There was a whole lot of verbal jousting at Brush Square in downtown Austin on Saturday. Twenty-eight punslingers battled it out at the 29th annual O. Henry Pun-Off.

Two competitors are paired up on stage and given a category, ranging from the weather to music to the Internet. No one knows their category beforehand, so you don’t know if you’re getting something easy, like food and cooking, or something hard, like the oil business.

Each punster gets five seconds to come up with the winning words. If their puns don't qualify, they get a strike, after three they're out. Taking longer than five seconds will also keep you from moving on.

That's what happened to Valerie Ward. It’s her second year to compete in the battle of wits.

"I fell okay about it because I think it's really about giving the people who come to watch a good time. It's set up as a competition so it can start to feel personal, but I think everyone who is here likes puns and wordplay," she said.

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"This is very important to the restoration of the Susanna Dickinson house. I think this is probably reaches the most people at one time during the year for our organization," Dickinson Museum Co-Chair Deborah Rosenquist said.

The Pun-Off is definitely an “Austintatious” event, even though many competitors and judges are from all over the United States.

“It's just a fun, quirky thing for people to do. It's kind of geeky and intellectual, which is kind of part of the weirdness. It's a neat thing. I've never heard of anything else like this anywhere else," Ward said.