@inproceedings{schechter-etal-2026-jct,
title = "{JCT} at {S}em{E}val-2026 Task 1: Let the Best Joke Win - A Generate - and-Rank Approach to Constrained Humor",
author = "Schechter, Batya and
Barzel, Sarah and
Liebeskind, Chaya",
editor = "Kochmar, Ekaterina and
Ghosh, Debanjan and
North, Kai and
Komachi, Mamoru",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 20th {I}nternational {W}orkshop on {S}emantic {E}valuation (2026)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, USA",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.semeval-1.13/",
pages = "89--94",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-414-9",
abstract = "We present a humor generation system forSemEval-2026 Task 1, Subtask A (Castro et al.,2026) that produces short jokes under lexicalor headline-based constraints. For each input,our system generates multiple candidate jokesusing a large language model across diverse hu-mor styles and prompting strategies, includingzero-shot, few-shot, and structured prompting.Constraint satisfaction is explicitly enforced,either by requiring exact lexical inclusion orby approximating semantic relevance to a head-line using sentence-embedding similarity. Allvalid candidates are ranked using a weightedhumor score that combines semantic incon-gruity, emotion-based humor potential, ironylikelihood, linguistic fluency, and novelty withrespect to a large external jokes corpus, andthe single highest-scoring joke is selected foreach constraint. This approach follows a best-candidate selection paradigm, leveraging auto-mated humor proxies to improve joke qualitywithout task-specific fine-tuning."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="schechter-etal-2026-jct">
<titleInfo>
<title>JCT at SemEval-2026 Task 1: Let the Best Joke Win - A Generate - and-Rank Approach to Constrained Humor</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Batya</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Schechter</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sarah</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Barzel</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chaya</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liebeskind</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (2026)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ekaterina</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Kochmar</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Debanjan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Ghosh</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Kai</namePart>
<namePart type="family">North</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Mamoru</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Komachi</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, USA</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-414-9</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>We present a humor generation system forSemEval-2026 Task 1, Subtask A (Castro et al.,2026) that produces short jokes under lexicalor headline-based constraints. For each input,our system generates multiple candidate jokesusing a large language model across diverse hu-mor styles and prompting strategies, includingzero-shot, few-shot, and structured prompting.Constraint satisfaction is explicitly enforced,either by requiring exact lexical inclusion orby approximating semantic relevance to a head-line using sentence-embedding similarity. Allvalid candidates are ranked using a weightedhumor score that combines semantic incon-gruity, emotion-based humor potential, ironylikelihood, linguistic fluency, and novelty withrespect to a large external jokes corpus, andthe single highest-scoring joke is selected foreach constraint. This approach follows a best-candidate selection paradigm, leveraging auto-mated humor proxies to improve joke qualitywithout task-specific fine-tuning.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">schechter-etal-2026-jct</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.semeval-1.13/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>89</start>
<end>94</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T JCT at SemEval-2026 Task 1: Let the Best Joke Win - A Generate - and-Rank Approach to Constrained Humor
%A Schechter, Batya
%A Barzel, Sarah
%A Liebeskind, Chaya
%Y Kochmar, Ekaterina
%Y Ghosh, Debanjan
%Y North, Kai
%Y Komachi, Mamoru
%S Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (2026)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, USA
%@ 979-8-89176-414-9
%F schechter-etal-2026-jct
%X We present a humor generation system forSemEval-2026 Task 1, Subtask A (Castro et al.,2026) that produces short jokes under lexicalor headline-based constraints. For each input,our system generates multiple candidate jokesusing a large language model across diverse hu-mor styles and prompting strategies, includingzero-shot, few-shot, and structured prompting.Constraint satisfaction is explicitly enforced,either by requiring exact lexical inclusion orby approximating semantic relevance to a head-line using sentence-embedding similarity. Allvalid candidates are ranked using a weightedhumor score that combines semantic incon-gruity, emotion-based humor potential, ironylikelihood, linguistic fluency, and novelty withrespect to a large external jokes corpus, andthe single highest-scoring joke is selected foreach constraint. This approach follows a best-candidate selection paradigm, leveraging auto-mated humor proxies to improve joke qualitywithout task-specific fine-tuning.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.semeval-1.13/
%P 89-94
Markdown (Informal)
[JCT at SemEval-2026 Task 1: Let the Best Joke Win - A Generate - and-Rank Approach to Constrained Humor](https://aclanthology.org/2026.semeval-1.13/) (Schechter et al., SemEval 2026)
ACL