Style Conversational Week 1094: If you get it, you don't get it:; The Empress of The Style Invitational on why most of this week's results are only online 
Washington Post Blogs October 16, 2014 Thursday 7:43 PM EST 
Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved 

Length: 1138 words Byline: Pat Myers 
Body 
"Sure don't see why not. Words are words," answered my editor a month ago when I sent him an e-mail titled "Can we do this contest?" I was pleased, of course, that he'd given the go-ahead to Loser Ward Kay's suggestion of a poetry contest based on the list of "50 Words That Sound Rude but Really Aren't." And readers seemed to agree: Four weeks ago, in announcing the Week 1090 contest, The Style Invitational printed 40 or so of the words, both  in print and online, including such genuine wholesome English words as "shittah," "dreamhole," "fuksheet" and "dik­dik" -without any indication of what their real meanings were. And there was even a sample poem by Gene Weingarten, featuring "peniaphobe" (someone with a fear of going broke): 
My sister is truly a honeyBut a peniaphobe, as to moneySo my sis sells her tailTo most anyone male(Which is pretty ironically funny.) 
Yeah, it was a pretty immature idea. But "immature" is part of the Empress's job description anyway, and, as I'd expected, we received the usual number of complaints for a Style Invitational column: zero. 
Four weeks later, however -yesterday evening -my editor had a serious change of heart. He remembered his earlier approval, "but after seeing the page today I think we just have to go another direction. There's simply too much in there that crosses the line, when taking into account that we are still a family paper." 
Fortunately, he agreed late this morning to let the entire set of results run online, and to allow the winner and two other entries -ones that weren't double-entendres -to run in print. Officially, The Post's position is that there are not two sets of standards for print and online; everything is held to the same high standard. That may be true for its standards for accuracy, transparency and news judgment, but here's a case when differing standards do and should apply:   
As I note in the Web version's introduction to the results, readers paging idly through the Sunday Arts & Style section might reach Page E16 or 18 -let's say they had an unusually large breakfast waffle -and be unpleasantly surprised by what they could see as coarse humor (or, if they were young children, in-cred-ibly exciting humor). But to read the Invite online, you really have to track it down. You have to look for it through the search bar at washingtonpost.com, or you have to know the generic URL, washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational; or you have to know the usual specific-week URL, bit.ly/invite[week number]; or you have to have the link (which you get if you're on the e-mailing list by entering the Invite or by signing up on your own). 
And if you go looking for The Style Invitational, and you're upset by these poems, well, you're just being silly. 
most of this week's results are only online 
I'm delighted that The Post did give actual liquid ink to Danielle Nowlin's poem about the guy bragging about his Hawaiian fishing trip, with the conclusion "aholehole" (a fish). Danielle, who didn't start entering the Invitational until Week 995, already has blotted up 132 inks, including 14 "above the fold"; this is her fourth Inkin' Memorial. The Loser Community awarded Danielle plaques for both Rookie of the Year and Loser of the Year this past May. It's hard to see how anything could top that, but she's giving it a try - Moppet No. 3 is due shortly. 
So this week we have two second-place winners and two third-place winners. But just one "Klutz Book of Inventions." The book will go to Beverley Sharp, who edges out Chris Doyle by virtue of printability. Not to mention that Beverley once ended up with a flying squirrel in her bed, and maybe there's some invention in there that's a Flying Squirrel Debedder. With this 475th blot of ink -46th above the fold -Beverley continues inexorably downhill toward the welcome mat of the Style Invitational Hall of Fame.  
Chris's "penistone" couplet only increases his hold on the status of Biggest Loser Ever, as he slides away from the 1,600 mark. I'm not sending him anything. 
It's ironic that this contest deemed too risque for our readers includes two inking entries from Mae Scanlan, the most gracious and elegant of Losers. Mae, whose younger elementary school classmates included John McCain, has told us that she writes to her own criterion of tastefulness: She won't send in anything that might embarrass her minister on a Sunday morning before church. So while Mae's "gullgroper" entry -with no double-entendre at all -was the one that wins her a mug or bag, even she had her "dreamhole" poem cut from the print paper. 
And then there's the other fourth-place for Frank Osen, because Frank Osen seems to have some deal with the gods in which he has permanent squatter's rights above the fold. I don't know what it says about Frank that he ended up with five blots of ink in this contest - perhaps his next volume of poetry could contain a set of these. 
Some people didn't follow the contest directions, which stated that the poems had to make sense if you read the words with their actual meanings -even if you could also read them entertainingly with the wrong meanings. So it wasn't the contest to say "The Cohens were now sitting shittah" for someone who died, or "The bird fired a pakapoo [actually an Australian lottery] in my ear." It wasn't like the contests we've done in which you had to come up with your own, totally inaccurate definition for an archaic word. 
Chris Doyle suggested the Tour de Fours contest 11 years ago, basing it on a similar one that ran regularly as part of the New York Magazine Competition, in which he played a starring role (under various credit names) in its later years. And each year since then, the word-block neologism contest has evinced dozens of classic additions to the vocabulary. (I'll be sharing some this week from 2010 on the Style Invitational Ink of the Day.) 
If you'd like some inspiration for this week's contest, it's easy to find the 10 previous versions (with different letter blocks, of course) on Elden Carnahan's Master Contest List at nrars.org. Call up the list and search on "fours" to find each contest, then scroll four weeks down to click on a link to see the results. As always: An interesting made-up word -it's especially good if it has a real-life application -can become a funnier entry with a clever definition and/or a funny sentence as an example. 
It's not too late to join the Loser contingent this Sunday at noon at the Front Page in Arlington's Ballston section. I'll be there, along with about 10 others, including some I'll be meeting for the first time. There's a buffet (as well as a Bloody Mary bar) but you can also order from the menu. RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. I am so glad that I didn't have to show up on a week when there was no Invitational at all.