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Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

RFK Jr.’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

5 big travel lessons from an accomplished conservationist

Wizards just miss No. 1 pick again but land top consolation prize this time

Eighth-inning decision burns the Nats in a 4-2 loss to the Red Sox

The Wizards will pick second in the NBA draft. Here’s whom they could take.

Why Donald Trump ended up praising Hollywood’s most famous cannibal

Biden seeks to put focus on health care, infrastructure

Pentagon worried its primary satellite launcher can’t keep pace

U.S.-China talks on AI risks set to begin in Geneva

Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers

In photos: The scene in Indonesia after flash floods and cold lava killed at least 44 people

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

Trump insults N.Y. case prosecutor at Jersey Shore rally

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Are smartphones destroying childhood? It’s complicated.

Rare collection of ancient coins, locked away for 100 years, heads to auction

Why Spain will recognize a Palestinian state

Middle East conflict live updates: Israeli forces advance in Rafah; Health Ministry says Gaza hospital system will collapse in hours

Miss Manners: Should I accept offered seat swaps when I’m flying for free?

Ask Amy: Dad hurt by daughter publicly reconnecting with her biological family

Carolyn Hax: What’s the real cost of going halfsies on a modest engagement ring?

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

US President Joe Biden Departure

Can you imagine the mind of Bob Staake? No, of course you can’t. Bob sketched all the motley zany doodles above — as he does for The Style Invitational a couple of times a year — in some insanely short period. In the past I’d hesitated to show them, since he might want to use some of the other cartoon ideas next time. Not a problem, he’d say. He’ll just think up another set. 

As you can see in this week’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/style-invitational-week-1468-the-year-in-redo-part-2/2021/12/23/a3d3753a-626a-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html#report" target=_blank>results of the Week 1464 cartoon caption contest,</a> I ended choosing Cartoons G, I, Q and R (conveniently renamed A, B, C and D for their dressed-up debuts). It’s not as if any number of the other ones wouldn’t have worked as well, but my limit was four. I looked especially for situations that would lend themselves to “dialogue” in the caption, not just a description of what was going on (I like using both types) as well as ones that could prompt widely differing interpretations: the blob on the carpet, for example.

And sure enough, I did get lots of dialogue, lots of description, lots of variety. But! With as many as 400 captions for a single cartoon (Picture D got notably fewer, for some reason), people are going to get a lot of the same ideas — the same funny ideas. So for Cartoon A, the man and boy looking up at the drones carrying a drooping sack, lots and lots of people thought of a stork. A lazy stork. A stork made obsolete by technology. A stork that observed covid restrictions. A stork that experienced supply chain shortages. A stork whose job was stolen by Jeff Bezos Who Owns The Washington Post. And even several that had the specific joke of the man admitting that the stork was a fairy tale — and THIS is the truth about where babies come from. 

My top pick for Cartoon A was from that last group, but with a unique twist. Lee Graham’s admirably pithy caption: “Remember when I told you where babies come from? I lied.” The twist is that not only could the father have meant that he’d lied about the stork; he might have first told the son the biological explanation, right? For that, Lee gets his 55th blot of Style Invitational ink plus a deck of cards featuring trivia about New Jersey. (There will be a quiz later.)

Other frequent ideas: there were eight that imagined a bowling ball hanging from the bag — Leif Picoult’s ill-advised “Bowling Ball Land’s ‘You Buy It, We Fly It’ delivery service” blots the ink — a surprising number of entries about the grand tradition of leaving a bag of poop at someone’s door and setting it on fire. (Sam Mertens wins that group with a description of the auto-drive version.) But yes, only Jeff Shirley conjured Roald Dahl’s famous <a href="https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/lofting-james-giant-peach-would-have-required-way-more-seagulls-roald-dahl-said/" target="_blank">bird-tugged hyperfruit </a>to suggest “James and the Giant Testicle.” Oh, Jeff.

Similarly for the other three contests: Instead of throwing out all the entries that shared some basic joke, I chose one that had some element that won me over. Among four entries referencing “schadenfreude” for Cartoon D — in which, at the end of a movie, one woman is gleeful while the woman next to her on the couch weeps pitifully — I gave the Clowning Achievement to Craig Dykstra, who made it the funniest: Denise Downer realized it was just no fun watching sad movies with Amy Schadenfreude. It’s the first Clowning Achievement trophy for Craig, but he’s far from prize-deprived: Craig has returned only recently from stepping away from the Invite for a few years; before that, he was the first to win both Loser of the Year and Rookie of the Year simultaneously (2010) and went on to snarf up more than 350 blots of ink, including five wins. Soon after becoming immersed in Loserdom, Craig told me that he tended to throw all his energies and wit into mastering some project or other, then tire of it and pursue another goal with the same passion. But he stuck around for a good five or six years, snarfing up as many as 121 blots in a single Loser Year (and hosting two memorable Loser parties), before turning to whatever. So it’s heartening to see that Craig may well be back in earnest. I mean, the Hall of Fame is fewer than 150 inks away! Go for it!

Also popping up again after a long career in Loserdom — dating back more than 20 years — Phyllis Reinhard gets a Loser Mug or Whole Fools Grossery Bag with her pithy caption for Cartoon B: “Tough night, Mr. Gumby?” Before moving away to the Philadelphia exurbs, Phyl was one of the most delightful guests at Loser functions — and for years in the <a href="//on.fb.me/invdev" target=_blank>Style Invitational Devotees </a>group, she’d write personalized poems for other Losers on their birthdays. Turns out that this was her only entry this week, too. Batting 1.000!

And a couple of generations younger than Phyllis, Jesse Rifkin grabs the remaining spot in the Losers’ Circle (and his 62nd ink already) with one of this week’s rare political entries — and even rarer, one that digs at the Dems: For the people outside the store labeled with a giant R: “I think I’ll shop here — the D store is about to cost another $2 trillion.”

A trip down short-term memory lane: The Week 1468 retrospective 

It’s hard to be nostalgic, exactly, when you look back a whole week — or zero weeks — for <a href="http://wapo.st/invite1468" target=_blank>Week 1468,</a> when you have a chance to enter (or reenter) any of our 25 most recent contests, including the cartoon caption contest we review just today. As I did in <a href="http://wapo.st/conv1467" target=_blank>last week’s Style Conversational </a>for the still-running Part 1, Week 1467 (through Monday, Dec. 27) below I’ve provided links to all the contests eligible this week, along with the first-place entry for each of those contests. It’s an amazing greatest-hits anthology.

 The links go to the announcement and instructions for the contest; for the results of each contest — be sure to check them so you don’t send an entry that’s like one that already ran — click on the link from four weeks later.

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1440">Week 1440, </a>song lyrics about anything in the news:

To <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlcIKh6sBtc&ab_channel=LordeVEVO">“Royals”</a>

The crown will rest on brother's head, I can not see

I'll avoid Mom's fate — damn paparazzi!

Grow up, stand tall, pick a proper mate. An

Actress? Good God! What an awful state! Man,

Curtsies, pinkies up, shoulders with no chip, be

Discreet, stoic, stiffen up that lip, see

We don’t want to be royals (royals), we don’t need all that strife

I’ll take my children and my wife, we crave a different kind of life

Let me go on Oprah (Oprah), she’s the queen of TV

And baby, we'll spill, (we'll spill, we'll spill)

A whole bunch of royal tea. (Hildy Zampella)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1441">Week 1441,</a> a limerick that sums up or otherwise reflects on a particular song

<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=the+star-spangled+banner+lyrics&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS890US890&oq=the+star-&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i20i263j0l2j0i20i263j0l2j69i60.6623j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">The Star-Spangled Banner</a>

'Twas our second time fighting the British

Now of despots we’re finally rid (ish). (Emma Daley)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1442">Week 1442, </a> what’s the same or different between any two items on the random list we supplied:

12 gallons of hand sanitizer: Purell. An evening with Mitch McConnell: Pure 'ell. (Double credit for Jesse Frankovich and Jeff Rackow)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1443">Week 1443,</a> propose some law and give it a humorous acronym:

The Let’s Acknowledge Legitimately Authentic, Literate Americans Love Apathy resolution, to earnestly affirm that climate change is an existential crisis and we really should do something about it someday. It’s the LALALALA resolution. (Kevin Dopart)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1444">Week 1444,</a> slightly change the name of a sport or game and describe the new pastime:

Marrython: The only endurance sport where you try not to reach the finish line. (Melissa Balmain)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1445">Week 1445,</a> poems using a word from the later rounds of the 2021 National Spelling Bee, or Q&amp;A jokes using one of the words

Down in zones that too much mud’s in. (Chris Doyle)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1446">Week 1446,</a> use a partially filled in crossword grid to create your choice of words (including made-up ones) or phrases, then write the clue

T- - N &gt; TEEN: I’m working on the definition, OKAY? (Roy Ashley)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1447">Week 1447,</a> take any sentence from an article or ad in any publication (for this week’s contest, use ones dated Dec. 23-Jan. 3) and interpret it in “plain English”:

Spelman College’s study-abroad program has pivoted to “a systematic internationalization of the curriculum that infuses virtual exchange opportunities.”

PE: You can study a broad section of your Zoom screen. (Drew Bennett)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1448">Week 1448,</a> a limerick that features a word, name or other term beginning with “he-”:

(After three or four bottles of beer) say. (Beverley Sharp)

<a href="http://wapo.st/week%201449">Week 1449,</a> begin with a real name; overlap it with a word, name or expression; and describe or “quote” the resulting phrase or name.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giannis_Antetokounmpo">Giannis Antetokounm-Poe:</a>

Once upon a playoff mission, 2021 edition,

After sitting out two games (his knee was feeling really sore) —

Wearing Nike sneakers squeaky, showing off his talents freaky,

Six-eleven, strong and Greek, he made amazing moves to score.

Named the Finals MVP, the finest player on the floor:

Giannis, Number 34. (Jesse Frankovich)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1450">Week 1450,</a> describe some aspect of our current society as a space alien or future anthropologist might interpret it:

Once a year every human must recommit to the familial cult by lighting a cake on fire while clan members chant a mournful dirge. (Scott Richards)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1451">Week 1451,</a> humorously bad “first drafts” of famous lines from history, literature or entertainment.

“Torpedoes?? Damn.” — Adm. David Farragut (Marli Melton)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1452">Week 1452, </a> neologisms “discovered” by snaking around the word-find grid provided.

From F-14: OM-ZAP: A meditation-induced inspiration. In full lotus, Ellen suddenly experienced an om-zap: “What if I created a dog fitness program called Labs of Steel”? (Leif Picoult)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1453">Week 1453,</a> change the meaning of any book title by adding a subtitle

Silent Spring: The Year I Forgot About Valentine’s Day (Dave Prevar)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1454">Week 1454, </a> Punku: haiku including a pun or other wordplay

Are getting warmer. (Laura Clairmont)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1455">Week 1455,</a> Cite a “good idea” and then alter the wording slightly into a “bad idea”

Good idea: Getting your cues from science.

Bad idea: Getting your science from Q. (Ryan Martinez)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1456">Week 1456,</a> ask an insulting question roughly in the format of “Is that your X, or did Y?”

Is that your way of encouraging your child’s self-expression, or did you fail to tip the exorcist? (Mark Raffman)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1457">Week 1457, </a> Ask Backwards: Choose one of the “answers” provided and follow it with a question. (No guest-judging by Ken Jennings this time around, alas.)

A. Six hours without Facebook. Q. How do 56 percent of Americans describe an eight-hour workday? (Jeff Hazle)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1458">Week 1458, </a> Using all the letters in the title of a TV show (as often as you like), create a new TV show title and describe it

“Gilligan’s Island” &gt; “Ding-a-lings in Sand”: Still “Gilligan’s Island.” (Coleman Glenn)

<a href="http://wapo.st/invite1459">Week 1459, </a> write song lyrics “by” a particular person, set to a familiar tune

Sen. Susan Collins (To<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nauLgZISozs&t=15s"> “If I Only Had a Brain"</a>)

I can talk of moderation — adept dissimulation!

The conclusion is foregone I'll go and side with Mitch McConnell

University of Maryland at College Park, BA in economics, 1980

Pat Myers is the "Empress" of The Style Invitational, The Washington Post's famed contest for clever, edgy, wacky humor and wordplay. In the role since 2003 -- 900-plus contests ago -- she writes the column and is its only judge. She also writes the weekly Style Conversational column and runs the Style Invitational Devotees page on Facebook.