Style Conversational Week 1241 (n, fr. Engl., ‘converse of sensational’) Add to list On my list 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 Email // Bio // Follow // 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.)