Style Conversational Week 1175: Sorry, ‘arbitrary’ is a 14-point word The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s contest and the new entry thing In Style Invitational Week 1175, we want you to make up a 13-point word and define it. Cleverly, of course. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // May 12, 2016 What happened was that I forgot to run this contest on July 13, 2014. That would have been the first week — three months after Mark Raffman suggested, complete with great examples, what would become Week 1175 — that The Style Invitational would run on the 13th of the month. Mark had e-mailed me with the suggestion two years ago, but I was on vacation in England at the time, and I just let it fall too far down the page on my “Invite Ideas” Google Doc. Then, this week, I rediscovered Mark’s suggestion, and I didn’t feel like waiting till Thursday, Oct. 13. It’s a totally new excuse for a neologism contest, which is something I’m always in the market for. The sum of 13 points seems as good as any, and if this contest pans out (highly likely) we could do it again with a different total. So, two years later, Mark can finally get his contest suggestion prize — ice cream with the Empress. It might be kind of melty by now, though. I added these clarifications to the contest instructions after two questions came up on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page: Nah, you’re not limited to the number of tiles for each letter that are available in the actual game — you can’t use the words in Scrabble anyway. (That’s even part of this week’s rules — no words that are in a Scrabble dictionary are permitted.) And no, you don’t incur 50 extra points if your word has seven letters or more. SUBMIT! SUBMIT! OUR NEW ONLINE ENTRY SYSTEM Last week, a day or two after I posted the inking foal names from Week 1170, I got an email from a regular Loser. At first, he told me, he was going to complain that I’d failed to credit him for an entry that was identical to his own — but then he noticed that he’d written the wrong week number in the subject line of his email. Which meant that it wasn’t sorted into my Week 1170 folder. This accident can’t happen anymore now that you’ll be sending entries not by email, but by filling out a form on a Post website. There’s a different website for each contest, so you won’t even have to give the week number on the form. You will, however, have to give me your postal address, something that makes it a lot easier for me to send you a prize. The short-form URL should always be subpl.at/inviteXXXX (as in Sub Platform). This won’t count against the number of articles a week that non-subscribers can access online. The email submission system, which the Invite has been using, at least as an option, ever since Week 55 in 1994 (before that, the choices were snail mail and fax), presented a number of irritants over the years, in addition to the wrong-week-number risk: For many years there was no confirmation that an email was received; then there was one, but it might show up hours later, the next day, or not at all. Then we switched email systems and, for an embarrassing amount of time, the auto-reply wouldn’t go out for someone’s second submission — even if it was the next week. And all kinds of problems presented themselves when entrants included links in their entries, or attached a photo. On my end, sorting the emails and compiling the contents of all of one week’s emails (for the horses, I had 334 of them) into one searchable list, and then deleting all the entrants’ identifying material so I could judge the contest blindly, can take me hours. So I’m truly thrilled that the Sub Platform, The Post’s new system for online submissions, has been adapted to work for the Invitational. With a single click, I’ll be able to hide all the Losers’ ID data, then make it all reappear when it’s time to announce the winners. All the week’s entries — and no other ones — will be on a single page. I’ll be able to tag certain entries for the short­list. And you’ll be able to easily attach photos or other graphics, in case we have another photo contest. While I’m able to shut down the website at midnight on the deadline day, I won’t do that; I’ll continue to accept the occasional late entry if there’s a problem getting it to me on time. Still, some wrinkles are sure to present themselves; Invite contests are so varied and complex that it’s hard to anticipate everything. But the Web developer I’ve been working with, the delightful Sruti Cheedalla, is eager for feedback and has been amazingly responsive to all my concerns. So let me know if there are problems. (You can always reach me at pat.myers@washpost.com.) There’s one issue I did anticipate: *How should you submit alternative headlines and honorable-mention subheads?* In addition to regular entries for a week’s contest, I also take suggestions for the headline that will go atop that week’s results, as well as for the subhead that precedes the honorable mentions. Under the email system, I’ve asked for those submissions to be on separate emails, with something in the subject line to identify them. This way I could keep those entries in the folder with the rest of the week’s stuff, but I wouldn’t have to look through everything to find those dozen or so emails with the “revised titles,” as we used to call them. Now that there’s no email with a subject line, we need a new system. Until we come up with something more elegant, here’s the plan: *Simply include the phrase “revised titles” in the body of your entry,* for both headline and HM ideas. When it comes to choose them (always after the regular judging), I’ll just search for “revised titles” and read what’s under it. (Once again, this new system begins with this week’s contest, Week 1175. For the “grandfoals” contest of Week 1174, please continue to send them by email to losers@washpost.com.) *ZING, ZING A SONG: THE WEEK 1171 TAILGATERS* As was ourfirst tailgaters contest — to pair a line from a classic poem with a rhyming line of your own — the Week 1171 song-lyric variation was lots of fun to judge, with more funny, clever entries than I could reasonably use. (Contest suggester Duncan Stevens has already collected /his / ice cream.) Using pop songs doesn’t offer as much humor as poetry tailgaters do in terms of juxtaposing a lofty-sounding first line with an earthy second one — when the /first/ line is “She got a big booty so I call her Big Booty,” it’s hard to get any farther earthward. But it offers a much wider pool of familiar lines to most readers, and in many cases the couplet can function as a singable mini-parody. (And there’s still the lofty/earthy tack especially when the music is lofty, like Brendan Beary’s “When you’re weary, feeling small/ Don’t whine to me while I’m watching basketball.”) As usual in song-themed Invites, the entries were weighted heavily toward songs from the late 20th century, though there were also folk songs, children’s songs, patriotic songs, old-timey songs, show tunes, and at least some from the Non-Old-Fart Era — many of them from several dozen Eleanor Roosevelt High School students who did this as an English class assignment. (First Offender Charlie Dawson is from this group, which their teacher entered in a single package.) It’s always fun to find YouTube clips for the songs; check out the amazing performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to induct George Harrison into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and thechorus girls singing “We’re in the Money” in the movie “Gold Diggers of 1933” is a riot. How exciting to learn that this week’s Inkin’ Memorial winner hadn’t been seen in the Invite since Week 8! (It was an honorable mention for creative tabloid headlines: “Napoleon’s Penis Found in Rectangular Pastry!”) Several Losers had played off the 1922 song “Carolina in the Morning” to refer to North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” but Jesse Etelson’s interior-rhyming couplet was the classiest of the bunch. Meanwhile — and this happens with blind judging — Mark Raffman ended up with both the No. 2 and No. 4 spots in the Losers’ Circle with his takes on the Beatles’ gross-out lyric and the Doors’ dumb one. And Beverley Sharp provides a handy Donald Trump theme song. (Hmm, might there be another campaign-themed parody contest in the works, like our2008 classic ?) *To Impress Kress: * Our regular Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood has been off for a few weeks, so I asked his fill-in Steve Kress, for his faves: Steve agreed with Jesse Etelson’s winner, and also singled out Barry Koch’s “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention;/ On votes, I trail, it’s true, but I’ve got plans for the convention!” (“clever response”) as well as Chris Doyle’s “I am woman — hear me roar / The toilet seat is up once more” (“funny response”). *You Can’t Say That on the Radio: The Unprintables* Well, there was this: I love him , I love him, I love him. And where he goes I’ll follow, I’ll follow I’ll follow. (Peggy March) He’ll always be my true love, my true love, my true love. And when he comes I’ll swallow, I’ll swallow I’ll swallow. (Michael Rosen) And then there was the entry that Jon Gearhart wrote before April 21 — and included in his entry just to share his bad luck: And if the elevator tries to bring you down (Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy”) Just take the freaking stairs, you lazy little clown! Jon’s timing was blessedly lucky. Prince, of course, died in an elevator. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO FLUSH! FLUSHIES-ON-THE-FARM, MAY 21 We can still squeeze in a few more people for this year’s Flushies, the Loser Community’s own awards lunch and songfest, this year on the little farm of Loser Robin Diallo in Lothian, Md., in Anne Arundel County. It’s a family-friendly potluck, with pettable ponies, goats, llamas, chickens, etc. (To see the invitation and to RSVP, go to NRARS.org and click on “Our Social Engorgements.”) And hopefully we can get a team together for the spectacularly spectacular Washington Post Hunt the next day. There’s a podcast about this year’s event, featuring as usual Gene Weingarten, Dave Barry and Tom Shroder. I will be singing in a choral concert that day, but I guarantee that those guys will pose with you for a selfie if you tell them you’re from the Invite.