The Invitational Week 129: The Pettysburg Address
Plus, we give spelling bee words a better reason to exist.
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Jun 19, 2025


Art by Valerie Holt
Hello. A jolly, joyous Juneteenth to you all. Not coincidentally, the results of this week’s Invitational contest will run on July 3, which is also the 152nd anniversary of the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, which gives us a pretext to gin up today’s contest. It was suggested by Tom the Butcher.

In Invitational Week 129: Rewrite some portion of the Gettysburg Address as it would have been written and delivered by Donald Trump. For example:

“The world will greatly note and long remember what we say here, because it’s coming from me, who, by the way, I’ve heard is considered the greatest president ever by everyone except Hillary Clinton, who should be in jail.”
Your entry may play off existing lines from the actual speech, as in the example above, but doesn’t have to. You can write to any length, but it’s unlikely we will publish an entry of greater than, say, 50 words. And, um, not to belabor an obvious point, we are looking for funny, not merely embittered.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyURL.com/inv-form-129. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form. Formatting: It’s just our standard request to write each of your entries as a single line; i.e., don’t push Enter until the end of each entry.

Deadline is Saturday, June 28, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 3. (What better way to celebrate?)

The winner receives what is perhaps the polar opposite of the Gettysburg Address: It’s called America Has Very Nice Legs: It’s a Fact!, a spiral-bound book with three rows of flip cards, each containing a Trumpian word or phrase. The gimmick of this product — which probably will not end up on the list of Great Works Published by Simon & Schuster Inc. — is that you line up three of these snippets, Mad Libs style but not as funny, to make some silly sentence. And we’ll balance it with actual wit, a mini-pocket-size but hardcover Benjamin Franklin: Wit and Wisdom, epigrams from Poor Richard’s Almanack such as “Approve not of him who commends all you say.” (Pssst, Donald …)



A Bee in Your Sonnet: Spelling bee poems and jokes from Week 127
In Invitational Week 127 we asked you to use obscure words from the later rounds of this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee in funny poems or jokes. A few let’s-call-’em-real words also made it in, courtesy of the Bee’s vocabulary round.

Third runner-up:
Anenterous: having no stomach or intestinal tract
(To my Republican Senator)
No stomach have you, nor intestinal tract,
An anenterous being, but still it’s a fact:
Though you haven’t the guts for what’s right to defend,
You can bet that some shit will come out in the end. (Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Second runner-up:
Littoral: relating to the seashore
Quite pleased at last that seaside bar to reach,
She ordered, with a smile, “Sex on the Beach.”
The barkeep then commenced to rub her clitorally —
She hadn’t meant for him to take her littorally.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

First runner-up:
Monticle: a little hill
What’s so funny about places with monticles?
I don’t know, but they’re totally hill areas!
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

And the winner of the book Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter:
Perpension, deep reflection
For an elderly man comes a time of perpension,
Reflecting on days when he gave no attention
To matters mundane, like the strength of his streams,
Since he’d sleep for eight hours not waking from dreams.
But his prostate’s now big as a grapefruit, and he
Makes five trips every night to the toilet to wee.
So though fondly recalling his youthful well-being,
He longs for one bearable night of less peeing.
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

Beleaguered Bee-leaguers: Honorable mentions
Villatic: rural
In America villatic,
The response is automatic:
They vote red in all the races,
Though the leopards eat their faces. (Mark Raffman)

Dactyliomancy: divination with finger rings
Soothsayer-boothsayer,
Telling my future by
Swinging a ring around —
Heck, what’s to lose?
I’d guess reports from this
Dactyliomancy
Aren’t more off base than the
Word from Fox News. (Duncan Stevens)

Oxter: armpit; osphresis: the act of smelling
Disgust oft increases
From oxterosphresis.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Blithesome: cheery; tithe: to give a tenth of your income to a religious institution
The church bell rang out in the steeple;
Then the pastor addressed all the people:
“If you covet a life that is blithesome,
I would highly advise that you tithe some.”
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

Rubicund: ruddy, especially in the face
Said a rubicund gambler named Fred,
“It’s not fair! There’s a tell I can’t shed!
Though I don’t tend to blush,
With a straight or a flush,
When I bluff, I’m too easily red.” (Mark Raffman)

Hyaline: transparent, glasslike
Project 2025’s aim? To belittle.
It’s hyaline — there’s surely no riddle.
While wrapped in the flag,
MAGA cons finger-wag
While libs wave their finger—the middle.
(Leif Picoult, Rockville, Md.)

Shikken, senior officer during the Japanese shogunate
Some have called a shogun shikken
And spoke with fear and dread,
But all who called a shogun chicken
Went home without a head.
(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Aptery: winglessness
Dear Lord, this winglessness — my aptery —
Seems ill-conceived, quite maladaptery.
These arms I’ve got are insufficient
To slow this fall. Aren’t you omniscient?
I feel you should have known that I was going
To ply the skies in planes designed by Boeing. (Duncan Stevens)

Funis: umbilical cord
Upon our son’s brand-spanking-newness,
The doctor snipped away his funis.
But it took eighteen years—my Lord!—
For us to truly cut the cord. (Jesse Frankovich)

Genethliac: relating to birthdays or the position of the stars on one’s birthday
The milestone that every year comes back:
Its pattern’s in the stars: genethliac.
I’m wishing that they told us how to soften
The blow, and make it come around less often. (Duncan Stevens)

Tropholytic: Relating to the deeper part of a lake
The mobster made an offer that the rat could not refuse:
A tropholytic vacay in a pair of concrete shoes. (Jesse Frankovich)

Kasha: Eastern European porridge
Putin’s first bowl of kasha? Too hot!
And the second? Too cold to consume.
The third was just right, but did not
Save the cook from his subsequent doom. (Jesse Frankovich)

Antrorse: directed forward or upward
While driving, if I get cut off by some distracted idjit,
I’ll show the jerk my feelings with an antrorse middle digit.
(Jesse Frankovich)

Basilisk: a mythological reptile with poisonous breath
A basilisk with poison breath
Could surely cause your instant death.
But here’s a plan (I know it’s mean!):
Give him a slug of Listerine! (Beverley Sharp)

Avidya: ignorance; blindness to truth
Hey, you’re the guru of avidya!
(Betcha didn’t know that, didya?) (Jesse Frankovich)

Endarterectomy: surgical removal of part of the lining of an artery
“You may need an endarterectomy,”
My doctor said, rather direct to me,
“And your stomach looks rather suspect to me;
I’ll need to perform a gastrectomy.
And your testes are in such defect, you see,
Removal seems duly correct to me.
The good news: no hemorrhoidectomy —
And you’ll no longer need that vasectomy.”
(Rob Cohen, Potomac, Md.)

Juvenescence: youthfulness
One feature of the Trumpy recrudescence
Is jobs for folks in throes of juvenescence.
Authority for folks like Edward Coristine,
A hacker resume-is-rather-porous teen.
It’s not the trust in younger folks that galls:
Please find some better help than ol’ Big Balls. (Duncan Stevens)

And Last: Acetarious: used in salads
What did the Empress do with all my acetarious jokes? She tossed them. (Jesse Frankovich)

The headline “A Bee in Your Sonnet” is by Leif Picoult; Chris Doyle and Beverley Sharp submitted halves of the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline Saturday, June 21, at 9 p.m. ET: Our contest to “discover” new words in a randomly generated word-search grid, and write funny definitions. Click below for details.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: ()
Examples: ()
Judging: ()
Title: (Leif Picoult)
Subhead: (Chris Doyle; Beverley Sharp)
Prize: ()
Add:H:1647: (Valerie Holt)
VisibleInk!