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Pangrams

Posted By: Nack Ballard
Date: Thursday, 31 August 2017, at 6:07 a.m.

In Response To: Mystery sentence (Nack Ballard)

.....Champ QF bywords jinx veg klutz

First, is the above sentence true? Though largely a matter of opinion, it seems true to me, perhaps even insightful. It could be interpreted as: "Even expert quiz factor explanations can hold back a lazy fool." In other words, some hindsight analysis that is posted here based on quiz factor position data can obscure the truth from people who fail to think for themselves. [Notes: (1) Veg is a verb or adjective referring to (brain-dead or) couch-potato behavior, whereas an edible vegetable can be shortened to "veggie." (2) A byword is a word or expression summarizing a thing's characteristics.]

Second, what aspect makes the sentence notable? Answer: It is a minimal (26-letter) pangrammatic sentence, a fact noticed by Scotty, Casper and Ray, and perhaps others who outwitted me with their humor.

A "pangram" uses each letter of the alphabet at least once. For example...

.....The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (35 letters, eehooortu)

...is the most popular sentence taught in elementary typing classes, so that the student can practice typing every letter. There are nine duplicates (eehooortu), but at least they have a high common-usage frequency.

.....Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. (32 letters, eioouu)

The above pangram (with which Ray is familiar) has only six duplicates instead of nine, and is often taught in adult typing classes. I guess it is considered too racy for kids. :)

Below I've selected a few more pangrams, gradually decreasing the number of duplicate letters:

.....The five boxing wizards jump quickly. (31 letters, eiiiu)
.....Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz. (30 letters, eiio)
.....Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. (29 letters, aou)
.....Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex. (28 letters, ai)

That last one is my favorite. It sounds like advice a Victorian parent might give to a naughty teenage daughter.

The final two pangrams of this group use some obscure words, but all are legal in Scrabble (on either side of the Atlantic). I've included subtitles:

.....Fry blintz gum qophs, vex jackdaws. (27 letters, a)
....."Cook fruit compote in the shape of hebrew letters, to discourage small crows."

.....Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz. (26 letters)
.....“Symbols carved into a cave on the shore of an inlet made an exam more frustrating.”

Clearly, the shortage of vowels (only five + Y out of 26) is the biggest challenge. One way around this is consonant-laden acronyms. While there seems to be no hard "rule" against, resorting to them seems bush league by comparison. Notwithstanding, I explored.

Champ QF bywords jinx veg klutz (see the top of this post) is a 26-letter pangram customized for bgonline. The runner-up (which some of you might like better) was: Blowzy QF kvetch, sad grump jinx. Those both contain six words (tied with "Cwm fjord...").

Having found pangrams with the minimum 26 letters, the only way to arguably improve further (other than with commoner words?) is to use fewer than six words. In order to accomplish the feat (charitably counting each acronym as just one word), we can employ a longer acronym. For example, a minimal pangram I constructed recently is

.....LGBTQ shucked frowzy vamp jinx. (26 letters, 5 words)
....."The Lesbian-Gay-Bi-Transgender-Queer community ousted a messy musical curse."

To decrease a 26-letter panagram to a mere four words would require one of them to be an acronym that is longer and/or expends more troublesome letters. However, even after finding QBXML (Quick Books eXtensible Markup Language) and XQZT (eXQuiZiTe) online, I was unable to piece together as few as three legal words with the leftover 21 or 22 letters. Therefore, I made up an acronym that stands for "Weapons of Mass Destruction For Very Zany Xenic Jacks Queens and Kings," so that it would dovetail with the longest word in the English language that has no repeating letters. The result is this whimsical two "word" pangram:

.....WMDFVZXJQK uncopyrightables

Finally, this website (see def. 2) implies there are three different one-word pangrams -- though they are not actually referenced as such nor does there seem to be an awareness of the concept. Those solutions, in any event, are so inclusive as to make the whole notion meaningless! I conclude that the honest winner is Cwm fjord bank glyphs vext quiz.

Nack

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