Style Invitational Week 1182: Where in the wor(l)d? Explore What3words


There’s a 3-word phrase for every little spot on Earth — discover
the best ones. Plus winning collective nouns.




Bob Staake found “hidden.cave.dinner” in the Central Park Zoo on the map
at what3words.com. What can you find among the 57 trillion codes, one
for every 3-meter-square spot on Earth? (Bob Staake/for The Washington
Post)
By Pat Myers Entertainment
June 30



(Click here to skip down <#report> to the winning collective nouns of
Week 1178)

*/At the Central Park Zoo:/ hidden.cave.dinner*

*/Near the White House kitchen:/ hill.shares.fairly *

*/At the Kohler toilet factory: / couch.sights.blowing AND
stews.prevent.pumps*

Your eggs won't go over easy with these creepy heads watching over them.
This week's second prize, direct from England. (Jayne Osborn)

*/The Style Invitational’s future European headquarters:/
pathetic.invite.loser, Cantabria, Spain *

*/Or maybe it’s here:/ empress.banished.forever, near Ribeira Grande,
Azores*

This week’s contest isn’t your typical Style Invitational challenge, but
the Empress has to agree with Loser Doug Frank that the concept is just
too cool to pass up.

There’s a new website (and app) called What3words, in which every single
3-by-3-meter square on the entire surface of the Earth has been assigned
a unique name combining three common words from a list of 40,000. There
are more than 57 TRILLION of these three-word codes.

The idea is that, even in places with no street addresses — and that’s
the vast majority of the world — locations may be identified precisely,
and easily shared with others, without those long strings of GPS
coordinates. (The app has separate dictionaries in several languages.)

So you go to what3words.com (or download the
app) and click on Explore Map. You type in a street address or more
general place (e.g., “Grosvenor Metro Station,” “Mongolia”) and get a
map on which you can zoom way in or out. You move the map around under a
teardrop-shaped pointer — and as you do, at the bottom of the screen
will be the unique three-word code for each little point, like the ones
above. Because each point is only 9 by 9 feet, even a single building
will have lots of different codes. So: How to make this into an Invite
contest? The Empress gives you two options: *This week: (1) On
What3words.com, find one or more humorously appropriate (or ironic)
three-word codes at a particular place,* like the zoo or the White House
above; and/or*(2) find a three-word code, tell us where it is, and tell
us what /ought/ to be there, *like the Invitational headquarters above.
See this week’s Style Conversational column (published late Thursday
afternoon, June 30) for further guidance.

*Submit entries at this website: bit.ly/enter-invite-1182
(all lowercase). *

Winner gets the Inkin’ Memorial
,
the Lincoln statue bobblehead that is the official Style Invitational
trophy. Second place receives a fantastic egg timer encircled by rings
of weird humanoid heads,

brought all the way from England and delivered into the Empress’s eager
hand by Loser Jayne Osborn.

*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). Deadline is Monday night, July 11; results
published July 31 (online July 28). You may submit up to 25 entries per
contest. See contest rules and guidelines at wapo.st/InvRules
. The headline for this week’s results is by
Chris Doyle; the honorable-mentions subhead is by Jesse Frankovich. 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 . . .

*A RUN OF GOOD YUK: WINNING COLLECTIVE NOUNS OF WEEK 1178*
In Week 1178 we finally reran our 1993 (Week
14) contest for new collective nouns.

The Empress was inundated with
several thousand entries, 99 percent of which were terrific except for
being entirely boring and unfunny. Some good ideas were submitted by too
many people for individual credit, such as a NUMBER of
anesthesiologists, a GROSS of sea slugs/poopy toddlers, a MASS of
physicists, an ABUNDANCE of twerkers, an ASSEMBLY of Ikea shoppers.
Others had already run in theprevious set of results:
a PRIDE of grandparents, a RASH of hookers, a
PILE of hemorrhoids, a SLEW of killers, and a PROLIFERATION of abortion
protesters. But then there were all these:

4th place:

*A RISING TIDE of climate change deniers *(Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)

3rd place

*A GROUNDSWELL of undertakers *(Jack McBroom, Fort Valley, Va.)

2nd place

and thecuddly plush dust mite:


*TWO intellectual Trump supporters* (David Kleinbard, Maramoneck, N.Y.)

And the winner of the Inkin’ Memorial:

*TWO SQUARE MEETERS of Mormon missionaries* (Dudley Thompson, Cary, N.C.)

A GONY of defeat: honorable mentions

*A SHUL of gefilte fish* (Dave Matuskey, Sacramento, Calif.)

*A PAFFEL of Colonial documents* (Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

*A WHATEVER of teenagers *(Chris Filiatreau, Arlington, a First Offender)

*A SCARCITY of velociraptors* (Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

*A Y’ALLIANCE of Southerners* (Jesse Frankovich, Lansing, Mich.)

*A BULLPEN of speechwriters* (Jack McBroom)

*A SELF-SERVING of egos *(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

*A LOT of salty wives *(Bill Curtis, Fort Worth, Tex., a First Offender)

*A GASP of drama queens* (Kimberly Baer, Woodbridge, Va.)

*UN PETIT PEU DE pretentiousness* (Chris Doyle)

*A CONVOCATION of license plate makers * (Bruce Niedt, Cherry Hill,
N.J.; Rob Huffman, Fredericksburg, Va.)

*A GUILD of ichthyologists* (Rob Huffman)

*A CRU of raw-vegans* (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

*A FW:FW:FW of email jokes* (Brendan Beary, Great Mills, Md.)

*A DULTERY of Ashley Madison members* (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

*A MEDLEY of busybodies* (Robert Schechter, Dix Hills, N.Y.; Larry Gray,
Union Bridge, Md.)

*AN ANARGASM of anagrams* (Jesse Frankovich)

*A BUTT TUBA of palindromes* (David Kofalt, Gaithersburg, Md.)

*A COATERIE of Burlington executives* (Dave Prevar, Annapolis, Md.)

*A PEERAGE of optometrists* (Larry Gordon, Potomac, Md.)

*A PLEATHERA of dominatrixes* (George-Ann Rosenberg, Washington; Ted
Weitzman, Olney, Md.)

*A QUARTER POUND of coin stampers* (Susan Thompson, Cary, N.C.)

*A QUIVER of romance novelists* (John Hutchins, Silver Spring, Md.)

*A FLEX of mussels* (Beverley Sharp)

*A STRAND of Metro riders* (Nan Reiner, Boca Raton, Fla.)

*AN EMBARRASSMENT of dads* (Bird Waring, Larchmont, N.Y.)

*A HALF PECK of air kisses* (Dudley Thompson)

*A ZYQK of Scrabble cheaters* (Perry Beider, Silver Spring, Md.)

*A SURFEIT of Beach Boys singles* (Perry Beider)

*AN EXCESSIVE SURFEIT of redundancies*(Dave Matuskey)

*A CONGLAMORATION of supermodels * (Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.;
John O’Byrne, Dublin; Mae Scanlan, Washington)

*A CLUTCH of misers* (Susanne Pierce Dyer, Suisun City, Calif., a First
Offender)

*A FARTERNITY of windbags* (Stephen Gaull, Arlington, Va.)

*AFLEET

of [glassbowls] * (David Thorne, Washington)

*A RECORD NUMBER of bookkeepers* (David Friedman, Santa Clara, Calif.)

*A HANDFUL of Muppets* (Larry McClemons, Annandale, Va.)

*A HUSUFRADE of Virginia wolves* (Randy Lee, Burke, Va.)

*A HEAP of used-car salesmen* (Douglas Raybeck, Amherst, Mass.)

*A PRESCHOOL of roe* (Jesse Frankovich)

*A REAM of drill sergeants* (Danielle Nowlin, Fairfax Station, Va.)

*A PANTYBUNCH of prima donnas * (Kimberly Baer)

*AN ASCENT of flatulence *(Chris Doyle)

*A ****LOAD of censors* (Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)



*A UNIT of needleworkers* (Jennifer Dickey, Silver Spring, Md.)

*AN OLIO of crossword buffs* (John Hutchins)

*LOT’S of grammatical errors* (Jill Renkey, Frederick, Md.)

/And Last: / *A STAAKE of refrigerator magnets *(David Garratt, Silver
City, N.M.)

*Still running — deadline Tuesday, July 5: Our contest for short poems
featuring spelling bee words. See bit.ly/invite1181
*