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.