PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR DAVE GARRATT

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
1257 The year in redo, Part 1 Enter (or re-enter) any Style Invitational contest from Week 1203 through Week 1229, except for Weeks 1205 and 1206. H H
1256 Picture this -- a caption contest Provide a funny caption for any of the provided cartoons. H
1253 Fashion x fiction: More fake trivia Tell us some totally bogus trivia about clothing or fashion. H
1249 Ask Backwards 36 Choose any of the 15 provided items and follow it with a question that it could humorously answer. H H
1245 Call us reprehensible … Complain in a humorously missing-the-point way about something that has appeared in The Washington Post (in print or online) recently, or in another publication. W
1242 Generation Yux Give us a "then/now" joke. 4
1239 MASH 3  Combine two movie titles and  describe the result. H
1233 Not The Loser Community  gets a week off (actually  two) from writing contest  entries and will have to  find something else to do  during staff meetings,  sermons, romantic  breakups, etc. H
1227 Celebrate ortho-diversity! Name and describe a new life form -- and no letter in the term may be used twice. H H
1224 We beg you to differ Explain how any two (or more) items in the provided list are the same or different, or otherwise connected. H
1221 Who's kidding whom? Take two people from history, past or present, and tell what their child would be like H
1217 Mergers you wrote: Combine two businesses with puns Give a clever name for a combination of two or more businesses. H
1178 A ______ of collective nouns Propose one or more funny new names for groups of things. L
1157 Clue us in -- a backward crossword Supply clever, funny clues to up to 25 of the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. 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
1140 You're giving us a bad name Cite a REAL brand name, past or present, note its original use, and then say what sort of product, organization, etc., that name would be bad for. H
1138 Show us your touché Offer an elegantly snide (and original) insult of anyone living or dead. 2
1134 The 'Sty'le Invitational Red'ux' Put quotation marks around part of a word, name or phrase and define the result. H
1094 TAXI's the fare for Tour de Fours XI Coin a word or hyphenated term that contains the letter block T-A-X-I; the letters may be in any order, but there may be no other letters between them. H
1088 Ask backwards with our answers, your questions Supply the questions to as many of the 16 supplied answers as you like. H
1072 The Tile Invitational Come up with a 5-, 6-, or 7-letter term by scrambling any of the provided seven-letter ScrabbleGram sets, and define it. 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
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 H H
1045 Songs for the asking Take a sentence, phrase or title from a song and provide a funny question it might answer. H
1042 Tour de Fours X: Go SANE Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block S-A-N-E -- in any order, but consecutively, and define it. H
1038 It's like this, see Answer a simple question with a ridiculously argued answer citing various connections and parallels. 3
1034 What's to like? Supply an original joke of the form "I like my [your choice] the way I like my [something else of your choice]: [some clever, funny parallel]." 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. H
1014 Join now Combine the beginning and end, or the beginnings and ends, of any two words in single Washington Post story or ad published March 21 to April 1 into a new word or two-word phrase, and define the result. H H
1010 Picture this Write a caption for any of the five provided cartoons. H H
1007 Clue us in Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the provided grid. H H H
1002 Wring out the OED Make up a false definition for any of the listed OED words. H
997 Unworthy causes Name a dubious charity and describe its mission. H
995 Ask backwards We give you the "answers" and you supply jokes in the form of a question. H H H
993 Versus, verses Write a short "rap battle" between any two characters, real or fictional. H
991 Tour de Fours IX Create a new word or two-word term containing the letter block V, O, T, and E and define it. H
990 Indecent relations Pair two people, real or fictional, who have the same last name; say how they're alike or different, or something they might do (even in fantasy), as a pair. 2
989 On the double Come up with a double or multiple profession, and explain how each job complements the other(s). 2 H
953 Clue us in Come up with creative, funny clues for the words and multi-word terms in the crossword puzzle that's already run in The Post. H
947 Tour de Fours VIII: Neologisms Come up with a new word or two-word term that includes the letter block N-O-E-L, in any order but with no other letters between them, and define it. H
946 Another round of Bierce Write a clever definition of a word, name or multi-word term. H
942 Singular ideas Give us an idea for a contest for which there's likely only one good entry. H H H
941 They don't say! Give us a quote that a particular person, present or past, real or fictional, sooo wouldn't have said. H
916 Bank shots Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Post or on washingtonpost.com from April 22 through May 2 and reinterpret it by adding a "bank head," or subtitle. H
915 Picture this Write a caption for any of the cartoons pictured here. P
904 We move on back Move the first letter in a word or name to the end of that word and define the resulting word. H W
805 Brand Eccchs Give us an original name in any of the above categories (not an actual badly named product). H
801 Ask Backwards You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. You supply one or more of the questions. H
800 Compairison Briefly define or sum up an existing word or short phrase, then change it very slightly and do the same with the result. H
798 Dead Letters Write a humorous poem commemorating someone who died in 2008. H
796 Sincerest Flattery Make up a pun on a familiar name of a real of fictional person and provide a fitting description or quote. H
795 Stimulate Us Tell us what the government ought to be spending our money on. H H
794 Ripped Off From the Headlines Send us some Onion-type headlines. H
790 If Only! Explain how the world would be different had some event not occurred. H H
789 Doctrine in The House? State a humorous, original "doctrine" for a person or other entity. H
787 Tour de Fours V Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order -- the letters M, I, N and E. H H
317 PICK US A WINNER Come up with flawed contest ideas, and the single, obvious, too-good-to-beat entry. 3
277 LIFE IN THE BLURBS Come up a simple plot summary to help attract the modern audience to any classic work of fiction. It must be literally true and defensible. H
276 SPIT THE DIFFERENCE Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. H
268 WHAT KIND OF FOAL AM I? Take the names of this year's Triple Crown nominees, mate any two of them, a propose a name for the foal. The foal's name must be contained in 18 characters, including spaces. H H
106 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS Who are these people, and what are they doing? H
86 EXCUSES, EXCUSES Come up with funny excuses for various malfeasances. L

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 ...]