The Style Invitational
The Style Invitational
By the Empress

Style Invitational Week 928: Turn a movie title into a punch line; and the winning history fictoids

Answer: Airplane!

Question: What is the last thing you want to hear when making love on what you thought was a deserted runway? (Jennifer Hart)

A. Duck Soup.

Q. What is good advice for a food fight? (David Genser)

The Empress found this contest from 11 years ago while perusing a new online master list of all 928 Style Invitational contests, dating back to 1993, that was prepared entirely as a labor of love (or madness) by Proto-Loser Elden Carnahan of Laurel, who also has maintained elaborate statistics on ink accumulated by all 4,000-plus people who’ve had their name mentioned in the Invite. This week: Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question, as in the examples above from Week XXX (we used Roman numerals for a while). You can see the rest of those winners at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational.

Winner gets the Inker, the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place wins a pretty notepad and daybook made of genuine Chinese panda poo paper (lots of bamboo fiber in that). It’d be far too nice for an Invite prize were it not for the raw materials.

Other runners-up win their choice of a coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt or yearned-for Loser Mug. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders get a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, July 25; results published Aug. 14 (Aug. 12 online). Include “Week 928” in your e-mail subject line, or it may be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational. The revised title for next week’s results is by Dixon Wragg; this week’s honorable-mentions subhead is by Kevin Dopart.

Answer: Airplane!

Question: What is the last thing you want to hear when making love on what you thought was a deserted runway? (Jennifer Hart)

The Style Invitational

The Style Invitational is The Post’s weekly humor/wordplay contest, serving up since 1993 an irreverent mix of highbrow and lowbrow -- haughty and potty -- in genres ranging from neologisms to cartoon captions to elaborate song parodies. A new contest appears at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational every Friday.

Archive

(Bob Staake/For The Washington Post)


A. Duck Soup.

Q. What is good advice for a food fight? (David Genser)

The Empress found this contest from 11 years ago while perusing a new online master list of all 928 Style Invitational contests, dating back to 1993, that was prepared entirely as a labor of love (or madness) by Proto-Loser Elden Carnahan of Laurel, who also has maintained elaborate statistics on ink accumulated by all 4,000-plus people who’ve had their name mentioned in the Invite. This week: Use the title of a movie as the answer to a riddle or other question, as in the examples above from Week XXX (we used Roman numerals for a while). You can see the rest of those winners here.

Winner gets the Inker, the official Style Invitational trophy. Second place wins a pretty notepad and daybook made of genuine Chinese panda poo paper (lots of bamboo fiber in that). It’d be far too nice for an Invite prize were it not for the raw materials.

Other runners-up win their choice of a coveted Style Invitational Loser T-shirt or yearned-for Loser Mug. Honorable mentions get a lusted-after Loser magnet. First Offenders get a smelly tree-shaped air “freshener” (FirStink for their first ink). E-mail entries to losers @ washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, July 25; results published Aug. 14 (Aug. 12 online). Include “Week 928” in your e-mail subject line, or it may be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry. See contest rules and guidelines at washingtonpost.com/styleinvitational. The revised title for next week’s results is by Dixon Wragg; this week’s honorable-mentions subhead is by Kevin Dopart.

Visit the online discussion group The Style Conversational, where the Empress discusses today’s new contest and results along with news about the Loser Community — and you can vote for your favorite among the inking entries. If you’d like an e-mail notification each week when the Invitational and Conversational are posted online, write to the Empress at losers @ washpost.com (note that in the subject line) and she’ll add you to the mailing list. And on Facebook, join the lively group Style Invitational Devotees and chime in.

Report from Week 924

in which we asked for bogus historical trivia, another in our series of “fictoid” contests. We expect these entries to appear shortly on Internet lists of “answers from actual high school history tests.” Or maybe in history books.

The winner of the Inker

Susan B. Anthony’s middle name was Barbie.

(Judy Blanchard, Novi, Mich.)

2.Winner of the dorky card game featuring photos of halves of people: William Howard .Taft hated Theodore Roosevelt so much that, just to spite him, he spoke loudly and carried a twig. (Kathye Hamilton, Annandale, Va.)

3. Ponce de Leon did actually find what he was searching for in his explorations; he is currently living quietly in Hialeah, Fla., under the name Ramon Rodriguez. (Edward Gordon, Austin)

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