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
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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)
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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.