We learned this morning that Dornoch -- one of the "sires" of today's winning entry -- has the No. 1 post position in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. And that's he's owned by former Nats star Jayson Werth.
The real question is how many new breeders and their crumpled $5.00 bills did you attract ? Enough to run the same competition profitably each week ? Apart from the rest of the Triple Crown (new horses, of course) you would have a bunch of boutique meets throughout the season to choose from.
I thought "Godiva" was a perfect entry, very succinct and to the point. I also liked Nicholas Pennyby, Chevy Impaler, Four Skor, Six-Pack Abes, Straight Up, Möbius Trip, and quite a few others. A good crop all 'round.
RE: TL;DR. I voted JERK. Too harsh? Like for boneheads who post reviews of a product by saying '... haven't used it yet...'? Maybe PATHETIC could have been a choice.
"As someone whose job it was for a quarter-century to fix writers' language mistakes, I've sensed how language changes continually over the years in big ways and small --..." --- Pat The Past Perfect
Ah, so you started as a child chide, did you? I'm all for using more connotative substitutions where they add a bit more understanding or feeling to a description. There certainly can be a difference between someone being "impacted" and another someone being "affected," in similar circumstances. And just to show PTPP doesn't make stuff up --- that business about "contact" as one-time offending verb --- for example. Rex Stout, the author of those genteel Nero Wolfe mysteries, was one of the offended. Or at least Nero Wolfe was --- and in no uncertain terms. In one of the novels, a potential client mentions he had contacted the police and Wolfe pulls a face. Archie (Wolfe’s assistant and the narrator of the stories) then tell us, "...Wolfe had made a face. I, at my desk, could have told Herold that unless his problem smelled like real money he might as well quit right there. One man who had made ‘contact’ a verb in that office had paid an extra thousand bucks for the privilege, though he hadn’t known it.” And yes, the Bard himself was very fond of "verbing the noun" and to great effect; in fact, you would not be wrong in thinking he never met a noun that he couldn't uh..verbify. The word wonks call it denominalization, and while in the hands of a Shakespeare (or his modern-day equivalent, The Talented Mr. Weingarten), it may be all the more enlightening, in lesser mitts it has gotten out of hand. A verb too far IMO --- the constant, and often welcome, evolution of language notwithstanding. C'mon. "Efforting ?" Or, "Can I librarian that for you ?" Then there's that (gak!) "friending" business.
"Calvin: I like to verb words. Hobbes: What? Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them like verbs. Remember when access was a thing? Now it’s something you do. It got verbed… Verbing weirds language. Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."
I'd like to thank the Academy, as well as the Empress and the Czar.
(especially since I thought my winning entry was so dumb I nearly deleted it from my list. my personal favorite of mine was Nutella Fella x Triple Espresso = HAZELNUT!! MOCHA!!)
Speaking only in generalizations, Pat and I have found that the least competent judge of the strength of an entry -- less competent, say, than some rando plucked from the street, is the entrant of that entry.
Curious to know if you ever hear from people who actually did predict the success of their inking entry, or if you only hear from those of us who are in disbelief at either the success or failure of our efforts.
I haven't talked to Pat about it, but we mostly don't hear, period. Which is fine. I truly believe no one can judge his or her work objectively -- including me.
The "TL;DR" interjection is among my favorite inanities of the internet age, along with non-opinions ("I haven't tried/done/seen it, but I felt compelled to let you to know that") and the past unreal conditional opinions ("Had I tried/done/seen it, I'm sure I would have loved/hated it. And here's why").
". . . we no longer say 'I shouldn't do that' to mean 'I wouldn't do that' even though it was the common usage as late as the mid-20th century." I never knew that was ever American usage! I always thought it was British; I've only ever read it -- or heard it said --in British books or on British TV shows.
My least favorite verbed noun is “authored” instead of “written.” Segueing, as a business student, I was given one mandatory English course, and the required final paper was a 25-page review of Webster’s 3rd Abridged Dictionary, with a viewpoint on whether a dictionary is prescriptive or a lexicon.
My least favorite verbed noun is “efforted” instead of “tried.” Local news/sportscasters around here are now telling me that they're "efforting to get you that information."
I hate that talking heads speak of “the Open.” They mean the opening, right. Also, as time runs out in football where clock stoppages are critical, they “wind (WHINED) the clock” to indicate time has restarted. But to me, it should be “resumed unwinding.” Just to be juvenile, a certain sex act. Oh, never mind.
That Dirda didn’t even mention the typeface/font nightmare that is the cover of the book causes his judgement to be suspect.
(Probably not her fault, however. Now I have to hope her book is unsuccessful so that I am not subjected to a slew of nonfiction books with terrible ransom note cover art. [I work in a public library])
I would argue that adult using street slang and “sloppy” syntax is not so much a factor of trying to appear working class and authentic as trying to feel young and hip.
"Here’s what we meant: We meant we don’t want you to update old sayings or old saws that are so old you don’t read or hear them much anymore, like “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” or “a stitch in time saves nine,” or “early to bed, early to rise…"
I guess I wasted a week and submitted a bunch of things you don't want. Oh well.
Jon, we said specifically, in the original instructions, Don't give us aphorisms like a stitch in time or an apple a day. None of the six examples we gave was an old saw like those. This thing today was not so much a clarification as an elaboration. But if you send us in a new set of entries, with instructions to kill the first set, we will accept that.
I don't know my aph from an aphorism so I'm not even sure what phrases we can and can't use. "The devil is in the details" seems to me to be as old as the hills. I don't understand the distinction.
I would argue they are all still all around us otherwise how would anyone know them? I'll never understand "the difference" because, to me, there isn't one.
Suggest you use the "tornado made me do it" excuse. Gene is always a sucker for big wind. However, I should caution that I have tried to use some of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to no avail --- although boils, hail and frogs did get Pat's attention and momentary consideration, I was informed several years later.
We learned this morning that Dornoch -- one of the "sires" of today's winning entry -- has the No. 1 post position in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. And that's he's owned by former Nats star Jayson Werth.
https://wapo.st/4bkj6ZS
Gotta say, I don’t know how you manage to winnow this batch down, as there are such good laughs all the way through the list.
It was hell, I tell ya.
The real question is how many new breeders and their crumpled $5.00 bills did you attract ? Enough to run the same competition profitably each week ? Apart from the rest of the Triple Crown (new horses, of course) you would have a bunch of boutique meets throughout the season to choose from.
Almost everyone was a regular paying subscriber, even those who tend to enter The Invitational only for the horse contests.
I thought "Godiva" was a perfect entry, very succinct and to the point. I also liked Nicholas Pennyby, Chevy Impaler, Four Skor, Six-Pack Abes, Straight Up, Möbius Trip, and quite a few others. A good crop all 'round.
RE: TL;DR. I voted JERK. Too harsh? Like for boneheads who post reviews of a product by saying '... haven't used it yet...'? Maybe PATHETIC could have been a choice.
"As someone whose job it was for a quarter-century to fix writers' language mistakes, I've sensed how language changes continually over the years in big ways and small --..." --- Pat The Past Perfect
Ah, so you started as a child chide, did you? I'm all for using more connotative substitutions where they add a bit more understanding or feeling to a description. There certainly can be a difference between someone being "impacted" and another someone being "affected," in similar circumstances. And just to show PTPP doesn't make stuff up --- that business about "contact" as one-time offending verb --- for example. Rex Stout, the author of those genteel Nero Wolfe mysteries, was one of the offended. Or at least Nero Wolfe was --- and in no uncertain terms. In one of the novels, a potential client mentions he had contacted the police and Wolfe pulls a face. Archie (Wolfe’s assistant and the narrator of the stories) then tell us, "...Wolfe had made a face. I, at my desk, could have told Herold that unless his problem smelled like real money he might as well quit right there. One man who had made ‘contact’ a verb in that office had paid an extra thousand bucks for the privilege, though he hadn’t known it.” And yes, the Bard himself was very fond of "verbing the noun" and to great effect; in fact, you would not be wrong in thinking he never met a noun that he couldn't uh..verbify. The word wonks call it denominalization, and while in the hands of a Shakespeare (or his modern-day equivalent, The Talented Mr. Weingarten), it may be all the more enlightening, in lesser mitts it has gotten out of hand. A verb too far IMO --- the constant, and often welcome, evolution of language notwithstanding. C'mon. "Efforting ?" Or, "Can I librarian that for you ?" Then there's that (gak!) "friending" business.
"Calvin: I like to verb words. Hobbes: What? Calvin: I take nouns and adjectives and use them like verbs. Remember when access was a thing? Now it’s something you do. It got verbed… Verbing weirds language. Hobbes: Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."
TL;DR
Clever. Bet you had a chuckle before posting. Attention deficit issue is it ?
I'd like to thank the Academy, as well as the Empress and the Czar.
(especially since I thought my winning entry was so dumb I nearly deleted it from my list. my personal favorite of mine was Nutella Fella x Triple Espresso = HAZELNUT!! MOCHA!!)
Speaking only in generalizations, Pat and I have found that the least competent judge of the strength of an entry -- less competent, say, than some rando plucked from the street, is the entrant of that entry.
Curious to know if you ever hear from people who actually did predict the success of their inking entry, or if you only hear from those of us who are in disbelief at either the success or failure of our efforts.
I haven't talked to Pat about it, but we mostly don't hear, period. Which is fine. I truly believe no one can judge his or her work objectively -- including me.
The "TL;DR" interjection is among my favorite inanities of the internet age, along with non-opinions ("I haven't tried/done/seen it, but I felt compelled to let you to know that") and the past unreal conditional opinions ("Had I tried/done/seen it, I'm sure I would have loved/hated it. And here's why").
". . . we no longer say 'I shouldn't do that' to mean 'I wouldn't do that' even though it was the common usage as late as the mid-20th century." I never knew that was ever American usage! I always thought it was British; I've only ever read it -- or heard it said --in British books or on British TV shows.
I usually see TL;DR as an intro to a summary of something that goes into a lot of detail. As a review, it's obnoxious.
My favorite: 4 Scores in 7 Yrs. Took some creativity to make that connection.
Always a red letter day. Congrats to all 100.
My least favorite verbed noun is “authored” instead of “written.” Segueing, as a business student, I was given one mandatory English course, and the required final paper was a 25-page review of Webster’s 3rd Abridged Dictionary, with a viewpoint on whether a dictionary is prescriptive or a lexicon.
My least favorite verbed noun is “efforted” instead of “tried.” Local news/sportscasters around here are now telling me that they're "efforting to get you that information."
I hate that talking heads speak of “the Open.” They mean the opening, right. Also, as time runs out in football where clock stoppages are critical, they “wind (WHINED) the clock” to indicate time has restarted. But to me, it should be “resumed unwinding.” Just to be juvenile, a certain sex act. Oh, never mind.
That Dirda didn’t even mention the typeface/font nightmare that is the cover of the book causes his judgement to be suspect.
(Probably not her fault, however. Now I have to hope her book is unsuccessful so that I am not subjected to a slew of nonfiction books with terrible ransom note cover art. [I work in a public library])
I would argue that adult using street slang and “sloppy” syntax is not so much a factor of trying to appear working class and authentic as trying to feel young and hip.
"Here’s what we meant: We meant we don’t want you to update old sayings or old saws that are so old you don’t read or hear them much anymore, like “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” or “a stitch in time saves nine,” or “early to bed, early to rise…"
I guess I wasted a week and submitted a bunch of things you don't want. Oh well.
Jon, we said specifically, in the original instructions, Don't give us aphorisms like a stitch in time or an apple a day. None of the six examples we gave was an old saw like those. This thing today was not so much a clarification as an elaboration. But if you send us in a new set of entries, with instructions to kill the first set, we will accept that.
I don't know my aph from an aphorism so I'm not even sure what phrases we can and can't use. "The devil is in the details" seems to me to be as old as the hills. I don't understand the distinction.
It is used frequently by talking heads and people being interviewed. It is tired and still all around us. That's the difference.
I would argue they are all still all around us otherwise how would anyone know them? I'll never understand "the difference" because, to me, there isn't one.
Suggest you use the "tornado made me do it" excuse. Gene is always a sucker for big wind. However, I should caution that I have tried to use some of the Ten Plagues of Egypt to no avail --- although boils, hail and frogs did get Pat's attention and momentary consideration, I was informed several years later.