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We examined how phonological competition effects in spoken word recognition change with word length. Cohort effects (competition between words that overlap at onset) are strong and easily replicated. Rhyme effects (competition between words that mismatch at onset) are weaker, emerge later in the time course of spoken word recognition, and are more difficult to replicate. We conducted a simple experiment to examine cohort and rhyme competition using monosyllabic vs. bisyllabic words. Degree of competition was predicted by proportion of phonological overlap. Longer rhymes, with greater overlap in both number and proportion of shared phonemes, compete more strongly (e.g., kettle-medal [0.8 overlap] vs. cat-mat [0.67 overlap]). In contrast, long and short cohort pairs constrained to have constant (2-phoneme) overlap vary in proportion of overlap. Longer cohort pairs (e.g., camera-candle) have lower proportion of overlap (in this example, 0.33) than shorter cohorts (e.g., cat-can, with 0.67 overlap) and compete more weakly. This finding has methodological implications (rhyme effects are less likely to be observed with shorter words, while cohort effects are diminished for longer words), but also theoretical implications: degree of competition is not a simple function of overlapping phonemes; degree of competition is conditioned on proportion of overlap. Simulations with TRACE help explicate how this result might emerge.