MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – Will it be ApricotAbra’ or Wackie Chan? Italian Renaissance or Mojito?

How about Puttin’ on a Ritz?

Ben & Jerry’s has winnowed down more than 40,000 suggestions for a new flavor to five finalists, and will turn their customer-creators loose next month in the “Flavor Finals,” to see whose is tastiest.

The five finalists in the “Do Us a Flavor” contest get expense-paid trips to the ice cream maker’s Waterbury plant, where they will whip up their concoctions for the company’s flavor gurus in the Oct. 4-5 finals.

The winner gets bragging rights and an ice cream party in their hometown, complete with plenty of the winning flavor.

Whether the folks behind unorthodox flavors like Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey and Phish Food decide to scoop up the winning concoction for the company’s 30-flavor permanent collection remains to be seen.

“We’ve always had consumer folks sending us suggestions, but we’ve never done a contest before,” said Ben & Jerry’s spokesman Sean Greenwood. “This is just a contest for our fans. We’re not necessarily going anywhere else with it.”

The contest, which had no advertising and existed only on the company’s web site, started last June, encouraging ice cream lovers to drum up – er, spoon up – something sweet and new.

The response surprised Ben & Jerry’s officials, with the recipes for thousands of creatively named confections sent via e-mail to the company’s headquarters.

Of them, five were chosen and their creators invited to Vermont for the taste-off, in which they get a one-day tutorial in the flavor lab before competing against one another to see who pleases the palate the most.

The finalists:

-Robin Thorneycroft, 25, of Richmond, B.C., who suggested a flavor she calls Italian Renaissance, made of amaretto liqueur ice cream, cherry chunks and sliced almonds.

-Timothy Link, 36, of Troy, Idaho, whose suggestion was Mojito, a lime-based sherbet with mint, brown sugar and rum added in.

-Kerstin Karlhuber, 25, of Boston, whose Wackie Chan would be sweet cream and ginger-flavored ice cream, with chocolate-covered fortune cookie bits and fudge swirl.

-Tasha Callister, 26, of Jackson, Fla., whose Puttin’ on a Ritz would consist of vanilla ice cream, caramel and Ritz crackers.

-Reina Chilton, 26, of Tempe, Ariz., who recommended “ApricotAbra,” a mix of apricot chunks, dark chocolate, vanilla ice cream and tart apricot preserves.

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On the Web:

Ben & Jerry’s: www.benjerry.com

AP-ES-09-18-06 1622EDT