Style Conversational Week 1467: Our annual wretchrospective
The Style Invitational Empress on this week’s do-over contest and winning spoonerisms

Given that the editors said no last week to a cartoon depicting Woodrow Wilson fishing a crouton from a woman's decolletage, it seemed sensible to ask Bob Staake to give this poor office worker a longer, unbothered shirttail in the final version of this week's Style Invitational cartoon. But this very sketch (or a host of others) could be yours: Bob has special prices for his Invite art at bobstaake.com/SI.
By Pat Myers
December 16, 2021 at 4:37 p.m. EST



This email was forwarded to me a few days ago: “For several years I have followed and appreciated the list of Neologisms published each year by The Washington Post — but would like to know the procedure for submitting one for consideration.”

I’m not sure what the person has “followed” for “several years”; I’m guessing that she’s perhaps read more than once the corrupted lists — from 1998 — of new meanings for existing words (Style Invitational Week 266), and words changed by one letter (Week 278), that continue to pop up with amazing energy. I didn’t ask, “You have, huh?” but I did, as always, clarify that The Style Invitational is a weekly contest offering a wide variety of humor challenges, including several neologism contests a year, and I invited her to sign up for the weekly notification newsletter.

Had I answered the email today, though, I could have pointed to the motley list below of 24 contests from the first half of the past year, the ones you get a chance to enter (and reenter) for Week 1467. Each listing contains a link to that contest, any special rules for this week (e.g., use this week’s papers for a headline contest), and the winning entry.


(Remember, you can also just type in the short URL “wapo.st/invite[week number]”; e.g., wapo.st/invite1417 gives you the Week 1417 contest. And wapo.st/invite1421 gives you the Week 1417 results; all the results in this list appear four weeks after the contest was announced.) The nutshell descriptions below are not always complete; be sure to read the instructions in the contest itself.

The links below are to Washington Post pages, and so you’ll need to be a subscriber — one of The Post’s 3 million digital subscribers — to see them. (It’s just $40 for your whole first year! I mean, that’s just nuts. And you can usually get the following years for less than $10 a month.) But if you really can’t subscribe, the other way to see the contests is to go to the Master Contest List on the Losers’ website, NRARS.org, and scroll down to 2021. Each week has PDFs of both the print page and the Web page, as well as a faster-loading plain-text version.

Week 1413, poems using terms added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2020:


Useful idiot, a naive person who can be exploited politically:

had a useful idiot; for years he kissed my bottom.

I need a favor? Two or three? Well, every time I got 'em.

But now he’s on his way out and I’m feeling kind of miffed.

Those millions that he’s in my debt? I’m likely to be stiffed.— V.P., Moscow (Mark Raffman)

Week 1417, poems (no more than 8 lines) about someone who died in 2020 (NOT someone who died in 2021, since that contest is imminent)

Michael Sexson (1966-2020), treasure hunter

Michael Sexson, 53, had read of buried treasure;

Set out with just some clues, and an acquaintance, for good measure.

They didn’t find the gold. Soon, cold and hungry, they got lost,

But searchers finally brought 'em down the mountain to defrost.

Now most folks, being reasonable, would kiss this quest goodbye;

ADVERTISING


But not these two! In just one month, they made a second try . . .,

Bad choice. At least the pal survived ('cause later they were found),

But Michael (like the gold) has now been buried underground. (Beverley Sharp)

Week 1418, Tour de Fours: new words or phrases containing the consecutive letters U-N-D-O, in any order

Ickspound: To overshare about your bodily functions. “To start the Zoom meeting, the boss ickspounded on barfing up a whole bag of multicolored Skittles.” (Terri Berg Smith)

Week 1419, “joint legislation”: a wordplay “bill” combining the names of two or more freshman legislators in the 117th Congress

The Bordeaux-Gimenez-Torres Resolution, limiting long-winded uncles at Thanksgiving to 20 minutes tops. (Sarah Walsh) [Bored o’ him and his stories]

Week 1420, song lyrics about work, or about a particular job, set to a familiar tune (or, if on video, any tune)


Cosmetic surgeon (To “I Saw Her Standing There”)

If you are past 39 and your form’s in decline,

Well, there may be parts that I can help repair,

So how 'bout I tuck in your tummy, ooh! And lift your derriere?

Well, people are vain, but, hey, I can’t complain’

Cause self-regard made me a millionaire

There’s still time to look like Jane Fonda, ooh! When you’re on Medicare.

[bridge] Well, it may be crass but you’ll love your ass/ And your face without a line!

Oh your skin may shine at night and it may feel kinda tight,

And when you laugh, your mouth may feel real sore.

But you’ll never look like your mother, ooh, once you come in through my door. (Bob Kruger)

Week 1421, a new sentence or passage formed from words used in President Biden’s inaugural address

My fellow Americans: As you know, Vice President Pence and I have been close friends for many years. Today, I need to tell you something. We are more than just friends — much more. In fact, he is the one and only love of my life, and the two of us will be entering into a state of total domestic union. Yes, as of tomorrow, we are becoming husbands. (George Thompson)


Week 1422, pair a song, book or movie title with a “collaborator,” then make a wordplay on the title

With co-author Vladimir Putin, Barbara Kingsolver would write The Poison-Good Bible. (Harold Mantle)

Week 1423, anagram a headline or a significant part of a headline (use headlines from articles/ads in any print or online publication dated Dec. 16-27; please include the URL of the Web page, or the date and page number of a print paper)

Perseverance Probe Successfully Lands on Mars =

Endless Probes From Space Cleverly Scan Uranus (Jesse Frankovich)

Week 1424, find new words in any of the provided letter sets from the New York Times’s Spelling Bee word-find game; you may repeat letters

BEFILON > Foible file: Where your brain stores the memories of every mistake you ever made so it can bring them all out when you’re trying to fall asleep. (Danielle Nowlin)

Week 1425, write a caption for any of four Bob Staake cartoons


(Bob Staake for The Washington Post )
Jack hopes his inflatable-luggage gag goes viral. (Dave Prevar)


Week 1426, reinterpret any headline dated Dec. 16-27 by following it with a bank head, or subtitle

Real headline: US 45 resurfacing project starts Monday Fake bank head: Former president getting skin peel, de-oranging (Jesse Frankovich)

Week 1427, describe any historic event as a pair of puns in the “A, or B” format

2008: Sen. John McCain announces his running mate: Impalin’ the Ticket, or Wasilladvised (Gary Crockett)

Week 1428, find new words of 5-7 letters in any of the provided letter sets from the ScrabbleGrams game (letters may be used only once)

AAEPPRT > PAP ART: My OB/GYN is so skilled, she doesn’t just make a “smear” . . . (Danielle Nowlin,

Week 1429, pair a Shakespeare quote with a modern equivalent

“If it be a sin to make a true election, she is damned.” (“Cymbeline”) =

“Ms. Abrams, the Georgia legislature thinks there’s been way too much voting going on.” (Duncan Stevens)


Week 1430, “breed” any two 2020 Kentucky Derby nominees and name a “foal” reflecting both names

One Fast Cat x Soup and Sandwich = Usain BLT (Matt Monitto)

Week 1431, tell how things will be different after the pandemic is over (warning: jokes might be beaten out by the 2022 predictions in the not-yet-judged Week 1465)

Now it will be less awkward when Grandpa tells everyone how Pfizer saved his social life. (Ben Aronin)

Week 1432, new angles on folk tales or nursery rhymes

Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,

Kissed the girls and made them cry.

Then he made them go away

Encumbered by an NDA.

(But richer by one-thirty K.) (Gary Crockett)

Week 1433, Questionable Journalism: take any sentence from an article or ad (use current ones, dated Dec. 16-27) and follow it by a question it could humorously answer


A. That was Frances McDormand having explosive diarrhea in a plastic bucket on a van.

Q. What was the worst act on “Celebrity America’s Got Talent”? (Jon Ketzner)

Week 1434, “breed” any two of the “foals” from Week 1430 and name the “grandfoal”

HaberDasher x It’s All Over = RIP What You Sew (Jonathan Paul)

Week 1435, send a photo of a diorama or other humorous art featuring cicadas — or, this week, any currently available bug


Week 1436, alternative plots for movie titles

The week’s winner is the first example in this week’s Invitational, so here’s that week’s second place: Joe Versus the Volcano: The definitive documentary of the 2020 presidential campaign. (Eric Nelkin)

Week 1437, “typo” neologisms: change a word, name or phrase by either adding or substituting one letter adjacent on a standard keyboard, or by doubling a letter

Jest lag: The awkward silence between telling a joke and getting a laugh. (Chris Doyle)

Week 1438, “fictoids,” or bogus trivia, relating to the law or the justice system

As part of a flurry of deregulation, the Trump administration nullified the federal law requiring bridges to freeze before roadways. (Bruce Carlson)

Week 1439, remove all the vowels from a song title, then add your choice of vowels to create a new song title

I’m a Believer >MBLVR > Mob Lover:

Sen. Ron Johnson changes his tune after Jan. 6:

“Then I saw their race, now I’m a mob lover, Not a trace of doubt in my mind … (Kevin Dopart)

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Wow. Pretty good stuff, huh? Those were the days! (I’ll say that next week, too.)

I think I’ve made it impossible for you to send your entries to the old entry forms for those contests — where I would never see them. But do remember that the entries go to THIS week’s form: wapo.st/enter-invite-1467.

Which contests are more likely to get retro-ink? Lots of different ones, I hope; I love to show readers the variety of the stuff we throw at people all year long. But there are physical limitations, especially for space. I definitely won’t run more than one cartoon with a caption entry (though I could run one Week 1425 cartoon with two different entries) and it’s highly unlikely to run in the print paper. And remember, we also have the Week 1435 bug-art contest; given its novelty, I could see myself using the art space for that instead.

It’s more fun for me to judge 1,200 entries spread over 24 contests than 1,200 of a single kind, so I’m looking forward to the retrospectives. Often, Losers will send me their favorite “noinks” from previous contests, and indeed, a few previously submitted entries usually get ink the second time around; the foal name contest often gets 4,000 entries, for example, and plenty of inkworthies can shake the dust from their bridles and break anew from the starting gate.

You HAVE to tell me which contest your entry is for: If you have some letter-rack neologism and didn’t tell me if it was from the Spelling Bee letters or the ScrabbleGrams letters, you’re done.

Whipped flurds*: The spoonerisms of Week 1463
*Non-inking headline by Jeff Contompasis

Our Week 1463 contest yielded a crumper bop of spoonerism jokes: My first cut from the 1,100 entries ran to 120 inkworthies (or at least inksemiworthies), finally winnowed down to today’s 40 inking entries. But oh, it was slow going through so many of the rest.

I was able to shuffle all the entries alphabetically, and so I don’t know if a whole lot of people didn’t understand (or care) that a spoonerism is the “transposition of the beginnings of different words,” or just a few people who sent the maximum 25 entries each. But today’s gems had to twinkle amid such less twinkly efforts as “folksy witticisms/ focused pragmatism,” “Poor, sweet Fredo/four wet Speedos,” “jack of all trades/track of unjust gains.”

I also should have described the spoonerism as the transposition of the beginning sounds,” since sound is the key to the humor, not the letters themselves. That’s why this honorable mention by Coleman Glenn works creatively: “How is a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine like someone saying “cock-a-doodle-doo”? One is an RNA booster, the other is bein’ a rooster. RNA-BNA! But why I passed on this one: “How is a remote-controlled car like a gown made of organ meat? One is driverless, the other liver dress.” My bad for not stating that explicitly at the start.

The best wordplay I saw that was, alas, not a spoonerism:

How is beginning by doing something wrong like the hiring of Sean Spicer? One is starting off on the wrong foot and the other is starting off on the wrong fool. (Chuck Smith)

By the way, about half the riddles asked, “What’s the difference between X and Y?” and the other half asked, “How is X like Y?” I think the former is more logical for spoonerisms, but I usually just left whatever the person sent in.

It’s the third Clowning Achievement — but the ridiculous 27th Invite win — for Hall of Famer Mark Raffman, with his observation that a demagogue at a rally who’s rotten to the core tends to cotton to the roar. Ryan Martinez gets the second-place Poop Timer, and his third ink “above the fold,” for his Cuomotastic Patagonia/ gonna pat ya. (Meanwhile, Mike Gips also gets ink for contrasting that prize with President Biden: New POTUS/ poo notice.) H o’ F’er Jesse Frankovich, father of a tween, sounds like the voice of experience when musing about a “10,000-piece Lego set” with “Citizen Kane/ kit is insane.” And Jon Ketzner sounded almost elegant with needlessly crude/ creedlessly nude, referring to a gratuitous comic and an undressed atheist.

What Doug Dug: In addition to the four top winners, as well as Coleman’s “bein’ a rooster,” Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood also particularly liked Jeff Shirley’s interpretation of Virginia’s elections as seen by Republicans, fairy tale, and Democrats, Terry fail; Eric Nelkin’s relief pitcher/confessional priest: saves the win/ waives the sin; similar entries from William Kennard and Steve Offutt for Taming of the Shrew/shaming of the true, as in the Republicans who show the amazing backbone to speak out against people who tried to undermine the election; and this one from First Offender Pam Shermeyer: How is Donald Trump like Mike Pence? One traffics in fibs and lies; the other’s pestered by libs and flies. (That last one does bend the rule a bit, by leaving the L in changing from “lies” to “flies.” 'Sokay.)

Not surprisingly, there were a number of entries — valid spoonerisms — that, well, they’re better off hiding down here in the Invite Weeds rather than out in the actual contests, where more decorous people might accidentally see them.

I almost gave official ink to this one by Mark Richardson, but a friend who read my shortlist didn’t get it: “I was hugely excited by the crowds on January 6th — there will never be another sin erection as big as mine. D.J.T., Florida”

More obvious but definitely unprintable, the same idea: What did they call the men’s revolt against the government’s edict to wash their genitals before sex? The rinse erection insurrection. (Jeff Shirley)

Here are a few more unprintables, which you’ll understand why I’m not boldfacing:

How is Facebook like a urology symposium? One passes misinformation; the other masses piss information. (Jonathan Paul)

How does a singing cartographer differ from someone relieving himself in the woods? One croons while mapping and the other moons while crapping. (Steve Fahey)

How is a bullet to the brain like a roll in the hay? One is being shot in the head; one is being hot in the shed. (Beverley Sharp)

What’s the difference between a good boss and a bad boss? One you like to work for 9 to 5, while the other you think is fine to knive. (Richard Franklin, who did, to be fair, attach a note that he was only “metaphorically speaking)

How is Rudy Giuliani like skipping foreplay? One had dye dripping, the other leads to dry dipping. (Sam Mertens)

How is a single-skill specialist like an award-winning Broadway jerk? The first is a one-trick pony; the second is a one-Tony prick. (Chris Doyle, specified “Convo-only”)