Week 1031: The ‘Sty’le Invitational: Find a nugget of truth in a word
or name


By Pat Myers
,
Thursday, July 25, 1:36 PM

*Wai“tress”: *Often the source of hair in one’s soup. /(Meg Sullivan) /

*Co“pious”:* Describing the amount of phony religiosity in the
presidential campaign. /(Mike Genz)/

*Fem“me fat”ale: *The transformation made by a changing-room
mirror./(Jonathan Paul) /

*Donald T“rump”:* Donald Trump. /(Elden Carnahan)/

Here’s a contest that gave my predecessor the Czar great results in both
2000 and 2001, and the Empress in 2009: *Choose any word, name or short
term; emphasize a key, suddenly pertinent part of it with quotation
marks; then redefine the word,* as in the Losers’ examples above from
those contests. You may not alter the spelling of the original.

Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial,

the Lincoln-statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second-place receives a small bag of Holy Crap brand
fiber-enriched breakfast cereal,

made in British Columbia and sent to us by Sylvia Betts of the Style
Invitational Western Canada Bureau.

*Other runners-up *win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug

or the ardently desired Grossery Bag
.
Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet
.
First Offenders receive a smelly, tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink
for their first ink). E-mail entries to /losers@washpost.com
/ or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is
Monday, Aug. 5; results published Aug. 25 (online Aug. 22). No more than
25 entries per entrant per week. Include “Week 1031” in your e-mail
subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name,
postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and
guidelines at wapo.st/inviterules . The
subhead for this week’s honorable mentions is by Dave Prevar; the
alternative headline in the “Next Week’s Contest” line is by Danielle
Nowlin. Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at
/on.fb.me/invdev ./

*Important Loserific Announcement:* Last week, with his honorable
mention in Week 1026, Elden Carnahan of Laurel sauntered into the Style
Invitational Hall of Fame with his 500th blot of ink, the ninth Loser to
do so. Elden is essentially the founder of the Invite’s Loser community:
He not only has kept comprehensive Invitational statistics dating back
to Week 1, but he was also the guy who, back in the Invite’s infancy in
1993, decided to look up some fellow ink-getters in the phone book and
invite them to brunch. Loser Brunches continue monthly to this day; on
Aug. 18 it’s part of a field trip to Gettysburg. See www.nrars.org
for all this stuff.

*Report from Week 1027, in which we asked for creative paired names for two related building
elements, à la the “Buoys” and “Gulls” restrooms in kitschy seafood
joints.

The Empress declared right off that she’d be pretty expansive in
what would count as a building element. More than a dozen entries
suggested that Metro’s up and down escalators should officially be named
Out of Service and Out of Service. Numerous others said the men’s and
ladies’ rooms at the Westminster Kennel Club should be labeled Pointers
and Setters, but only Bob Chell of Brookings, S.D., admitted it wasn’t
original.

*The winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:
*

The restrooms at a Paula Deen “true Southern wedding”
:
Never mind. /(Phil Frankenfeld, Washington)/

*2.* *Winner of the weird spiny head massager
: *

The receiving and shipping areas at a Brooklyn warehouse: Gozinta and
Gozouta /(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.) /

*3.* Redskins uniform storage lockers: White and Colored (and no,
there’s no way they can call them anything else) /(Danielle Nowlin,
Woodbridge, Va.)/

*4.* Maternity ward doors: Regular Entrance and Cervix Entrance
/(Nandini Lal, Bethesda, Md.) /

*Paired down: honorable mentions*

*MEN’S & WOMEN’S ROOMS . . . *

At Chris Brown’s house: Men and First Aid /(Mike Gips, Bethesda, Md.) /

At an Oktoberfest: Frauleins and No Lines/(Suzanne Austin-Hill, Ruskin,
Fla., a First Offender) /

At the U.S. Census Bureau: 50.8% and 49.2% /(Brendan Beary, Great Mills,
Md.)/

At a game show studio: M_N and _OM_N /(Stephen Dudzik, Olney, Md.)/

At a zoo: Adders and Udders /(Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)/

At a garden center: Lattice and Gentians /(Mae Scanlan, Washington)/

At National Park Service headquarters: Devil’s Tower and Grand Tetons
/(Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.) /

At a comedy club: Standup and Siddown /(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)/

Privies in Henry VIII’s chambers: His Majesty and Temp /(Ellen Ryan,
Rockville, Md.)/

At a furniture store: Highboys and Settees /(Larry Powers, Falls Church,
Va.)/

At a marina: Outboards and Inboards/(Tom Murphy, Bowie, Md.)/

At the MIT computer science department: Men and !Men/(Jeff Contompasis) /

Urinals and Stalls at the Dr. Seuss Museum: Thing One and Thing Two
/(Jeff Contompasis, Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)/

*OTHERS*

The hour and minute hand on the clock in the Motion Picture Academy
lobby: Michael Bay and Ingmar Bergman /(Samantha Poyer, Annapolis, Md.,
a First Offender) /

Inboxes and outboxes at the NSA: Taps and Leaks /(Gary Crockett, Chevy
Chase, Md.)/

Off-on switch at Al Gore’s house: Off and Harmful Emissions /(Robert
Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.)/

Embalming and viewing rooms at a funeral home: Meat and Greet /(Kevin
Dopart, on vacation in Naxos, Greece)/

Pumps at a Sicilian gas station: Unleaded and Sonny Corleone/(Danielle
Nowlin)/

Department store sections: Self-Esteem-Deflating Imperfection Revealer
Wall of Shame, and Men’s Swimwear /(Danielle Nowlin)/

Aisles at a Tea Party rally: Right and The Speaker’s Right/(Dave
Komornik, Danville, Va.)/

Door and window in a Wild West saloon: Entrance and Exit /(Doug
Hamilton, College Park, Md.) /

At a justice of the peace: Front door: Here Comes the Bride. Back door:
Here Comes the Bribe. /(Beverley Sharp)/

Outer and inner rings at the Pentagon: Stars and Stripes /(Chris Doyle,
Ponder, Tex.)/

Entrance and exit doors at an orthopedic office: Cane and Able/(Joanne
Free, Clifton, Va.)/

First-class and economy-class airplane cabins: Laps of luxury and Lapse
of Luxury /(Rick Lempert, Arlington, Va.) /

Entrance and exit at the Moscow airport transit area: In and ??? /(Nan
Reiner; Scott Poyer, Annapolis)/

A church’s choir loft and confessional: Forgive and Forget /(Jeff
Contompasis)/

Windows at the Beverly Hills marriage license bureau: Under 72 Days and
Long-Term Commitments /(Roy Ashley, Washington) /

Entrance doors at Lake Wobegon Elementary: Above Average and
Visitors/(Roy Ashley) /

Counters at the Hotel California reception desk: Check-In and Closed
/(Steve Offutt, Arlington, Va.)/

Signs in a future Colorado vending machine? Dope and Change /(Gary
Crockett) /

The casino’s candy machine has only two products: PayDays and Suckers
/(Brad Alexander, Wanneroo, Australia)/

The rows of washers and dryers at a D.C. area laundromat: The Humidity
and The Heat /(Ben Aronin, Arlington, Va.)/

Escalators at the M.C. Escher Museum: Updown and Downup /(Steve Offutt)/

Welcome mats at doors of NSA headquarters: First Amendment, Fourth
Amendment, Fifth Amendment /(Mike Gips) /

Platforms and farecard machines at the Capitol South Metro station: Ways
and Means /(Brendan Beary) /

FCC’s enforcement divisions for online scams and pornography: Phish and
Foul /(Mark Richardson, Washington)/

The Washington Post’s main and emergency bathroom supply cabinets:
Today’s Tissue and Today’s Issue/(Beverley Sharp)/

And Last: Tables at a Style Invitational brunch: People Who’ve Been
Cheated Out of Ink and People Who’ve Never Entered /(Roy Ashley)/

*And a few more from Week 1026*

*You might be spending too much time at work if* sleeping with your wife
makes you feel guilty about cheating on your secretary. /(Mark Raffman,
Reston, Va.)/

*You might need to do some shopping if *your “Home of the Whopper”
underwear now says “Who.”/(Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.) /

*You might be humor-impaired if* you begin your favorite joke,“I presume
we’re all familiar with the War of Austrian Succession . . . ”/(Frank
Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)/

*You might be too much of a cat person if *all the correspondence you
send out, from Christmas cards to tax returns, is signed by you and
Muppet and Roari and River Song. /(Robyn Carlson & Muppet & Roari &
River Song, Keyser, W.Va., First Offenders)/

*You might want to cut back on the coffee if *you completed a
prospective employer’s thoughts 12 times during a five-minute interview,
including “. . . I know, you’ll call me.” /(Michael Greene, Alexandria) /

*Still running — deadline Monday night: our contest for cinquains:
five-line, 22-syllable poems. See bit.ly/invite1030
. *

/See the Empress’s online column The Style Conversational
(published late
Thursday) , in which she discusses today’s new contest and results along
with news about the Loser Community — and you can vote for your favorite
among the inking entries, since you no doubt figured the Empress chose
the wrong winner. If you’d like an e-mail notification each week when
the Invitational and Conversational are posted online, write to the
Empress at losers@washpost.com (note that in
the subject line) and she’ll add you to the mailing list. And on
Facebook, join the far more lively group Style Invitational Devotees
and chime in there. /

*Next week’s results: Joint Legiflation, * or *The Olde Bill Game, * the
Week 1028 variation on our usually biennial contest to create
legislation fitting the combined names of two or more members of
Congress; this time we’re using the First U.S. Congress (1789-91).

© The Washington Post Company

pixel