Style Conversational Week 1434: Minds on the same track The very clever foal name that popped up 18 times over Image without a caption Soup and Sandwich, one of 14 horses on the Week 1430 list to be running in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, has already paid off for Loser Matt Monitto: Matt wins this week's Clowning Achievement trophy with his “breeding” of One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT. (Charlie Riedel/AP) By Pat Myers April 29, 2021 at 4:19 p.m. EDT Add to list One Fast Cat x Savile Row = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Concert Tour = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x Fly Like an Eagle = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Savile Row x One Fast Cat = Tailor Swift. Hey, it’s a good joke — a punny, perfectly inkworthy name submitted for Style Invitational Week 1430, this year’s installment of the racehorse name “breeding” contest. And had it not been submitted by 18 different people, Tailor Swift might well have been among this week’s inking entries (results here). There’s just no way to know what the other people entering the contest — this year, almost 400 of them — are going to come up with. This is one reason you’re allowed to send as many as 25 entries: If four people send pretty much the same entry, I toss it; if three people do, it had better be worth running a credit line that’s longer than the entry itself. I’ll note some more good-but-too-common ideas farther down in the column. People are getting so good at this contest. Though well over 300 people got no ink this week — though a whopping 60 of you did — I’d suspect that many of them made my “shortlist” of 282 entries that I culled from the pool of 3,834. (I don’t look up the authors’ names until I’m ready to give them ink, so I never checked on wrote all those puns that I marked but ultimately tossed. Maybe all your entries were in that part of the list — yeah! For sure! As I read through the entries, I’d put a double star among ones I was sure I wanted to use. I ended up with 29 of those, and they’re all sprinkled throughout today’s results (including this week’s top four winners). Then for the remaining entries — it turned out that 43 more of them would fill the space exactly on the print page — I paged through nine pages of single-spaced, small-type printout and chose what how-you-say spoke to me at that moment. I don’t doubt that I could have chosen 43 others that would have been just as clever and funny. But today’s top winners, of course, worked for me especially well — and it turns out that all four “above the fold” Losers are veterans of the horse contest. Matt Monitto, though still in his twenties, has inked in five earlier horse contests, but this is his first finish in the money, as it were — and though this is the sixth time he’s won an Invitational contest (for 164 blots in all) it’s his first Clowning Achievement, our new trophy. His winning entry: One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT. This year’s second-place winner, Jonathan Paul, was one of the biggest stars of the Invitational’s early years, earning almost 400 inks — and 25 wins — before stepping back to a saner life a number of years ago. But Jonathan always comes back for the horse contests — and continues to score big virtually every time. Today he scores with Troubadour x Chaos Reigns = Widespread Luting, a totally distinctive entry this week. Bernard Brink started entering the horse contests in 2008, after his daughter Laurie Brink had gotten fourth place in the previous one. Virtually every year since then, they’ve each sent in a list full of clever names. Laurie usually outscores him, but this week Bernard gets his first ink above the fold, with Like the King x Breadman = Elvis Pretzely — plus two honorable mentions, while Laurie scores “only” two HMs. Rob Wolf, likewise, has made himself scarce Invite-wise except for the horses — for which he’s scored in virtually every contest in recent years, often with multiple ink and runner-up “honors.” Today’s mug- or bag-winner: Count Tolstoy x Uno = War and Pizza What Pleased Ponch: Ace Copy Editor Panfilo “Ponch” Garcia — whose moniker is even more fitting now that he just won the ACES award, from what used to be called the American Copy Editors Society, for his headline writing — particularly enjoyed these honorable mentions this week: Never Surprised x Chaos Reigns = No Duh Rioty (Susan Geariety) ) Beep Beep x Hidden Stash = Wile E. Peyote (J.J. Gertler, Alexandria; Brent and Elizabeth McBurney) Federal Bureau x Classier = J Edgar Louvre (Jon Gearhart) I Am the Law x One Fast Cat = Cuff Lynx (Kathy El-Assal) Hush of a Storm x Money Mike = Hush Stormy (Jonathan Jensen) Savile Row x Santa Cruiser = HaberDasher (Fred Shuback) I Am the Law x Hold the Salsa = Mild Bill HIckok (Laurie Brink) Breadman x Arabian Prince: CruMBS (Kevin Dopart) More From the Great Minds Department: ADVERTISING Foals named “2020″ came from a variety of pairings: Chaos Reigns x Isolate; Concert Tour x Outasite; Life Is Good x Notable Exception, among others. The 1981 Tommy Tutone song “867-5309” was used for numerous foal appellations, mostly from Get Her Number; the other parent was variously Circumvent, Concert Tour and Prime Factor (is it?). Then there were variations: Get Her Number x Uno (and x O Besos) = 867-5308; x Hyperfocus = 86753 Oh Nine; x Myopic = 867530NighEyeing (now there’s an example of piling on too much complexity); Many entries, of course, used O Besos (besos meaning “kisses” in Spanish) to refer to Washington Post and Everything Else Owner Jeff Bezos; four people played off the spelling difference and named their foals “Amason.” I wouldn’t have had a problem making Bezos jokes; the Invite has made lots of them; I just wasn’t blown away by any of them this week. Similarly the many Biden references using Joe Man Joe: Biden My Time or Biden His Time appeared 19 times under various pairings. Many of the others seemed awfully worshipful, like, really: Joe Man Joe x Magnificent = President Biden. Six people used the Operative form — Horse A x Horse B as a modifying word = Modified A — to Turn Beep Beep into Bleep Bleep, mostly via Tarantino. Sometimes, though, one pairing works significantly better than another to get to the same foal: There were four foals named Clooney Tunes, but others paired By George with Concert Tour; only Rivka Liss-Levinson used Beep Beep — the signature call of Road Runner in the Looney Tunes cartoons. Gershwin was “bred” far more often than any other horse, with 195 matings, so it’s not surprising that Gershwin x Ram = Embraceable Ewe showed up nine times and Gershwin x Big Fish = Porgy and Bass 14. The horse with the fewest breedings, with a mere 10? Irony, take a bow: It’s the scarce Prevalence. A few more multiples, certainly not a complete list: Overtook x Helium = Passed Gas — so good, all seven of you. Arabian Prince x Helium = Lighter Than Heir — six. One Fast Cat x Whole Shebang = Kitten Caboodle — six. Petruchio x O Besos = Kiss Me, Kate — eight. This week’s follow-on contest -- Week 1434, the grandfoals -- tends not to have so much duplication, because so many of the horses are puns in themselves, and so they can be played on in more ways. Also, if history is a guide, there will be far fewer entries than for the foals -- 30 to 50 percent fewer. So there’s every reason to waste even more time this week -- perhaps while you’re watching TV’s 90-minute buildup to the 2-minute Kentucky Derby. Be sure to root for “our” horses -- 14 horses out of the 20 scheduled to run on Saturday were on our list, and I think all of them got at least one foal today. Once again, my deepest thanks to Loser Jonathan Hardis, who took my giant file of entries — stripped of the Losers’ names, addresses, etc., — and transformed it into an alphabetized, perfectly consistently formatted Word document of 213 pages. (I’m so glad he got ink, with Spielberg x Savile Row = Clothes Encounters. And we both also appreciate the cooperation of all you Invite entrants who followed the directions this year. Please do it again for the grandfoals! Note to people who got ink this week: I’m grateful for your patience in waiting for your magnet or runner-up prize; I’ll get all the letters done sooner or later. Runners-up: Unless you’d like a Grossery Bag, which I can mail from home, it’ll be a few weeks before I’m back in the newsroom for my once-a-month package-mailing frenzy. If I think that you’ve already gotten a bunch of our current magnets, “No ‘Bility” and “Punderachiever,” I’ll be sending you the “prize” letter by email instead — but feel free to write me right back and ask for the magnet that you certainly have earned. (If you’d prefer your letter to come as an email attachment rather than by snail, let me know and I’d be more than happy to oblige.) And did you see that last line in the Invite? Hey, remember The Post’s Peeps diorama contest?So what’s grosser, a bunch of Peeps or a bunch of cicadas?