PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR SYLVIA BETTS

This is what you've done, each Week. I arrange the rows in reverse chronological order, because there are some Losers, and they know who they are, who check up on my points-awarding every Week.

But I would just like to reiterate that such checking up is not a problem for me. I have said many times that each Loser's enlightened self-interest is my best QA.

If you wish to see what your ink was, refer to the Master Contest List or search All Invitational Text. Remember that Types I, P, some H, and sometimes A are seen "above the Report" -- that is, if they are listed here for Week 7777, for example, they will be found in text files or images of Week 7777. Everything else will be found in a "Report" section of a file two, three, or four weeks later; 7781 in this Example.

If you see any error, please let me know, elden.carnahan@gmail.com.

Key to Ink Types:

WKTITLESYNOPSISINK TYPES
1187 Just drop it, okay? Drop the last letter from an existing word, phrase or name and define the result. H
1160 A remeaning task Redefine an existing word or two-word term beginning with P through Z. H
1158 What have we here? Tell us what one or more of these objects really are. H H
1146 Stick it to us with a magnet Suggest a new Style Invitational honorable-mention magnet. H
1141 Mess with our heads Reinterpret (or comment wryly on) a headline appearing in the Post (print or online) Sept. 17-28 by writing a bankhead, or subtitle. H
1130 Yux Redux: Play on a foreign phrase Make a word play on a foreign phrase or term (or English phrase using foreign words) and describe it. H
1126 Picture this Provide a humorous caption for any of the cartoons provided. H
1110 The mama of all humor Write a [Someone’s] Mama joke for some well-known figure, past or present, real or fictional. H
1085 Eww-venirs: Ideas for gift shops Suggest a humorous--but NOT horribly tasteless--tchotchke, T-shirt, etc., from a real or imagined gift shop at a particular tourist site. H
1060 Picture this Write a caption, or captions, for one or more of the provided cartoons. H H
1059 With parens like these … Add some words in parentheses to a well-known song title to make it funnier in some way. H
1056 Weather or nuts Coin a term relating to the weather, climate, etc. -- either literal or figurative -- and define it. H
1055 Oh, K! This week, to commemorate both Kevin Dopart and his 1K ink blots: Change a word, phrase or name by adding one or more K's, and define your new term. H
1031 The 'Sty'le Invitational Choose any word, name, or short term; emphasize a key, suddenly pertinent part of it with quotation marks; then redefine the word. P
949 Putting the SAT in satire Give us an analogy using "a is to b as x is to y." P
919 Good Luck With 13 Alter a 13-letter word, phrase or name by one letter (add a letter, drop a letter, switch two letters somewhere in the word, or substitute one letter for another) and describe the result. 3
873 Back to Square 1A Replace the shaded letters in this grid with your own letters to come up with a different word or phrase -- either an existing word or one you make up -- and define it humorously. 4
862 Be cheerful Send us a cheer or fight song for any pro sports team or any national team. P
834 Fractured Compounds Combine two full words within any single article appearing in The Washington Post or on washingtonpost.com into a hyphenated compound word, and define or otherwise describe the result. W
816 Googillions Come up with an original phrase that generates at least 1 million listings on a Google search. H
686 It's Baaaaack! Explain why you, or anyone else in particular, ought to have this fine oil-on-panel by Fred Dawson of Beltsville, or what it might be used for. H
607 Contest Fodder Created! Produce absurdly parochial views of historical events. H H

MOST OF YOUR INK

Here is, I hope, most of your ink to be found in the All Invitational Text list. I have to find these with what are called regular expressions, which is a method used in a lot of programming languages to find and modify certain text strings in larger corpora. Basically I look for something like this:

"Report From Week 758"

or

"And from The Style Invitational four weeks ago . . ."

and then some text, your name, and your town, arranged in this familiar way:

"GlaxoSmithKline: I have six kids named Chesterfield, Winston, Lark, BensonHedges, Doral and Kool. If I name my new baby Nicorette, can I get a free coupon for your products? (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)"

I don't catch everything, but I believe I find 90%.

Unlike in the table to the left, I've arranged these in chronological order, so you can see how your humor matured, like a forgotten cheese deep in the walls of an old house. You started out, perhaps in Year 1, sending in riddles you sort of remembered from grade school, and now look at ya, ain't you Dorothy Parker.





[still working on this ...]