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Style Conversational Week 1123: JefCon’s perseverance pays off with the ScrabbleGrams
By Pat MyersMay 7, 2015
Our now-perennial ScrabbleGrams contest met with my usual negativity when Next In Line For The Hall of Fame Jeff Contompasis suggested a “Hardscrabble Humor” Style Invitational contest to me in 2012. “I’ve been playtesting this” on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook, Jeff said, “and I’m now convinced it has contest potential.” He listed several very good examples. I said no because I didn’t think we’d have the room to print a list long enough to prevent too much duplication.

Jeff proceeded to slap his head at my stupidity for an entire year. The next March, he tried again — noting that I’d recently run a long list of words in paragraph form, rather than a table, and remember that ScrabbleGrams contest? Also, the Invite had come into some more real estate: It now took up the whole back page of the Sunday Style tabloid — about 30 percent more space than we’d had since 2011. I was still hesitant.

But Jeff did what does finally convince me: He provided several varied and inkworthy examples, demonstrating that entrants could take a wide variety of approaches. Looking back, I have to admit: Why on earth couldn’t I see what a suitable Invite contest this would be — over and over and over?


Anyway, Week 1021 — headlined “’Gram Theft” in the print paper, “Nice Sets of Racks” online — proved wildly successful, of course. I listed 100 letter sets, and then: “I have 2 million Scrabblegrams neologisms,” I told my daughter in a late-night IM (thanks, Gchat archives). Bob Staake’s cartoon featured a drawing of Jeff himself, looking much wider than in real life but just as winsome, juggling seven letter tiles above his head. That week’s winner brought Frank Osen his second Inkin’ Memorial, no doubt because of his sample sentence: “AUFWRGF: Gruffaw: A mocking, dismissive laugh. ‘Listen, kid, if you can’t take the constant gruffaws, you’ll never make it big in the mime biz.’”

Because there were so many good entries — and especially because it was fun to show several very different uses of the same rack — I ended up running 41 results at the usual time, then 48 more honorable mentions two weeks later.

The next May, of course, I was eager to run the contest again. And in Week 1072 — Jeff got his cartoon again — I cut the list from 100 sets to 40. And the results were still plentiful, and plenty good. That week’s winner was by Brendan Beary: “AAURGJN → Uganja: Country ruled by the surprisingly mellow dictator Weedy Amin.”


So here we are again: This year JefCon is acknowledged only here in the Conversational, but he is not the type to grouse about that. Is he.

There’s something about this contest that brings out the newbies: In Week 1021, there were nine First Offenders among the two weeks of results. My theory is the list in the print paper: It presents readers with a prompt — a set of parameters that they can look at quickly, and think of something quickly as well And then, oh, they think of another one. Hey, this is fun! The foal name and “joint legislation” contests also feature long lists, and have always had both especially large entry pools and especially large numbers of first-time entrants. And remember, Loser Obsessives, regular doses of fresh blood are essential to keep the Invite, um, fresh-blooded.

Note that I beg you, when you submit your entries for Week 1123, to include the original letter set before each entry, and in the same line: DON’T do:
“ABCEDEFG:
Entry 1 for that.
Entry 2 for that.”
This is because I hope to sort the entries alphabetically, as I did for the Week 1118 horse names, so that I’ll be able to judge the sets together, and also have not the foggiest idea of who wrote which entry. My little Sort function is rearranging what it sees as paragraphs; so if you hit Enter between the letter set and your word, it’s going to go astray. (I’ll still be able to find it — it won’t be totally lost — but it won’t show up with its pals from the same letter set.) I alphabetically sorted the entries for today’s results, and it worked close to perfectly.

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DYE LAUGHING*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1119

*A non-inking entry from both Kevin Dopart and Jeff Contompasis

Our contest for color names (reprising one from 22 years ago) echoes those for names of restaurant dishes, chemical elements, rooms in buildings, etc.: The inking entries feature lots of puns, and words that cleverly carry multiple meanings, with some zingy, timely jokes tossed in. Classic Invite. Because such entries tend to be very short, I was able to run the whole list of more than 30 in the print paper even though we also have the table of the 40 ScrabbleGrams names.

With “Lilac a Rug,” John McCooey finds himself bumped off the Cantinkerous list with his first Inkin’ Memorial among his 33 blots of ink since Week 903. The Royal Consort and I had lunch with John and his wife near their his home in Rehoboth Beach when we were camping at Cape Henlopen a few years ago; I’m glad he continued to enter the Invite nevertheless.


Edward Gordon, who logged a fair amount of time in hospitals recently, should find it especially fun to throw the Happy Pill against the wall as it laughs irritatingly. Among Ed’s 57 blots of ink are six “above the fold,” including his slogan “Certifiably Inane” for one of the 2009-10 honorable-mentions magnets.

And I’ll deliver in person, perhaps right from a cake, the prizes for the other two runners-up: Frank Osen is flying in from Pasadena to attend this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s annual award banquet, for which, if you pay the $5 and bring some potlucky thing, you can get your own plastic fork and probably a door prize. And I’m also sure that Danielle Nowlin will be there on Saturday, May 30, noon to 4, because the event is at her house in Fairfax Station, Va. As of this writing, we can take about 20 more people; please RSVP to Elden Carnahan here ASAP if you intend to go (or, if you think you’re expected, if you intend not to go).

By the way, I’ve seen a couple of the song parodies written for the occasion, and they’re classic.


Laughed Out of Courtney — the faves of copy desk chief Courtney Rukan: “The winner is brilliant. It’s a great pun – and not an obvious one to make. Also love Indigo Montoya, Spinal Taupe, Andy Marooney, Goooooold, Inhofe, Bureaucratic Maize (nice to see Ink after so long!), Board of Directors Rainbow and Invisible Ink (great inside joke). Unred, Kiddie Pool Blue, Perple, Fuchsiashima, Obamatone and Beat Red made me laugh AND cringe. Another very strong week – and you can’t lose with Inigo Montoya and Cary Elwes.”

I hope Courtney can come to the Flushies and gush over all of yas in person.

What Doug Dug — from my longtime colleague and onetime boss Doug Norwood: “I liked all the runners-up and the winner, plus Gooooold, and Beiging and Board of Directors Rainbow and Rich Maroon — how is it that Trump jokes never get old?”

Loser Blue: Unprintable ink from Week 1119
Two grossouts:
Shartreuse: A brownish stain (Jeff Contompasis, and in even more graphic detail from Jon Gearhart)

And one for which, even had the writer not included his own name, I would have known anyway:
“Eff-white: The color of male eff-luent. Also known as tapiOca and uh-roe. Or, in my case, Cream o’ Witte and, unfortunately, Quick Bisque.” (I don’t get “uh-roe” and probably don’t want to.)