Style Conversational Week 1119: Our updated color scheme
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By Pat MyersApril 9, 2015
Some of our readers who are on Facebook see the Style Invitational Ink of the Day, a page on which I post a little graphic containing some entry from the past 1,118 sets of Invite results, with the hope that someone out there will share it and thereby spread the word about the ’Vite in general. The Ink of the Day is now in its third year, so I’ve put up more than 700 of these things, but still you’d think it shouldn’t take me more than a minute or two to dig up some classic entry from all the links on Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List. But it turns out that a lot of Invite humor doesn’t really work in this form.

Sometimes a contest is just too hard to explain; sometimes it’s a bit too highbrow; sometimes the humor in the contest comes from how well the writer met the challenge of the contest, rather than the intrinsic funniness of the entry (I’ve discovered this is true for cartoon captions; as clever as they are in context, they don’t tend to make very funny stand-alone cartoons). But perhaps the main reason old entries aren’t good for tomorrow’s Ink of the Day is that they’re dated.

But of course humor doesn’t need to be timeless to be terrific. The Invitational has always been full of zingy topical humor, like so many of the entries I rediscovered as I read the results of Week 39. These entries are still enjoyable now, if you know the references, but their freshness must have made them that much more fun at the time:
Fourth Runner-Up: Kevorkian: Description: A bright, light white. (Linda K. Malcolm, Silver Spring)


Second Runner-Up: Rainbow — Description: Black. (Douglas Olson, Beltsville; also, Henry Lynton, Arlington, and Richard J. Swanson, Mount Airy)

First Runner-Up: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buttafuoco — Description: The color and oily texture of rancid margarine. (Kelly A. Lindner, Washington)

Packwood — Just a touch of flesh. (Stu Segal, Vienna)

Cincinnati Red — Multicolored, with a white flaky head. (Steven King, Alexandria)

Ed Rollins — Toast. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

Where’s William Kennedy Smith? — Cinnabar, usually. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

Petit-Bone — Very pale. Soon to be discontinued. (Tom Lehker, Silver Spring; also, Steve Shearer, Alexandria)

Twenty-one years later, surely there are so many more colorful characters ripe for an eponymous hue, so I’m confident that we’ll have lots of good entries for Week 1119. Rip ’em from the headlines. (Though less topical humor is welcome as well.) Meanwhile, some people just Never. Go. Away.:

Rust Limbaugh -- A big fat crayon with no point, but very colorful. (Lowell Feld, Arlington)

Err heads*: The results of Week 1115
*Jeff Shirley’s idea.

I’m in a bit of a glass house this week — one of my sample horse names in last week’s contest was longer than the maximum 18 characters — but I’m still going to lament over how many entrants to Week 1115 ignored these very specific instructions: “Change a headline in an article or ad in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com from March 12 through March 23, by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting a letter; switching two letters; or changing spacing or punctuation.”


This is not going to allow a change from “Some Nats extra careful about protecting bodies” to “Some bodies extra careful about protecting ’nads.” Or “abstract art” to “abs-tracked art.” Or “campaign” to “camping.” Enterprising though they were.

As this week’s inking entries — and many others — prove, 10 days’ worth of Washington Post headlines offered plenty of funny “typos” to be found within the rules. I’m glad I said that people could use “upstyle” headlines when the joke involved a capitalized word, such as Brian Collins’s “Go Palestinian State.” (I didn’t make all the headlines consistently upstyle because they’re a bit harder to read in the narrow columns of the print paper.)

The previous time we did this contest, Week 940, I didn’t think to (or didn’t know how to) use the strikeout function to show the original word when displaying the results; instead, I put the word at the end of the entry, in brackets. I think the strikeout method is better because it requires less work for the reader to go back and place the original words back in the headline. Or do you think the first way was better because it was less heavy-handed? Also, in most of the Week 940 results, I didn’t say the original at all; I counted on the reader to figure it out — which often makes a joke more fun. For when we (inevitably) do this contest again, which way should we do it?


Any way you strike it, lots of fun stuff among the 35 inking entries from 25 Losers. Three of the four “above-the-fold” names — eight-time winner Gary Crockett and runners-up Frank Osen and Chris Doyle — have almost 2,100 blots of ink among them, and each had at least three inks today. But the coveted squid hat goes to Brian Collins, whose “Palestinian State” gets him only his second blot of ink ever — and his first was in Week 668, nine years ago.

What Doug dug: Ace copy editor Doug Norwood, one of the few people who get paid to read The Style Invitational, “loved Palestinian State and the winner. too. [Elden Carnahan’s] ‘One-way crush’ and the subhead were nice. [Chris Doyle’s] ‘pot-seeded Terps’ and [Gary Crockett’s] ‘Student Acid Bill of Rights’ made me want to go back to school.”

Unprintable entries at the bottom of this column.

Loser Brunch, April 19. Grevey’s. I’ll be there.
[Mostly reprinted from last week’s Conversational] The Royal Consort and I hope to chow down along with you at the next Loser Brunch, at Grevey’s sports pub right outside the Beltway at the Gallows Road exit. It’s at noon. Not a buffet, but the servers have been perfectly accommodating about separate checks. Contact Elden Carnahan at bit.ly/invitebrunch so he can get a head count. While I’ll be sending the squid hat to Brian, I still have a future-prize orca hat (courtesy of Cheryl Davis) that I can wear with my Sunday best.

Headed for trouble: Unprintable entries from Week 1115
Sexual or scatological references about a particular real person usually lead to Convo-exile. I also wasn’t going to make the Japanese jokes.

Japanese historians contest textbook’s description contest: textbook’s description of ‘comfort women’
Tokyoho and Nipponmybooty are favorite entries to replace outdated term (George-Ann Rosenberg)


Rebels’ Defiance Could Tip Yemen Semen Into Civil War
Boiling fluid more effective than oil for defense of fortified positions (Elden Carnahan)

Netanyahu warns supporters he may lose election erection
Will seek new handlers to increase odds of retaining his post (Jon Gearhart, as well as the same “typo” but a less racy bank head by Jim Kosinski in his first entry ever)

Dulles passenger subdued after rushing cockspit
Penalty for early withdrawal charged to compensate flight attendant (Jon Gearhart)

Dan Balz, Washington Post chief correspondent, wins Toner Boner Prize
Lives up to more than his name, says John Holmes Society president (Rick Haynes)

Plane forced to land after blowing tire rite
Crew breaks up passenger’s initiation into mile-high oral club (Chris Doyle)

Struggling to save young sea lions loins
Shore leave poses challenge for Navy as sailors continue contracting ‘crotch rot’ (Jeff Contompasis — would have been usable had it said “jock itch,” probably, but Jeff specified “’Verse Only” and so I didn’t consider it)

Victorious Netanyahu faces feces host of troubles
Post-election excitement creates slip hazards at celebration (Dave Prevar)

And the Scarlet Letter goes to:
A search for safe-deposit boxes safe deposit-boxes
Men encouraged to check out brothels first (Elden Carnahan)