Style Invitational Week 1518: Our Last Laugh
In our final week after 29¾ years, we celebrate with 39 of our greatest hits
Cartoon by Bob Staake for The Washington Post
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We just might have a few more things to share in the future, so it wouldn’t hurt to …
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Our ink runs dry.
The Style Invitational contest, begun in 1993 by then-anonymous “Czar” Gene Weingarten and, since a bloodless coup 19 years ago, by “Empress” Pat Myers, has served up a hearty mix of clever wordplay, political zingers, song parodies, caption contests, all kinds of jokes both highbrow and lowbrow and often highbrowlowbrow all in one joke.
Today, The Washington Post ends our run, but we go out with a celebration of some of our most famous “ink” ever: 39 varied winners from almost 30 years. The hokey-pokey turned into a sonnet. The neologisms that have been flying around the internet — and pre-Internet — since the 1990s.
And a farewell from the Czar and the Empress.
And a bonus: This closing anthology ran in the place of a previously scheduled contest, our perennial “Ask Backwards” in which we gave the answers — “42 Minutes”; “Vegan bone broth” — and readers supplied the questions. Instead, I’ve posted a shortlist of submissions and invite you to weigh in with your faves in my closing Style Conversational column, and I’ll tally the votes.
I’m keeping this Substack open, so you’re free to look back on any of the previously posted contests — and I’ll also send a note out with the Ask Backwards winners. Our Style Invitational Facebook group is still active, and the Ink of the Day archive full of thousands of entries in graphic form.
I don’t suppose I’ll be posting on this Substack newsletter after next week’s final column, but I’ll leave it open with all the newsletters with their links to past Style Invitational contests. I hope you enjoyed their humor as much as I have.
Pat Myers
The Empress of The Style Invitational
P.S. Always feel free to message me through the Substack links provided.
LINKS TO …
This week’s Invitational column, Week 1518, with the Greatest Hits
The same column for non-subscribers
This week’s Style Conversational column
The Convo for non-subscribers
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 — and will quite likely start sharing more of their original humor, and even perhaps run informal contests.
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; this email address will work through Dec. 31.)
*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.