Politics

The Empress of The Style Invitational discusses this week’s retrospective contest


Part 1 of the retrospective, Week 1415, covers Weeks 1360 to 1387 (minus three ineligible contests); and Part 2 is 1388 through 1412. Part 1 runs through Monday, Dec. 28; last week’s Style Conversational contains links to the first set of contests plus their results. And below are the ones for Part 2 (deadline Jan. 4). The mini-summaries below aren’t necessarily complete; they’re only reminders: Make sure you read the full directions from the contest itself.

One thing I noticed when looking through these contests for inking entries to use as examples: Trump is old news, and months-old jokes about him — which sometimes took up half the list of answers — are likely to seem dated, especially several weeks from now. Feel free to use of-the-moment references when entering these old contests; they’re much more likely to get ink than one about some ephemeral scandal from the Republican convention.

I almost always use a cartoon caption as one of the inking entries for the retrospective, so feel free to enter Week 1392 or 1397. On the other hand, I use A caption; your chances for ink won’t be too high.

At the bottom of the list are directions for people who can’t use the links.

Week 1388: Create a business name that contains a word/phrase and its anagram, such as “Allergy Gallery: Museum of Natural Histamine” (results)

Week 1389: TankaWanka: A poem about current events that has five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables and at least two rhyming lines. (results)

Week 1390: From the random items on the list we supply, explain how any two are alike or different. (results)

Week 1393: Give funnier descriptions to any on a list of the non-inking entries from Week 1388 (results)

Week 1394: Cite a line of dialogue (real or not), or give a description, that could work for two different movies, plays or TV shows (results)

Week 1395: Add a “plus one” to some true or fictional numerical grouping, such as “The Ten Commandments Plus One” or “Thirteen Angry Men” (results)

Week 1397: Give a fresh idea for any of four cartoon tropes including a desert island and a psychiatrist’s couch (results)

Week 1400: “Breed” any two of the 100 Triple Crown nominees on our list and name the foal to reflect both parents’ names (results)

Week 1403: Update an old TV show with a current (especially covid-centered) story line (results)

Week 1404: Ask Backwards: We list the “answers”; you provide a question that one might answer (results)

Week 1405: “Breed” any two of the inking foal names from Week 1400 and name the “grandfoal” (results)

Week 1406: Acrostic poems on the news: The lines’ first letters spell out the subject or relevant word (results)

Week 1408: Slightly change the name of a charity or other nonprofit and describe the new cause (results)

Week 1409: Drop a letter or consecutive letters from a song title and describe the new song, or quote some lyrics from it (results)

Repeating from last week:

If you can’t access the Post pages above for some reason, you can also go to the Master Contest List at the Losers’ own website, NRARS.org, and click on the various icons for PDFs of the print or online version of each week. Both there and here, remember to check the results of the contest you’re entering (or reentering), to make sure you’re not sending in the same joke: So just go to the far right column on the table to click on that week’s results (i.e., the results of Week 1382 are on the same row as the introduction to that contest; just look to the far right).

Another way is to join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook, then, at the top of the page, click “More” and then “Files.” You’ll get an index, newest to oldest, of copies of the contests.

‘Grammy nominees*: The results of Week 1412

*Submitted as a headline by numerous entrants

Contests featuring anagrams have become more and more frequent in the Invite in recent years: Our first was in Week 13, then 551, then 734 … but recently we’ve done them every year or two. The results of Week 1412 show why: The results are so impressively clever — astonishingly so, to a reader who isn’t already used to seeing these feats of letterdermain.

I’m glad that I offered various options for anagrams: of the title of a song or a line from it, along with the option of some lyrics for the new title. I had a hunch that someone would submit an anagram of a whole verse, and in fact got a few from among the 120 or so entrants (some of whom sent 25 different submissions). And I liked mixing up the one-liners with the whole songs. Also, while I had predicted I’d be looking for at least a few holiday songs to feature, I also liked getting the rest-of-the-year fare as well, especially Chris Doyle’s “ACB” — as in Amy Coney Barrett — parodying the Jackson 5 bubblegummer “ABC.”

It was so much fun to check the inking anagrams on the validator at wordsmith.org and watching the letters twirl around to signify that they works. Not so much fun to see the chart of big red lines that noted when a particular letter was used the wrong number of times. I had to toss some funny stuff. (And then I missed, until alerted, that a foreign-named song title was misspelled, thus ruining the anagram. I had to delete it.)

This week’s Clowning Achievement winner, Englishman Tony Crafter, is brand-new to The Style Invitational — he’ll be getting his FirStink air “freshener” for his first ink, along with our new disembodied-clown-head trophy. I certainly hope that Tony sticks around for our other contests and becomes a regular Loser, but Week 1412 was especially suited to him, it turns out: Tony, a retired banker, has made a specialty of what he calls “songagrams” — anagramming, as he did here this week, the lyrics of a whole song into another song. A singable parody! Here’s an interview that Tony did in 2009 with the Anagram Times website, part of Wordsmith.org, about his passion — and here’s a pageful of links to his many songagrams, heavy on the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, but also including a perfect parody of the hymn “Jerusalem” (“O did those feet in ancient time”): “Jam Rule Ends” begins, “And did roast beef in olden times/ Fill gentle England’s gentle need …”)

Style Invitational legend Jesse Frankovich, who utterly dominated the Invitational for three years running, also came to us from the little subculture of anagram savants — then stayed to get ink after ink in a vast variety of our other humor contests. I’d love to see Tony join him. (He’d probably rather to enter our humour contests, but hey, I’m there for U.)

What Doug Dug: Ace Copy Editor Doug Norwood agreed with me that the four top winners this week were “all inspired.” He also singled out Mark Raffman’s O Christmas Tree > O Sir Tech Master and David Smith’s The Twelve Days of Christmas > A RASH ELF TWEETS COVID MYTHS — one of only two Trump jokes this week (we’re weaning off).

WON, AY? > NO WAY! The unprintables

Yes, not only did several people anagram “O Christmas Tree” to “Erotic Hamsters.” Two of them sent song lyrics.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, How lovely are your branches = Erotic hamsters, erotic hamsters: Worry, O bare lovely haunches (Kevin Dopart)

Erotic hamsters? What delight!

For Christmas there’s no better gift.

I’ll keep them warm throughout the night

Held tightly (if you catch my drift).

Not to mention this parody of “Blues in the Night” from Jonathan Jensen:

My daddy done told me, when I was pubescent,

My daddy done told me, “Son,

You’re gonna get urges, it’s normal and healthy,

And it’s a whole lot of fun.

There’s K-Y and skin cream,

Whatever you choose, be sure that you use

Some lubes in the night.”

Here’s a sketchy gift idea for 2021

Looking for a Welcoming 2021 gift to yourself or another Invite fan? Remember that Bob Staake is offering his original work for the Invitational from over the past 27 years — both pencil sketches and finished pen-and-ink versions — to the Loser Community at this special page on his website: bobstaake.com/SI. You get in touch with him about the art you’re interested in buying, and he’ll check if he has it.

A positively Beverley podcast — catch You’re Invited, Episode 8

Be sure to listen to Mike Gips’s positively delightful half-hour interview with Hall of Famer Beverley Sharp. Beverley talks about her first encounters with Loserdom, and how, using her own name instead of her married surname, she made an identity as a writer of wholesomely subversive humor of all stripes, without raising the eyebrows of the other ladies at church, or of her husband’s business clients. And how she filed Invite entries from cruise destinations around the world, including Mongolia (once they left their yurt and got to metropolitan Ulan Bator). Catch this episode and all the rest at bit.ly/invite-podcast.

Wishing you all a happy holiday of your choice — and we’ll be back on our Thursday schedule next week, the morning of New Year’s Eve.



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