Style Conversational Week 1207: Grid expectations The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over (eww!) this week’s contest and results Week 172 winner: “Mom, a Jew. Pop, a WASP/ Easter, Pesach, Christmas/ Communions, tallises / Psychoanalysis.” The Empress’s family, however, celebrates this way without issues. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post; “poed” by Roger Browdy) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // December 22, 2016 Happy Impending Holidays, everyone, and welcome to The Style Invitational’s 11th running (not counting variations) of Clue Us In (a.k.a. Haven’t Got a Clue), our almost annual reverse-crossword contest. While this contest always attracts lots of crossword buffs, it’s not a puzzle at all: in fact, the grid we show is just a catchy graphic for might as well be a list of words for which we’re seeking creative definitions. And many of the “clues” that get ink would be too long and just wouldn’t work in a real crossword. The Empress doesn’t care. As much as she adores the Loser Community and tries to run a fair and fun contest, the Invite’s overriding goal is to entertain /readers/ with all your great stuff that you give us in return for the chance that I might send you a 0.113-inch-thick magnet the size of a business card. I note in the instructions for Week 1207 that, along with not requiring ultra-brevity, we also don’t use the convention of including a question mark to signal that the clue includes wordplay; for one thing, most of the inking clues would have them. On the other hand, to help the reader a bit but not be heavy-handed, I might occasionally add “(hyphenated)” or “(2 words)”: I’m not out to stump the reader — remember, the Invite is /not a puzzle/ — but still, the joke that requires you to take a moment to figure it out is often the one you’ll enjoy the most, and I want to make sure that not too many readers will just do the brow-furrow and turn the page to the wedding announcements. As in past years, I’ll probably run several, very different clues for some of the 72 words while I skip others entirely. At least one year, I ran a whole second list that contained one clue for every word, just for people who wanted to try to solve the puzzle. But so few people bothered to work it that I decided that it wasn’t worth the time and effort. I didn’t spell it out this week, but you’re welcome to write multiple entries for the same word, as long as you don’t send me more than 25 entries in all. This contest is /guaranteed/ to generate a lot of duplicate entries, certainly many with the same idea. Normally when I get too many of the same entry, I toss it or just mention it, without specific credit, in the introduction to the results. But occasionally with Clue Us In, I’ll run a particularly funny entry attributed to “many people.” I’ll at least select an entry that I found to have the very best wording, rather than give multiple credit for similar ones. The takeaway: If you want to see your name in the paper, you’ll want to be creative. (Another tip: I almost always get more entries from words near the top of the grid.) I spelled this out in the directions, both in the column and on theonline entry form, but I’ll beg here one more time: The best way for me to judge this contest is to search through the whole combined list of entries — which will number several thousand — for Word 1, ITSATRAP, and mark my favorite entries; then proceed to BARGES, etc., 72 times. If you note that your entry is for “I DO TOO” rather than IDOTOO, I could well miss it; I can search on “trap” and find various forms for Word 1, but I can’t search on “I,” “do” or “too” without running into a lot of entries for other words. To see all the results of our crossword contests (including those from our variant of letting you make up words from a partially filled grid), go to the super-fab Master Contest List compiled by Grandpa Of All Losers Elden Carnahan. Then search for “crossword,” which will lead you to most of the contests. Note the week number, then look four rows farther down the list to see the contest that has that week’s results. If instead you might have a thing or two to do this weekend, just look at the “above the fold” winners of three recent Clues Me In. /Last year’s winners, Week 1157: /4. BAR: Both lawyers and drunkards need to pass this (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) 3. BEAT: Follows “A: Get up” on a forgetful person’s to-do list (Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.) 2. FARMS: Rejected terser, saltier title of Hemingway’s novel (hyphenated) (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.) 1. LIE: Dead politicians continue to do this in their graves (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) /From 2013-14, Week 1048: /4. IRAN: Paul Ryan’s revised marathon claim (Mark Richardson, Takoma Park, Md.) 3. ICE: H 2 O^3 (Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.) 2. GRAFT: How politicians get money to grow on trees (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) 1. BAGPIPES: Scotland’s drone program (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.) /From early 2012, Week 953: /4. GAY: Baby name not in the top 1,000 since 1969 (Robert Gallagher, Charleston, S.C.) 3. WHATAMESS: GOP mantra — drop second “A” for Democrats’ version (Barry Koch, Catlett, Va.) 2. ADA: Dyslexics Association of America (Seth Brown, North Adams, Mass.) 1. ACADEMY: Last word in the song “My Aca Lies Over the Ocean” (Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.) *ARE WE ALL FAKED OUT? LOOKING FOR MORE FICTOID CATEGORIES* Loser Marleen May recently gave me a prize donation of a party game called Fact or Crap: You choose a card bearing some bit of trivia that’s a real fact or . . . anyway, it would be a perfect prize for yet another of our bogus-trivia contests. But what would be a fresh category? We’ve already had a general contest as well as specific ones for medicine/physiology; derivations of words and expressions; current or past political figures; movies; general history; musicians; sports; cars, driving, etc; Washington, D.C.; the military. . . Taking suggestions! Email me at pat.myers@washpost.com. Funny examples are always persuasive. *POWER PLAY*: THE RESULTS OF WEEK 1203* /*A non-inking entry submitted by both Tom Witte and Jesse Frankovich/ Like most Invite contests that are more about comic writing than about wordplay, Week 1203 — asking what you would do with one or more of the magical powers we listed — generated relatively few entries (though they did include several heartfelt vows to help orphans and otherwise make the world a little bit sweeter; I think they were from a class assignment by a teacher not quite familiar with what we do in Loserland). It’s, wow, the seventh Inkin’ Memorial, and the 149th blot of ink in all for Rob Huffman, who had the best phrased of several entries about supersonic speed and Usain Bolt. Bob actually has more wins than runners-up, 7 to 6. Phenom Jesse Frankovich strikes again with, oh look at that, we did a Trump joke. (Jesse’s zingiest joke of the week was, I decided an unprintable cheap shot; see the bottom of this column if you want to look.) And two more Invite fixtures, Old Fixture Bird Waring and New Fixture John Hutchins, flew away with the other two spots “above the fold.” *What Doug Dug: * The faves of ace copy editor Doug Norwood were the two runners-up about X-ray vision — Jesse’s and John’s — as well as Kevin Dopart’s honorable mention about the ghosts of Trump’s past, present and future ... wives. *Power Derangers*: The Unprintables* /Non-inking headline submitted by both Chris Doyle and Jeff Contompasis/ These three, among others, were how-you-say Funny But No: /The power to become many times as small as you are: /Wow, now I can fit inside Megyn Kelly and stop the blood from coming out of her wherever. —John Barron, New York (Stephen Dudzik) /Shape-shifting:/ I would put on an exhibition featuring my most artistic bowel moveme... oh wait, you said “-shifting.” (Jeff Contompasis) And for the Scarlet Letter: /Shape-shifting:/ I’d become Jared Kushner — that Ivanka has got one heck of a body. — Proud Papa in N.Y. (Jesse Frankovich) --- Have the merriest of Christmases, the happiest of Hanukkot, the divinest of Diwalis, the kwaziest of Kwanzaas, the abstainiest of non-holidays — just find some time to write crossword clues. Next week, some of my fave winners from the past year.