iPad Update: We're Putting it to the Vote!

Way back in the mists of time (or October, take your pick) we ran a competition to win a 16gig iPad with WiFi to try to distract ourselves from the misery of the Captcha reign the site was suffering under at the time. We asked you to tell us your best and funniest Captcha words but we didn't *quite* reckon on getting over 600 entries for it.

And as most of them are really funny and deserve proper scrutiny, we've been ploughing through then in snatched 20 minute bursts ever since.  Hence the delay in announcing the winner, for which we do sincerely apologise. And what's worse is we can't narrow it down ourselves, but we have gotten the ones we thought were funniest down to 20.

And from here, you'll have to help us. We'll do three rounds of voting for the best Captcha comments, kicking off today with the top 20. You'll have the weekend to vote for your fave, and we'll eliminate the poorest-performing ten. On Tuesday 21st, we'll have the next round of ten entries to vote for; on Thuesday we'll have it down to five and we'll announcing the winner on Christmas Eve, Friday 24th.

So, here are the final 20. Read 'em, and then step two is to vote in the poll below for the person whose Captcha phrase you like the most. In all cases, the Captcha is in single quotes. (' ').

1. Bee: I got 'Vablicne Reason' – which everyone knows is the lost book from the Dan Brown series of running round some European city investigating conspiracy theories with Forrest Gump in bad hair.
2. LuLuBabe: 'the unnsin' – It came up when I was commenting on the Airport Shopping post so I reckon it was the cybergod's way of telling me that money spent in Duty Free *is actually not real money* and will never appear on your credit card statement – thus, is not a sin, but an UN-SIN!
3. Emz: I just got 'barber hornynes' – is this what men get when they get a fantastic new hair do I wonder?
4. Fairycakes: 'almoster small': he was almoster small as Peter Stringer, crack myself up!
5. Aisling: 'Rampant wagons’ … this Captcha sounds like an all-female rock band from the 90s!
6. MsSittingatherdeskandpretendingtowork: 'Lois Grunting' – poor Superman.
7. brideandjoy: ‘knoteno usual’ …to be loved by anyone
8. Pud: 'Numerous fisaters'? Nothing a good concealer won’t fix!
9. Bawnie: 'ah goon': OMG! Separate the words and you get Mrs. Doyle off Father Ted's famous “Ah go on!” AH go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on gimme that iPad! GO ON!
10. Deirdre Kirwan: 'sweates hysterics': how I felt when Michael Buble came on stage on Saturday night.
11. MiamiMortimer says: ''radculty but'  - like a Roddy Doyle ‘The Snapper’ phrase!!!! “Ah now, yisser chips are radculty but."
12. Nims: 'was sweere' - I was sweere last weekend… but it was after a couple of vinos!!
13. Joseph: 'maiming foundation' – I won’t be buying that make-up!
14. Eve: 'restore norket'. Sounds like a type of cosmetic surgery. “Oh, she’s getting surgery to restore her norket, you know, keep the husband interested.”
15. Naois: 'freight repeld' – what the lads do in rosslare when the boat comes in from france full of stinking cheese.
16. Jessica: 'purvely available', sounds like the kind of personal ad you never want to see.
17. Jaz: 'pantay Hopes' - many a young man’s dream for Saturday night?
18. Emma: 'Nomnom Cat' - sure I love cats but I’d never eat a whole one.
19. Claire Lynch: 'Major stiffen' – I kid you not.
20. Shanna: I just got 'could houtors'. Which, when said in a Cavan accent, might describe the temperature of my chest area while walking home tonight. “Jaysus, it was freezin, I had fierce could houters.”

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T&Cs: the final 20 were picked because they tickled our funny bones the most. Our criteria was involuntary guffawing; these satisfied that criteria. Please feel very free to ask friends, family and the man on the street to come and vote for your entry. We use Polldaddy polling software to collect votes and it uses cookies so each person can vote once. We will know if there are any attempts made to spam the poll from a 3rd party source and that will mean immediate disqualification for any/all entries which have tried to rig the vote.  The ten entries that performed most poorly in the poll will be discarded and will not go forward to round three. At the end of the elimination rounds, the person with the most votes will win the prize. They must be resident of Ireland, they must be signed up to our mailing list and they must satisfy all our other competition requirements as normal. In the event of the requirements not being met, the 2nd highest number of votes will win. The second prize in the competition is a beauty bag. Phew!