It’s Post Time! (Well, post-Post Time): It’s The Invitational’s annual horse name ‘breeding’ contest

Our favorite game lives on at The Gene Pool — sign up to enter this AND the ‘grandfoal’ contest

Breed Triple Crown nominees

Chess Match with The Big Con and name their foal Rooked

Get Them Roses x Big Cuddle = Get Them Pregnant

Peace On Earth x Obliteration = Whatever

Here’s a special dispatch from my otherwise hibernating/estivating Empress page to let you know it’s post time (if no longer Post time). As it has every year since 1995 with its most popular wordplay contest, The Invitational — now on Substack at The Gene Pool — invites (it’s what we do!) you to “breed” any two of 100 racehorse names to make a “foal” name that cleverly incorporates both parents’ names. Deadline for Week 172 is Saturday, April 25, at 9 p.m. ET; you can submit up to 25 clever names (we’ll also take unclever ones, but they won’t get ink).

You have to subscribe to The Gene Pool to play, but you have the option to sign up for just a month ($5) — and that includes not just the foal contest, but also the “grandfoal” contest two weeks later, when you get to “breed” this week’s winning names. (There’s an EZ Gene Pool “subscribe” button right on The Invitational.)

And while you check it out, you’ll also see the winners of our perennial Ask Backwards contest, in which we give the “answers” and our readers give the questions — like:
A. Other than a cat, no one.
Q (a contest runner-up): Who do we like who is orange and stupid?

And your monthly or (we hope) yearly subscription also includes Pulitzer-winner Gene Weingarten’s devilishly funny writings on Our Current Situation in both politics and the news media, as well as Crazy Life in General, along with Q&As with readers. Sign up and you’ll get the Invite and Gene’s column delivered right to your email.

Now, Pun for the Roses! Click here to get to the stud barn.