It's The Invitational's horse name 'breeding' contest!
Our favorite game lives on at The Gene Pool -- sign up to play this AND the 'grandfoals'
Breed Triple Crown nominees Gettysburg Address and Midnight Love and name their foal Four Scores
Triple Espresso x Next Level = Caffeine^8
Hancock x Stoke the Fire = Stroke the Fire
Here’s a special dispatch from my otherwise restful Empress page to let you know it’s (non)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 68 is Saturday evening, April 27; you can submit up to 25 clever names (no unclever ones, sorry).
You have to subscribe to The Gene Pool to play, but you have the option to sign up for just a month — 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 this week’s winners; the contest was to rearrange the letters of a brand name or business to create a new product, and so our anagram whizzes had a field day. Like this one by Chris Doyle:
SHELL OIL COMPANY > HEY, MAN, COOL SPILL!: No oil-shaming with our ocean cleanup service!
And along with the contest, there’s Gene Weingarten’s twice-weekly column and reader chat about just about everything.
Now, Pun for the Roses! Click here to get to the stud barn.