We’re looking for neologisms like “Sousaphobe” — in which you add or
substitute B’s in an existing word to create a new one. (Bob Staake for
The Washington Post)
By Pat Myers March 3



(Click here to skip down <#report> to the winning fake political trivia
from Week 1161.)

*Sousaphobe: “Ides, nothing – just beware anything with a march.”*

*Bransportation: the process of creating effective movements.*

*Seismolobby: A PAC for all the serious movers and shakers.*

A thousand inks, huh? Well, where’s the ball? Brendan Beary with Milo.
See this week’s Style Conversational for a collection of Brendan’s best
Invite-winning poems and other entries. (By Terri Griest)

**With his three blots of Style Invitational ink in this week’s results,
Brendan Beary of Great Mills, Md., splashes past the 1,000-ink mark into
that exclusive off-the-deep-end pool that includes just four other
Losers in our 23-year history.

Brendan, a 54-year-old civilian “deputy something-or-other” at the Pax
River naval base in Southern Maryland, started entering the Invite back
in 1996, getting a blot of ink here and there like a normalish person
for several years, until he zoomed from eight inks in Year 10 to 113 in
Year 11. Brendan went on to score the most ink ever in a single year — a
ridiculous 179 blots in 2005-06 — before dialing it back to something a
bit closer to sanity, but continuing to make regular appearances in the
Losers’ Circle every year, racking up 36 wins and 98 runners-up,
including this week’s fourth place.

As Brendan joins Russell Beland, Chris Doyle, Tom Witte and Kevin Dopart
in the Double Hall of Fame, he’s opted to accept the Empress’s “award”
she’s offered to these milestoners: to serve as a guest judge for a
week, and to choose the contest he’ll be judging. We assumed that
Brendan, a published poet and an ink-snarfer in umpteen verse contests,
would want to judge poems, but instead he chose a neologism contest
modeled on the K-themed one that Kevin judged in 2014: *Change a word,
phrase or name by adding one or more B’s, and/or by replacing one or
more letters with B’s, and define your new term,* as in Brendan’s
examples above. The E will send Mr. B a list of all the week’s entries
minus any identifying or personal information; he won’t know whose work
he chose until we publish it here.

Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial
,
the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second place receives the latest in Loser Barbara Turner’s
creations made from old Loser T-shirts. In past years she made two
dresses; this year Barbara’s stitched together several Invite shirts
with others to make a great length of multicolored fabric you wrap
around yourself — it’s called the Sorry. THE thing to wear to the
Losers’ Flushies awards May 21
. (Photo below.)

*Other runners-up* win their choice of a yearned-for Loser Mug,
the older-model
“This Is Your Brain on Mugs” mug

or a vintage Loser T-shirt. Honorable mentions get one of our
lusted-after Loser magnets, “Magnet Dum Laude”

or “Falling Jest Short.”

First Offenders receive a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink

for their first ink). Email entries to /losers@washpost.com
./ Deadline is Monday night, March 14;
results published April 3 (online March 31). You may submit up to 25
entries per contest. Include “Week 1165” in your email 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 headline for this week’s
results was submitted by Chris Doyle, Danielle Nowlin and Tom Witte; the
honorable-mentions subhead is by Beverley Sharp. 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,
published late Thursday afternoon, discusses each new contest and set of
results; this week the E will offer some of Brendan Beary’s Greatest
Hits among his 1,000 inks. Especially if you plan to enter Week 1165,
check it out at bit.ly/conv1165 .

And the results of the Style Invitational contest announced four weeks
ago . . .

Wrap yourself in Loserific glory with the custom-made Sorry, this week’s
second prize. Its creator, Barbara Turner, can show you how to wrap it
better than the Empress managed. (Mark Holt)

*A super PAC of lies: Report from Week 1161*: In Week 1161 we asked for bogus “facts” about politicians.

This season,
the following list might be the only bigger collection of lies than a
debate transcript.

4th place:

More a fan of football than baseball, President Truman annually attended
Redskins’ home openers to throw out the first interception. (Brendan
Beary, Great Mills, Md.)

3rd place:

Bernie Sanders’s high school debate coach was slightly hard of hearing.
(Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.)

2nd place

and “The Trump Coloring Book”
:


Marco Rubio takes frequent water breaks to cool his CPU. (Dave
Silberstein, College Park, Md.)

And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:

To add some levity to his second inauguration, President Clinton added
“in bed” under his breath to the phrases he repeated taking the oath of
office. (Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)

What lies beneath! Honorable mentions

When young Hillary Rodham passed secret notes to friends in class, she
kept copies in an open jar on her desk. (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.)

“Caucus” is a Latin term for “small gathering of white people.” (Warren
Tanabe, Annapolis, Md.)

Although George H.W. Bush did not know it at the time, Willie Horton
was a registered
Republican. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Bernie Sanders decided to run for president after discovering that an
anagram of “Hillary Clinton” is “I’ll cry a lot in NH.” (Jesse
Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.)

Before inventing hip-hop, Alexander Hamilton played both calypso and
reggae music as a youth in the Caribbean. (Dave Letizia, Alexandria)

Ben Carson actually can perform brain surgery in his sleep. (Rob Cohen,
Potomac, Md.)

Calvin Coolidge did not take the oath of office at his inauguration in
1925; instead, he had the Chief Justice read it in full, then replied,
“What he said.” (Brendan Beary)

Cletus P. Harvey, father of Steve Harvey, was the Chicago Tribune
Linotype operator who printed the “Dewey Defeats Truman” front page in
1948. (Roy Ashley, Washington)

Despite a subpar Super Bowl, write-in votes lifted Cam Newton to a
third-place finish in the South Carolina primary. (Barry Koch, Catlett,
Va.)

Donald Trump moonlights as a male protestant. (Jack McBroom, Fort
Valley, Va.)

Feeling that the game was rigged, young Bernie Sanders tried to get each
of the three-card monte players in Brooklyn broken up into three
one-card monte players. (Gary Crockett)

Carly Fiorina’s claim to have been class valedictorian is true; however,
she was home-schooled. (Neal Starkman, Seattle)

Ben Carson’s childhood home is a converted grain silo. (Mike Gips,
Bethesda, Md.)

Bill Clinton once had sex with Hillary Clinton in the White House. (Rob
Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)

Following Ted Cruz’s reading of Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor, Donald
Trump tweeted: “I’m going to ban the Star-Belly Sneetches
.”
(Todd DeLap, Fairfax, Va.)

John Ellis Bush’s nickname as a kid was “!” (Ward Kay, Vienna, Va.)

John Nance Garner’s famous quote about the vice presidency “not being
worth a bucket of warm spit” was inspired by an inaugural gift from his
brother-in-law. (Jamie Martindale, McLean, Va.)

On quiet nights in the White House, FDR loved to put baseball cards in
the spokes of his wheelchair and have an aide push him through the halls
at full speed. (Brendan Beary)

Rahm Emanuel gargles with soap every morning, but it doesn’t help. (Mark
Raffman)

To distance himself from the Russians, Richard Nixon changed his dog’s
name from Chess to Checkers. (Edward Gordon, Austin)

Though he doesn’t cultivate an image of an intellectual, Donald Trump
has a vocabulary of nearly 800 words. (Larry McClemons, Annandale, Va.)

Showing fiscal restraint, Ben Carson proposed building a wall only
around New Mexico. (Kevin Dopart, Washington)

President James Garfield had a morbid fear of cats. (Jerry Birchmore,
Springfield, Va.)

Sarah Palin once gave an off-the-cuff response in the form of a complete
sentence containing three relevant subordinate clauses. (Jeff
Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Sen. Barry Goldwater’s real first name was Barack, too (Brendan Beary)

Furious about Ted Cruz’s “New York values” gibe, Donald Trump tweeted:
“Stupid Cruz accuses me of having values! Rediculous loser!” (Frank
Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

The Washington Monument has one stone for every place George Washington
is known to have slept. It continues 150 feet below ground level.
(Steven Litterst, Newark, Del.)

Richard Nixon’s campaign staff had to talk him out of a plan to adopt
his own version of Eisenhower’s signature slogan, “I Like Ike.” (Mark
Raffman)

*And Last: *Working as a duo, Bernie SANDERS and his Loser pal (Jim
LUBELL, Portland, Ore.) have rung up more than 1,500 inks in The Style
Invitational under the anagrammatic pseudonym RUSSELL BELAND
. (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

*Still running — deadline Monday night, March 7: Our contest for “Wait
Wait ... Don’t Tell Me”-style trivia questions. See bit.ly/invite1164
.*