Too Hot for This Challenge Winners

One thing became pretty clear from reading Too Hot for This entries: heat does terrible things to good judgment. The best pieces let every reasonable solution fail until the bad ideas started sounding pretty good.

That gave these stories a really fun sense of escalation. You could usually see the trouble coming, but rarely where it was actually going to end up.

🏆 Winners

(Not a) Nice Day for a Funeral by Hannah Moore

Hannah Moore won us over with a narrator desperately trying to keep it together at a funeral while the heat makes absolutely everything worse.

Hot Soup for Brains by Stephen Kramer Avitabile

The black shirt decision tells you pretty quickly what kind of day this poor man was in for. Stephen has a lot of fun watching the heat chip away at his judgment from there, as one bad decision somehow keeps finding another.

Hot and Bothered by Matthew Batham

Poor Harry just wants to cool down, and Matthew Batham seems determined not to let him. Every little attempt at relief brings a fresh indignity, and they just continue to pile up beautifully.

Jell-O Shots Didn't Help by Andrea Corwin

Andrea Corwin commits so completely to overheated brain logic that every new bad idea somehow makes perfect sense. The fan fails, the shower fails, the ice packs don 't work, and from there, things only get hotter, stranger and funnier.

A Series of Unfortunate Decisions by Sasha Desideri

Sasha Desideri turns one miserable hot day into a spectacular run of bad decisions. The best part is how confidently the narrator talks herself into each one, even as every possible escape somehow makes things worse.

🎖️ Runners-up

• Melted Smiles by Josh Ripperger

• Deon's Inferno by Lamar Wiggins

• Damnit, Dale! by Harper Lewis

• The Fall of the House of Fahrenheit by Tim Carmichael

• House on Fire by Jesse Lee

• Hot Date by JL Daly

• A Reasonable Person Would Have Stayed Home Or Walked by Chel Writes

• Fahrenheit by Paul Stewart

• Coyote and the Sun by Meredith Harmon

• One Flight at a Time by Silvia C Corella

• Even the Rain Didn't Help by Timothy E Jones

• Hot and Bothered by Cristal S.

• Hot Date by Julie Lacksonen

• Out of the Fire, Into the Ice by Rebecca Patton

• Stay Cool by Fiona Hamer

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• Sweat by Raistlin Allen

• Relief at Last by L.C. Schäfer

• Carey and Albert by Kendall Defoe

• Clowns at the Center of the Earth by Leslie Writes

• Marmaduke Saves My Arse by Edward Swafford

• Too Hot Too Function by Elizabeth Butler

• Bra or No Bra? That is the question by Felicia Ledbetter

• Humanity’s Only Hope by Ophelia Keane Braeden

• Hot Bother. by Carol Ann Townend

• Not Cool, Gary by Aaron Morrison