Style Conversational Week 1170: Rerun for the Roses The Style Invitational Empress on this year’s foal name contest — and what was that winner with rabbits and backpacks? Kentucky Derby contenders Mohaymen, left, and Nyquist (seen here near the end of the Florida Derby; Nyquist won) may be tough “breeding” challenges in this week’s Style Invitational. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // April 7, 2016 Yay, it’s horse name week! If Week 1170 is much like the 21 previous years of Style Invitational foal-“breeding” contests, I’ll be facing a lot of work but very little worry — because the results are always fabulously clever. In fact, even the work part has become far easier now that Loser Jonathan Hardis, for the second year, will be sorting the entries for me with a computer program he devised that spares me from having to look at each entry twice: I used to search through thousands of entries, over and over, to find those that bred Horse No. 1with Horse 2, Horse 1 with Horse 3, down to Horse 100 — and then ended checking up Horses 15 and 42 and 85 (and every one between) with Horses 1, 2, 3, etc. Now I can start looking at each new horse and instantly skip over the matches I’ve already seen. If you’ve entered this contest before — and thousands of Losers have over the years — you probably know the drill, and what we’re looking for. If you’re new ... well, I was going to write up a big description of the process, the strategy, etc. — but why reinvent the horseshoe? Just take a look at my Style Conversational for Week 1118 , which was last year’s horse contest. As I’ve been doing ever since I’ve limited the list of horses to 100 names rather than the some 400 in the full list, I’ve included the horses who top most prognosticators’ lists of Kentucky Derby favorites (though they inevitably will change over the next four weeks) — just because it’s more fun to watch the race and root for “our” horses among the 20 starters. And this year, some of those horses have what you could charitably call “challenging” names for this contest — chief among them the undefeated Nyquist and the previously undefeated Mohaymen, whom Nyquist just trounced in last weekend’s Florida Derby. I’m hopeful that some enterprising Loser will come up with some clever offspring for at least one of them. The idea for our horse contest came from Loser and serious horse player Mike Hammer back in 1994. He noted that often, racehorses’ names reflect those of their parents, or at least their sires: War Admiral was a son of Man o’ War; Seabiscuit was the son of Hard Tack, who was the son of Man o’ War. Sometimes a horse’s owner acknowledges that a foal also has a mother, and incorporates the dam’s name as well; this year’s nominee Awesome Speed is the product of the love match between Awesome Again and Speedy Escape. Okay, that wasn’t exactly clever — but that’s what /you’re/ here for. You could see the 1,000-some names we’ve given ink to over the past 21 years — not to mention those from the spinoff “grandfoal” contests — by searching down Loser Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List for “foal,” then clicking on the link for the results a few contests later. Or just take a little easy inspiration from these randomly chosen gems from the past decade. And they’re all honorable mentions rather than “above the fold”; the bar is high in this contest, every year. Achilles of Troy x Tug o’War = Heel and Tow (Mark Eckenwiler, 2006) Clued In x Reporting for Duty = Colonel Mustered (Pam Sweeney, 2007) Daddy Rabbit x Revenge Is Sweet = Lucky Human’s Foot (Andrew Hoenig, 2008) Rocket to the Moon x Gluteus Maximus = Tang N Cheek (Barry Koch, 2009) Beethoven x Lethal Combination = OD to Joy (Steve Price, 2010) Major Art x Humble and Hungry = Art Major (David Smith, Barbara Turner, 2011) Boat Trip x Holy Highway = Rowed to Damascus (Jonathan Paul, 2012) Now and Then x Python = Intermittent Viper (Jeff Contompasis, 2013) Scotland x Harpoon = Plaid the Impaler (Roy Ashley, 2014) Tough Customer x Punctuate = Tough, Customer! (Mark Richardson, 2015) *ASKMASTERS*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1166* /(*Non-inking headline by Tom Witte) / As with the ponies, our perennial Questionable Journalism contest — in which you quote a sentence from The Post and write a question that (in a sillier or snarkier world) it could answer — always produces more great material than I’ll be able to share. This week’s results are as funny as always, with a healthy mix of the topical and the timeless. For this contest, which I’ve judged at least 10 times, I often like “answers” whose real context is clear — because it makes the twist to a new context clear as well; if it’s a big change in meanings, that’s going to enhance the humor. For example, Jeff Contompasis’s quote about the shower doors is obviously from some dry ol’ home care advice column — which makes you laugh out loud when Jeff turns it into a story of unrequited love (or at least “love”). And among the “above the fold” winners this week, Brendan Beary’s “community is anticipated to be sold out” was clearly froma real estate story, and Mark Raffman’s wordplay on “ground game in South Florida” was playing off either an unrelated campaign story or one about football (it was indeed about Marco Rubio ). But sometimes, even a sentence for which you have no idea of the original context can fuel a great joke — as in this week’s winner by John Hutchins, who used a sentence no one else did. And what is it really that “carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and domestically made school backpacks”? Not the product-placement State of the Union address, but a North Korean government website that also mentioned that the DPRK could take out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb. Here are some more sources of potentially puzzling sentences. /A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the runway./ — Not obese pilots (Kimberly Baer) but a fashion show featuring the weird designs of Rei Kawakubo /A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.” /— Not a minstrel show but University of Virginia basketball coach collapsed during a game /A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring book, I barely heard them./ — Possibly not really Ben Carson at the debate (Frank Osen) but the writer remembers her parents fighting when she was a child /A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a little bit more athletic./ — Not a perky intern (First Offender Jim McCormack) but UVA beats Miami in basketball // /A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby./ — Not Mitch McConnell’s suggestions for where D.C.’s poor should eat without food stamps (Chris Doyle), but a pair of ravens seen nesting in D.C. /A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”/ — Not a description of the local bar association luncheon (Mark Raffman, with another self-deprecating lawyer joke) but of a rattlesnake roundup in Texas // /(This sentence, as well as others from the same article, was used for numerous entries, several of them about Trump rallies and GOP debates — like Frank Osen’s about “the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum reverberating all around you”)./ // /A. It is very messy to clean them out./ — Not the clients of divorce lawyers (another Raffman joke) but Heloise on bagless vacuum cleaners /A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most unreserved condemnation. /— Not the opinion of a stripper’s breasts by a hypocritical clergyman (Mae Scanlan) but Charles Krauthammer on both the hecklers at Trump rallies and the menacing behavior of the Trump camp /A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them./ — Not handy toilet substitutes (Jeff Shirley) but uses for coffee grounds /A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot piece of bacon. — /Not suggested words for poop (Ann Martin) but some second-graders’ favorite birthday foods /A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when all the flowers start to bloom. — /Not explaining why I released a bunch of bees at your wedding (Dave Prevar) but the White House florist about a state dinner /A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument./ — Not the views of polygamist wives (Kate Cross) but, duh,an article about an organist // /A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”/ — Not billionaires choosing which candidate to buy (Jesse Frankovich) but a designer talking about a chair for a child’s room /A. Today, that hill is a mountain. /— Not the result of Kim Kardashian’s surgery (William Kennard) but theuphill battle to sell a certain very costly drug /A. Just think about how clapboard siding works./ — Not a trick “to delay, y’know, happy endings” (Brendan Beary) but, well, how clapboard siding works. While all three runners-up this week are frequent visitors to the Losers’ Circle, Inkin’ Memorial winner John Hutchins (of the State of the Union with the backpacks) got his first blot of Invite ink just four weeks ago, and his second last week. John’s based in the D.C. area, which makes me wonder where he’s been all these years. Ditto for newbie Kimberly Baer, who was a First Offender just last week with “bumpkin pie” and submitted several inkworthy entries for this contest as well. In announcing this contest, I had specifically stated that headlines were off limits as sentences — because we have another perennial contest for that, “Mess With Our Heads.” Which is the only reason this one gets no ink for Duncan Stevens: /A. Wizards fail to heed advice, still pull out win / Q. Can you summarize the plot of every Harry Potter book? *LOSERS ON THE RIVER: NEXT BRUNCH, ANNAPOLIS, APRIL 17* The brunch buffet at Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs, right near the Annapolis City Dock, is once again the site of a Loser Brunch. I don’t think I can make this one, but I’ve been there several times and it’s a friendly place in a historic district that’s great for a sightseeing walk afterward. RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Loser website, NRARS.org (click on “Our Social Engorgements”). And do write in — in blood, please — Saturday afternoon, May 21, on your calendar for the Flushies, the Loser Community’s (but open to all) annual “banquet,” this year a potluck at the little farmy place of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., about 15 miles south of Annapolis. And you can bring the family — there are not just horses to pet, but baby goats as well. And Elden Carnahan. As always, there will be awards for Loser milestones; song parodies written for the occasion; and plenty of time to meet the Losers whose work you’ve always admired. And Elden Carnahan. The Losers will also be assembling a team of participants for theannual Post Hunt extravaganza the next day — and for the first time ever, it’ll be held indoors, at the Washington Convention Center. We’ve come very close to winning!