In honor of Hemingway’s 122nd birthday, for SixContest #140, we asked you to write a novel in six words. Not the simplest of tasks—as any hopeful Hemingway knows—but as always, Sixers brought their imaginations to the party.

In six words, your stories challenged the cynic (“Gave love, got even more back.” —MaxMatt), inspired the adventurer (“Road less traveled took her home.” —SF51girl) and brought familiarity to the grounded narrative (“Multi-millionaire. Fills purse with restaurant sugars.” —DynamicDbytheC). You showed what it is to be human on the inside (“A held moment startled the rivals.” —PapaCraft) and on the outside (“Telling stories to explain the unexplainable.” —canadafreeze). Papa would be proud.

You also gave Hemingway’s “For sale” story its own life by adding your own twist to it, so here are our Top 6 “For Sale” entries, followed by our overall Top 6:

1. Farmhouse for sale: honeybees in walls. —TonyGlim

2. For sale: Testing kit. Never used. —a_g_gordon

3. For sale: Her heart. Still beating. —canadafreeze

4. For Sale, Broken Heart, 50% Off —BanjoDan

5. Old impulses for sale. Very explosive. —Bevvie

6. For Sale: Baby shoes. BNNW, NRFB —enginethatcould

And here are our top six picks!

6. “Secluded gardener dies, plants watered daily.” —minervaarinya

5. “Supercomputers solve social problems. Solutions suppressed.” —a_g_gordon

4. “At long last, ‘she’ became ‘he’.” —k.sison

3. “Got stuck in time machine traffic.” —Bevvie

2. “Star-crossed lovers. Interstellar voyage. Stars uncross.” —AnnaMac

And the winner of Write a Novel in Six Words is…

1. “We met at the very end.” —FencingDude333

Congratulations FencingDude333, for breaking the rules of traditional storytelling and letting your characters live past the last “page”! You’ll have real pages to flip through after receiving the Six-Word Memoir book of your choice.