‘Sudoku with buttocks’: coupling images and captions inThe Adventures of Naked Man

The Adventures of Naked Man is a newspaper caption competition that began life in Melbourne in 1998, then moved to two New Zealand newspapers. The competition's protagonist is the sole naked person in a cartoon-like drawing where, owing to some convenient object or body position, his penis is obscured from sight. Entrants to the competition submitted a caption to complete the drawing, and with the obscured penis as the understood focus, entrants mostly (but not always) used double entendre to make risque humour. The sexual slant of the competition resulted in surprisingly little negative reaction, with the episodes continuing for many years, generating loyal followers. It is argued that part of the reason for the competition's longevity is its Sudoku-like mental challenge, which involves ensuring tight connections between categorisations of people and the activities in which they can normatively be inferred to be engaged.