Style Conversational Week 1147: Grid expectations with Word ‘Find’ And in Meet the Parentheses, (Nan Reiner, Alexandria) pitches herself some questions A passionate Nats follower, Nan Reiner got to be Fan of the Game on the day this photo was taken a couple of years ago. To those familiar with Nan’s brassy personality, this will come as zero surprise. See “Meet the Parentheses” below. ( Courtesy of Nan Reiner) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // October 29, 2015 I know that we’ve been going heavy on neologism contests lately, but it’s been more than a year since we debuted our word-“find” contest, and — given the thousands of entries and the very good results — I was eager to do it again for Week 1147 . I put the grid together just as I did in Week 1089 , with the aid of an instant word-search (and rudimentary crossword) maker, puzzle-maker.com. You just type in the words you want to include in the grid — for example, if you’re a teacher and want to use the week’s list of vocabulary words — and in no time, you get a PDF of the smallest puzzle that would hold your words in the classic word-search format: with each word embedded in a straight line going straight from left to right (or right to left); or up or down; or diagonally up or down, toward the left or the right. So all the words I fed the constructor appear in the grid in one of those straight-line directions, amid the random letters that fill the rest of the spaces. And once again, I generated those words at random, by clicking at wordgenerator.net. What words were there? Mostly weird ones! /expurge/ (i.e., to purge) /waly/ (a Scottish interjection of sorrow, like “O woe”!; I knew it from the gorgeous folk song “O Waly, Waly” ) / coafforest /(it’s a verb! To convert into a forest) /bookworm/ /tue/ (the only definition I can find for it as an English word is as an abbreviation for “Tuesday”; not really a word but so what) / plantigrada/ (animals that walk on the full soles of their feet, like humans and bears; dogs, horses, etc., walk on the equivalent of the balls of our feet) /disconsolation/ /Goldilocks/ (in addition to the fairy tale character; a term meaning the happy medium, as in the bed that is not too hard or too soft) /verbarscarus/ (a Mediterranean fish) /vire/ (an old kind of arrow) /coherently/ /stram/ (the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs way back when; also to spring or recoil with violence) indistinguishing /fitly/ (i.e., fittingly) /dire / /sylvine/ (an ore of potassium) /debilitate/ /assumptive / Not that it matters, of course, because they’re only 18 possibilities — and not very likely ones — out of the 3.1415926 bazillion words you can “find” by tracing your finger or arrow up and down and back and forth. You /will/ find some brand-new words in there. The trick, of course, is to define it in a clever, funny way. If you like, though, feel free to use any of the above words as well. The tricksters in Week 1089 were certainly in top form. Here’s the “above the fold” ink from last year; scroll down in Week 1093 to see all the results. /The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial: / *F-12: CRIMEA VISIT:* Term for guests who overstay their welcome, and then announce they own your house. (Mark Raffman) 2.*D-11: NOTIGAN:* The sweater your aunt knits for you, every birthday, every year. (Frank Osen) 3. *F-12: CLINTONHOLE:* A term conservatives use in front of their children while talking about someone they don’t like. (Rob Wolf) 4. *J-8: DANGRY: *Only mad enough to use pseudo-curse-words. (Pam Sweeney) Meanwhile, as I write this column, Imminent Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis has already typed up and posted a grid on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook that you can copy and use as searchable text. The results of Week 1143: What will deplete the Invite prize closet by 26 items? As /always,/ there were lots of clever and varied approaches to the odd “answers” in this latest Ask Backwards contest. It’s the nature of the contest that the entries’ humor tends to come from the writers’ ingenuity in responding to the prompt, rather than as a self-contained joke. (This is why they don’t tend to work asInk of the Day cards.) Also as always, there were many answers with roughly the same idea; sometimes they canceled one another out, and sometimes I chose an entry that had something to edge it past the rest (that something is /not / transmittable via PayPal). Four out of the five members of this week’s Losers’ Circle are habitues (and, while I didn’t do the research, probably are all Ask Backwards vets as well): Runner-up Neal Starkman has his 53rd ink since starting in Week 944, while Bird Waring, who’s been entering since 2002, blots up Nos. 147 and 148. But at another level altogether — you might call it The Stratum of the Ridiculous — are this week’s winner and second-place finisher, who are No. 3 and No. 1 in the Invite all-time standings. It’s the 27th first place for Loser Since Week 7 Tom Witte, and his 1,358th blot in all, while Chris Doyle notches Inks 1,725 and 1,726 — and his 155th runner-up prize. SWARM OF LOSERS TO INVADE VA. NOV. 15 The next Loser Brunch is at a place we’ve been to many times: It’s The Front Page in the Ballston section of in-town Arlington. There’s a buffet and also a Bloody Mary bar. The restaurant is inside an office building, and the last couple of times they’ve set up our long table in the building’s sunlit atrium lobby. And if you come, Pie Snelson will let you have a vintage pre-Loser Magnet Style Invitational bumper sticker. I plan to be there; RSVP to Elden Carnahan here. Everyone is welcome, even the Merely Curious. *MEET THE PARENTHESES* /This week, meet one of the Invite’s most memorable Losers. Nan Reiner not only inks up the joint every time we have a song or verse contest, but she’s become a fixture at the Flushies awards and holiday parties while performing parodies written for the occasion. And under the moniker Kitty Ditty on the Style Invitational Devotees page, Nan often comments moments after a baseball game — in instantly composed limericks. / *(Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)* “Otherwise known as ‘this [insert glowing superlative here] with all the songs and the silly prize donations.’ ” *Official Loser anagram? * RAN ERNE IN, in tribute to my years as a prosecutor and my natural habitat among the seabirds at the beach. (Alternatives, RERAN NINE or INNER NEAR… sorry, there’s not much you can do with this array of letters.) *Age?* Um… less than 60. And let’s just keep it there, shall we? Playing by “Jewish diaspora rules” (i.e., time everywhere on earth is determined by what time it is in Jerusalem), I will gladly receive felicitations for my 15th birthday on the last day of this coming February. *Where do I live?* For the past 35 years, I have called AN AXED LIAR (Va.) home. I hail from GET CANKER (N.Y.), and in the near future I expect to come to rest in O, NOT A CRAB! (Fla.). But not until at least one or two more Loser events wherein I can inflict song parodies on the not-at-all-unsuspecting assemblage. *What do people who’ve never heard of the Invite know me as? * Pretty much the same. At the tender age of 7, I discovered summer camp. Where it was a tradition to write topical new lyrics to existing songs. And thus the monster was unleashed. Countless school and camp shows, Law Revues, and Purim Spiels later, my parents’ hard-earned investment is paying off, in precious inkblots. The Capitol Steps’ loss is the Invite’s gain. (More on that below.) Also, in no particular order: Tireless denizen of the D.C. attorney general’s office, sometime cantorial soloist, a cappella fanatic, and perpetual cheerleader, among many other things. *How long have I been playing and how much ink do I have?* I entered on a lark in the summer of 2010. Since then, it’s been more or less regular, depending on the contest and what normal people call “life”. I have somewhere north of 250 inkblots. (According to the Omniscient Stats Man, my current tally is 272.) I’d like to make it to 500 someday, if I can. *What brought me to Loserdom? * Retirement. As an attorney for the D.C. government, there was no way I could rev my snark engine – almost totally fueled by current events – in print and sign my name to it. Then, some months after I hung up my government lawyer shoes, a stroke of serendipity cast my eye on Week 877 of the SI. On a lark, I sent in a few couplets, including one skewering the sitting mayor (my erstwhile boss); next thing I knew, that couplet was above the fold, and I had a T-shirt, a stinky tree, a signed column and delightful letter from someone called The Empress, and an invitation to brunch. The Loser drug was too intoxicating – I was powerless to resist! I was hooked. *A few favorite entries I’d like to share?* Well, there are the song parodies… but they’re way too long-form to be included here. (You can find many of them in the results of Weeks 929, 982, 1004, 1074 & 1113.) Equally fun for me have been the light-verse contests, in particular those which had me writing poetry in forms I’d never tried before. To wit (at least to half-wit): /Week 978, Framed Couplets (2 or 4 lines, 9 syllables, first & last rhyme), from 2012:/ GOP’ers wail about Barack: “He puts forth a socialistic crock!” Say the Dems, “Well, Mitt and Ann are snobs.” Hey — do you guys have a plan for jobs? (Alas, not much has changed since then…) /Week 1095, TankaWankas (haiku-ish, with 2 more 7-syllable lines), from 2014 – this about “Gamergate,” harassment of women in the gaming world:/ Gamer dweebs all say Girls are not supposed to play. Hey, guys: Get a clue. We have learned what we can do With our joysticks, without you. /And Week 1030, cinquains (5 lines of 2-4-6-8-2 syllables), from 2013, in reference to an unfortunately photogenic Member of Congress: / Weiner — “Carlos Danger”! — Rears his head in hubris. Doesn’t need our votes, he needs a New bris. *Something Loserly I did? *Or, rather, something Loserly that got did to me. In 1987, while pregnant with my first child, I played the 17-year-old Japanese ingenue Pitti-Sing in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Mikado” for a local community theatre. (Which is funny enough in itself, especially for those who know my upper-body configuration un-pregnant, let alone prenatally engorged.) As was my wont – and also my will – I supplied much of the parody material for the updated song reprises in the show. And as luck would have it, two of my fellow players were members of the Capitol Steps. Who promptly approached me about joining the troupe. At that time, though, it was a requisite that all members be employees (or alumni) of Congress, which I was not, so the founders kiboshed that idea. To which I say, in the words of the immortal Calvin Coolidge, “Capitol Steps – you lose!” *And something Loserly I do now?* Traipse through as many flea markets and schlock shops as I can, in search of Objects of Questionable Taste and/or Quirky Amusement for the Imperial prize hoard. You’re welcome.