Style Conversational Week 1241 (n, fr. Engl., ‘converse of sensational’)
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The Style Invitational Empress ruminates all over the week’s contest
and results
Evan Birnholz's full grid. It's okay if you use the same word in your
entry, as long as you have a brilliantly original and funny clue to go
with it. (DevilCross.com)
By Pat Myers
Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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August 17, 2017
Week after week these days, I find myself saying these things:
1. Great week for news items to use in The Style Invitational!
2. [Today’s Worse Than Ever Outrage] has made it hard to laugh at
anything today.
It’s a credit to the Loser Community that I found plenty to laugh about
while judging the Week 1236 fake portmanteau
etymologies over the past weekend. While this week’s ink coalesced
around significantly fewer Losers than usual, I was checking off worthy
entries on almost every page of my printout (which had no entrants’
names attached). One of the casualties of blind judging is that I can’t
even unconsciously ensure some ink for a Loser who had several good
entries and oughta get /something. /So if you entered and didn’t get ink
this week — that would be all but 12 of you — I’m sure you were soooo
close, several times over.
If you gambled on Invite contestants — they have that in Vegas, right? —
you might not get a huge superfecta payout if you’d bet
Doyle-Dopart-Frankovich-Raffman. Among them, Chris, Kevin, Jesse and
Mark have tallied 3,841 blots of ink over the year. And it’s Doyle’s
57th win of the entire contest, almost twice that of the
second-winningest ever, Russell Beland. Meanwhile, in recent weeks,
Kevin has passed the 1,300-blot mark, and Mark (who started playing much
later) is now past 400, inexorably inking his way into the 500-blot Hall
of Fame.
And though she didn’t get ink in the contest she suggested — hmm, that
may be because she didn’t enter! — Ann Martin wins some ice cream from
the Empress for the idea.
There were a few unprintable portmanfaux this week; see the bottom of
this column.
*UP AGAINST THE (PAY)WALL? *
I’m regularly hearing now from Losers who click on the links to the
Invitational and Conversational that are included in the Invite’s e-mail
newsletter or are posted on Facebook — and see nothing but an ad to sell
online subscriptions. Yes, The Post’s paywall that blocks nonsubscribers
comes up more quickly than before; I don’t know how many stories you can
read for free anymore in a given month, but it’s more than one and a lot
fewer than the 20 that used to be allowed.
I’d love it, of course, if the Invite and Conversational were exempt
from the paywall, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. (I did ask.)
So here are some things you can do.
1. The best thing, of course: SUBSCRIBE!
For $99 a year — $8.25 a month — you get everything The Post has to
offer online, more than 700 pieces of content /a day. / And I don’t have
to tell you how important The Post has been in bringing to light the
important news that the government is doing its best to hide from us.
Also, poop jokes. *IMPORTANT: *If you have access to an email address
with a .gov, .mil or .edu suffix, you get a free subscription! Just be
sure to sign up with that address, and log in with it later.
2. If you just want to enter one particular contest — say you just want
to do limericks for Week 1240 — note that The
Post offers a promotional rate for four weeks for 99 cents. You could
cancel after that, before the $8.25 rate kicks in.
3. It’s nowhere as nice and useful, but I have begun to post copies of
the Invitational and the Conversational on theStyle Invitational
Devotees page on Facebook. You can see the files
by clicking on “Files” on the left column of the Devotees page. I’ll put
this week’s grid there as well. You might not have all the photographs,
but there should be enough to let you enter the contest.
4. You can see PDFs (or other formats) of all past Invitational columns
(but not the Conversational) on the Master Contest List on the Losers’
own website, NRARS.org . Keeper of the Stats Elden
Carnahan is a few weeks behind right now, but will be catching up soon.
*GRIDDY REALITIES: THIS WEEK’S PARTIAL (NON-) CROSSWORD*
I admit that the whole concept of Week 1241
is silly, given that you can’t cross the
sucker, but this spinoff of our standard reverse crossword produced good
results in Week 873 (results here
)
and Week 1061 (here
).
I asked Evan Birnholz, who constructs The Post’s Sunday crossword
every
week — it’s always imaginative and ingenious, with clever clues — for a
grid that had a sizable number of long words or phrases. The filled-in
grid is atop this page; it’s okay to use the same word Evan has, as long
as your clue is substantially different (scroll down to see his clues on
this page
on
his website, Devil Cross. I think it’s especially fun to show readers
very different solutions for the same line.
*How to print out this week’s grid: *If you just click “Print” on The
Invitational’s Web page this week so you can write on the grid, you’ll
probably get a version without the grid! Instead, right-click on the
grid itself and click on “Save As,” then print the resulting .jpg
picture from your computer.
*ORRRRRRR ... *And we should all thank Loser Jesse Frankovich for
posting on the Devotees page this very afternoon — in time for me to
steal it and publish it here — this handy-dandy list:
Across
1: S--C-C---S
11: SL--
15: -A-LI-M-N-
16: --NE
17: IT-U-T-YO-
18: ED--
19: T-E-
20: BE--
21: -L-ES
22: -L-B
24: MAI---
26: HI-
29: --A-O--
31: -P-
33: A--UND
35: -U--OR-D
37: -OM--
38: -S-
39: B---D
40: ON-S-AR-
42: R--OC-
43: --O
44: -VE-S--
46: -E-
47: A-DR--
49: -IL-
51: WI--N
52: CH--
54: -ALF
58: I--L
59: -OIS--A-E-
61: -EW-
62: A---N-LI-E
63: --NS
64: G---THE--D
Down
1: S-IT
2: -AT-
3: ---E
4: CLU--
5: -I-
6: C-TB--D
7: -M-EBA
8: --Y-
9: -NO-MOU-
10: S--
11: S-EL-
12: L-D---R-O-
13: -N-E-P--CE
14: -E-S
21: -I--B--L
23: L-N---RN
25: A--
26: HA-O-
27: I-ON-AI-E-
28: --M-O---WN
30: --S--
32: -DD--
34: U-S
36: O--
38: -RE-CO--
41: AV-
42: R-I--NT
45: S--S--
48: D-L-S
50: --ALE
51: WI--
53: HI--
55: A-I-
56: LE--
57: F-ED
59: -AG
60: --H
*WHO’S UP FOR BRUNCH SUNDAY? OR EVEN SATURDAY? *
This month’s Loser Brunch — No. 199, Elden Carnahan informs us — is the
breakfast buffet at Kilroys on Sunday, Aug. 20, at
noon. Please let me know at pat.myers@washpost.com if you’re planning to
come (as well as to RSVP to Elden here
). And it happens that Loser
Jeff Shirley is going to be up on Richmond on Saturday, and is going to
join the Royal Consort and me at the Indian restaurantAditi
in suburban Kingstowne (across from the movie
complex) for an early lunch at 11:30 on Saturday. (Excellent buffet plus
the regular menu.) If you’d like to join us for that, let me know as well.
*NO + WAY: THE UNPRINTABLES*
Banal: Combination of “ban” and “anal.” A situation where fun, daring,
adventurous activities are proscribed. “How was the party?” “Banal –
boring.” (the never boring, though predictably risque, Tom Witte)
Brothel: From “brotherhood” and “morsel.” A place where the guys gather
and each sample a piece. (Duncan Stevens)
Floozy: Combination of “Flo” and “oozy.” A term for a woman who is
apparently always ready for love. (Witte again.)