WEEK 1170: DERBY OR NOT DERBY

The latest mating techniques in this year's foal-"breeding" contest --
our 22nd year. (Bob Staake for The Washington Post)
By Pat Myers April 7 at 10:07 AM



(Click here to skip down <#report> to this week’s “Questionable
Journalism” winners)

*Stradivari x Catapult = Fiddle On The Roof*

*Mighty Moses x Percolator = He Brew*

*The Big Mo x Exaggerator = OK, The Medium Mo*

The 2015 Triple Crown was won by a horse with a misspelled name — which
the Empress had mistakenly spelled correctly as “American Pharaoh,”
rather than “Pharoah,” last spring in the 21st running of The Style
Invitational’s horse name “breeding” contest. This year, we checked the
names of our stud roster more carefully (yes, Mooose really has three
O’s) and so it’s off to the races with Year 22 of our most popular
contest. *At the bottom of this page is a list of 100 of the almost 400
racehorses nominated for this year’s Kentucky Derby, Preakness and
Belmont; your job is to “breed” any two of them and name the “foal” to
reflect both names,* as in the examples above. Yes, every horse on the
list is male; sorry, Kim Davis! As in the racing world, *a name may not
exceed 18 characters including spaces,* but one or more of the
characters may be punctuation marks or numerals. You may run words
together, but the name still should be easy to read. Make sure to spell
the original horse names correctly in your entry, or the E’s search
button might skip over them. Please use the format in the examples. *As
always, you may send as many as 25 entries,* preferably on a single e-mail.

All this in a 3-inch box: This week's second prize.

Winner doesn’t get a $2 million Derby purse but does get the Inkin’
Memorial
,
the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second place receives Desktop Derby,
a
little bitty kit containing a mat, a spinner, some plastic horses, a
gold-colored trophy and a 32-page guide to horse racing. We don’t know
how interesting the game is, but we’re intrigued how all that stuff fits
into a 3-inch-square box. Donated by Christina Courtney.

*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, April 18;
results published on Kentucky Derby weekend: May 5 online, May 8 in the
paper. Include “Week 1170” 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 is by
Kevin Dopart; the honorable-mentions subhead is by Chris Doyle. 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. Especially if you plan to enter, check it out at
wapo.st/styleconv
.

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

*THOSE SMART-ASK LOSERS: ‘QUESTIONABLE JOURNALISM’ WINNERS FROM WEEK 1166*
In Week 1166 we once again asked readers to choose any sentence from a
Washington Post article or ad that week, and give us a question that it
might answer.

Shockingly, many entrants had politics on their minds. See
this week’s Style Conversational column (published late afternoon April
7) to find out what the sentences below were really about.


4th place:

/“Answer” from The Post: The entire community is anticipated to be sold
out by this fall./
Q. Does it seem inevitable that the House GOP will swallow its
principles and endorse you-know-who? (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)

3rd place:

/A. Nobody else has that kind of ground game in South Florida./
Q: Why do people line up for gator burgers at Bubba’s of Boca Raton?
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

2nd place

and the Evolution Eraser
and
plunger-shaped phone stand
:

/A. Two days before Christmas, a trust called DE First Holdings was
quietly formed in Delaware, where corporations are required to reveal
little about their workings./
Q. What does “The Night Before Christmas” sound like when retold by
Bernie Sanders? (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:

/A. It also carries reports about such topics as rabbit farming and
domestically made school backpacks./

Q. Why are critics saying the State of the Union address is being
influenced by too many lobbyists? (John Hutchins, Silver Spring, Md.)

Mis-Q’s: honorable mentions

/A. Sometimes their bottom halves were nearly the full width of the
runway./
Q. What is the most shocking finding from last year’s study of pilot
obesity? (Kimberly Baer, Woodbridge, Va.)

/A. “I just grayed out or blacked out a little bit.” /
Q. Do you deny starring in your fraternity’s racially insensitive
minstrel show? (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

/A. When the angry words darted over my head as I worked on my coloring
book, I barely heard them./
Q. How did you maintain your composure during the debates, Dr. Carson?
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

/A. Judging from the pictures you sent, your shower doors appear to be
framed in anodized aluminum.
/Q. What do you think of the nude selfies I took in my bathroom? (Jeff
Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

/A. Let me be honest here./
Q. What does a politician say before lying? (Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

/A. Virginia was a little bit quicker, a little bit sharper, and a
little bit more athletic./
Q. President Clinton, how was your intern’s replacement? (Jim McCormack,
Fairfax, Va., a First Offender)

// /A. Gov. John Kasich has long resisted direct engagement with Trump./
Q: Why has the GOP front-runner been married only three times? (Pam
Sweeney, Burlington, Mass.)

/A. Plus, they have a food source with the Potomac River nearby./
Q. You’re cutting SNAP benefits because D.C. families could dive in
dumpsters, Senator McConnell? (Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

/A. A reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram described the spectacle
as “a spaghetti of writhing angry reptiles” that emanates “a strange
dense smell with an evil vomit-like edge to it.”/
Q. Why did the Midland Bar Association stop inviting the press to its
annual luncheon? (Mark Raffman)

/A. Yes and no./
Q. Does Hillary Clinton have a plan to respond to criticism that she
equivocates on important issues? (Duncan Stevens)

/A. The Mets had explored trades for Tejada but apparently couldn’t find
any willing partners./
Q. Since he stinks as a player, could Ruben Tejada maybe be an
apprentice plumber or drywaller? (Brendan Beary)

// /A. For some employees, a single sighting is enough to trigger what
psychology texts call “musophobia,” an extreme fear of mice./
Why does the Disneyland hiring process include an interview with Mickey?
(Stuart Backer, Falls Church, Va., a First Offender)

/A. Go crawl in a hole./
Q. What was the worst advice Saddam Hussein ever followed? (Lawrence
McGuire, Waldorf, Md.)

/A. It is very messy to clean them out.
/Q. Why do divorce lawyers wear rubber gloves when meeting with clients?
(Mark Raffman)

/A. Both are repugnant, both dangerous and both deserving of the most
unreserved condemnation. /
Q. Yo, Rev. Sanctimonius, how do you like the bazooms on that stripper
up there? (Mae Scanlan, Washington)

/A. Do you have houseplants? You can sprinkle some in them./
Q. Dear Heloise: What if you really have to go but guests are using your
bathroom and kitchen sink? (Jeff Shirley, Richmond)

/A. It’s hard to worry about propriety when you’re focused on matching
the dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum reverberating all around you./
Q. Governor Kasich, do you regret the lack of decorum during recent
debates? (Gary Crockett, Chevy Chase, Md.; Frank Osen)

/A. Other requests included chocolate mousse, berries and a three-foot
piece of bacon./
Q. What were some more of the suggestions for the AMA’s revised “Words
for Poop” list? (Ann Martin, Falls Church, Va.)

/A. “I’ve been around for a long time,” said Sal Pittelli, 70. “And you
can smell the flop sweat.”/
Q. Why does Sal Pittelli, 70, not have very many friends? (Duncan Stevens)

/A. I wanted to give you the feeling of walking through a garden when
all the flowers start to bloom./
Q. Why on earth did you release hundreds of bees during our wedding
ceremony? (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)

/A. We don’t think of the organ as an intimate instrument./
Q. What did the wives on “Big Love” say about sharing one husband? (Kate
Cross, Silver Spring)

/A. Europe is launching its own Mars-landing mission Monday from
Kazakhstan, in central Asia./
Q. While we’re all talking about moving to Canada in case of
you-know-what, what’s the rest of the world doing? (Brendan Beary)

/A. “The swivel feature on this model is a nice bonus.”/
Q. What did one billionaire say to the other when deciding which
candidate to buy? (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.)

/A. Today, that hill is a mountain. /
Q. How would you describe the result of Kim Kardashian’s surgery?
(William Kennard, Arlington, Va.)

/A. Just think about how clapboard siding works./
Q. What’s a useful trick to delay, y’know, happy endings? Asking for a
friend. (Brendan Beary)

/A. It’s just about damn time./
Q. What happens when Mitt Romney gets really agitated, after darn time
is over? (Duncan Stevens)

*Still running — deadline Monday night, April 11: our acrostic/backronym
contest for movies, books, etc. See bit.ly/invite1169.
*

*THE 2016 STUD FARM*

These 100 horses were drawn from a list of almost 400 Triple Crown
nominees published by KentuckyDerby.com
;
“breed” any two and name the foal for Week 1170, above.

First: Do the Empress a favor and . . .



●*Don’t “breed” two names and use a third name from the list for the
“foal.”* People do this every year and never get ink because it’s just
too easy to do. Also, *don’t breed three horses together — * what were
you thinking?

● *Don’t format your list as a chart, with tabs., etc.* All the
formatting disappears when the entries are combined into one big list
for judging, and sometimes the names end up all over the page. Please
just use regular text in your e-mail, with each entry on a separate line.

● *Make sure the horses you breed are spelled just as they are in this
list,* because the E will be searching on each of those names to compare
all the foals from Horse A at once, then all the foals from Horse B.
(We’ll be using the format *Horse A x Horse B = Foal, *as in the
examples at the top of the column.)

● *Observe the 18-character limit, * including spaces and punctuation
marks. In many Invitational contests, the Empress has sometimes given
ink to an entry that bent the rules a leetle bit, if it was especially
clever or funny. But not the letter limit on horse names — it’s part of
the challenge.

All World
Alpha Team
Annals of Time
Attraction
Awesome Speed
Bar None
Battery
Benediction
Big Red Rocket
Big Squeeze
Billy’s Kitten
Bombs Away
Brody’s Cause
Can’t Remember
Caribbean
Catapult
Cherry Wine
Cold Blood
Collected
Creator
Cupid
Cutacorner
Danzing Candy
Deserved
Destin
Diplodocus
Discreetness
Dressed in Hermes
Economic Model
Emoji Man
Enroute
Exaggerator
Fellowship
Flexibility
Found Money
General MacArthur
Gettysburg
Giant Trick
Great Dane
Gulf Of Mexico
Gun Runner
Happy Match
Hardly Home
Hawk
Hot Item
Ima Monster
John Q. Public
Kiss Limit
Lani
Latest Craze
Let Me Go First
Life Is A Trip
Magical Mystery
Majesto
Matt King Coal
Mighty Moses
Miles of Humor
Mo Tom
Mohaymen
Molasses Brown
Mooose
Mor Spirit
Name Changer
Nyquist
Outwork
Percolator
Perfect Saint
Pinnacle Peak
Pinstripe
Prospectus
Rated R Superstar
Realm
Riddler
Shagaf
Singleton
Smokey Image
Snow Fighter
Sorryaboutnothing
Start A War
Stradivari
Suddenbreakingnews
Swagger Jagger
Swipe
Tally
Ten Blessings
That Makes Sense
The Big Mo
The Lieutenant
Time Will Tell
True Solitaire
Twenty Four Seven
Twirling
Unexplained
Urban Bourbon
Walk Out
Weight No More
Whitmore
Who’s Out
Williamsburg
Zulu