Style Conversational Week 1257: Mulligan stew The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s do-over contest and fashion fictoids Check out Elden Carnahan’s super-duper Master Contest List to find the contests to use this week, or use links to The Post’s own pages. Directions below. (Image) By Pat Myers Pat Myers Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003 Email // Bio // Follow // December 7, 2017 I don’t know how many of us really wish we could live 2017 all over again without major alterations, but let’s do what we can. Obviously this week’s Style Invitational contest and the next favor the Invite Obsessives — how many normal people are going to look up old contests? — but of course we welcome sanesters as well. We’re going back to Nov. 27, 2016 (Week 1203), to start our Week 1257 retrospective contest, since last year’s ended with Week 1202. Last year we also had a two-week retrospective, but both contests covered the whole year; it makes a lot more sense to split them up. And in the unlikely possibility that you’d have anything else to do in December: You can get both contests done this week, if you like; just enter the second set of entries (Weeks 1230-1254) next week. (Don’t send them now!) These first six months’ worth of the past 12 offers lots of variety, as you’ll see from the Master Contest List at NRARS.org , where I refer both print and online readers who’d like to do this week’s contest. Along with the Loser Stats that he’s been keeping back to Week 1, Hall of Fame Loser Elden Carnahan maintains this indispensable list (and sub-lists), featuring a link in some form or other (usually more than one) to every single Style Invitational contest. The links on Elden’s list (an image is above) are not subject to The Post’s paywall, its limit on articles viewed by nonsubscribers. Instead, at least for the ones to use this week, they links go to PDFs — essentially pictures, but with links that still work. If you click on the WP logo on the right side of each listing, you’ll get a PDF of the print version that appears in Sunday’s Arts & Style section; the “E” will get you the online version, which sometimes has more results, but you have to scroll through lots of pages, and sometimes pictures don’t show up. *But if you’re a Post subscriber *— and you certainly should be (there’s a great promotion going on right now for only $100 for the whole year of The Post online) — you can see all the contests by going to washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational , scrolling down to Week 1229, then clicking “Load More” to get the earliest ones. Those are links to actual Washington Post Web pages, so they do count against the paywall. But they’ll be the most complete version. *(And! *If you sign up with an email address ending in edu., mil. or gov., your subscription is free! There are also deals through Amazon Prime.) Or you could just type in one URL at a time into your browser: The format is /bit.ly/invite[week number]/, e.g., bit.ly/invite1208 , except for three for which I had to add a hyphen to get a unique name: /bit.ly/invite-1204 , bit.ly/invite-1218, bit.ly/invite-1229. / Before you go searching one by one, here’s a list of the contests covered this week. But please consult the actual details of the contests before entering. Week 1203: What would you do with one of the six magical powers listed. 1204: Offer some comforting observations about the coming year. 1205 and 1206 were last year’s retrospective contests; don’t go there. 1207: Write funny clues for any of the words in the provided crossword grid. 1208: Write a humorous poem about someone who died in 2016 (and make it still 2016; save the 2017s for January) 1209: Fictoids about how a product or invention came to be. 1210: Describe a piece of “joint legislation” produced by humorously combining the names of two or more members of Congress on the provided list. 1211: Write a stupidly disparaging tweet about a laudable current, historical or fictional figure. 1212: From any of the seven-letter ScrabbleGrams racks provided, make up a new word and define it. 1213: Write a haiku that incorporates a pun. 1214: Write a humorous passage that uses only words appearing in the 2017 presidential inaugural address. 1215: Write a humorous exaggeration roughly in the form “x is so y that …” 1216: “Discover” a new word by snaking around the provided word-search grid and define it. 1217: Combine two or more businesses and give the hybrid a clever name. 1218: Reinterpret a headline in this week’s Post or other publication (use something dated Dec. 7-18) by following it with a “bank head,” or subtitle. 1219: Write a “lik the bred” poem. (You’ll just have to check it out.) 1220: Be humorously pedantic about something. 1221: “Marry” any two people from any time or from literature and say what their child would be like. 1222: “Breed” any two of the listed racehorses nominated for the 2017 Triple Crown races, and name the foal to reflect both their names. 1223: Write a humorously sensationalistic, misleading headline on an otherwise mundane article or ad published in The Post or elsewhere (again, Dec. 7-18). 1224: Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are similar, different or otherwise connected. 1225: Suggest a march for some group or field, along with one or more slogans. 1226: Breed any two “foals” that got ink in Week 1222 and name the “grandfoal.” 1227: Name and describe a new life form — and no letter in the term may be used twice. 1228: Name someone who was the “secret inspiration” for a certain movie. 1229: In the tradition of Edward Gorey’s “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” supply a rhyming alphabetical couplet (A is for/B is for) for any of the 13 listed letter pairs. None of the contests above require a lot of space in the results, like a cartoon caption (I’d have to run the cartoon) or a song parody. But in general, think short: One of my aims in the retrospective contests is to celebrate the varied ways that the Loser Community can be so cleverlytasteless clever. I have, I think, physically prevented anyone from accidentally using the entry forms for the old contests. But just in case: Your handy-dandy place to submit your entries is wapo.st/enter-invite-1257 . There’s most likely some question to come up about reusing one contest or another; feel free to email me with a question, or post it on the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook; tag my name so I’ll get a notification. Yes, feel free to resubmit an entry that didn’t get ink earlier. But how could it possibly be chosen this time around? It’s happened! A. There were so many entries for that contest that many inkworthy ones didn’t fit. B. Another entry that week was similar enough in theme (we’re not talking close to identical, though) that it didn’t make sense to run both worthy entries. C. The Empress is a human life form, if not so much like your own human life form, and her mind can change. *FALSIES*: THE FASHION FICTOIDS OF WEEK 1253* /(*Non-inking headline suggestion by Dave Prevar) / The Loser Community is consistently good at supplying fake trivia, most likely because many of us have been reading lists of factoids since we were wee nerdlets. And so while fashion might not be our passion — I have a form letter warning Facebook users who get a prompt to join the Style Invitational Devotees group that we are NOT STYLISH — we can still write untrue information about it to know and tell. Good thing, though, that I broadened Week 1253 to encompass most anything that can be worn, and so we got to tell fun unfacts about suits of armor, swords, tinfoil hats, and the jerkin — a garment that’s important because it has a funny name, not because it’s a Renaissance-era leather vest. I bounced my short­list off more people than usual this week, and was thrilled that they all especially liked this week’s winner, even though it was less in factoid form than the others in this week’s results ; I’d worried a bit that Warren Tanabe’s report that Republican congressmen have been wearing wool pullovers was too subtle, but they got it instantly, or at least in the second or two of thought that enhances the joy of the joke. It’s the first win for Warren Tanabe after a whopping eighty-two blots of Loser ink since Week 782, thus toppling him from second place on the Cantinkerous list, behind only Now 94 and Still Counting Kyle Hendrickson. Meanwhile, Daniel Galef gets just his seventh — and eighth — and ninth blot of ink this week, including his runner-up, which is his third “above the fold” award, an amazing ratio. And I’m sure that winter in the Ozark mountains will allow second-place finisher Drew Bennett to enjoy the beautiful “Style Ink” cap painstakingly designed an D knitted by Devotee Catharine Mefford. *What Doug Dug:* Aside from Warren’s pullovers, Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood singled out Jesse Frankovich’s muumuu as Hawaiian for “Your Mama’s swimsuit; Kyle Hendrickson’s noting that buttons used to be made of fruitcake; Robert Schechter’s pointer on wearing the tinfoil hat properly; and Bill Spencer — who at least once attended a Loser event dressed in a kilt — on the sporran as a Scots version of the protective cup. What should our next topic of fake trivia be? Send me a suggestion! The fashion idea was offered by longtime Loser Christina Courtney. *RAISE YOUR GLASSES (AND FORKS), LOSERS!* As I mentioned in last week’s Conversational, there are three-count-’em-three Loser events over the next month or so; I have to miss this Sunday’s Loser brunch but I’ll definitely be at the other two. Here’s what I wrote last week: The next *Loser brunch, on Sunday, Dec. 10,* at noon, is at the expansive buffet at Paradiso, an Italian place on Franconia Road, close to the Beltway between the Van Dorn Street and Springfield exits . . . RSVP to Elden Carnahan at the Losers’ Web page, NRARS.org; click on “Our Social Engorgements.” As with all our get-togethers, you don’t have to have Invite ink to attend; everyone is welcome, even The Merely Curious. Meet the Losers! I will be at a Special *Unofficial Supplementary Loser Brunch on Saturday, Dec. 30.* It was requested by 71-time Loser Edward Gordon, who’ll be visiting from Texas and has to return later that afternoon. He’ll be staying at a hotel near the King Street Metro station in Alexandria, and so we’ll have lunch at noon at Hard Times Cafe (1404 King St.; free parking), a joint that specializes in four kinds of chili. If you’d like to join us during that between-the-holidays lull, let me know so we can get a head count. And!!! Clearly under the influence of some terrible potion, 35-time Loser Steve Langer and Style Invitational Devotee Allison Fultz once again have offered to host the *Loser Post-Holiday Party *at their lovely, close-to-the-Metro house in Chevy Chase, Md., on the evening of *Saturday, Jan. 13. *As always, it’s a potluck and we’ll have some sort of parody singalong amid the general schmoozage. In a few weeks [now sooner] I’ll be sending an Evite and will add details here as we have them. Meanwhile, don’t forget to send in your entries to the Week 1256 cartoon caption contest — deadline Monday, Dec. 11.