PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR BOB SORENSEN

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:

W: Win, whether of the regular contest or the auxiliary contests.
2: 2nd Runner-Up; this is second in esteem after the Win, and earns a Loser the crappy prize that used to go to the Winner.
3: 3rd Runner-Up.
H: Honorable Mention, sometimes appearing in the setup of a new contest.
I: Idea for Contest.
T: Revised Title for current or next Week's Results.
E: Ear No One Reads. The Ear was a short phrase that appeared at the top the first page of the Style Section. It wasn't part of the SI itself, but the Czar solicited ideas for it. It was awarded 204 times, lastly to Alvin O. Marchonos (a pseudonym) in Week 332.
U: Uncle's Pick. Czar kept up an "Uncle" persona for a few Weeks in Year 8, but the data show that it was awarded 72 times, into the Empress era, which is not how I remember it. I'll have to look into that.

WK	TITLE	SYNOPSIS	INK TYPES
1027	Built for two	Give humorous related names for any pair of features in a given building, organization, etc.	H
794	Ripped Off From the Headlines	Send us some Onion-type headlines.	H
668	Cut From the Chase	Write an original John-Bunnell-style wrap-up to a crime story -- or one for a more minor transgression.	H
615	Airy Persiflage	Write some jokes you'd like to hear in an airport announcement.	H H
559	Your Slogan Here	Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business.	H
440	Picture This	What is going on in these cartoons?	T
437	The Telegraph Poll	Tell us the beginning of a joke that badly telegraphs the punch line.	H
423	Roling With Laughter	Take a character from one movie, use him or her to replace a character in a second movie, and then explain how this change would affect the second movie.	H
422	Taught Language	Come up with lessons learned from (1) the movies, (2) popular songs, (3) romance novels or (4) the comics page.	W
419	Don't Spare the Rodney	Come up with indications that one might not be getting no respect.	H H
418	Xtreme Invitational	Come up with signs you are overdoing it any in any of the provided categories.	H H H
412	Painful Climaxes	Come up with statements that start really dramatically, but leave you sorta flat at the end.	3
407	Adverbiage	Come up with a witticism or a joke by making a pun out of an adverb. Unlike Tom Swiftlys, your adverb must modify not a verb but an adjective.	H
406	Bum Steerage	Offer some spectacularly bad advice to any of the provided people.	H 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
400	Life Is Snort	Write a "Life is Short" entry in under 100 words, in the voice of a celebrity, living or dead.	H
398	Animal Magnetism	Make great literature and/or a significant expression of the human condition out of the provided randomly-selected words. Use whatever punctuation you choose and any of the words, but only those words, and use them only once.	H
396	April Foals	Mate any two of the horses qualifying for the Triple Crown races and come up with appropriate names for their foals. Maximum 18 letters and spaces.	H
395	Devilishly Clever	Describe someone's special little corner of Hell.	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.	H
391	Spinning Out of Control	Take a headline in today's Washington Post and create a subhead that spins the story in an opposite or unexpected direction.	H
389	Operation Overkill	Present a solution to a problem that goes just a little too far.	I
387	By Jingo	Come up with a joke that could be written and understood only by a Washingtonian.	H
386	The Game of Clue	What are some clues that someone might be any of the provided characterizations?	H
377	Week MMDCXLIV	Provide a headline (and, if necessary, the first line of the text) for any article that will appear in The Washington Post on this day in the year 2050.	H
376	Apply Yourself	Supply bad openings to college application biographies.	H
355	Seeing Stars	Tell us ways we can attract celebrity participation to this contest.	H
340	ASK BACKWARDS 12	You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the answers. What are the questions?	H
339	Campaignful Developments	Come up with signs that a presidential campaign might be in trouble.	H H
338	WHO WANTS TO WIN A TOILET?	Propose even greater depths of shameless, tasteless sleaze to which Fox TV is likely to sink after the noisome debacle of "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"	H
334	The New Style Invitational: Six Choices for Czar	Vote for one of six possible editors of the Style Invitation, from among the current Czar and five worthy competitors.	U
327	ASK BACKWARDS	You are on "Jeopardy!" These are the answers. What are the questions?	H
325	THE BURMA ROAD	Propose welcoming doggerel for states or cities patterned after Burma Shave signs.	H
324	A PREQUEL OPPORTUNITY OFFERING	Come up with a "prequel" to some classic film or work of literature. You must produce a title and a brief plot summary, which of course must take place prior to the main action of the original work.	2
322	YOU NAME IT	Take a well known pair or group of names, extend one of them in some manner, and explain how the group dynamic changes.	H
316	CALLING THE TOON	What are these things?	H
313	THE STYLE INVITATIONAL SOUVENIR SHOP	Come up with bad names for a new store at a mall.	H
310	IT'S LIKE THIS	Come up with really lame analogies.	H
217	NO QUESTION ABOUT IT	Come up with truly stupid questions.	H
201	THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE	Come up with a new element and its symbol, and provide a brief description of its chemical or physical properties.	H
198	YOU MUST BE MAD II	Come up with proposals designed to infuriate special interest groups.	W
190	OFFICE YOU CAN'T REFUSE	Come up with a Principle for the Workplace.	I
185	WONDERLUST	Come up with replacements for the Seven Wonders of the World. To qualify, an object must really exist, and be manmade and, in some way, awesome.	E
181	YOU CAN TAKE IT TO DEBUNK	Take a common slogan or saying and prove it wrong with at least one example.	H
178	DEEP THROATS	Come up with Deep Thoughts, in the style of Jack Handey of "Saturday Night Live." A Deep Thought is a short, simple, seemingly inspirational observation that winds up being cynical, ironic, or just plain weird.	E H
176	WRITE IN THE KISSER	In the style of any famous author, write a description of any one of these people: Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Prince Charles or Sylvester Stallone.	E
169	DIFF'RENT JOKES	Tell us the difference between any two of the provided items.	H
162	MAY WE HAVE YOUR PRETENSION, PLEASE?	Come up with the most pretentious original sentence possible.	H H H
161	CAPITOL MISTAKES	Come up with very, very bad advice for first-time visitors to Washington.	H
160	SEEKING WISE GUYS	Come up with cool new bad-guy terms.	H H
145	LOOIE, LOOIE	Come up with paired, themed ladies' room and men's room signs for various types of public places.	2

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"

"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 ...]