Style Invitational Week 1505: Munici-pals -- wordplay contest with 'sister cities'
Pair the names of two cities and give them a 'joint venture.' Plus winning (un)helpful ideas.
Cartoon by Bob Staake for The Washington Post
The Keokuk (Iowa)-Chappaqua (N.Y.) Conference on Jazz Drumming Sounds
The Marietta -Liddell-Lamm Children’s Library (Ga., N.C., N.C.)
The Pray-Novice-Pilot-Cando-Landing Air Phobia Support Group (Mont., Tex., Va., N.D., N.J.)
—If you’re not yet getting this free newsletter by email (or if you got dropped because you didn’t expressly opt in since we moved over to Substack): By all means …
This week the Empress redoes one of her very first columns — her 11th, and she’s now within sight of the 1,000 mark: For Week 1505, choose any two or more real U.S. or Canadian towns and come up with a joint endeavor they would undertake, as in the examples above from Week 546 in 2004. It’s conceived as a wordplay contest on their names, but the E wouldn’t rule out an idea based on the qualities of the actual places. Write the state/province names at the end of your entry so your joke is easier to read. Deadline is Monday night, Sept. 19. (The indexes in an old-fashioned print atlas just might prove useful!)
And we have the winners of our contest asking for “helpful” actions that are anything but, written “by” the clueless/creepy “helpers.” Like these among the 35 inking entries:
— Nobody likes being told in public that their zipper’s down, so I just walk up and discreetly zip it back up for them.
— At home, I always leave the toilet seat up so my wife can see at a glance whether she needs to clean it.
In my supplementary column, The Style Conversational. I share many of the inking entries from 2004, as well as that column’s headline and cartoon — neither of which would would fly in 2022.
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LINKS TO …
This week’s Invitational column, Week 1505, with the results of Week 1501
The same column for non-subscribers (but do sign up — there are always great promotions going on!)
This week’s Style Conversational column
The Convo for non-subscribers
Paywall-free entry form for Week 1505
Two more contests still running -- deadline Monday night, Sept. 12:
Week 1503, our contest for songs about food. (Paywall-free entry form for Week 1503)
Week 1504, our challenge to write something that uses all 100 Scrabble tiles. (Entry form for Week 1504)
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. Follow the page to get it regularly on your news feed, or to scroll through the archives. bit.ly/inkofday.
And we have two seasons’ worth 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.