| WEEK | TITLE | SYNOPSIS | INK Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1076 | Dactyly fractyly | Send us some double dactyls that conform to Gene Weingarten's rules. | H |
| 1071 | A pair of threes | Choose two or three entities represented by a single three-letter combination at bit.ly/3letterabs and say how they are alike or different. | H H |
| 589 | Hyphen the Terrible (New Edition!) | Combine the beginning of any multi-syllabic word in this week's Invitational with the end of any other multi-syllabic word in this column (or in this week's Web supplement) to coin a new word, and then define it. | H |
| 588 | Gadget If You Can | Tell us what these nifty, indispensable items are. | H |
| 586 | God's Will (and Won't) | Complete either of the following: "If God hadn't wanted us to ----, God wouldn’t have ----"; "If God had wanted us to ----, God would have ----. | H |
| 553 | Picture This | Tell us what's going on in one or more of the provided cartoons. | H |
| 549 | Show Us Your Best Quantities | Come up with novel units of measure, and explain or quantify them. | X H |
| 451 | Make Your Pix | Which two of the provided cartoons are related, and how? | H H |
| 440 | Picture This | What is going on in these cartoons? | H |
| 405 | The "Sty"le Invitational | Take any word--this may include people or places--put a portion of it in "air quotes" and redefine it. You may not alter the spelling. | H H |
| 402 | Spitting the Difference | Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items. | H |
| 401 | A Matter of Degree | Describe a sign of some modest change in a situation and pair it with a sign of an extreme change in that same situation. | H 2 |
| 399 | IT PAYS TO BE GENDEROUS | Write a short film description that could persuade a woman that the guy movie he wants to see is really close to being a gal movie, or vice versa. | H |
| 397 | Sins of Omission | Omit a letter or letters from a real-life sign to create a name for a new business, comically different from the original. Describe the new business or include a slogan that explains it. | H |
| 394 | Life in the Blurbs | Come up with a blurb used to sell a real or imagined book or movie that would be likely to have the opposite of the intended effect. | 4 |
| 393 | Things Could Be Verse | Take any story in today's Washington Post and rewrite it into a rhyming poem of no more than eight lines. | H |
| 392 | Everyone's a Comic | Choose any panel of any comic strip in today's Washington Post and improve it by replacing the original speech and thought balloons with your own, | H |
| 337 | DEGREES OF DIFFICULTY | Take a quality you wish to quantify and devise the perfect icon to measure it. Then give us an example of the extremes. | 2 |
| 336 | THE "STY"LE INVITATIONAL | Choose any word and emphasize a single part of it, as though you were saying the word out loud with "air quotes" around the key part. Then redefine the word. You cannot alter the spelling of the word. | H |
| 335 | A LOVER'S SPAT | Come up with some inept "sweet nothings"--graceless terms of endearment. | 2 |
| 334 | The New Style Invitational: Six Choices for Czar | Vote for one of six possible editors of the Style Invitational, from among the current Czar and five worthy competitors. | H |
| 315 | FERMENTING TROUBLE | Write a rhyming poem, eight lines maximum, on the subject of cheese or any of the provided items. | W |
| 307 | IF YOU BOYCOTT THIS TASK / YOU WON'T WIN THE FLASK | Come up with rhyming couplets to warn us about the perils of modern life. | H |
| 306 | YOUNGIAN THERAPY | Suggest ways in which the Style Invitational or any other Washington area institution can become more relevant to younger people. | H |
| 304 | TIME OF THE SIGNS | Come up with appropriate signage to appear outside any business or retail establishment in the Washington area, including government offices. | H |
| 301 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these cartoons? | H |
| 292 | PAYING THE BILL | Propose appropriate punishments for President Clinton. | I |
| 290 | THE WORLD THEORIES | Codify some of life's more populist theories. | H |
| 289 | PLAY IT AGAIN, SHAM | Submit entries to any previous contest, ideas you might have thought of after the contest deadline had passed. | H H |
| 288 | PICTURE THIS | What is happening in these pictures? | H |
| 287 | BEFORE AND AFTERMATH | Begin with a real name, append to it a word, name or expression that completes the bridge, and finally define the resulting phrase. | H H E |
| 284 | ASK BACKWARDS MCLXVII | You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions? | H |
| 283 | UH-OH | Come up with "uh-oh" lines, statements that occur in the middle of a seemingly benign speech or conversation, suddenly alerting the listener that he is about to hear some bad news. | H H |
| 282 | TAKING SNIDES | Take any story anywhere in today's Post and append to it a single snide observation, concerning either the headline or the text of the story. | H H H |
| 279 | TREACLE-DOWN THEORY | Come up with a treacly and deeply moving piece of crap. It must somehow mine joy and goopy inspiration from the vicissitudes of life. It must also rhyme. | W |
| 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. | 4 |
| 274 | THE DROLL OF A LIFETIME | Be the New Yorker comics editor, and explain to readers of The Washington Post why the provided jokes are charmingly witty. | H |
| 271 | YOGI BEARER | Come up with new Yogi-isms, which seem to make sense, but collapse like a soufflé when you poke it a little | A |
| 270 | PALINODE--HAVE PUN, WILL TRAVEL | Write a "palinode", retracting something said in an earlier poem. Your poem must be four lines long and contain at least one rhyme. | H |
| 269 | SIGNS, AND THE TIMES | Come up with new, helpful signage for downtown streets. You must state the problem, and propose the sign to rectify it. | H |
| 262 | CAMPAIGN FOR ONE | Design a line for Niels Hoven to deliver in his campaign for a student government office that will wake up a snoozing audience. | I H 2 |
| 259 | SPARE EXCHANGE, BUDDY? | Take any phone number of any business or government office in the Washington area, translate the first two digits into their constituent letters and propose any appropriate one-word exchange. | H |
| 258 | IT'S A BIRD. IT'S A PAIN. | Choose one or more of the provided super powers and tell us what you would do with it. | L H H |
| 256 | THE PYLE INVITATIONAL | Come up with hip, contemporary riddles and answers. The punch line must contain a painful pun. | H |
| 255 | SCANDAL IN THE WIND | Each of the provided items is somehow related to the current presidential scandal. Tell us how. | H H H |
| 253 | IT'S A PITY | Enter any of the provided contests. Winners will be judged entirely on the basis of how pitiful an attempt at humor the entry is. | H |
| 250 | OH, GREAT | Complete the sentence "Wouldn't it be great if . . . | H |
| 246 | OUR OWN DEVICES | What do these contraptions do? Tell us in 50 words or fewer. | R 1 |
| 244 | HYPHEN THE TERRIBLE | Coin new words, and provide a definition, by combining the first half of a hyphenated word for any story in today's Post with the second half of another hyphenated word in the same story. | H |
| 238 | CHALK IT UP TO STUPIDITY | Propose apologies for yourself in the style of Bart Simpson writing on his blackboard. | H |
| 236 | CALLING THE TOON. | What is happening here? | H |
| 232 | PRIMAL URGES | Update, for the millennium, the old "A is for Apple" reading primer. An entry must include the four letters in one of these blocks: A-D, E-H, I-L, M-P, Q-T, U-Z. | H |
| 224 | DRAWING CONCLUSIONS | What is wrong with these pictures? | H |
| 217 | NO QUESTION ABOUT IT | Come up with truly stupid questions. | H |
| 208 | SEND IN THE CLONES | Suggest questions a commission to investigate the moral, legal and practical question raised by cloning might consider. | H |