Pangrams

Old and new

A pangram is a sentence or phrase that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once.

The most famous is “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. At 35 letters, it has nine redundant letters and no fewer than four “o”s. Rubbish. You could shorten it into “Quick brown fox jumps sleazy Jon Voight” - that’s 33 letters, but it’s not as memorable and is defamatory, even if Jon Voight is the supposed victim.

Other good pangrams include “pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs” (32 letters) and “jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz” (31 letters). I also like “how vexingly quick daft zebras jump” (30 letters, and showing off with an 8 letter word). Even better is “glib jocks quiz nymph to vex dwarf” (28 letters) and which has a distinct tabloid headline ring to it, perhaps used at some point in the investigations into Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband’s ill-gotten four-mile driven motor home.

There are no known perfect pangrams (26 letters) that do not resort to names, e.g. “Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.” Not very good.

The Danish language has a perfect pangram (i.e. it uses all the Danish letters exactly once including the weird ones we don’t have) - Høj bly gom vandt fræk sexquiz på wc which means “tall shy groom won naughty sex quiz on wc”. Superb.

Finnish also has a perfect pangram Törkylempijävongahdus, which roughly translates as “whinge of a sleazy lover” - unsuccessful in the sex quiz perhaps. The Norwegians also turn to doing sex quizzes on the toilet for their pangrams: Sær golfer med kølle vant sexquiz på wc i hjemby: “Strange golfplayer with club won sexquiz on wc in hometown”.

I also like the Turkish Pijamalı hasta yağız şoföre çabucak güvendi which means “the sick person in pyjamas quickly trusted the swarthy driver” and the Portuguese Vejo galã sexy pôr quinze kiwis à força em baú achatado, translating as “I see a sexy hunk forcibly stuff fifteen kiwis into a shallow trunk”. And I have a soft spot for the Dutch Pa’s wijze lynx bezag vroom het fikse aquaduct - “Dad’s wise lynx piously looked at the sizable aqueduct”.

I’ve wasted half an hour trying to come up with my own original (English) pangram. I tried to avoid words cropping up in other known pangrams, which made it surprisingly hard. “Goats just love maize, barley, quorn and seafood except whelks” (51!). Terrible, I’m sure a seven year old could do better. It’s not even factually accurate - goats can’t eat seafood at all without getting ill (that’s not a pangram by the way).

If we borrow “sex quiz” from the Scandinavians we can get another very weird tabloid headline: “why Goat flunked chimp sex rave job quiz”, which does at least come in at a respectable 33 letters, even if one struggles to picture the scenario it is purporting to describe.

If you are really are at a loose end you can attempt pangram lists i.e members of any category who together contain all 26 letters of the alphabet. For example, countries of the world (7): Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Mozambique; Fiji; Kuwait; Luxemburg; Paraguay. This is just my attempt - there may be a shorter list.

Or the Guardians Top 100 novels list published this year (5): The Brothers Karamazov; Great Expectations; Don Quijote; The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy, Gentleman; Wolf Hall.

Unfortunately you can’t do it for English football league clubs, because none include the letter Z (or indeed the letter J). I asked AI to be sure and they said:

There’s hope for us Earthlings - our AI overlords may need us for a few years yet.

Do contribute any pangrams or other observations (apart from the fact I have too much time on my hands), in the comments.