Style Conversational Week 1257: Mulligan stew
The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s do-over contest and
fashion fictoids
Check out Elden Carnahan’s super-duper Master Contest List to find the
contests to use this week, or use links to The Post’s own pages.
Directions below. (Image)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
Email //
Bio //
Follow //
December 7, 2017
I don’t know how many of us really wish we could live 2017 all over
again without major alterations, but let’s do what we can. Obviously
this week’s Style Invitational contest and the next favor the Invite
Obsessives — how many normal people are going to look up old contests? —
but of course we welcome sanesters as well.
We’re going back to Nov. 27, 2016 (Week 1203), to start our Week 1257
retrospective contest, since last year’s
ended with Week 1202. Last year we also had a two-week retrospective,
but both contests covered the whole year; it makes a lot more sense to
split them up. And in the unlikely possibility that you’d have anything
else to do in December: You can get both contests done this week, if you
like; just enter the second set of entries (Weeks 1230-1254) next week.
(Don’t send them now!)
These first six months’ worth of the past 12 offers lots of variety, as
you’ll see from the Master Contest List at NRARS.org
, where I refer both print and online readers who’d
like to do this week’s contest. Along with the Loser Stats that he’s
been keeping back to Week 1, Hall of Fame Loser Elden Carnahan maintains
this indispensable list (and sub-lists), featuring a link in some form
or other (usually more than one) to every single Style Invitational
contest.
The links on Elden’s list (an image is above) are not subject to The
Post’s paywall, its limit on articles viewed by nonsubscribers. Instead,
at least for the ones to use this week, they links go to PDFs —
essentially pictures, but with links that still work. If you click on
the WP logo on the right side of each listing, you’ll get a PDF of the
print version that appears in Sunday’s Arts & Style section; the “E”
will get you the online version, which sometimes has more results, but
you have to scroll through lots of pages, and sometimes pictures don’t
show up.
*But if you’re a Post subscriber *— and you certainly should be (there’s
a great promotion
going
on right now for only $100 for the whole year of The Post online) — you
can see all the contests by going to
washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational
, scrolling down to Week
1229, then clicking “Load More” to get the earliest ones. Those are
links to actual Washington Post Web pages, so they do count against the
paywall. But they’ll be the most complete version. *(And! *If you sign
up with an email address ending in edu., mil. or gov., your subscription
is free! There are also deals through Amazon Prime.)
Or you could just type in one URL at a time into your browser: The
format is /bit.ly/invite[week number]/, e.g., bit.ly/invite1208
, except for three for which I had to add a
hyphen to get a unique name: /bit.ly/invite-1204
, bit.ly/invite-1218, bit.ly/invite-1229. /
Before you go searching one by one, here’s a list of the contests
covered this week. But please consult the actual details of the contests
before entering.
Week 1203: What would you do with one of the six magical powers listed.
1204: Offer some comforting observations about the coming year.
1205 and 1206 were last year’s retrospective contests; don’t go there.
1207: Write funny clues for any of the words in the provided crossword
grid.
1208: Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2016 (and make it
still 2016; save the 2017s for January)
1209: Fictoids about how a product or invention came to be.
1210: Describe a piece of “joint legislation” produced by humorously
combining the names of two or more members of Congress on the provided
list.
1211: Write a stupidly disparaging tweet about a laudable current,
historical or fictional figure.
1212: From any of the seven-letter ScrabbleGrams racks provided, make up
a new word and define it.
1213: Write a haiku that incorporates a pun.
1214: Write a humorous passage that uses only words appearing in the
2017 presidential inaugural address.
1215: Write a humorous exaggeration roughly in the form “x is so y that …”
1216: “Discover” a new word by snaking around the provided word-search
grid and define it.
1217: Combine two or more businesses and give the hybrid a clever name.
1218: Reinterpret a headline in this week’s Post or other publication
(use something dated Dec. 7-18) by following it with a “bank head,” or
subtitle.
1219: Write a “lik the bred” poem. (You’ll just have to check it out.)
1220: Be humorously pedantic about something.
1221: “Marry” any two people from any time or from literature and say
what their child would be like.
1222: “Breed” any two of the listed racehorses nominated for the 2017
Triple Crown races, and name the foal to reflect both their names.
1223: Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an
otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere
(again, Dec. 7-18).
1224: Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are
similar, different or otherwise connected.
1225: Suggest a march for some group or field, along with one or more
slogans.
1226: Breed any two “foals” that got ink in Week 1222 and name the
“grandfoal.”
1227: Name and describe a new life form — and no letter in the term may
be used twice.
1228: Name someone who was the “secret inspiration” for a certain movie.
1229: In the tradition of Edward Gorey’s “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” supply a
rhyming alphabetical couplet (A is for/B is for) for any of the 13
listed letter pairs.
None of the contests above require a lot of space in the results, like a
cartoon caption (I’d have to run the cartoon) or a song parody. But in
general, think short: One of my aims in the retrospective contests is to
celebrate the varied ways that the Loser Community can be so
cleverlytasteless clever.
I have, I think, physically prevented anyone from accidentally using the
entry forms for the old contests. But just in case: Your handy-dandy
place to submit your entries is wapo.st/enter-invite-1257
.
There’s most likely some question to come up about reusing one contest
or another; feel free to email me with a question, or post it on the
Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook;
tag my name so I’ll get a notification.
Yes, feel free to resubmit an entry that didn’t get ink earlier. But how
could it possibly be chosen this time around? It’s happened!
A. There were so many entries for that contest that many inkworthy ones
didn’t fit.
B. Another entry that week was similar enough in theme (we’re not
talking close to identical, though) that it didn’t make sense to run
both worthy entries.
C. The Empress is a human life form, if not so much like your own human
life form, and her mind can change.
*FALSIES*: THE FASHION FICTOIDS OF WEEK 1253*
/(*Non-inking headline suggestion by Dave Prevar) /
The Loser Community is consistently good at supplying fake trivia, most
likely because many of us have been reading lists of factoids since we
were wee nerdlets. And so while fashion might not be our passion — I
have a form letter warning Facebook users who get a prompt to join the
Style Invitational Devotees group that we are NOT STYLISH — we can still
write untrue information about it to know and tell. Good thing, though,
that I broadened Week 1253 to encompass most
anything that can be worn, and so we got to tell fun unfacts about suits
of armor, swords, tinfoil hats, and the jerkin — a garment that’s
important because it has a funny name, not because it’s a
Renaissance-era leather vest.
I bounced my shortlist off more people than usual this week, and was
thrilled that they all especially liked this week’s winner, even though
it was less in factoid form than the others in this week’s results
;
I’d worried a bit that Warren Tanabe’s report that Republican
congressmen have been wearing wool pullovers was too subtle, but they
got it instantly, or at least in the second or two of thought that
enhances the joy of the joke.
It’s the first win for Warren Tanabe after a whopping eighty-two blots
of Loser ink since Week 782, thus toppling him from second place on the
Cantinkerous list, behind only Now 94 and Still Counting Kyle
Hendrickson. Meanwhile, Daniel Galef gets just his seventh — and eighth
— and ninth blot of ink this week, including his runner-up, which is his
third “above the fold” award, an amazing ratio. And I’m sure that winter
in the Ozark
mountains will allow second-place finisher Drew Bennett to enjoy the
beautiful “Style Ink”
cap
painstakingly designed an D knitted by Devotee Catharine Mefford.
*What Doug Dug:* Aside from Warren’s pullovers, Ace Copy Editor Doug
Norwood singled out Jesse Frankovich’s muumuu as Hawaiian for “Your
Mama’s swimsuit; Kyle Hendrickson’s noting that buttons used to be made
of fruitcake; Robert Schechter’s pointer on wearing the tinfoil hat
properly; and Bill Spencer — who at least once attended a Loser event
dressed in a kilt — on the sporran as a Scots version of the protective
cup.
What should our next topic of fake trivia be? Send me a suggestion! The
fashion idea was offered by longtime Loser Christina Courtney.
*RAISE YOUR GLASSES (AND FORKS), LOSERS!*
As I mentioned in last week’s Conversational, there are
three-count-’em-three Loser events over the next month or so; I have to
miss this Sunday’s Loser brunch but I’ll definitely be at the other two.
Here’s what I wrote last week:
The next *Loser brunch, on Sunday, Dec. 10,* at noon, is at the
expansive buffet at Paradiso, an Italian place on Franconia Road, close
to the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits . . .
RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ Web page, NRARS.org; click on “Our
Social Engorgements.” As with all our get-togethers, you don’t have to
have Invite ink to attend; everyone is welcome, even The Merely Curious.
Meet the Losers!
I will be at a Special *Unofficial Supplementary Loser Brunch on
Saturday, Dec. 30.* It was requested by 71-time Loser Edward Gordon,
who’ll be visiting from Texas and has to return later that afternoon.
He’ll be staying at a hotel near the King Street Metro station in
Alexandria, and so we’ll have lunch at noon at Hard Times Cafe (1404
King St.; free parking), a joint that specializes in four kinds of
chili. If you’d like to join us during that between-the-holidays lull,
let me know so we can get a head count.
And!!! Clearly under the influence of some terrible potion, 35-time
Loser Steve Langer and Style Invitational Devotee Allison Fultz once
again have offered to host the *Loser Post-Holiday Party *at their
lovely, close-to-the-Metro house in Chevy Chase, Md., on the evening of
*Saturday, Jan. 13. *As always, it’s a potluck and we’ll have some sort
of parody singalong amid the general schmoozage. In a few weeks [now
sooner] I’ll be sending an Evite and will add details here as we have them.
Meanwhile, don’t forget to send in your entries to the Week 1256 cartoon
caption contest — deadline Monday, Dec. 11.