Style Conversational Week 1226: At the restarting gate The Style Invitational Empress looks back at the foals and ahead to the grandfoals Some of the 200 pages of printouts containing the 3,909 entries for Week 2226. With the entries sorted alphabetically, the Empress found it handy to work from actual paper. (Pat Myers/The Washington Post ) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // May 4, 2017 Whew! Yeah, it took a long time to peruse more than 3,900 entries for our 23rd annual contest to “breed” the names of the year’s Triple Crown-nominated horses. But I actually look forward to judging this contest every April, because I haven’t the slightest worry that I’ll be short of usable material, and simply because so many of the entries will be fun to read. I’ll take that anytime over scrolling worriedly through a small list of jokes that struggle to make something out of what seems to be a lost cause. I hope you enjoy reading the results of Week 1222 as well, though I guess they’ll be more enjoyable for a certain 53 people than for a certain 307 other people. *A note right up top for the Losers this week:* If your exact entry for Week 1222 (or the same entry with the names flipped) got ink today but your name isn’t on it, email me at pat.myers@washpost.com and I’ll fix the online version (the print version is published Thursday afternoon). My apologies in advance. My judging has been much more systematic (and accurate), however, in the past few years thanks to the invaluable and totally unpaid-for entry-sorting assistance of Loser Jonathan Hardis, but after I make my picks, I still have to search through the pool of submissions for each entry to find out who wrote them, and I can still screw up there, especially in cases of double or triple credit. I had to toss so many clever ideas when I slashed my “short­list” from 300 inkworthies to 200, then 100 and then the final 58 inking entries. (Yes, of course, that 59th one was yours.) Still, I managed to sleep last night (though it might have to do with not having much sleep during the previous week), knowing that it doesn’t take untold hours to write up a foal name. It’s not as if I hurriedly scrolled past your photo of the Peeps diorama you’d spent a month working on. As promised in the Invite, here are the /best / of the clever entries that crossed American Anthem, including the four that got ink this week: American Anthem x Always Dreaming = Oh Say Can You Zzz (Michael Porcello) American Anthem x The Stranger= Oh Say Camus See (Mary McNamara) American Anthem x Cloud Computing = O Say, Can You C++ (Dion Black) American Anthem x Caustic = Don’s Surly Slight (Jesse Frankovich) American Anthem x Downhill Racer = Oh Say Can You Ski (Pamela Love) American Anthem x Run for the Cup = Oh Say Can You Pee (Paul Burnham) American Anthem x Foggy Night = Nope, Can’t See It (Laurie Brink) American Anthem x Irap = Yo Say Can You See (Julia Shawhan) American Anthem x No More Talk = OSayCanYouCease (Claudia Raffman) American Anthem x Sonneteer = OSayCanYouABBACDDC (Sam Kyung-Gun Lim) American Anthem x Takeoff = Dawn’sEarlyFlight (William Kennard) American Anthem x MarchToTheMusic = RockettesRedGlare (Matt Monitto) Iliad x American Anthem = Homer the Brave (Paul Burnham) American Anthem x Talk Logistics = Star Spangled Banter (Hildy Zampella) Practical Joke x American Anthem = StarSpangledBannon (Lynne Ann Larkin) American Anthem x Excitations = StarSpangledBoner (both Rob Huffman and Jesse Frankovich; it’s cute but we can’t run “boner”) Gummy x American Anthem = TarSpangledBanner (David Peckarsky) American Anthem x No More Talk = Star Spangled Ban (Pie Snelson) Plus a couple of other patriotic anthems: Gummy x American Anthem = MyGumTreeTisOfThee (Chris Doyle) American Anthem x Midnight Pleasure = Grand Old Shag (Larry Passar) If you didn’t get ink this week (and of course if you did), you should try again next week with our 12th annual “grandfoals” contest, Week 1226 , in which you breed any two of the week’s inking entries, including the three I mention in the introduction to the results — Erin Go Braghless, Eureka! and Carnegie Dali. (At the bottom of this column, as a reward for reading The Style Conversational, is a handy list of all 61 foal names, courtesy of Jesse Frankovich, who immediately compiled it this morning upon reading the results and shared it on the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook page. ) You’re almost certain to have less competition than in Week 1222; for several reasons: One, the first contest is probably better publicized. Second, I think some entrants feel outclassed upon seeing the results and sit out the next round. And third, the grandfoal names are harder to work with than the real names; they’re already full of puns and contain multiple references, so it can be daunting to combine two of these names to make even more wordplay. And do you play on the /original / that the first pun alluded to? No, you don’t have to allude to every element in both parents’ names; it’s better to have a funny, readable joke. Here’s a random honorable mention from last year: Let My Pimple Go x Glock Watcher = ZittyZittyBangBang (Charles Trahan). He gets Pimple in, he gets Glock, and maybe he gets Watcher (since it’s a pun on a movie title), but he doesn’t bother with anything about Moses or clocks. No problem. --- I always time the foal contest so that the results run in time for the Kentucky Derby. Eighteen of the 20 colts scheduled to run Saturday were on the list I supplied for Week 1222 (pretty good, given that I chose only 100 of the 429 nominees). And 10 of those 20 horses got ink today, though just one of them, Irap, placed “above the fold.” So I’ll be shouting, “Come on, Always Dreaming, Classic Empire, Girvin, Hence, Irap, Irish War Cry, McCraken, Practical Joke, Sonneteer and Untrapped!” But I’ll also be rooting for another horse from our list, Patch. Aww. It’s the second Inkin’ Memorial — we now have just seven of them left — and the 115th blot of ink for Loser Jon Gearhart, whose elegant pairing of Midnight Pleasure x Archimedes = Lover & Lever turned out to be the top pick not just of the Empress, but also of the Czar, whom I’d shown about 100 entries (I’d already chosen my top four, but hadn’t told him which ones). The Czar usually marks the ones he likes with “Good”; after Jon’s he wrote “Great.” Given his inestimable help to me with this contest, I was thrilled to find out that the author of the No. 2 pedigree, Factorial x Confederate = Jeb! Stuart, was a second Jonathan, Dr. as in Physicist Dr. Hardis. (There’s absolutely no way I know who’s written what, so why shouldn’t he have a chance to enter?) I got lots of good entries that incorporated “!,” the math symbol for a factorial, but I thought Jonathan made the cleverest and definitely the most unusual use of it: to refer to the “Jeb!” campaign slogan of Jeb Bush in the past election. Third place this year, for the zingy mix(-a-lot) of Irap x Rapid Dial = I Like Big Buttons, goes to Laurie Brink of Missouri, who’s been joining us almost exclusively for the horse contests for many years, with lots of success — including her three blots of ink today, which bring her to the 50-ink milestone. Laurie lives with her father, Bernard Brink, and he usually enters a few horses every year as well. And he got ink today too! And there’s Good Ol’ Chris Doyle (MarchToTheMusic x It’s Your Nickel = The Half-Dime Show) in what would be just out of the money on the track, but part of the Losers’ Circle here. Chris now has between 6! a nd 7! blots of ink. It might take longer than usual for me to send out all the prizes this week, but I was delighted to see so many Losers get ink, especially a whopping six First Offenders (okay, you all may stop whopping now) and several people who used to be regulars but had made themselves scarce in Loserland lately; they include Mark Eckenwiler, Malcolm Fleschner, Dion Black, Harold Mantle, Larry Yungk and Brad Alexander, who together have amassed 643 blots of ink over the years. I hope they all stick around awhile. **Note:*If you don’t get one or more of this week’s entries, you’re not alone, * as evidenced by the questions posted on the Devotees page this afternoon. Kevin Dopart’s “Rubenesque Chance,” for instance: “Rubenesque,” as in the Old Master paintings by Rubens of voluptuous women, is a polite term for “fat.’ Laurie Brink’s “Girvin x Midnight Pleasure = Fledowered” took me a minute; she cleverly flipped Girvin to Virgin, then did the same to Deflowered. When I get a chance, I’ll add some explanatory links to entries. On the other hand, someone told me she didn’t get “Jeb! Stuart”; not sure how I could link to something about the factorial symbol, something about Jeb Bush’s campaign, and something about Confederate war hero Jeb Stuart — all three of which you have to be familiar with on some level. Please feel free to ask for explanations on the Devotees page, in the thread under where I posted the Invite (at the top of the page). I promise that no one will mock you; it’s the most civil group around. *Speaking of First Offenders:* I’ve been apprised by Keeper of the Stats Elden Carnahan that as of this week, and by his count, 4,997 people have gotten ink in The Style Invitational since its debut in March 1993. I’m taking suggestions for how to celebrate the 5,000th. *Here’s the list of foals to be used in the Week 1226 grandfoal contest. As for the foal contest, please use these guidelines: * ● Type each entry on a single line. This is essential: If you have the parents’ name on one line and the foal on another, little Junior is going to get lost from Mom/Dad and Mom/Dad when we do The Big Sort. Remember, use this format: Foal Name A x Foal Name B = Grandfoal Name. And spell the names correctly so that Jonathan’s program can find them. ● Don’t number your list of entries. Numbers at the beginning of a line will give fits to our name-sorting system. You’ll have to count to 25 on your 25 fingers. ● Observe the 18-character limit, including spaces and punctuation marks. In other Invite contests, the Empress has occasionally given ink to an entry that didn’t technically fit the rules, if it was especially clever or funny. But there’s no give on the letter limit on horse names — it’s part of the challenge. ● If you need to revise an entry, /*do not send all your entries over again;* / I had to keep checking last week whether several people had sent the same entry or if it was just someone sending them over and over. Just submit that one entry again correctly on another form at bit.ly/enter-invite-1226. All Systems Ergo Baba O’Really Bare It Browning Bed Bath N Bayonne Bomb Bard Bonus Pints Carnegie Dali Carnegie Endowment Chinese Checkers Congrats, Loser Disappearing Inc. Dispencer Don’s Surly Slight ’Ell, a Beer! Emir Trifle Eric Clap Erin Go Braghless Et Tupac? Eureka! Felon of Troy Fillet of Seoul Fish Shtick Fledowered Good Vibe Rations Haribo Diddley Have One Skittle Help a Thief! Hive Got Rhythm Ho California Horse Fly United I Like Big Buttons In a Minute Dear Jeb! Stuart Jethro Dull Koch-Conspirator Left Right Repeat Love Hertz Lover & Lever Man Asses Muck Rakin’ No, It’s Iowa Now It’s MY Nickel O Say, Can You C++ Oh Say Camus See Oh Say Can You Zzz P.A.T. on the Back Punk’d-uation Read It and Veep REMbrandt Rubenesque Chance Ruble Yell Shall I Comp Thee? Shenand“O”ah Spruuuuce!!! The Half-Dime Show The Who? Titan the Screw Too Loose Lautrec Troy, Troy Again Up in Sfumato Walk Off Homer