PERMANENT INKSTAIN FOR DOROTHY YUFER

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
868 Count the ways Give us some musings of a technical wonk. H
845 Reologisms Write a description for any of 50 genuine Loser-created neologisms. H H
806 DQ Very Much Give us a phrase or sentence that would nip a potential relationship in the bud (or elsewhere). H
789 Doctrine in The House? State a humorous, original "doctrine" for a person or other entity. H
757 Gorey Thoughts From A to Z Send us some rhyming alphabet-primer couplets. H
728 Tour de Fours IV Coin and define a humorous word that includes -- with no other letters between them, but in any order you like -- the letters S, A, T and R. 1 H H
673 Mess With Our Heads Take any headline, verbatim, appearing anywhere in The Washington Post or on Washingtonpost.com from July 30 through Aug. 7 and reinterpret it by adding either a "bank headline," or subtitle, or the first sentence of an article that might appear under it. H
665 Your One-in-a-Million Coin the millionth word in the English language and define it. The word must end in -ion. H
653 It's the Eponymy, Stupid Coin a word or expression based on the name of a well-known person, define it, and perhaps use it in a sentence H
642 It's Open Season Come up with a brand-new word and its definition. The words must begin with O, P, Q, R or S. H
633 Your Secret Here! Send us some original secrets (they don't have to be true). 2
611 Ask Backwards, Erudite Edition You are on "Jeopardy!" Here are the sophisticated answers. You supply the questions. 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
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
581 Evil Things in Store Think of evil or just plain stupid practices that the staff of a retail or other establishment might perpetrate. H
578 Ask Backwards You are on "Jeopardy!" Above are the answers. Send us the questions. H
577 Teledubbies Slightly change the title of a TV show, past or present, and describe it. H
573 Thine Ad Goest Here Propose biblical and other literary passages, poems, etc., that could benefit from product placement. 2
559 Your Slogan Here Come up with a clever slogan or sign for a business. H
551 Lost in Translation Find us some comical translations-and-back using Google translator. Feed some passage of English text into the tool--25 words max--and ask it to translate it into one of the five languages offered; then copy the result back into the tool and ask it to translate that back to English. H
514 Ask Backwards You are on "Jeopardy!" These are your answers. What are the questions? H
481 Homonymphomania Create a new homonym of any existing word, and define. The new word must be spelled in such a way that is obviously pronounced identically to the original word. H
476 Portmanteautapping Make a new word by squishing together two existing words. The constituent words must share at least two letters. H
464 Cursive Writing Come up with a new curse for this millennium. H
449 Cut and Pastiche Create a new, funny headline from the words of any headlines appearing anywhere in today's Post. You cannot subdivide words. H H
443 Sick Humor Come up with modern diseases of Washington life. 5 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 ...]