The Invitational Week 118: Clue Us In
We give you a partly filled-in crossword; you give us some words and funny clues. PLUS! Winning photos from our food-art contest.
Hello. Today, as a protest against the Donald Trump regime, we present a marathon Gene Pool that will take you 25 hours and 5 minutes to read. And good news: Unlike Sen. Booker, you will be able to take us into the bathroom.
Okay, kidding. But this is about enduring things: It’s been many years since The Invitational last ran one of its reverse-crossword contests.
For Invitational Week 118: Write novel clues for as many as 25 answers in the grid above, across or down, first supplying your own letters in the blank squares. (Click here for a printable grid.)
— Your answer may be a single word or a phrase, a real word or one you made up.
— The letters don’t have to cross the other words; think of each answer on the grid as an individual word or phrase. When we run the inking entries, it’ll just be a list of words and definitions.
— Your clues don’t have to be as brief as in real crosswords, but they shouldn’t run more than a dozen words or so.
— IMPORTANT!!! Formatting your entries: Begin each entry, one per line up to 25, with the square number followed by A(cross) or D(own):
79A: PITH: What toddlers do at Inappropriate Language Preschool
94A: SPOP: From Slobbovia, the latest teen music fad
73D: HIN: A partial hint
Deadline is Saturday, April 12, at 9 p.m. ET. Results will run here in The Gene Pool on Thursday, April 15.
Click here for this week’s entry form, or go to tinyurl.com/inv-form-118.
This week’s winner gets this week’s first runner-up: the caffeinated portrait shown below, by Craig Dykstra. Craig is putting it in a frame that will not include dartboard circles.
Runners-up get autographed fake money featuring the Czar or Empress, in one of eight nifty designs. Honorable mentions get bupkis, except for a personal email from the E, plus the Fir Stink for First Ink for First Offenders.
LOL You Can Eat: The food art of Week 116
In Invitational Week 116 we asked you to make something funny out of real food, and send us a photo. Naturally, the comestible humor tended toward politics, wordplay, or both.
Third runner-up:
The cracks in Pete Eggseth’s defense were obvious during his
Signalgate press conference.
(Kevin Dopart and Deborah Hensley, Washington, D.C.)
Second runner-up:
“Dammit, Charlene, when are you going
to stop coddling him?”
(Frank Osen, Pasadena, Calif.)
First runner-up:
Coffee Mug Shot: Grounds for Impeachment
Coffee grounds on paper
(Craig Dykstra, Centreville, Va.)
And the winner of the folding mini-signs warning of cat vomit and dog vomit:
The Grape Divide
"With berry little resistance remaining, Republicans are making America grape again. But in Florida, the trend is getting pretty old.”
(Kevin Dopart and Deborah Hensley)
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Now for the Gene Pool Gene Poll:
As always, if you think the best among today’s inking entries were unjustly buried in the honorable mentions, shout out your favorites in the comments.
Table Scraps: Honorable mentions
Cereal Killer I
Insect’s wings and body made from date and prune; strips of date for the legs; and oiled blueberry eyes (Stu Segal, Charlotte, N.C.; sculpture by his niece Anja)
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Cereal Killer II
(Duncan Stevens, Vienna, Va.)
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At the next morning’s sales meeting, Cheepskate Chester
regretted eating the leftover egg salad from the company potluck.
Peeps, a Peeps Delight, graham crackers, cocoa powder, water (Jeff Contompasis, Ashburn, Va.)
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Couch Potato
Carved russet spud (Jesse Frankovich, Laingsburg, Mich.)
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Fybertruck: This Too Shall Pass
Tesla logo, broccoli; truck body, fruit and nut bars; outline, asparagus; windows and door, celery; tires, black lentils and carrots (Lee Graham, Reston, Va.)
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Mount Flushmore: ‘Orange You Glad I Made It?’
Navel orange, Cheez-Whiz hair and eyebrows, clove eyes (Kevin Dopart and Deborah Hensley)
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“Sure, ignore us, Francine — we remember when
you were a dollar a dozen!”
(Frank Osen)
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Friday Dinner Special
(Jon Ketzner, Cumberland, Md.)
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The Tiny-Head Swan is known for its bad breath.
(Duncan Stevens)
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When the Chips Are Don
Doritos face, Ruffles hair (Jesse Frankovich)
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“Holy hemorrhoids, Missy — that Preparation H really did smooth your skin!”
Friend: Sumo citrus, with eyes of Trader Joe’s O’s and black beans; Missy: orange, with mouth of salt and white paint, and hair of carrot leaves (Dan Steinbrocker, Los Angeles)
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The Leaning Tower of Pez
(Craig Dykstra)
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Can’t Live Without It: A Heart Beet
(Jesse Frankovich)
The headline “LOL You Can Eat” is by Jesse Frankovich; both Chris Doyle and William Kennard submitted the honorable-mentions subhead.
Still running — deadline 9 p.m. ET Saturday, April 5: Our Week 117 contest to imagine more discussion in that Signal chat group, including with some new person added. Click on the link below for details.
We now begin the real-time Questions and Observations segment of the Gene Pool, in which Gene responds to your questions and observations in real time. Please send in your Q’s and O’s to the button below. Many of today’s questions are in response to Gene’s call for anecdotes about times you may have seen or heard something you were not supposed to see and hear, a la Jeffrey Goldberg. And what happened as a result.
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Q: I receive misdirected emails from time to time. Usually they are benign and innocuous. What I saw that I wish I hadn't seen was an allusion in my teenage daughter's diary. She'd left it open on her bed, and of course I couldn't resist. She had written something about her then best friend that suggested that the friend was subject to some kind of abuse, possibly sexual, at home. I could have believed this of the friend's father, who had viciously coached their soccer team (they were just eight years old, pretty young for such aggressive treatment). It was a large blended family, and it appeared that he ruled it with an iron hand. The friend seemed to have a troubled life thereafter, with a failed marriage and a dead-end career. She and my daughter (now in their late 40s) no longer speak. I know better than to even try to ask my daughter about what happened to/with this girl, as my daughter is quick to shut down any conversation about any of her friends.
A: Whoa. I don’t think I would ever read a teenage child’s diary except under extreme circumstances involving his or her mental or physical welfare. Doesn’t matter how conveniently available that diary happens to be. I also kind think once you did that, counterintuitively, you maybe had a moral obligation to ask her about it. Possibly I am being too judgmental.
Emergency Gene Pool Gene Polls:
Okay, we now lurch into real real-time.
TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Just click on the headline in the email and it will deliver you to the full column online. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.
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And finally, please consider becoming a paid member of the Gene Pool. It’s $5 a month or $50 a year and it makes you eligible to both Comment and enter the Invitational, and also entitles you to use the f-word in your posts without punishment or opprobrium. I made that last benefit up.
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Q: I was a twenty year old female deployed to Desert Storm with an Army reserve unit comprised mostly of men.
An alarm for incoming scuds went off, and at this stage we were always worried about a chemical attack.
Therefore your first priority on hearing the alarm was to don a gas mask, which you were repeatedly told to keep at hand at all times, but, well, there's a lot of equipment and we had a lot on our minds, so sometimes people forgot.
A guy from my squad had just gone into the showers when this alarm sounded. He immediatly realized he'd left his mask on his bunk and tore out of the showers naked, running for his mask.
Later he attempted to apologize to me, as he said he wasn't sure if I was among the crowd he sprinted through.
I didn't have the maturity or aplomb to simply point out that unintentional nudity should have been the least of anyone's concerns while we were there. Instead I blurted out, "If I was there, I couldn't see anything!"
I didn't even realize the faux pas of my wording until the other men started laughing.
A: And now I am laughing.
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Q: One of the unanswered questions for me remains: how can all of these regime enablers who are so mind-bogglingly bad at their jobs (but excellent ass-kissers) still be so freaking arrogant? When Sen Michael Bennet did an in person town hall he talked about the number of retired generals and admirals thick on the ground here in Colorado, near several military installations. Many people qualified to be the Secretary of Defense, but Trump chose someone whose only qualification was fealty to Trump. His lack of experience is fully on display….but still arrogant. Ditto Karoline Leavitt. Cringe inducing…and arrogant. Is there an arrogance master class out there I missed?
A: It’s the same reason that people with those gigantic, beach-size umbrellas stride so confidently in rain storms on small sidewalks while obnoxiously bumping others out of the way: They feel they have protection from above. And they do, until a REALLY big wind comes along….
Q: Re: Your post on the headline writers from the New York Daily News: I am quite sure that this was the first time in history that Dave Barry, Franz Kafka and Tom Lehrer were part of the same sentence. This being the second time. I love that you appear to love Tom Lehrer. Just in case you don't know. Lehrer has made everything he ever recorded available and free to download. Pretty sure it's Tomlehrer.com. I'm too lazy to check at the moment. He helps to make the end of the world a bit more "comfortable".
A: Tom Lehrer is 96 years old. I am dreading the day — I hope not soon — that I am going to have to write his obit. I did an interview with him in 2008, and he basically insulted me, and it is one of the high points of my professional life. This is from the Wiki entry on Tom Lehrer: In a February 2008 phone call, Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post interviewed Lehrer off the record. When Weingarten asked if there was anything he could print for the record, Lehrer responded "Just tell the people that I am voting for Obama." (The insult involved something else.)
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Note, re your question: In my book on hypochondria, I wrote this line: “In terms of risk-taking, however, Dick Cavett is a bomb-squad demolitions expert next to Marcel Proust.” This sentence had a footnote which read, “This is, to my knowledge, the first time Dick Cavett and Marcel Proust have appeared together in the same sentence.”
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Q: I saw my sister-in-law in a porno online. I then discovered she had made a series of such videos. I didn't say anything to my brother for 3 reasons. (1) I did not want to discuss the fact that I was watching porn in the first place. (2) I didn't want to discuss that I saw his wife doing things with other men, women, and sometimes both. (3) What if it turned out not to be her?
Turns out I didn't need to worry about number 3--she was found out when their SON saw one of her videos--she left it open on the computer in their living room. He showed his dad. They stayed together for a while but eventually divorced. I have never told him or anyone else that I knew and said nothing.
A: Holy crap.
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Q: Regarding the portrait of himself in Colorado that Donald Trump hates.
I thought at first it made him look like Hugh Downs, but on further reflection he now strikes me as looking like Lou Dobbs.
Downs
Dobbs
A: I would add Nigel Bruce (Dr. Watson)
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This is Gene, who is also the editor of The Washington Pist. I have just learned something deeply depressing: Eugene Robinson is leaving The Post because of the spineless disaster that is the management of The Washington Post.
Needless to say, Gene has been among the most revered columnists the paper has ever had. And a mensch, as my grandma would have said. Wise, compassionate, and brave.
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Q: On your issue of eye color: I have brown hair. Therefore, growing up I assumed that I also had brown eyes, until one day I looked in the mirror and was mildly surprised that they were green. At the time I was 26. (This is not a joke.)
A: I am going to answer this with an emergency Gene Pool.
Q: Hi Gene, I saw the horrible thing that you did all those years ago. You know what it is. And now you are going to write about it - I am sure it is the most horrible thing you ever did, that's how horrible it was - and if you don't, then I will curse you with eternal flatulence.
(Or this could be a joke, but do you want to take that chance? Feel free to answer that question too.)
A: I am not ashamed and thus I am not blackmailable. That goat fully consented.
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Q: Once while walking up to a friend's girlfriend's house I saw the girlfriend naked through a street-facing window. I was far enough away to not be noticed. I quickly averted my gaze. After a discreet interval I walked to the front door and knocked.
In case you're wondering, I didn't find the experience unenjoyable on a couple levels. They were both friends of mine! And I am straight but wasn't attracted to her anyway. But they've been happily married for a couple decades now, and great for them.
A: I think you meant to say “enjoyable,” but am not sure. I’m publishing it as written. It comes out as a bit of a logical tease.
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Okay, this is Gene. I am going to end on this ambiguity.
Please keep sending in Questions and Observations at the button below:
The couch potato is absolutely brilliant, as is the hatched egg salad! That breakfast cockroach made me shudder too.
Whelp, that breakfast cockroach just hit the nail on the head for one of my biggest aversions. I shuddered.