Style Conversational Week 1366: Invinite variety
The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s 17-contest Kook’s Tour

Bear the Newfoundland looks a bit intimidated by Sparkle the Chihuahua. Ken April's "problematic invention" of a Newfohuahua was a runner-up in the Week 1362 retrospective contest. (Wikipedia Commons/Wikipedia Commons)
By 
Pat Myers 
Jan. 9, 2020 at 3:39 p.m. EST
It’s a lot more fun to look at, say, 50 entries to each of 20 Style Invitational contests than 1,000 entries to a single one, which is one reason I always enjoy our end-of-year retrospectives. And I think it might be more fun for the reader as well. Today’s results of Week 1362, which span Weeks 1307 to 1333 (November 2018 to May 2019), show the wide scope of our Humor Delivery Systems, from foal names to crossword clues, to movie title jokes, to anagrams, to cartoon captions, to longer-form (for us) writing, to song parodies. I’m counting on that variety — I ended up running work from 17 contests — to keep readers engaged through 46 entries.

While this week’s four top winners all happened to be newly submitted, many of the honorable mentions were “noinks” the first time around; I remember liking a lot of them, since they’d had made my shortlist. Not every week, but almost, my list of inkworthy entries is far longer than space (or a sane reader’s attention span) allows, especially longer-form humor. I still didn’t know (or at least remember) who’d written what; I generally don’t look up the authors of the entries unless they’re getting ink, or after the fact when I send someone a prize and sometimes check what else the person had sent that week.

Not surprisingly, a few Losers this week amassed veritable vats of ink — six blots each for Chris Doyle, Jesse Frankovich and Duncan Stevens, five for Jeff Contompasis. And most if not all of their entries were resubmissions: It’s a testament to just how dang good they are in all these different contests that despite getting multiple ink almost every week, they had stuff like this left over.

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Kevin Dopart, who just a few weeks ago scored his 1,500th blot of ink, had just one this week, but to me it was the out-and-out winner: the impeachment clause of the Constitution, 168 characters long, anagrammed into a mordantly sarcastic view of the GOP’s position. Also, it included the epithet “sphincters.” Jon Gearhart, who’d been under the weather lately, wins the nice book of paper dolls with his clever “receding heirline,” as well as virtual ice cream for his suggestion and examples for this week’s Tour de Fours contest. His runner-up marks the 20th trip to the Losers’ Circle for Jon as he continues to glide away from the 200-ink mark. Hall of Famer Jeff Contompasis adds to his crap collection with his first of the new Loser Mugs.

Our final runner-up, by Ken April — whose last Invite ink, his sixth, was for Week 733 a dozen years ago — made me laugh out loud and wince simultaneously: the “problematic invention” of a Newfohuahua. I was dismayed to learn that, after I posted the Invite this morning in the Style Invitational Devotees Facebook group, several Devotees didn’t get the joke, that it’s a portmanteau for a Newfoundland-Chihuahua mix, like a Labradoodle or cockapoo, except that the first of those breeds runs 150 pounds and the other one 5. I hope that the Chihuahua is the very cocky male in the pairing.

What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for the winners and also singled out three honorable mentions: John Hutchins’s statistical fictoid that “92 percent of clickbait uses this one weird trick”; Jesse Frankovich’s elegant anagram “Articles of impeachment = The top criminal faces ’em"; and Duncan Stevens’s bank head about “the oldest story ever told” being discovered in a cave: “Etching translated as ‘Wife no understand me.’ ”

A RIAL doozy: This week’s contest
It’s our 16th go-round for our Tour de Fours neologism contest, Week 1366, for the letter block L-I-A-R, and I think the examples at the top of the column should give you an idea of what we’re looking for. You even get the bonus inspiration of three honorable mentions this week from our previous T de F, for T-O-U-R: “Sourteen,” “Bot-rus Bot-rus Ghali” and “See Spot Run.”

By the way, thanks for the helpful thought, but please don’t try to boldface or underline your RIAL (or permutation) block in your entry. The entry form turns it into plain text regardless, and sometimes coding will show up as garble. I promise I’ll figure it out.

Last call for the Loser Post-Holiday Party! This Saturday.
We’re up to 61 yeses for the Loser Community’s 22nd annual winter potluck/songfest, along with 20 people who are listed as “maybe” two days out (my general formula is that 10 maybes translates to one guest) and whoever inevitably shows up without having responded. Yes, YOU are invited! Click right here. I’m especially excited about this year’s festivities because we’ll be singing as many as a dozen song parodies that have gotten ink over the past year. (Once again, if anyone has a camera that can record the singalong, I can bring a tripod.)

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I’m also excited that a lot of rookie Losers are attending, as well as older hands who are finally showing up at their first Loser event. If I don’t see you amid the throng, please come over to me to say hi and chat a bit: I guarantee that even though I am comically short, you will see me. (All I’m going to say about my brand-new headgear that I will wear along with my tiara.)

As always, we’re not coordinating what people should bring. But keep in mind that while we’ll have plenty of folding chairs brought to the lovely house of Steve Langer and Allison Fultz, we won’t be sitting at tables. So it’s best to bring food that can be eaten from a handheld or at least lapheld plate. Finger food, of course, also works. Remember that you don’t have to bring enough food for 63 people! Figure six or eight.

Also, I’ll be giving out a bunch of recently won prizes. If I owe you a cannon or mug, or even a recent magnet, be sure to pick it up from me. And if you might have a prize to donate, I can take it at the party; how else can I make it a three-year streak (might be four!) of accidentally leaving stuff at the Loser party and having to pick it up downtown from Allison?

See 60-some of you soon!