Starting today at 1 Eastern: The Gene Pool! Starting Thursday: The new Invitational!
Former WaPo writer Gene Weingarten moves his famed write-in chat to Substack (Tues-Thu). And every Thursday it'll feature a new Invitational contest and results.
Dear Style Invitational fan:
The Washington Post might have pulled the plug last month on its renowned humor/wordplay contest after 1,518 weeks — but boing! We’ll already be back on our feet with its very similar post-Post incarnation, The Invitational. Credit it to serendipity.
Just as I was putting together the final Invite column, with help from my predecessor and its founder, Pulitzer-winning feature writer and humorist Gene Weingarten, Gene got a call from a Substack honcho, inviting him to revive his famous write-in live chat, which he’d done for The Post for 20 years. The chat was renowned not just for witty observations on the issues of the day, but also for running commentary on aptonyms — people’s names that fit their occupations (like gynecologist Dr. Harry Beaver); discussion of various bathroom habits; and … here’s Gene’s list: “Subjects: Medicine, politics, language, philosophy, sex, human excreta, human relations, life. Voice: Seditious, unfettered.” It’s an hour of great fun.
It goes live Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 1 p.m. Eastern (and available to read later). Hurry right over now to The Gene Pool at GENEWEINGARTEN.SUBSTACK.COM.
Free to read it — and for this week, free to participate in the chat!
And then … The Invitational !
Once Gene had the opportunity to bring back the chat, he figured: Let’s bring The Style Invitational over here, too! After all, he’d founded the humor/wordplay contest back in 1993 in The Post’s Style section (hence its ex-name) as “The Czar.” And he invited me, his successor and “Empress” since 2003, to put it out as collaborators — jointly posting new contests, judging the entries, presenting the winners.
And so Week 1 of The Style Invitational will appear Thursday, Jan. 5 (time still TBA), as part of The Gene Pool. It’ll be free to read, cheap to enter — one $5/month subscription to The Gene Pool lets you participate in both chat and Invite. The first contest will be one that The Style Invitational ran each January — and this week’s results will be from the finished contest that The Post never ran because it killed the column so abruptly.
That contest was for “sister cities” of Europe: a wordplay game to combine two or more towns for a “joint venture.” An earlier contest for U.S. towns featured such winners as “The Iowa-Latta-Green Student Loan Forgiveness Program” and “The Luke-Warm Springs Very Average Resort. So lotsa great puns await.
I’ll send out another newsletter on Thursday when the Invite goes live. Once again, you have to subscribe at The Gene Pool. But for now, get over there and enjoy the chat. You can already post questions in advance.
If you’re not subscribed to this newsletter as well, feel free to also sign up here just to get the news. (Totally free.)
I’m beyond delighted to end my sudden two-week retirement and have my tiara re-drilled into my skull. I hope you continue to enjoy the fruits of Loserdom!
Pat Myers
Empress of The Style Invitational