Washington Post Style Invitational Week 508 Letter Rip
I was handed a forwarded email today. Fun list. Seemed vaguely familiar, though. On the way to work, I came up with these two entries:
- stupod
- an implantable device that makes the wearer seem stupid, i.e., puts them in an apparent stupor. (This one's a two-fer!)
- yellphone
- a cellphone so tiny or stupidly shaped that the microphone is several inches away from the yeller's mouth.
And then I did some research, because I thought maybe I'd seen
one or two of those words before. But first, I did have one
question: what word is "arachnoleptic" supposed to be one
letter away from?
My research led me to a John Dvorak column/blog, where he posted
the same list in March 2005 ( http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1598 ).
One of the comments says:
Just doing some urban legend control.. this contest actually occurs weekly
in the Washington Post but it's called The Style Invitational. It
varies in content but the words listed above came from a 2003 contest, not
2005. Typical net meme: good content, bad metadata. Netadata??
-- Comment by Ebone Likea Mutha -- 4/25/2006 @ 11:40 am
And that was the pointer that finally allowed me to find it.
Another search, tonight, led me to this cynical comment on the matter.
Anyway, it appears that one of the sources of the list was indeed
the Washington Post, in their fun "Style Invitational" column.
The list in question was apparently published as "Week 508", in the Post in June of 2003.
The Post's permalinks kinda suck (they want to make money off their archives), and their site is
pretty hard to navigate, but:
The easiest way I found to locate (part of) the column on the Post's
site was this google search:
"washington post" "style invitational" "week 508"
Here's the contents of the free preview available there, I hope this constitutes "fair use":
The Style Invitational
Week 508: Letter Rip
[FINAL Edition]
The Washington Post - Washington, D.C.
Date: Jun 1, 2003
Start Page: D.02
Section: STYLE
Text Word Count: 1013
This week's contest has been suggested, over the years, by literally dozens
of clueless readers from around the country. These people's only contact with
The Style Invitational occurs online, and consists entirely of having read
the excellent entries like those above, ripped off from a long-ago contest.
They have evidently concluded that The Style Invitational is a dreadfully
boring and unimaginative contest that, week after week, for years and years,
has been inviting readers to take a word from the dictionary, add, change or
delete a single letter, and redefine the word. And so every so often, out of
the blue, we get an entry from one of these people! This has been going on
for years! These people's entries are invariably terrible. So finally, we
decided, what the hell. Here we go. One more time. First-prize winner gets an
amazing prize donated to The Style Invitational by the Post's Food section:
Four promotional place mats produced by the Australian meat and livestock
industry. Each depicts, in the style of a different classical artist, people
eating lamb chops.
Oh, the list itself? Just search for intaxication, reintarnation, cashtration,
beelzebug, and so on; I have confidence that you'll be able to find it.
10:11:51 PM
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