Sesame, open up!
Round 1
Image 2 — "I know a magic spell! I'll be rich!" : 3.25
The pose is the clearest bit of acting in the round — arms flung wide, weight dropped, the whole body committed to the incantation — and the title carries real comic energy. But the picture around it is a default animated-film render: plastic skin, eyes that do not quite focus together, and a soft-blurred courtyard set that could be dressed for any story at all. The joke is in the caption rather than in anything on screen.
Image 3 — "The Spell is Spoken" : 3.70
Beautiful restraint, and the best pure lighting of the four — a figure reduced to silhouette, the door open just a crack, molten gold spilling out into a black cave. Handing the whole image to a rim-lit outline is a confident choice and the tonal control holds it together. What it lacks is anything to find on a second look: no face, no treasure, no consequence, just a lovely shape against a lovely light.
Image 1 — "Ali Baba and opening Sesame" : 3.85
The only entrant who read the moment as TERROR rather than triumph, and it transforms the story — the man clings to the rock in the foreground with his eyes blown wide, while behind him the cliff splits into fire and something walks out of it. The widescreen crop is used properly, staging reaction, miracle and silhouette across three distinct depths. Best of all is the ambiguity of that figure in the light: you cannot tell whether it is a thief going in or something ancient coming out, and the picture is far better for refusing to say. It loses a little on the waxy skin and the awkward grip of the hand on the rock.
Image 4 — "True magic, Sesame fridge!" : 4.05
This is the only artist who thought past illustrating the sentence and asked what the story is actually ABOUT — and answered: it is about a poor boy and a door with abundance behind it. So the vault becomes a fridge, and the treasure becomes roast meat, fruit and preserves glowing in the dark, which is funnier than gold and quietly sadder too. The execution matches the wit everywhere it needs to: the ornate stone-and-iron door blends into the appliance seamlessly enough to read as a joke rather than a glitch, the warm interior light does all the emotional work, and the glowing "Open Sesame" script is cleanly legible — something almost nobody manages. It gives up a fraction on the shelves, which are a slightly stock assembly of food, and on the perspective where the door meets its frame. But this is invention and craft arriving together, and the first image in a month to fully earn a four. My winner.