Style Conversational Week 1390: Thinning the herd The Empress of The Style Invitational on this week’s grandfoals, the new contest, and our new set of Loser Magnets Bob Staake's original take for the “No 'Bility' magnet. I decided that we'd better go with something less violent and more celebratory. I was fine with being depicted as a Sarah Huckabee Sanders look-alike, though. Bob Staake's original take for the “No 'Bility' magnet. I decided that we'd better go with something less violent and more celebratory. I was fine with being depicted as a Sarah Huckabee Sanders look-alike, though. By Pat Myers June 25, 2020 at 4:51 p.m. EDT Add to list Today’s results of the 15th annual Style Invitational “grandfoals” contest (Week 1386) are, like those from the “foal” contest four weeks earlier, contain dozens of clever wordplays selected from hundreds of clever wordplays among thousands of, um, entries. As in past years, the grandfoal entries numbered around 2,000, about half the entry field for the first contest, which this year featured 100 winners of the Kentucky Derby, dating back to 1875. (I hope you’re back in September, when we’ll do it all over again with the usual breeding pool, this year’s crop of Triple Crown nominees, in conjunction with the postponed Derby.) The task of judging the 2,000 entries — and before it, the 4,000 — has been made immeasurably more manageable for me by the generosity and great skill of Loser Jonathan Hardis, a physicist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology who each year takes my raw list combining all the entries (but without the Losers’ names), runs a program he designed, and returns it to me a few hours later with the combinations for each “parent” horse grouped together and changed into a consistent format, no matter what crazy way the entrant wrote it. (In general, the Losers have become much better in following the asked-for format, and for that we both thank you greatly.) To say that Jonathan went Above and Beyond — even discounting the fact that he’s nuts to do this favor at all — is wild understatement. For example, he’s so used to Losers’ misspelling the parent names that he directed his program to anticipate them. AD For instance, Jonathan explains what he did with the grandfoal entries for “Cairopractor” (American Pharoah x Carry Back): “I had set up the match on Cairopractor to be: C[hairo]{3,6}pract[aeo]r. In other words, even if [the Loser’s] spell check corrected the entry to “chiropractor,” or someone scrambled the letters in “airo, or ended the word with -ar or -er, all of those variants were going to match.” BUT that still wasn’t enough to meet the challenge from the Loser who, in five separate entries, went with “Cairoproctor.” (The same entrant, however, did notice he’d written “Oprah Wind-Flee” instead of “Wind-Free” and sent a correction.) “Now, thanks to that mystery person,” Jonathan noted, “the match is now: C[hairo]{3,6}pr[ao]ct[aeo]r.” Hey, people, how about just spelling the names right? Looking up who wrote which entry is one of the last steps in the judging process, after I’ve made my picks. And so I was delighted that I’d chosen one of Jonathan’s own entries, “Stubble Stubble x Tank Array = Rubble Rubble,” to finish in second place, for Jonathan’s 65th blot of all-time Invite ink. (I know it’s going to break his heart that this week’s second prize, the socks with a horse hoof motif, got delayed or lost in transit and I had to order them from China all over again, which means they probably won’t mosey up to my mailbox for another month.) AD Jonathan has been entering the Invite for about a decade, but only sporadically; he’s never had more than a handful of inking entries in a year. This week’s winner, on the other hand, goes back to Week 104 (1995): Steve Fahey ran up the lion’s share of his 192 blots during the Invite’s Czarist era, returning to regular Loserdom only recently after retiring from his long career as a sports medicine physician at the University of Maryland. What appealed to me most about his winning entry, “Avast! Waistland x Make Up Your Mind! = Bulge 'n’ Waffle” — in addition to the fact that no one else sent an entry even resembling it — was the switch of “waffle” not just in meaning but in part of speech, from noun to verb. The remaining members of this week’s Losers circle are an old hand at horse breeding and a brand-new one: Harvey Smith has gotten ink almost every year since 2005, but just a few at a time, and almost always for horse names — including “Spend a Buck x Forward Pass = Get a Quarter Back” in this year’s foal contest. This time he scores with that rarefied genre of Invite drollery, the bris joke, “Discount Mohel x Coupon Quipper = 80% Off.” And Hannah Seidel made a splash just three weeks ago when she got two blots of ink as a First Offender in Week 1383′s Questionable Journalism contest. She still hasn’t won an honorable-mention magnet. and instead must choose between the Grossery Bag and the Loser Mug for “Au! Au! Au! x Extremely Average = Oh. Oh. Oh.” Hannah’s entry is what I call an operational name: Horse A x Horse B = Modification of A or B. There were surprisingly few foal entries in this form in Week 1382; we have a number of them this week. Another is this one from George Smith: Flatley Denied x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = “Mr. Prez” is Lyin. AD What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood thought we had a very good crop of grandfoals this year. He liked all the top winners and also singled out Francis Canavan’s ““Mr. Prez” Is Fine x Avast! Waistland = BLOTUS”; Aloha, Damn’d Spot x If Only I Had TP! = Wipeout (Lee Graham); Bro x Play NYSE = Broke (Jonathan Jensen); Cat’s MeOW x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = Purrs Before Swine (Laurie Brink); and another Au entry, Extremely Average x Au! Au! Au! = So So-So (Pamela Love). Among the 61 entries getting ink this week, I showed a few variations on a single joke, like “Flush in the Pan” by Eric Nelkin and “Flash in the Pun” by Rob Huffman. both playing off One-Hit Wonder. But here’s a bigger set: The foal Hawaii 5-0 (Kauai King x Shut Out) was used in 81 entries — well shy of the (surprise!) most fertile Toilet Trouble (Macbeth II x Bubbling Over), who bred 183 foals. But many of those 81 played on the signature tagline of the TV police procedural of 1968-80 and revived in 2010. AD Six Losers submitted the straightforward “Give It Arrest x Hawaii 5-0 = Book ’Em, Danno,” though just one had the proper comma, and none, interestingly, went with “Book Him” or “Book ’im,” which was what Detective Steve McGarrett was really directing his assistant; he was arresting individual bad guys, not rounding ’em up en masse. See this montage of video clips.) And then the variations: Hawaii 5-0 x Coupon Quipper = Book ’Em Danno (Dave Letizia adds a play on “book”) Hawaii 5-0 x “Mr. Prez” Is Fine = Book’em Donno (Rob Wolf) Hawaii 5-0 x MeTarSand, YouThane = Book ‘em, Than-o (Richard Franklin) Aloha, Damn’d Spot x Hawaii 5-0 = Book ‘Em, Banquo (Gina Smith) 28 002 Hawaii 5-0 x Aloha, Damn’d Spot = Book ’em Damno (Bill Dorner) 028 015 Hawaii 5-0 x Dollar General = Buck ’em, Dan-o (Jon Gearhart) AD 028 017 Ex-prez Checkout x Hawaii 5-0 = CheckbookHimDano (Pamela Love) 028 018 Hawaii 5-0 x Extremely Average = Hug ’em, Dano (Lee Graham; I didn’t get this one) Hawaii 5-0 x Make Up Your Mind! = Book ’em? Dunno. (George Thompson, Jeff Contompasis. This made my shortlist.) Man of La Mantra x Hawaii 5-0 = Danno Quixote (David Peckarsky. This did also.) Hawaii 5-0 x One Hit Wonder = Book em, Don Ho (Frank Mann) MeTarSand, YouThane x Hawaii 5-0 = Him Danno (Mary McNamara) Hawaii 5-0 x Purple Drain = Book ’m, Drano (Jonathan Hardis, Mary Kappus, J.D. Berry; oh, there’s one entry that uses the comma and avoids using the contraction for “them”) Besides “Danno” puns, there were numerous other notable non-inking entries using “Hawaii 5-0.” Among them: Hawaii 5-0 x Make Up Your Mind! = Pick Your Poi, Son (Chris Doyle) AD Hawaii 5-0 x Liberate [state]! = D.C. 51 (Mike Hammer) Hawaii 5-0 x Au! Au! Au! = LuAuAuAu! (Steve Price) Hawaii 5-0 x Avast! Waistland = Jack Lard (Rob Wolf) Eye for an Eye x Hawaii 5-0 = Torah! Torah! Torah! (J.D. Berry) Hawaii 5-0 x Stubble Stubble = The Fuzz (Jeff Contompasis) Hawaii 5-0 x Stubble Stubble = 5 O’Clock Shadow (Jonathan Jensen, Jeff Shirley, Michelle Christophorou) Hawaii 5-0 x Get a Quarter Back = $49.75 (Roy Ashley) Will & Grace x Hawaii 5-0 = Ampersandy (Pamela Love) So we’ll definitely be back with another run around the track in September. Whether we’ll also have grandfoals — to make four horse contests in the same year: Well, we’ll see. Speaking of novel pairings: This week’s contest, Week 1390 I’m not a math person, as they say, but I think I counted 21 previous Invitational contests in which the Czar or I presented a list of a dozen or more random items and asked the Loser Community to explain how any two are alike or different. I counted from the “Differences” page of Elden Carnahan’s Master Contest List, that indispensable time-suck, the Great Repository of Loseriana. AD If you’re new to this contest or would like a jolt of inspiration or just chuckles, click on any of the links on the far right side of the chart; those will show you the results of each contest listed, in either plain text or a PDF of the print or Web version of The Post’s page. And I’ll leave you this weekend with a few random classics from over the years. Beethoven, stone deaf, created serious music; Howard Stern, tone deaf, creates Sirius mucus. (Howard Mantle) XL jeggings: Big waistband width. BuzzFeed quizzes: Big bandwidth waste. (Jeff Contompasis) The difference between the next Redskins season and Ivory Soap: With the soap, at the end the owner will end up with a ring. An all-you-can-eat buffet and three inches of snow: In D.C., there’s a good chance that either will clog vital arteries. (Mike Gips) AD Clown Shoe Friday: Flopsy. Boris Johnson’s hair: Mopsy. Jockey shorts: Cotton tail. (Jesse Frankovich) That last one? Yeah, I said “any two.” But if you’re not so good at counting to 2, and you have something that good? Go for it.