Style Invitational Week 1150: A deviant character — change a name by
one letter
Plus the winning ideas for Bob Staake’s next two Loser Magnets
Howard Walderman’s winning slogan for one of our two new Loser Magnets
for honorable mentions, designed as always by Bob Staake. See the other
magnet and losing slogans below. (Design by Bob Staake for The
Washington Post)
By Pat Myers November 19
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(Click here to skip down <#report> to the winning and losing Loser
Magnet slogans)
*Catherine Denerve: Just who does she think she is, anyway?*
*Orlando Boom: I hear he’s going to star in the remake of “Blow-Up.” *
*Helena Bonham Crater: She /used to be/ a bombshell. *
Rob Cohen’s second-place slogan graces the other magnet. As always,
we’ll have 500 made of each business-card-size design. (Designed by Bob
Staake for The Washington Post)
There’s one contest for which The Style Invitational is best known,
especially online: It’s the one in which you change a word by a single
letter and define the result. Old lists of Invite change-a-letter
results — often sullied with inferior jokes that others have tacked on —
have continued to careen through cyberspace since 1995, sometimes
misnamed the “Mensa Invitational”; the Empress still sees them on the
Web almost every week.
We’ve repeated the change-a-letter contest several times over the years.
But Ultra-Loser Brendan Beary notes that we’ve never had a contest that
required you to change just one letter of someone’s name. Hence *This
week’s contest: Change the name of a person or animal — real or
fictional — by adding or subtracting one letter; substituting one letter
for another; or switching the positions of two nearby letters, and
describing the result,* as in Brendan’s examples above.
Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial
,
the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second place receives a really fun, pretty little knickknack or
stress reliever, a hand-size sealed Lucite box in which two tiny frogs
sit on lily pads,
which float
atop blue water, which clearly isn’t water but something stronger and
more viscous — because no matter how you flip the box around, the little
frogs always keep sitting atop the whatever-it-is. Poor frogs can never
take a swim. Donated by Danielle Nowlin.
*Other runners-up* win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug,
the older-model
“This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug
or the ardently desired “Whole Fools” Grossery Bag.
Honorable
mentions get one of the two new Loser magnets presented this week. First
Offenders receive a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink
for their first ink). E-mail entries to /losers@washpost.com
/ or, if you were born in the 19th century,
fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday night, Nov. 30; results
published Dec. 20 (online Dec. 17). You may submit up to 25 entries per
contest. Include “Week 1150” 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/InvRules
. The “Tr‘ink’ets” headline is by Tom Witte.
Join the lively Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook at
/on.fb.me/invdev ./ “Like” the Style
Invitational Ink of the Day on Facebook at /bit.ly/inkofday; / follow
@StyleInvite on Twitter.
*The Style Conversational: *The Empress’s weekly online column discusses
each new contest and set of results. Especially if you plan to enter,
check it out at wapo.st/styleconv
.
Shake ’em up as you will, these little froggies never dip below the
surface of the “water.” Wait — that’s kind of sad. This week’s second
prize. ( Pat Myers/The Washington Post/ )
And the results of the Style Invitational contest announced four weeks
ago . . .
*TR‘INK’ETS: OUR NEW HONORABLE-MENTION MAGNETS (AND THE LOSING SLOGANS, TOO)*
In Week 1146 we asked for slogans for our next two Loser Magnets, the
prize that the Empress has sent out to honorable-mention winners since
2004; Bob Staake draws a new pair (we print 500 each) every year.
The last time we had a magnet contest was in 2011; since then, we’ve been
using entries from that contest. And in future years, God and Bezos
willing, we’ll be mining the list of runners-up and honorable mentions
below for subsequent sets.
4th place:
*No Cigar,* perhaps with a Loser spurned by a traditional cigar store
statue (Nancy Della Rovere, Silver Spring, Md.)
3rd place:
*Dork Losing,* with an arm sticking out between the closed doors of a
Metrorail car (Kevin Dopart, Washington)
2nd place
and the pumpkin-pie-slice hat
/(plus the magnet with this slogan):/
*Magnet Dum Laude *(Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.; see the design above left)
And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:
/(plus the magnet with this slogan):/ *Falling Jest Short *(Howard
Walderman, Columbia, Md.)
Winners of a magnet with someone else’s idea on it:
honorable mentions
*Cordon Bleh* (David Schildkret, Chandler, Ariz.)
*I’m So-So Special *(Nan Reiner, Alexandria, Va.)
*Better Yuk Next Time *(Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.; Frank
Mann, Washington)
*Nearly Beloved, *with a bride left at the altar (George-Ann Rosenberg,
Washington)
*Mini Ha-Ha *(Nan Reiner; George-Ann Rosenberg)
*A Marvel-less Achievement *(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
*We’ve Seen Better *(guy squinting at an eye chart) (Brendan Beary,
Great Mills, Md.)
*Punderachiever* (Danielle Nowlin; Steve Glomb, Alexandria, Va.)
*Too-Weak Notice *(Bruce Carlson, Alexandria, Va.)
am*BIG*uous
*ACHIEVEMENT* (Jeff Contompasis)
*AWESOME*what (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.)
*INFINITE*simal *JEST *(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
*Ax-Rated Material *(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala)
*Won Under Par *(Jim Exnicios, Manassas, Va.)
*BO_US PRIZE,* with a Loserly “Wheel of Fortune” contestant guessing “G”
(Larry Gray, Union Bridge, Md.)
*Cream of the Cr_p,* with the anarchy symbol — an A inside a circle —
replacing the missing letter (Ivars Kuskevics, Takoma Park, Md.)
*I ♥ Nyuk* (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)
*Oh Mirthy Me* (Roger Hammons, Ashburn, Va.)
*Just Do Wit* (Nan Reiner)
*P-U-litzer Prize* (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)
*Witty Bitty* (Elizabeth Kline, Frederick, Md.)
*Inking to New Lows* (Mark Richardson, Takoma Park, Md.)
*Delusions of Adequacy* (Brendan Beary)
*Ink-Brained Wretch* (Sylvia Betts, Vancouver, B.C.)
*Mom Be Not Proud *(Lawrence McGuire, Waldorf, Md.)
*Maximum Fool Efficiency, *with a clown car (Nan Reiner)
*A Mind Is a Thing to Waste* (Steve Honley, Washington)
*Beware the Punslinger *(Steve Honley)
*A Small Jester of Appreciation,* with, of course, a diminutive jester
(Elizabeth Molyé, Arlington, Va.)
*Embrace Your Dork Side,* a huggable teddy bear with a Darth Vader
helmet (Kevin Dopart)
*IDiot CARD* (Beverley Sharp)
*A Club That Would Have Me* (Steve Honley)
*From the Land of Inkin’, *with someone having trouble splitting logs
(Barbara Turner, Takoma Park, Md.)
*Shtick Magnet* (Claudia Raffman, Reston, Va.; Kristen Rahman, Silver
Spring, Md.)
*I Scratched My Jocular Itch* (Konrad Schwoerke, Chapel Hill, N.C.;
well, don’t expect /this/ one to be illustrated on a future magnet)
*I’ve Got Style Issues,* with a Loser surrounded by piles of Washington
Posts. (Ivars Kuskevics)
*Is This All There Is? *(Roger Dalrymple, Gettysburg, Pa.)
*Still running — deadline Monday night, Nov. 23: Our contest to show
“love” for lawyers or people in other professions. See bit.ly/invite1149
.*