Style Conversational Week 1461: You name it!
The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s eponym contest and on farming out her work to Ken Jennings

Bob Staake's sketch for one of the other eponyms used as examples for the Style Invitational Week 1461 contest: SINEMATIC, adj.: Describing utterly nonsensical behavior. “You decided to crash the car because it wouldn’t turn left and right at the same time? Pretty sinematic.” (Example by Duncan Stevens)
By Pat Myers
November 4, 2021 at 5:13 p.m. EDT



Heard any good names lately? It’s not as if you have you have a limited number of sources for Style Invitational Week 1461.

An eponym contest was one of The Style Invitational’s first: Week 24 in 1993, suggested by proto-Loser Kitty Thuermer, a reader who’d go on to head up the Extreme Travel Trivia contest for The Post for a while, and who ended up with 19 blots of Invite ink before bowing out in Week 262.

Headlined “It’s the Eponomy, Stupid” — the spelling was changed to the better “eponymy” two weeks later in the “next week” line — the contest was headed by these examples (no clue if they were Kitty’s or the Czar’s):

Perot, verb. To stand or sit next to someone important and make him feel insecure by saying inane but profound-sounding things.

Pack, noun. An unwanted sexual advance more intrusive than a peck, as popularized by Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon.


Bobbitt, verb. To bob “it.”

Hooverville, noun. A room full of transvestites.

(Word to the wise: if you end your joke with a phrase like “as popularized by Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon,” you will not get ink. Gaaaack.)

Except for the pathetic Pack entry, they were pretty good. But the results were better.

But as is true today, a big part of the fun was the humor’s timeliness — so many of the jokes concerned people who were all over the headlines … of 1993. Let’s refresh our memories with some of the entries that week. (Here’s the whole list in a somewhat clunky text file.) (Incidentally, the week this contest was announced, the results were for the very first Ask Backwards contest.)

Report from Week 27, in which we asked you to coin eponyms, words based on the names of famous people.

Fourth Runner-Up: Stockdale, noun. The place your mind wanders off to when you daydream. (Paul Sabourin, Greenbelt) Adm. James Stockdale, the running mate of 1992 third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot, had an excruciating night of a VP debate with opponents Al Gore and even famously dopey-sounding Dan Quayle, beginning with “Who am I? Why am I here?” Millions of viewers had the same question. (By the way, entrant Paul Sabourin is half of the hilarious music duo Paul and Storm, and previously a member of the equally funny Da Vinci’s Notebook. We miss him.)


Third Runner-Up: To Cuomo, verb. To edge forward and back up repeatedly when attempting to turn onto a busy thoroughfare, to the annoyance of other drivers. (Peter Owen, Williamsburg) The Invite has had whole generations of Cuomo jokes! This referred to the vacillations by Gov. MARIO Cuomo about whether he’d run for president in 1992; he finally didn’t.)

Second Runner-Up: Dee Dee, noun. Short, substanceless commentary. “I went to the press conference hoping for a good story, but all I got was dee dee.” (Kate Sparks and Sarah Ducich, Washington, and Laura Sokol, Warsaw) It sounds as if Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers was receiving the same sort of sniping that all presidential flacks get, but Myers has been treated well by history; the first woman in that role, she was known for her quick wit, and was the inspiration for the “West Wing” character C.J. Cregg.

First Runner-Up: To Pack Wood, verb. To be glad to see someone. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge) As the example to the contest hinted at less graphically, Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon was a notorious harasser of staffers and other women; The Post’s story in 1992 that included accusations from 10 women eventually prompted his resignation.


And the winner of the giant flag of a cow [no trophies yet; the gag prize went to the winner]:

To shalikashvili, v. To ensure a low profile for a program or agency by appointing a director whose name no one can pronounce or spell or even fit in a headline. “We finally shalikashvilied the White House Travel Office by appointing Joe Bkistellzrtngounmr!” (Sharon Kuykendall, Takoma Park) Gen. John Shaliskashvili, whose father was from the country of Georgia, had just been appointed head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While I’m not a huge fan of humor that makes fun of people’s surnames, I do like how the entry shows (with a funny sentence) how the neologism could be used more generally.

Tsong, noun. A sensible melody that no one wants to hear. (Paul Sabourin) Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas won several Democratic primaries in 1992 but eventually conceded to the more colorful Bill Clinton. Asked why he wasn’t proposing tax cuts like other candidates, he famously said, “I’m not trying to play Santa Claus.” He died at age 55 of complications from a return of lymphoma.


McGinniss stout, noun Faux beer. (Stefanie Weldon, Silver Spring) best-selling author Joe McGinniss had just released a book about Sen. Ted Kennedy that was viciously panned, as Wikipedia sums it up, for “its skimpy sourcing, lack of attribution, wild suppositions, lack of footnotes, possible plagiarism and prurient outlook. ‘It is, by a wide margin, the worst book I have reviewed in nearly three decades; quite simply, there is not an honest page in it,’ wrote Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post.”

The Czar never repeated the contest, but I brought it back in 2006 and again in 2010. Selected ink below. (Full lists for Week 653 and Week 888)

From Week 653:

Blix-and-mortars: Said of two types of things never found together. “Bill Frist campaigning at a Wiccan Festival would be like blix-and-mortars.” (Kevin Dopart, Washington) Hans Blix was in charge of the U.N.'s effort to search for evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; he found none, to the disappointment of U.S. pro-war partisans. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was accused of pandering to right-wing Christian groups. As this 2005 article on the Fox News website (!) says, “The critics have grown louder since he agreed to participate in an event on Sunday organized by Christian groups trying to rally churchgoers to support ending the judicial filibuster [and !!!].”


Enfant terrellible: An egregiously self-centered athlete. (Tom Greening) and T.O.: To insult co-workers, violate workplace standards and practices, and show little regard for clients. “Despite his smile and performance record, he still managed to T.O. everyone in the office.” (Ira Allen) Two entries about NFL star Terrell “T.O.” Owens, who was good at catching passes and great at antagonizing everyone on the many teams he played for. The same year of this contest, he spit in an opponent’s face after a play. After finally making the Hall of Fame, he skipped the induction and held his own celebration instead.

And from Week 888 (2010):

The winner of the Inker: lebronchitis, n.: Acute swelling of the ego. (Jeff Contompasis) LeBron James is inarguably one of the greatest NBA players of all time, and continues to be. But in 2010 he pulled an amazingly egomaniacal stunt — with the eager cooperation of ESPN and 13 million viewers: a live 75-minute TV special in which he announced that, as a free agent, he would leave his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat.


whittingtonto, n.: A sidekick who takes one in the face for you. (Chris Doyle) The Invitational has lots of ink alluding to the 2006 accident in which Vice President Dick Cheney shot his acquaintance (widely misreported at the time that he was a close friend) Harry Whittington in the face and elsewhere with a shotgun during a quail-hunting excursion. Whittington, a lawyer, offered this statement a week later: “We all assume certain risks in whatever we do. Whatever activities we pursue and regardless of how experienced, careful and dedicated we are, accidents do and will happen.” Years later he said that the Cheneys had never apologized, publicly or privately, to him. He’s still alive at age 94.

Heene, n.: The sound of air being let out of a balloon. (Kevin Dopart) The Balloon Boy! I’ll let Wikipedia sum it up: “The ‘Balloon Boy’ hoax occurred on October 15, 2009, when a homemade helium-filled gas balloon shaped to resemble a silver flying saucer was released into the atmosphere above Fort Collins, Colorado, by Richard and Mayumi Heene. They then claimed that their six-year-old son Falcon was trapped inside it. … After flying for more than an hour … the balloon landed about 12 miles northeast of Denver International Airport. When Falcon was not found inside and it was reported that an object had been seen falling from the balloon, a search was begun. Later that day, the boy was found hiding in the attic of his home, where he had apparently been the entire time.

“Suspicions of a hoax soon arose, particularly after an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Larry King Live that same evening. Asked why he was hiding, Falcon said to his father, “You guys said that, um, we did this for the show.”

It’s 'pardy time*: The Ask Backwards results
*Non-inking headline by Kevin Dopart


Golly, Ken Jennings is truly a good guy. “Sure, I can help with this. Thanks Pat,” he answered promptly after I emailed him in early October to ask if he’d be willing to look at and comment on four lists of “Jeopardy!”-themed entries in our Week 1457 Ask Backwards contest.

He did this last year, too, just as graciously and charmingly. But since last year, the “Jeopardy!” GOAT and professional brainiac has become A1 news in the wake of Alex Trebek’s death and the long and wild saga of Who’ll Replace Him — and for now, he’s still up there; he and fellow smarty Mayim Bialik are splitting up hosting duties through the end of the year, and there hasn’t been anyone else announced to take over.

No matter. I sent Ken the four lists on Tuesday and he returned them the same day, with the comments I quote atop this week’s results: “Hope this helps!”


Obviously, as the most recognizable name connected with the show (and someone who’d like to get some tenure), he wasn’t going to choose entries referring to the controversy, or gibes at the producer who named himself host until the world quickly saw to it that he would do no such thing. That’s my job.

That job for this year’s Ask Backwards consisted of reading about 1,400 entries plus 200 headline and subhead suggestions. Not surprisingly, there were many similar ideas offered; I usually chose my favorite wording. Thanks to everyone who — and this was just about everyone — typed the A-part and the Q-part of each entry on a single line; this let me shuffle all the entries alphabetically instead of seeing a single Loser’s entire list at once. I was also able to read big groups of, say, “30,000 steps” entries at once rather than having to search for them one by one through the massive amalgamation.

So I had no idea until the end that the Loser who sent the fourth-place “Dalai Double” joke for “Zen Jennings” and the Loser who wrote the first-place “Six hours without Facebook” question, “How do 56 percent of Americans describe an eight-hour workday?,” were both 136 (now 139)-time Loser Jeff Hazle. It’s his sixth Invite win but his first of the Clowning Achievement trophy (though I suspect that his shout-out from the Kenster might count for more in his book).

John Hutchins accurately predicted that Ken would be good-humored about his affliction of being Possibly the Whitest Man in America, asking, “Who was the inspiration for “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Procol Harum song. And Bird Waring, who used to work for the Jesuit magazine America, got the other runner-up spot for “A bun in the oven” as “What do bakers have no control over in Texas?”

Some categories proved more fertile than others for ink; that’s why I always put up more than I’ll have room for. Not surprisingly, more people tried to get some Ken-props and entered the “Jeopardy!” categories, but several of the other “answers” drew many dozens of questions as well.

Some of the answers were pretty inside-Jeopardy: Two of them alluded to an answer that Ken missed during his 74-victory run in 2004. Alex Trebek’s clue: “This term for a long-handled gardening tool can also mean an immoral pleasure seeker.” The intended response: “What is a rake?” Ken’s: “What is a hoe?”

And so we had these two questions:

A. Zen Jennings. Q. Who brought a hoe to the Japanese rock garden? (Dave Matuskey)

A. Zen Jennings. Q. Whose most famous “Jeopardy!” guess was “What’s a ho-listic approach?” (Jesse Rifkin)

One quibbler who read this week’s results this morning points out a problem with one of the honorable mentions: A. 3½ Pounds. Q. How big is a pound cake in Texas? The premise, of course, is that everything is bigger in Texas, but pound cake gets its name from the traditional recipe: a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of butter and a pound of eggs (that would be eight to 10). So at 3½ pounds, the Texas cake would be half a pound smaller than the classic. Okay, noted.

What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with my choices for the winners (really! And I’m sure it’s not just because I hired him in 1992) and also singled out Mike Gips’s and William Kennard’s “Buzzy Koan”; Pia Palamidessi’s description of six hours without Facebook as “the punishment for parents who don’t obey their children”; Ward Kay’s “bun in the oven” as the result of the Pillsbury Doughboy’s visit to Sara Lee; and Lee Graham’s saying Curry Spice is Gene Weingarten’s stripper name.

And yes, Gene was okay with my using the Curry Spice category and with all the inking entries for it. He especially liked Pia Palamidessi’s “takeout” wordplay.

Meanwhile, Gene won’t be going with us to …

Have some Curry Spice! Loser Brunch at Aditi, Nov. 14
(Reprinted from last week’s Convo) The longtime monthly rotation of Sunday Loser Brunches at various restaurants around the D.C. area resumes at Aditi, a really good Indian restaurant in Kingstowne, not far from the Beltway exit to Van Dorn Street in Northern Virginia. It’s Sunday, Nov. 14, at noon. I have been there many times and definitely have it on my calendar. There’s a buffet or you can order from the menu. If you’re vaccinated, come on out! Details and RSVP on the Our Social Engorgements page on the Losers’ website at NRARS.org. Everyone is welcome — and in person, we do not snark.

Feeling sketchy? Talk to Bob Staake.
Do you covet today’s “disputin” cartoon, or the “sinematic” sketch above — or any old Invitational art? Bob Staake makes them available to the Loser Community at low-for-a-famous-artist prices at bobstaake.com/SI. Tell him what you’re looking for — write to me first if you need help in figuring out the date, details of the cartoon, etc. — and he’ll check to see if he still has it.