Style Conversational Week 1354: Let’s do the twist
The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s neologism contest and
new-word poetry results.
The 24 vowel-heavy words that the Empress fed into the generator at
Puzzle-Maker.com. Not shown: lots of other words hiding out in this grid
for you to discover -- and create -- in Week 1354 of The Style
Invitational. And you don't have to stick to those boring straight lines.
The 24 vowel-heavy words that the Empress fed into the generator at
Puzzle-Maker.com. Not shown: lots of other words hiding out in this grid
for you to discover -- and create -- in Week 1354 of The Style
Invitational. And you don't have to stick to those boring straight lines.
By
Pat Myers
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Pat Myers
Editor and judge of The Style Invitational since December 2003
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Oct. 17, 2019 at 4:01 p.m. EDT
As I mention in my intro to Style Invitational Week 1354,
Hall of Fame Loser Jesse Frankovich noted to
me recently that last year’s As the Word Turns word grid, Week 1294
, was especially short on vowels, making it
harder to “discover” lots of neologisms by snaking through it. So I made
an effort to vowel it up this year: For the list of words that I fed
into the generator at Puzzle-Maker.com , I
looked for ones that were at least half vowels (including Y), starting
with “onomatopoeia” (the Royal Consort’s suggestion); then finding a
page for Scrabble aficionados featuring words with lots of vowels; then
just leafing through a print dictionary (those things do come in
handy!); then resorting to the random word generator I’ve used in the past.
Style Invitational rookie phenom Sam Mertens, who won both first and
second place in Week 1349, displays his prize of the Poop Hoop
head-basketball game, with the assistance of son Isaac. (Actually, the
"basketballs" are poop emoji blobs.) (Laurie Mertens)
Style Invitational rookie phenom Sam Mertens, who won both first and
second place in Week 1349, displays his prize of the Poop Hoop
head-basketball game, with the assistance of son Isaac. (Actually, the
"basketballs" are poop emoji blobs.) (Laurie Mertens)
Then I clicked on Build Puzzle and ta-da — a grid that didn’t quite fit
the dimensions I needed for the print page in the Arts & Style section.
(The tool builds the smallest puzzle it can that accommodates the word
list you feed it.)
There must be a setting somewhere to specify instead how big you want
the grid, but it was easy enough to just add and subtract words a few
times until I ended up with this week’s 20-by-20 square. Here are the
words I used — and if you were to produce some hilariously brilliant
definition for any of them, you’re certainly free to use it as an entry.
examinee, hemiparasite, physiology, eleemosynary, lanceolate, aqueous,
ipomoea, nouveau, aquaria, zooecia, aureolae, quinoa, boohoo, opioid,
aikido, pityriasis, intrauterine, epopoeia, ouguiya, castigatory, style
(added at the end to make the grid fit /just /right), dentilabial, nepheline
So what’s the upshot? After I posted Week 1354 this morning, Jesse sent
me a message: “Grid looks pretty good on first glance. I think the issue
with the vowel percentage is that after your words are placed all the
leftover spots get filled with consonants. So if you only submitted
“cat” there would be that one A and 399 consonants. So you just need to
submit enough words to fill up most of the grid and it will naturally
work out. Anyhow, choosing vowel-heavy words seems to have worked well
too. It’s about 35% vowels (English average is around 40%; I think the
past grids may have been something like 20% or less). ”
So: My plan didn’t vowel it up as much as I thought it would, because —
who knew — all the “fill” is consonants. Next year, then, God willing,
what I’ll do is submit lots of /short/ words with vowels: pine, rate,
ease, aide, etc. The more words, the less fill — and so the fewer
consonants.
On the other hand, the Loser Community has risen admirably to the
challenge; words don’t /have/ to have lots of vowels. And it’s a big,
big grid: I guarantee that there are hundreds of pronounceable words in
there waiting to be discovered.
For inspiration and guidance, here’s the Losers’ Circle (a.k.a. Above
the Fold) — the winner and runners-up — from Week 1294, featuring
someone whose name will quite possibly be cited in Week 1354 entries as
well:
Fourth place: /J-4: /ALARMOPATH: An extreme worrywart. “Nellie stayed up
all night fretting that she might be an alarmopath.” (Jesse Frankovich)
3rd place:/F-7: /MaTOO: Reminder that sexual harassment did not start
yesterday. (Mark Raffman)
2nd place: /P-5:/ ZITSEN: The other red-nosed reindeer. (Dudley
Thompson, Cary, N.C.)
And the winner of the Lose Cannon: /N-16:/ DJ DIZZY G: Rudolph W.
Giuliani’s secret hip-hop name: “I’m a long-in-the-tooth sleuth for
truth-isn’t-truth — kind of goof, like I’m dipped in vermouth or I fell
off a roof, trying to prove there’s no proof …” (Frank Osen)
I stress this in the intro AND atop the entry form, but I’ll give it one
more shot here: When I get all the entries together after the Oct. 28
deadline, I’m going to group them, as always, into one anonymous list of
what might be several thousand entries. And after that, I would really
like to copy them into a Word document and click on Sort. *IF* each
entry begins with the word’s starting coordinates — A-1, F-15, etc. —
rather than a number, or a bullet, or the word itself, or “Starting on
A-1,” or “1-A,” or “This one is my favorite,” I’ll be able to look at
all the A-1 words at once, including the ones that are similar to one
another. C’mon, help me out here. Don’t you want me to be in a good mood
when I’m deciding how funny you are?
Fabulosity, of course: The new-word poems from Week 1350
I’m expecting lots of entries to Week 1354; pondering the word search
grid during a five-minute after-breakfast sitting should make for an
entry or three from even an occasional Invite reader. A poetry contest
is a different matter, especially one that asks you to use words you
might have to look up — and one that requires you to be especially
skilled in using the English language with wit, economy and some
semblance of an ear. And so I wasn’t exactly shocked that the ink in
Week 1350, for poems that focused on words newly added to
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary — ended up mostly on the blotters of
our veteran Loserbards.
And sure enough, it’s LB Brendan Beary, of the 1,078-ink Brendan Bearys,
who earns his whoa 39th Invite win with “Escape Room,” a beautifully
crafted verse that builds perfectly to its twist ending:
This *escape room’s* the worst, everybody agrees;
We feel trapped, with a lingering sense of unease
That we’ll never get out of here, try as we may —
We get sullen or spiteful, our nerves start to fray
Till at last we’re released, overjoyed to survive …
And we come every weekday, 8:30 to 5.
I had specified that the poem had to use, or at least acknowledge, the
new term’s actual meaning. But I was talking about such cases as
“haircut” to mean a financial loss, not the term being used, as Brendan
does so deftly, as a metaphor. And of course, until the last line the
poem makes perfect sense as a reference to the clue-solving on-site game.
The Year of the Rookie Phenom continues with the second-place ink by Bob
Kruger; Bob now has a two wins and a second since his debut in Week
1271. In third place is the most occasional Loser to get ink this week:
It’s just the fifth blot of ink for Michelle Christophorou, who serves
up this week’s best line in her ode to the sexiness of her “rhotic”
American man who, unlike the British, pronounces the R-sound within
words: “There is nothing as firm as his R’s.” Erhotic, I’d say.
And there’s ol’ Duncan Stevens, with yet another above-the-fold Loss and
three for the week. I just looked up my shortlist to check who wrote
what, and it turns out that I’d first singled out /eight /of Duncan’s
poems this week.
*What Doug Dug: *Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for
first and second place. He also singled out both Stephen Gold’s and
Jesse Frankovich’s takes on “free solo” climbing, plus Frank Osen’s “sesh.”
Last call to march into Gettysburg!
/(Reprinting the following from last week’s Conversational)/
Just about every year, a contingent of Losers takes advantage of Loser
Roger Dalrymple’s tour guide expertise, driving up to Gettysburg, Pa.,
for lunch in a local pub followed by a drive to various sites where the
1863 Battle of Gettysburg transpired, and perhaps a stroll around the
historic town. I can’t make it this year, but it’s always fascinating
and fun. (Except the time I got sick …) Lunch is at Appalachian Brewing
Co., a nice pub. Because Keeper of the Brunches Elden Carnahan is on
vacation, it’s best to RSVP to Roger directly at rogerandpam [at]
comcast [dot] net.