WEEK 1170: DERBY OR NOT DERBY The latest mating techniques in this year's foal-"breeding" contest -- our 22nd year. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post) By Pat Myers April 7 at 10:07 AM (Click here to skip down <#report> to this week’s “Questionable Journalism” winners) *Stradivari x Catapult = Fiddle On The Roof* *Mighty Moses x Percolator = He Brew* *The Big Mo x Exaggerator = OK, The Medium Mo* The 2015 Triple Crown was won by a horse with a misspelled name — which the Empress had mistakenly spelled correctly as “American Pharaoh,” rather than “Pharoah,” last spring in the 21st running of The Style Invitational’s horse name “breeding” contest. This year, we checked the names of our stud roster more carefully (yes, Mooose really has three O’s) and so it’s off to the races with Year 22 of our most popular contest. *At the bottom of this page is a list of 100 of the almost 400 racehorses nominated for this year’s Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont; your job is to “breed” any two of them and name the “foal” to reflect both names,* as in the examples above. Yes, every horse on the list is male; sorry, Kim Davis! As in the racing world, *a name may not exceed 18 characters including spaces,* but one or more of the characters may be punctuation marks or numerals. You may run words together, but the name still should be easy to read. Make sure to spell the original horse names correctly in your entry, or the E’s search button might skip over them. Please use the format in the examples. *As always, you may send as many as 25 entries,* preferably on a single e-mail. All this in a 3-inch box: This week's second prize. Winner doesn’t get a $2 million Derby purse but does get the Inkin’ Memorial , the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place receives Desktop Derby, a little bitty kit containing a mat, a spinner, some plastic horses, a gold-colored trophy and a 32-page guide to horse racing. We don’t know how interesting the game is, but we’re intrigued how all that stuff fits into a 3-inch-square box. Donated by Christina Courtney. *Other runners-up* win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug, the older-model “This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug or a vintage Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get one of our lusted-after Loser magnets, “Magnet Dum Laude” or “Falling Jest Short.” First Offenders receive a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink for their first ink). Email entries to /losers@washpost.com. / Deadline is Monday night, April 18; results published on Kentucky Derby weekend: May 5 online, May 8 in the paper. Include “Week 1170” in your email subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/InvRules . The headline for this week’s results is by Kevin Dopart; the honorable-mentions subhead is by Chris Doyle. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at /on.fb.me/invdev ./ “Like” the Style Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook at /bit.ly/inkofday; / follow @StyleInvite on Twitter. *The Style Conversational: *The Empress’s weekly online column, published late Thursday afternoon, discusses each new contest and set of results. Especially if you plan to enter, check it out at wapo.st/styleconv . And the winners of the Style Invitational contest announced four weeks ago . . . *THOSE SMART-ASK LOSERS: ‘QUESTIONABLE JOURNALISM’ WINNERS FROM WEEK 1166* In Week 1166 we once again asked readers to choose any sentence from a Washington Post article or ad that week, and give us a question that it might answer. Shockingly, many entrants had politics on their minds. See this week’s Style Conversational column (published late afternoon April 7) to find out what the sentences below were really about. 4th place: /“Answer” from The Post: The entire community is anticipated to be sold out by this fall./ Q. Does it seem inevitable that the House GOP will swallow its principles and endorse you-know-who? (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) 3rd place: /A. Nobody else has that kind of ground game in South Florida./ Q: Why do people line up for gator burgers at Bubba’s of Boca Raton? (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.) 2nd place and the Evolution Eraser and plunger-shaped phone stand : /A. Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal little about their workings./ Q. What does “The Night Before Christmas” sound like when retold by Bernie Sanders? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: /A. It also carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and domestically made school backpacks./ Q. Why are critics saying the State of the Union address is being influenced by too many lobbyists? (John Hutchins, Silver Spring, Md.) Mis-Q’s: honorable mentions /A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the runway./ Q. What is the most shocking finding from last year’s study of pilot obesity? (Kimberly Baer, Woodbridge, Va.) /A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.” / Q. Do you deny starring in your fraternity’s racially insensitive minstrel show? (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.) /A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring book, I barely heard them./ Q. How did you maintain your composure during the debates, Dr. Carson? (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) /A. Judging from the pictures you sent, your shower doors appear to be framed in anodized aluminum. /Q. What do you think of the nude selfies I took in my bathroom? (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) /A. Let me be honest here./ Q. What does a politician say before lying? (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines) /A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a little bit more athletic./ Q. President Clinton, how was your intern’s replacement? (Jim McCormack, Fairfax, Va., a First Offender) // /A. Gov. John Kasich has long resisted direct engagement with Trump./ Q: Why has the GOP front-runner been married only three times? (Pam Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.) /A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby./ Q. You’re cutting SNAP benefits because D.C. families could dive in dumpsters, Senator McConnell? (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.) /A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”/ Q. Why did the Midland Bar Association stop inviting the press to its annual luncheon? (Mark Raffman) /A. Yes and no./ Q. Does Hillary Clinton have a plan to respond to criticism that she equivocates on important issues? (Duncan Stevens) /A. The Mets had explored trades for Tejada but apparently couldn’t find any willing partners./ Q. Since he stinks as a player, could Ruben Tejada maybe be an apprentice plumber or drywaller? (Brendan Beary) // /A. For some employees, a single sighting is enough to trigger what psychology texts call “musophobia,” an extreme fear of mice./ Why does the Disneyland hiring process include an interview with Mickey? (Stuart Backer, Falls Church, Va., a First Offender) /A. Go crawl in a hole./ Q. What was the worst advice Saddam Hussein ever followed? (Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.) /A. It is very messy to clean them out. /Q. Why do divorce lawyers wear rubber gloves when meeting with clients? (Mark Raffman) /A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation. / Q. Yo, Rev. Sanctimonius, how do you like the bazooms on that stripper up there? (Mae Scanlan, Washington) /A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them./ Q. Dear Heloise: What if you really have to go but guests are using your bathroom and kitchen sink? (Jeff Shirley, Richmond) /A. It’s hard to worry about propriety when you’re focused on matching the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum reverberating all around you./ Q. Governor Kasich, do you regret the lack of decorum during recent debates? (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.; Frank Osen) /A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot piece of bacon./ Q. What were some more of the suggestions for the AMA’s revised “Words for Poop” list? (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.) /A. “I’ve been around for a long time,” said Sal Pittelli, 70. “And you can smell the flop sweat.”/ Q. Why does Sal Pittelli, 70, not have very many friends? (Duncan Stevens) /A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when all the flowers start to bloom./ Q. Why on earth did you release hundreds of bees during our wedding ceremony? (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.) /A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument./ Q. What did the wives on “Big Love” say about sharing one husband? (Kate Cross, Silver Spring) /A. Europe is launching its own Mars-landing mission Monday from Kazakhstan, in central Asia./ Q. While we’re all talking about moving to Canada in case of you-know-what, what’s the rest of the world doing? (Brendan Beary) /A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”/ Q. What did one billionaire say to the other when deciding which candidate to buy? (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.) /A. Today, that hill is a mountain. / Q. How would you describe the result of Kim Kardashian’s surgery? (William Kennard, Arlington, Va.) /A. Just think about how clapboard siding works./ Q. What’s a useful trick to delay, y’know, happy endings? Asking for a friend. (Brendan Beary) /A. It’s just about damn time./ Q. What happens when Mitt Romney gets really agitated, after darn time is over? (Duncan Stevens) *Still running — deadline Monday night, April 11: our acrostic/backronym contest for movies, books, etc. See bit.ly/invite1169. * *THE 2016 STUD FARM* These 100 horses were drawn from a list of almost 400 Triple Crown nominees published by KentuckyDerby.com ; “breed” any two and name the foal for Week 1170, above. First: Do the Empress a favor and . . . ●*Don’t “breed” two names and use a third name from the list for the “foal.”* People do this every year and never get ink because it’s just too easy to do. Also, *don’t breed three horses together — * what were you thinking? ● *Don’t format your list as a chart, with tabs., etc.* All the formatting disappears when the entries are combined into one big list for judging, and sometimes the names end up all over the page. Please just use regular text in your e-mail, with each entry on a separate line. ● *Make sure the horses you breed are spelled just as they are in this list,* because the E will be searching on each of those names to compare all the foals from Horse A at once, then all the foals from Horse B. (We’ll be using the format *Horse A x Horse B = Foal, *as in the examples at the top of the column.) ● *Observe the 18-character limit, * including spaces and punctuation marks. In many Invitational contests, the Empress has sometimes given ink to an entry that bent the rules a leetle bit, if it was especially clever or funny. But not the letter limit on horse names — it’s part of the challenge. All World Alpha Team Annals of Time Attraction Awesome Speed Bar None Battery Benediction Big Red Rocket Big Squeeze Billy’s Kitten Bombs Away Brody’s Cause Can’t Remember Caribbean Catapult Cherry Wine Cold Blood Collected Creator Cupid Cutacorner Danzing Candy Deserved Destin Diplodocus Discreetness Dressed in Hermes Economic Model Emoji Man Enroute Exaggerator Fellowship Flexibility Found Money General MacArthur Gettysburg Giant Trick Great Dane Gulf Of Mexico Gun Runner Happy Match Hardly Home Hawk Hot Item Ima Monster John Q. Public Kiss Limit Lani Latest Craze Let Me Go First Life Is A Trip Magical Mystery Majesto Matt King Coal Mighty Moses Miles of Humor Mo Tom Mohaymen Molasses Brown Mooose Mor Spirit Name Changer Nyquist Outwork Percolator Perfect Saint Pinnacle Peak Pinstripe Prospectus Rated R Superstar Realm Riddler Shagaf Singleton Smokey Image Snow Fighter Sorryaboutnothing Start A War Stradivari Suddenbreakingnews Swagger Jagger Swipe Tally Ten Blessings That Makes Sense The Big Mo The Lieutenant Time Will Tell True Solitaire Twenty Four Seven Twirling Unexplained Urban Bourbon Walk Out Weight No More Whitmore Who’s Out Williamsburg Zulu