New Yorker cartoons are either the best of the genre, or incomprehensible, depending on whom you ask. In our view, they are frequently one or the other, and we wanted to see if users agreed which were which.

Our New Yorker Cartoons poll allows panelists to rate up to 50 of the magazine’s recent offerings on a scale of +100 to -100. Thus far, 261 users have done a total of 3,165 ratings, meaning each cartoon as been rated an average of 63 times.

We need about double that number of rankings to have "reliable" results, so alternately have a laugh and furrow your brow while doing your bit for society by taking the poll if you haven't already.

In the meantime, we can tell you the five highest ranking cartoons have an average score of 50, while the 5 lowest average -10.

The size of the gap is large enough so that even with double the replies, the current top 5 are very unlikely to end up in the bottom half, and vice versa, so we feel its reasonable to make an observation about what differentiates the winners from the losers even at this interim stage.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the topic of the cartoon seemed to carry some weight, with topics that are popular in other media being topics in the top 5 cartoons, including:

A popular schtick in tv commercials (kids know tech, parents don't)



A popular YouTube subject (cats)



And a popular social-media "war" (extroverts v introverts)





In the bottom five, were relatively unpopular subjects, including:

Classic literature



Millennial culture



And millennial culture plus classic literature



And of course, at the very the bottom was one we, and apparently some others, found incomprehensible

If you think you know what this one means, please fill us in!