Sentences that use all letters in the alphabet
Mark Boolootian
I apologize if this is a repost - it didn't look like it made it on the
original post.
Following are a few special sentences collected by the reknowned sentence
collector John Fletcher. These sentences use every letter of the alphabet with
as little duplication of letters as possible. The first two sentences use
each letter only once, the remaining three repeat some letters. I'll list each
sentence with a comment or two down below. My question for *you* is, can you
find other such sentences, each sentence utilizing every letter of the alphabet,
with as little repetition of letters as is possible? Of course, not repeating
any letters at all is optimal.
All letters used (without repetition):
1) Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox!
- This came from a talk given by Claude Shannon attended by Fletcher
back in the early 60's I think. John told me that last month he was
able to find every one of these words, with the exception of vox, in
a dictionary here at the lab. The word vox only appeared in phrases.
As explained to me by John, the sentence is an imperative, being given
by the wearer of a squat hat (squdgy fez), to blot out (blank) the
thin, reed-like (jimp) stringed sound or voice (crwth vox).
2) XV quick nymphs beg fjord waltz!
- Fletcher believes that this appeared in a Martin Gardner article some
years back.
All letters used (with repetition):
3) Quick dogs jump over the lazy brown fox.
- This contains 32 letters. Repeats include 1 extra u, 3 extra o's,
1 extra e, and 1 extra r. Fletcher recently realized this improvement
over the better known "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
which has 33 letters.
4) Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
- This also contains 32 letters. Repeats include 2 extra o's, 1 extra
u, 1 extra e, and 2 extra i's. Notice that the repeats are only
vowels. Of course, this is my favorite.
5) Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
- This contains 31 letters. Repeats include 1 extra i, 2 extra a's, 1
extra s, and 1 extra o. A Jackdaw is a bird that is related to the
Crow.
One other question I have: Fletcher tells me the longest single syllable
word he is aware of (i.e. has the most letters) is the word strengths. Anybody
know of one that's longer?
Please email me any replies and I'll post a summary.
Thanks,
mb
Dean Hickerson
awp...@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Alan Wm Paeth) says:
>
>Also, does anyone have software to hunt for pangrams? I suspect a sentence
>allowing the proper name "PDQ Bach" might have an excellent head start.
If initials are allowed, then there's:
D. Q. Schwartz flung J. V. Pike my box.
Some permutation of this was given in one of Martin Gardner's columns in
Scientific American; I don't remember when it appeared or who thought of it.
-------
Dean Hickerson, Dept. of Math., Penn State Univ., University Park, PA 16802
h...@psuvm.psu.edu
Alan Wm Paeth
back when I was with Xerox. One that I particularly remember:
"Frowzy things plumb vex Jack Quad"
as it is reasonably intelligible, and the use of a contrived proper name is
not too stretched. Both "jack" and "quad" are common nouns, the latter a
typographer's term, short for "quadrat". It's vowels "U" and "A" are duplicates
and put the total at 28 letters.
/Alan Paeth
Computer Graphics Laboratory
University of Waterloo
Alan Wm Paeth
"U", making for a new lower bound? Sure, it's cheating, but the whole field is
somewhat contrived. Anyone heard of this approach before? Other way 'round, a
word like "vacuum" contains a "double-U", but this doesn't lower the bound.
Also, does anyone have software to hunt for pangrams? I suspect a sentence
allowing the proper name "PDQ Bach" might have an excellent head start.
/Alan
David Chalmers
> "Frowzy things plumb vex Jack Quad"
>
>as it is reasonably intelligible, and the use of a contrived proper name is
>not too stretched. Both "jack" and "quad" are common nouns, the latter a
>typographer's term, short for "quadrat".It's vowels "U" and "A" are duplicates
>and put the total at 28 letters.
A more convincing 28-letter pangram is due to Bob French.
"Nymphs fix verb, jog, do quick waltz."
(You see, these nymphs had been working on a pangram themselves, and they
finally got the syntax right...)
Lots of pangrams have been doing the rounds around here recently. We need them
to test gridfonts (a sort of typeface) generated by "Letter Spirit", a program
of Doug Hofstadter's that is currently mostly implemented in hopeware, but
coming along. The shorter the pangram the neater the test. We need a lot of
pangrams: a crucial part of the testing process is ensuring that the
letters are recognizable even in an unexpected context. It won't do
to repeat the same pangram over and again, as the recognition process then
becomes trivial.
So, a request: if anyone out there enjoys coming up with pangrams in their
spare time, then send them along. Even better, if there's a pangram database
somewhere out there, we'd appreciate a copy. You never know, if you send
enough pangrams you might get acknowledged in the first papers on the
project. How's that for encouragement?
--
Dave Chalmers (da...@cogsci.indiana.edu)
Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable"