The Invitational Week 133: Panal Discussion
'Panalphabetic,' that is — a brand-new contest. Plus winning Yo Mama (and other Yo) haiku!
Pat Myers and Gene Weingarten
Jul 17, 2025


After 32 years of Invitationalizing, it gets harder and harder to launch a contest that has no antecedent. Today we have just such a one. The passage below is an excellent exemplar:

Well, about porn, I can say definitely that although I loathe junk like that myself, I don’t propose to question other people’s right to it, because, in my view, if sexy magazines and X-rated movies are what they want instead of the real thing, more power to them!

That’s an example of a panalphabetic sentence; that’s pan-alphabetic, not necessarily something relating to anal matters. In a panalphabetic passage, all 26 letters appear in order; the one above, by poet Howard Bergerson, comes in at just 132 letters, including the big chunk that comes after the Z. Queen of the Style Invitational Devotees group Alex Blackwood, who knows what we like, suggested this week’s contest.

(suggestion: if you are reading this in an email, click on the headline so you get the latest amended, emended and addended version.)
For Invitational Week 133: Write a humorous panalphabetic passage of one or more sentences. Your alphabet may go either from A to Z or from Z to A. While it’s not a contest to write the shortest possible solution — natural-sounding, funny, interesting writing is paramount — conciseness will be more impressive.

How to format your entries: This week it’s just our usual — but important — request to write each individual entry as a single line; i.e., don’t press Enter until you’re ready to start your next entry.

Deadline is Saturday, July 26, 2025, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, July 31. As usual, you may submit up to 25 entries for this week’s contest, preferably all on the same form.

Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-133.

This week’s winner gets this felt crab hat with bendable claws. When we gave out one of these hats a couple of years ago, the Empress got her neighbor Kennedy Matthews to model it; now that Kennedy is almost 6, she is of course much more mature and elegant, but how can you top this photo from 2023?


Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.

Hey, what are you doing Sunday at 11:30 a.m.? If you’re in town, how about joining the Empress and various motley Losers and Invite fans for brunch at Busboys & Poets in Hyattsville, Md.? Here’s the RSVP form (ASAP, please) and a list of future events.

Reader’s Hai-Jest: Yo Mama (etc.) haiku from Week 131
In Invitational Week 131 we sought to find out whether Gene’s distaste for haiku could be ameliorated by fusing it with a genre that the Czar appreciates deeply: the Yo Mama joke. It worked! We broadened the contest to welcome all sorts of other Yos as well. Our cretinously crude definition of haiku meant merely three lines, 5-7-5 syllables. One entry we otherwise liked, by Chris Doyle, wasn’t a Yo joke and so gets no official ink:
Stephen Miller’s so
vile, his prized lapel pin reads:
“I Like Eichmann.”

—

Third runner-up:
Yo Mama’s so old
she works at the museum
as an exhibit.
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)

Second runner-up:
Your Ma’s so ugly,
your daddy, when he wakes up,
gets morning wouldn’t.
(Laura Clairmont, Venice, Fla.)

First runner-up:
Yo Prez so kingy,
we ought to start calling him
His Royal Heinous.
(Chris Doyle, Denton, Tex.)

And the winner of the mix-and-match pairs of mini-socks with funny faces on them:
plum flowers tremble,
ripples course the evening pond,
Yo Mama’s so fat.
(Frank Osen)

Middlingku: Honorable mentions
Yo Prez so stupid
he thinks windows in Russia
need safer latches.
(Art Grinath, Takoma Park, Md.)

Yo Dad so MAGA,
he sends his tax refunds to
needy billionaires.
(Pam Shermeyer, Lathrup Village, Mich.)

Yo Mama so big
her favorite bath toy is
Jeff Bezos’s yacht.
(Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)

Yo Mama is so
heavy that a black hole once
got sucked into her.
(Jon Gearhart, Des Moines)

Yo Dog so ugly
the other dogs won’t pee on
the same fire hydrant. (Jonathan Jensen, Baltimore)

Yo Mama so dumb
she needs to use a cheat sheet
to pass a Captcha. (Jesse Frankovich)

Yo Feet so smelly,
the TSA changed its rules
all because of you.
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)

Yo Mama so old
I told her to act her age
She lay down and died. (Jonathan Jensen)

Yo Mama so fat
Trump has declared her anus
a shithole country
(Kevin Dopart, Naxos, Greece)

Yo Mother-in-Law
is so crabby that she farts
big clouds of Old Bay. (Jon Gearhart)

Yo Haiku so bad
Some syllables up and left
To find real poems
(Stu Segal, Southeast U.S.)

Yo Sister so dumb
she beat off a rabid dog.
No, literally.
(Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)

Yo BO so bad
They named a product for you:
Axe Dead Body Spray
(Mark Raffman, Reston, Va.)

Yo Prez is so dumb
thinks his middle initial
is J for jenius. (Laura Clairmont)

Yo Child so ugly
when he was born the doc thought
you’d boinked a shar-pei
(Tom Witte, Montgomery Village, Md.)

Yo Daddy so dumb
when counting to 21
he unzips his pants
(Mike Ostapiej, Charleston, S.C.)

Your Mama so fat
her clothes tags have more exes
than Elon Musk does. (Laura Clairmont)

Yo Mom so anal
she keeps her glasses case in
a glasses case case. (Laura Clairmont)

Yo Ma so fragile,
Just calling her a snowflake
Triggers a meltdown.
(Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)

Yo Ma’s so cheugy
She didn’t get this entry
Till she Googled it. (Mark Raffman)

Yo Mama so big
that Sarah Palin can see
her from Alaska. (Laura Clairmont)

Yo Mama is so
ugly, Picasso sued her
for plagiarism. (Jesse Frankovich)

Yo Mama so fat
if she was woke, her pronouns
would be “us” and “we” (Jon Ketzner)

Yo Mama so fat
that she rents herself out as
a human moon bounce (Tom Witte)

Yo Mama so yuge
Trump would love to drop her on
Iran’s centrifuge (Kevin Dopart)

Yo Neighborhood is
so dangerous, junkyard dogs
must travel in pairs. (Neil Kurland, Elkridge, Md.)

Yo Papa so dumb
he married Yo Mama and
he ain’t even blind (Tom Witte)

Yo Mama so dumb
she told a Yo Mama joke
at an orphanage. (Laura Clairmont)

Yo Uncle so cheap
he married a thin woman
to save on the ring (Stu Segal)

Yo Mom so ugly,
she went for a butt lift, they
gave her a face lift. (Frank Osen)

Yo Mom so ugly
the paper bags your dad wears
want bags of their own. (Mark Raffman)

Yo Wine is so cheap,
it comes with the phone number
for Poison Control.
(Beverley Sharp, Montgomery, Ala.)

Yo Ontogeny
doesn’t recapitulate
Yo Phylogeny.
(Jeff Shirley, Richmond, Va.)

And Last: Yo Empress and Czar
are so lazy, they can’t be
bothered to count syllables
(Gregory Koch, Falls Church, Va.)

The headline “Reader’s Hai-Jest” is by Beverley Sharp; Gary Crockett wrote the honorable-mentions subhead.

Still running — deadline Saturday, July 19, at 9 p.m. ET: Our photo caption contest — choose any or all of seven wacky photos. Click below for details.

InvisibleInk!
Idea: (Alex Blackwood)
Examples: ()
Judging: ()
Title: (Beverley Sharp)
Subhead: (Gary Crockett)
Prize: ()
Add:A:1649: (Chris Doyle)
VisibleInk!