// 1 Desktop notifications are on | Turn off Get breaking news alerts from The Washington Post Turn on desktop notifications? Yes Not now * // * Sections // <#> * // <#> * Home The Washington Post logo Democracy Dies in Darkness <#> * Try 1 month for $1 * Elden Carnahan * Sign In ------------------------------------------------------------------------ o My Post / / o My Reading List / / o Account Settings / / o Newsletters & alerts / / o Gift subscriptions / / o Contact us / / o Help desk / / * Elden Carnahan * Basic Digital subscriber * Sign out * My Post / / * My Reading List / / * Account Settings / / * Newsletters & alerts / / * Gift subscriptions / / * Contact us / / * Help desk / / * Accessibility for screenreader The Washington Post Discussions Style Conversational Week 1240: Golly gi-, we have limericks AND alliteration Add to list On my list The Style Invitational Empress discusses this week’s new contest and results This week’s prize T-shirt is too crude to show on any Washington Post page, so instead I’m sharing this shirt advertising the Uranus Fudge Factory of Uranus, Mo., sent me by Loser J. Larry Schott. I don’t know if I can give this out either. By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // August 10, 2017 Hello, Limerick People. Every year, The Style Invitational receives entries for our annual Limerixicon contest from readers who don’t enter any of our 51 other contests all year. Some of them, of course, are devotees of OEDILF.com, the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form, which Chris J. Strolin founded in 2004 — mere months before we found out about it and started our connected contest. But other entrants are just partial to the limerick form — or what they consider the limerick form. Over its history, the Invite and OEDILF have helped each other out in a big way. A number of our “Loserbards” — people who get a lot of ink in our many light-verse and song parody contests — heard about the Invite through OEDILF; Stephen Gold and Hugh Thirlway have amassed almost 100 blots of ink between them, and I’m sure there are many others. Meanwhile, since our first Limerixicon (Week 572, ai- through ar-), Losers have submitted thousands of limericks to OEDILF; Chris Doyle alone shows the following line on the website’s stats : Limericks submitted — 5,692. Limericks approved — 5,692. Other Losers whose names I see on the stats, with hundreds of lims each: Brendan Beary, Jane Auerbach, Jesse Frankovich, Seth Brown, David Schildkret. And OEDILF, unlike the Invitational, allows pseudonyms; I’m not going to ask who Birdbarf (318.5 limericks) is, but it sounds like a Loserly name to me. When I post a contest that we’ve run before in some way, I like to cite a previous winner as an example. So I looked through the Invite’s 13 previous Limerixicons (and its handful of other limerick contests) for one that had a fairly prominent gh- or gi- word, as well as being Bob Staake-cartoonable. Early on in my search I found the 2005 honorable mention by Chris Doyle that I used this week for Week 1240 . I found a few others of note as well: /Also from 2005:/ At the newsstand one frequently sees An assortment of bared double-D’s. Don’t begrudge the fair sex A few well-toned pecs: We*girls* want some beefcake, not cheese-. (Pam Sweeney) A very well constructed limerick — Pam is an ace — but I’d argue that now, a dozen years later, we’re less likely to say that “we girls want some beefcake.” If a peddler in Athens declares You’ll receive, if you purchase his wares, A free panda that dances, Don’t take any chances: Beware of a Greek*gifting* bears. (Tim Alborn, a regular at OEDILF) Love the pun in the last line — wordplay at the end of the verse is so useful when you want your limerick to serve as joke, as we do. The Greek “panda” was a bit of a stretch, making the joke seem a tad contrived. /From 2007 (da- words): / A heavy *girl* often went dateless; She feared that in life she’d be mateless. A friend warned, “Your inner Tube has to get thinner. So when you’re at dinner, inflate less.” (Peter Metrinko) A very clever lim by a Loser who quickly accumulated more than 300 blots of ink before retiring many years ago. But I didn’t want another cartoon mocking fat people, right after I asked Bob to draw Chris Christie just three weeks ago, and Trump in the two contests after that, in Weeks 1238 and 1239. /And then there was the winner of the whole contest in 2009: / She’s a *girl* of outstanding dimensions (Two of which were her surgeon’s inventions). She’s got 36D- 22-33 . . . And a PhD nobody mentions. (Andrew Burnet, writer of almost 300 OEDILF limericks, and a First Offender for us that year) I liked the content of that limerick so much that — this was such an unusual thing for me to do — I hadn’t noticed the flaw in the rhyming: Lines 1 and 5 form what’s called an identity; instead of rhyming, the final syllables are pronounced the same way: -mensions/-mentions. While I’m not going to say that the flaw should have disqualified the entry entirely, I certainly didn’t want to use it this week as an example of how a limerick /should / // be written. (But word to the wise: Don’t use identities.) My last word of advice for Week 1240: If you write about a gherkin as related to someone with tiny hands, your limerick would need to be both highly skillful and highly subtle. *WHAT WIT WE WIELDED*: THE ALLITERATIVE HEADLINES OF WEEK 1237 * /*Non-inking headline by Jesse Frankovich/ Really, I cannot go on vacation anymore; it clearly takes me ages to get back in gear and rehone my razorlike mental acuity so that I will, oh, know what week it is. Anyway, it’s actually good not to have to wait another week to run the results of Week 1237 , what with the hyperspeed that news now flashes in front of us, then is almost obliterated by the glare of the next flash moments later. So before we forget Scaramucci and the Boy Scout speech and — remember him? — Sean Spicer, we get to run these alliterative headlines about them. In fact, we get to chronicle That Whole Mess as it transpired, beginning with the ouster of Spicey and the appointment of his rival Scaramucci; then the ouster of also-rival Reince Priebus; then the Mooch’s Wildest Thing to Say to a Reporter (While’s He’s Typing Away) Ever; then the hiring of A Grown-Up; then the Grown-Up’s de-Mooching — all within our July 21-31 contest window. I couldn’t judge many Week 1237 entries at one sitting. I think this week’s 25 inking entries make for a fun read — especially out loud — but 40 times as many proved something of a slog. (My secret performance-enhancing drug: half a tablet of Walmart-equivalent NoDoz.) The Losers who subscribe to the Losernet email group, on which some contestants share their entries after the contest deadline, may have gotten an inkling, so to speak. But this is why we have editors, or, in current parlance, curators. This was a heck of a week for Hall of Fame Loser Jeff Contompasis, whom I’m forcing to choose between his fourthLose Cannon (the as-yet formally unannounced new trophy I’m giving out to recidivist winners while we still have a few moreInkin’ Memorial bobbleheads) and the second-prize musculature-pattern leggings that would fit his science-whiz daughter perfectly. (Emily, I know he’s going to be sensible here.) While I ran all the other entries with the original headline preceding the alliteration, I felt that Jeff’s winner was funnier with the one-word real headline, “Lotteries,” following Jeff’s string of academic-sounding R-words. It’s an all-veteran Losers’ Circle this week. In addition to Jeff’s hogging two of the four spots, our runners-up go way back to the salad days of the Invitational: Phil Frankenfeld has blotted up 143 Invite inks since Week 188 in 1996, and Mae Scanlan has managed to accrue more than 300 blots of ink — three this week! — since 1995 while refusing to send any entries she’d be embarrassed for her pastor to read that Sunday — a standard that can rule out a lot of potential Invite ink. *What Doug Dug: *Ace copy editor Doug Norwood agreed with my picks for the “above the fold” headlines, and also singled out Kevin Dopart’s “Missed Manners” Scaramucci head as well as Roy Ashley’s ingenious Seychelles-set entry that I saved for last. *UP FOR A PARODY-SING? * The two big Loser events of the year — the Flushies awards in late spring and the Post -Holiday Party in January — usually feature a musical component in which we sing a few song parodies penned by Losers for the occasion. But who’d be up for a gathering at someone’s home where the main activity would be sitting around with song sheets and singing some of the many parodies that have gotten ink in the Invitational over the years? Food would be uncoordinated potluck, the date depending mainly on the schedules of whoever volunteers to play host as well as the person or people who can play (mostly) show tunes on a keyboard, as well as a guitarist who could do rock-type songs. This could happen whenever, but presumably not too close to January or June. Let me know, prospective hostst! *KILROY’S WILL BE THERE: NEXT LOSER SIGHTING, AUG. 20* This month’s Loser brunch is on Sunday, Aug. 20 (probably at noon), at Kilroy’s, just off the Beltway at the Braddock Road exit in Northern Virginia, a spot we’ve visited many times. It’s now a breakfast buffet ($12) rather than the costlier breakfast/lunch combo, but there’s still a lot to choose from, including little waffle-boats that each can hold thousands of calories. I’m planning to be there; especially if you’re coming to a Loser event for the first time, or for the first time in a long while, let me know so I’ll be sure to make it. Pat Myers Pat Myers is editor and judge of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's page for clever, edgy humor and wordplay. In the role since December 2003, she has posted and judged more than 700 contests. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook. Follow // Subscriber sign in We noticed you’re blocking ads! Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Try 1 month for $1 Unblock ads Questions about why you are seeing this? Contact us