WK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK 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 ...]
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