Style Invitational Week 1471: Tour de Fours XVIII -- B-I-D-E with us with our annual neologism contest
Create a word or phrase containing BIDE in any order. And take our Kook's Tour!
Ringing the EDIBELL, by Bob Staake for The Washington Post
If you’re not yet getting this newsletter by email (or if you got dropped because you didn’t expressly opt in since we moved over to Substack): By all means …
EDIBELL: The triangle that the ranch cook hits at chow time in those old Westerns.
LOW-BARB DIET: Cutting back on the snideness. “Okay, starting January 1, I’m going on a severe low-barb diet — just two nasty tweets a day.”
DEBIG: Begin to fit into your pre-pandemic pants.
As Yes He Is the President’s second year begins, the Empress tips her tiara in our annual Tour de Fours neologism contest. For Week 1471: Coin a word or phrase containing the letters B-I-D-E — consecutively but in any order — and describe it, as in the examples above. Deadline is Monday night, Jan. 24.
And if you’re partial to just about any Invite contest, you’ll likely find it in our 2021 Retrospective, Part 1: This week we feature all-new ink from 17 previous contests, everything from foal names to cartoon captions to joint legislation to neologisms to song parodies — and especially a truly adorable video featuring dancing Covid-19 antibodies, not to mention more art featuring real cicadas.
In my weekly supplementary column, The Style Conversational, I’ll share some classic ink from earlier Tour de Fours contests, tell about how Loser Sophie Crafts made her “Antibodies” video, and share a few retrospective entries that weren’t quite Invite-printable. And there’s a final invitation to the Jan. 22 Loser Post-Holiday Party (proof of booster required). Unsurprisingly, we’re going to have a much more intimate crowd this year. We’ll have enough people for our usual parody-sing, though, and I’m kind of looking forward to being able to sit and chat with you, instead of buzzing around the whole time. There’s a link to the Evite right in the Convo.
LINKS TO …
This week's Invitational column, Week 1471, and results of Week 1467
No-paywall entry form for Week 1471
This week’s Style Conversational column
Still running -- deadline Monday night, Jan. 17: It’s our contest to add a “prefix”— really, anything of a syllable or more — to a name or title and define the result. See Week 1470 here; see the no-paywall entry form here.
More ways to enjoy The Style Invitational and be part of the Loser Community:
Join the Style Invitational Devotees group on Facebook and the Devs will anagram your name every which way.
Also on Facebook, the Style Invitational Ink of the Day page presents one classic entry as a colorful graphic that's easy to share. "Like" the page to get it regularly on your news feed, or to scroll through the archives. bit.ly/inkofday.
And we're now on Season 2 of the You're Invited podcast, half-hour episodes with host Mike Gips and various Invite luminaries. Catch all 18 episodes at bit.ly/invite-podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
— Pat Myers, Empress of The Style Invitational, pat.myers@washpost.com (or just reply to this email)
*That's Loser with a capital L; named for the runner-up prizes emblazoned "LOSER," the community of regular Style Invitational entrants now proudly calls itself the Losers. If you enter the Invite, you're a Genuine Loser. But not (necessarily) a loser.