Balderdash by Gabrielle Jarrett and Maria Hanna, one of our top 13 winners.

At a moment when word games are in the spotlight in The New York Times and in classrooms, we offer you a delightful way to add some new words to your vocabulary.

In December, we challenged students to define one of our Words of the Day in 15 seconds or shorter for our Ninth Annual Vocabulary Video Contest. From nearly 1,500 submissions, we chose 13 winners — whose short videos you can watch and learn from below — as well as 17 runners-up and 26 honorable mentions.

Thank you to everyone who participated, and to the teachers who devoted class time to this project. As always, our choices were chiefly based on originality — no clichés here — and how well each video shows an understanding of the word and its use in a specific context — balderdash you will not find.

If you enjoyed this contest, join our monthly vocabulary challenges from now until the end of the school year. And don’t forget our editorial contest, happening now, and our upcoming podcast and summer reading contests, too.