Thank you for all your submissions to our recent "Six Degrees of the Visual Thesaurus" contest! If you recall, we challenged you to use the Visual Thesaurus to link the following pairs of words: fire and sale, news and print and smart and card. We picked a winner from the submissions randomly, and our award goes to... subscriber Dallas Browning of Salt Lake City, UT! Thank you, Dallas! Your limited edition Visual Thesaurus t-shirt is on its way. (Runner-ups, you've got t-shirts coming, too!)

We also thought you'd like to see the answers. Here they are:

fire and sale
fire
dispel
disperse
break up
break
give away
shop
buy
sell
sale

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A few weeks ago subscriber Marije Martijn sent us a VT learning activity for students (see "Vox Populi," left column) that reminded us of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the trivia game where you link an actor through their film roles to Kevin Bacon. We here at the Visual Thesaurus love that game, and it inspired us to come up with our own twist:

In today's contest, we challenge you to use the Visual Thesaurus to link two words together through their related words. We'll choose five entries with the fewest "degrees of separation." Winners will receive a limited edition Visual Thesaurus t-shirt. In case of ties, we'll pick winners randomly.

The words pairs are:

fire and sale
news and print
smart and card

How do you play? Put on your cleverness cap, look up the first word in the Visual Thesaurus -- and start clicking to the right related words!

For example, to link "be" to "do:"

be and do
be
follow
do

Simple? Not so fast... Try connecting "be" to "strong." This one takes ingenuity. Here's what we came up with:

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We couldn't decide -- we received photos of so many desks, well-organized or, ahem, other!

We loved these three entries:

The first desk belongs to Mark Husson of Denver, CO, who writes "forecasts of the astrological kind."

The second is the writing desk of Cindy Mitchell, a communications director and writer in Olympia, WA.

And, finally, Particia Olson sent us a picture of hers. She says: "Here's a picture of my desk while I was writing my dissertation. Filing and cleaning was neglected for several years while I plugged my way through endless revisions and delays..."

Mark, Cindy and Particia: Thank you so much for your submissions! We're sending each of you a limited edition Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!

Dear subscribers, do you have a severe case of  Writer's Desk? Here's a photo of my -- your editor's -- disaster of a desk while I was putting together a piece about Japan last year for a big newspaper. What does your desk look like when you're writing? Send us a photo. We'll choose our favorite Writer's Desk and post it on our site. We'll send the winner a super cool Visual Thesaurus t-shirt.