Sets of words non-overlapping on letters
Perhaps you recall the oft-used sentence: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Each of the 26 letters of the English alphabet is used within it. It is not necessarily the most parsimonious such sentence however, since it uses 36 letters to do this. The site A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia discusses these "pangrams" with considerable thoroughness.
It is thus natural to wonder if there a sentence which uses exactly 26 letters, each different. Alternatively, since one person's poem is another's nonsense, let's forget about sentences -- two people are unlikely to share the same idea of what a sentence is. Let's just go for sets of words.
Going a step further, let's simply outlaw multiple occurrences of letters within the set and see how many distinct letters can be used within a set of words.
Below are several sets of words.
Before each set appears a number (in the range 0-26) representing the count of distinct letters appearing in the word list. The words in the list follow the constraint that no two words share any letters in common and no individual word uses any letter more than once. Letters that are not used in the set are shown in parentheses.
English
: Note: several 26 letter solutions can be found at A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia Page 9maintained by Jeff Miller who notes the following about a solution apparently contained in the Guiness Book of World Records:In the 1980s Michael Jones submitted two pangrams to Guinness: "Veldt jynx grimps waqf zho buck" and "Qursh gowf veldt jynx zimb pack." Guinness chose the first one. Michael writes that the second pangram "describes a scene where some Arabian coins are striking a group of flies gathered on that woodpecker. (Qursh can be used as plural according to W3; all my words come from W3). I liked this second pangram more because I preferred using 'qursh' over 'waqf,' but Guinness chose the other one."
24 (vq) 6 words
lymph bugs jinx wrack fez dot
24 (vq) 6 words
lynx craft jump whiz desk bog
25 (q) 6 words
lynx vamp whiz frock debt jugs
24 (qv) 6 words
junk plight combs dry wax fez
23 (kqv) 6 words
myth flax zinc jug pods brew
23 (bvg) 5 words (using q)
quartz jinx lymph docks few
24 (qz) 6 words
frown lymph just vex dig back
19 (hklqvxyz) -- best with three words?
pacify judgments brow
17 (fgjkpqvwz) -- best with two words?
ambidextrous lynch
15 (dfjkmqsvwxz)-- best with one word? See for more details.
uncopyrightable
French
21 (bhjkw)coq (cock) temps (time) lynx (lynx) vif (alive) dur (hard) gaz (gas)
26/33 (fx(ts)(shch)(ye)(yu)) Russian
knig (book)
rvat1 (to tear)
(sh)l(yo)p (crack)
boy (battle)
m(ya)(ch) (ball)
u(zh) (grass snake)
s2(ye)zd (congress)
1 - soft sign
2 - hard sign
The reader is invited to
- get better than 23 while using "q" and limiting oneself to relatively common words.
- do better than 19 with only three words
- do better than 17 with only two words
- do better than 14 with only one word
- suggest a nice cluster of four words
- do better than 21 in French or 26 in Russian (or overcome the difficulty with knig, which is more a word-stem than a word).
- contribute lists in other languages
Let me know
A pangram is a unique sentence in which every letter of the alphabet is used at least once. The name comes from the Greek root words pan, meaning “all,” and gram, meaning “something written or recorded”. Like any good sentence, good examples of pangrams should contain a subject and a predicate, but the real purpose of a pangram goes beyond its meaning alone.
Because pangrams contain every letter of the alphabet, they are particularly useful to artists who design fonts, as a pangram allows them to display all available letters in a given typeset. Likewise, they are useful for people to practice their handwriting, whether for a child learning cursive or a calligrapher trying a new pen tip. Often they’re used just for fun wordplay.
Pangrams exist in every language, though they may be more or less difficult to construct depending on the language and its unique alphabet.
Perfect Pangrams
A perfect pangram is a sentence that uses each letter of the alphabet only one time. In English this means that there are can only be 26 letters in the entire sentence. This is a very difficult thing to do, and the only pangrams that work perfectly in English are forced to use abbreviations. For example:
- Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD., bags few lynx.
- GQ's oft lucky whiz Dr. J, ex-NBA MVP - Steve Galen
Other perfect pangrams in English do exist, but they don't make much sense and are often forced to borrow words from a foreign language to work, such as:
- Jock nymphs waqf drug vex blitz
Other Examples of Pangrams
When you allow for some letters to be used more than once, it's possible to come up with many more pangrams in English. The most famous of all is:
- The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. - Michigan School Moderator
But there are many others. For example:
- Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud. - Dmitri Borgmann
- Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. - Mark Dunn
- Glib jocks quiz nymph to vex dwarf.
- Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
- The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
- How vexingly quick daft zebras jump!
- Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
- Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
- The jay, pig, fox, zebra and my wolves quack!
- Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives.
- A wizard's job is to vex chumps quickly in fog.
- Watch "Jeopardy!", Alex Trebek's fun TV quiz game.
- By Jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize!
- Waxy and quivering, jocks fumble the pizza.
Finally, there's a famous long pangram that tells you exactly how many of each letter it uses:
- This Pangram contains four a’s, one b, two c’s, one d, thirty e’s, six f’s, five g’s, seven h’s, eleven i’s, one j, one k, two l’s, two m’s, eighteen n’s, fifteen o’s, two p’s, one q, five r’s, twenty-seven s’s, eighteen t’s, two u’s, seven v’s, eight w’s, two x’s, three y’s, & one z. - Lee Sallows
Producing Perfect Pangrams
Pangrams are a fun and interesting challenge to create. The best ones use the fewest possible letters while still making sense to the reader, and many analysts are on the hunt for more perfect pangrams that make sense while avoiding foreign words. You can try making your own for fun and to help you build your English vocabulary.
Post your favorite pangrams that you’ve found or created in the comments below.