Style Conversational Week 1098: The week of review; The Empress of The Style Invitational ruminates on (ew) the week's contest and results 
Washington Post Blogs November 14, 2014 Friday 12:55 AM EST 
Copyright 2014 The Washington Post All Rights Reserved 

Length: 985 words Byline: Pat Myers 
Body 
Actually, as far as I know, J.P. Bezos of the Seattle area is not acquainted with The Style Invitational. But it's good to see that his sideline Web business has a sense of humor: Rather than getting huffy that people enjoy taking advantage of its sophisticated feedback system by writing creatively silly product reviews, Amazon seems to embrace them: It even sends readers to its own page of "Funniest Reviews" as well as "More Funny Reviews."  And notice that it invites nominations for others.  
Amazon also offers a link to a "smart take on the funny reviews phenomenon," a blog post by Maria Popova called "The Art of the Humorous Amazon Review." I think that's notable because the reviews Popova cites includes some that actually mock the product being sold on Amazon, such as the Bic Cristal For Her pen in pretty pastel colors, and lauds the many recent snarky and sarcastic pen reviews for skewering "the gobsmacking marketing exploitation [of] the 'women's niche' (which is, of course, statistically a population majority) by pinkifying, softifying, and otherwise ladyfying products that are so obviously gender-neutral by nature." 
For our purposes, I think we can have as much fun as we want with the Week 1098 contest, as long as it doesn't mess with Amazon's star-system feedback ratings, which often determine which product and which seller a buyer will choose -often without actually reading the reviews. A listing with an average feedback rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars tends to be shunned in favor of one that has the full 5. So even if your bogus review is negative, if you post it on Amazon, you ought to give the product the maximum five stars. (I don't think there's an option to post a review without choosing a star rating.) And if you're going to make the review negative, it must be abundantly clear that you're joking;  don't say it made you sick, that it injured your child, anything like that.  
When I checked the current reviews for the five products I chose, I didn't see any joke posts. But I bet that at least a few people will disregard my instruction not to post the entry until I print the results on Dec. 11. 
I love the solar dancing turkey -I got one myself, and it's a happy addition to my growing collection of solar dancers. (If you're on Facebook, you can see a few seconds of video here; Pukin' Paul on the right was an Invite prize that was declined by its winner.)
 "The inclusion of X in Week 1094's Tour de Fours really cuts down on the usable permutations," fretted Such a Loser Jeff Contompasis on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook minutes after I posted the contest four weeks ago. But a couple of days later, I was reassured by Even Bigger Loser Chris Doyle, who posted this: "Like Jeff, I was concerned about the limited useful letter permutations in Week 1094, but after playing around today (while watching soccer and football), I've decided Pat will have ample funny material to fill the column." 
the week's contest and results 
I'm glad that Chris decided this, for -though I wasn't really ever worried -we ended up with the usual lots of clever, varied neologisms for this Tour de Fours XI. And I never systematically checked, but I think that almost all of the 24 permutations proved usable (including for Jeff), provided the user was imaginative enough. There were of course a lot of jokes about taxis and taxes (and there was the resultant duplication of ideas; I picked the entry that I thought edged out the similar ones), but also so many with totally different, often unique approaches.   
An ingenious, instantly understandable term -and one that ought to gain currency in our language -is Ann Martin's winning portmanteau "prophylaxity," combined with "unplanned parenthood" in the definition. It's the second win for Ann -her 10th ink "above the fold" and her 67th in all -and I'm relieved that I won't have to ship the Inkin' Memorial overseas now that she's moved back from England. 
And Chris Doyle was especially creative (and amply funny) with "A_XI_TY," netting him an electronic bubble fart machine that might even work, as well as even more distance between Chris and Russell Beland atop the Invite's all-time standings. Two more veteran punsters round out the Losers' Circle to earn their Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag: Dudley Thompson (official anagram: Note Shoddy Lump) passes the 100-ink mark with this 14th ink above the fold, and Jeff Shirley (Fish Fly, Jeer) blots up No. 46. 
Note to honorably mentioned Losers: While I wrote four weeks ago that this week's HMs would get one of the two new Loser magnets, it turned out that I still have a couple dozen or so left from the 2014 set, and I'd like to use them up. This will probably be the last week of the Po' Wit Laureate and Puns of Steel, before I switch over to the Hardly Har-Har and The Wit Hit the Fan. 
 (A few unprintables from Week 1094 are at the bottom of this column.) 
Right now, Brunchmeister Elden Carnahan has just a half-dozen names for this month's Loser brunch, at noon at the Mosaic Cafe, but it's not too late to join in.  RSVP Elden here. (I'm afraid I can't make it this time.)  
AND! An announcement will be made very soon for a Super Great Event in early December that will feature several especially creative members of the Loser Community. I'll provide more details as soon as I'm given the go-ahead.  Stay tuned to the Devotees page. 
Among the funny-but-nos: 
Buxatits: The Leslie Johnson lingerie collection. You'll look like a million dollars... or at least 79,000. (Nan Reiner) Foxtaint: A vixen's betwixen. (Tom Witte)Lixateen: Provides extracurricular instruction at a certain D.C. public charter school. (Nan Reiner) And the Scarlet Letter goes to the wonderfully clever but doubly unprintable ...Yu Xiating Mee: A Chinese comic whose name translates to "Are you serious?" (Warren Tanabe)