(Adapted from Words at Play by O.V. Michaelsen, with
additional material from William Tunstall-Pedoe)
Pangrams
A pangram is a text using each of the 26 letters of
the alphabet at least once. The best known example is:
- The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
This pangram (often used as a typing test) uses 33 letters,
whereas the the next examples use between 30 and 32 letters:
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
- The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
- Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
- How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
However, none of the above are true anagrams.
On the other hand, a lot of attempts have been made to anagram
the alphabet in search of the elusive 26-letter "perfect
pangram". Because of the difficulty of dealing with Q, Z,
J and X in so few letters (so few of which are vowels), it is
virtually impossible to create a meaningful perfect pangram.
Even the best attempts require the use of obscure foreign words
and/or abbreviations, as the examples show:
- TV quiz drag nymph blew JFK's cox.
- Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.*
*Cwm is Welsh for a circular valley; a glyph is a carved figure; vext is the poetic spelling of vexed; a quiz is an 18th-century term for an eccentric. Thus, "carved figures in a valley on a bank of a fjord irritated an eccentric person".
Here are a selection from the Awardsmaster's Challenge in July 2005 to come up with the best perfect pangram:
- A quiz by RJG:
Os + V + Xe + Cl + Fm + ? = K + Pd + W + Th + N + ? (The solution) [Richard Grantham]
- My kind zap Fox TV, squelch GWB Jr.! [Meyran Kraus]
- Fix TV show, NBC! Dump lazy GQ jerk! [Scott Gardner]
- GCHQ down! Fix jam, klutz! Bye! (R.S.V.P.) [David Bourke]
- P.D.Q. Bach's funky jig vext Mr. Wolz. [Larry Brash]
- Crazy wimp fled junk-box TV's GHQ. [Tony Crafter]
- JFK Blvd 'acts' grow; quiz ex-nymph. [Rick Rothstein]
- GB, who junk crazy TV sex film PDQ. [Chris Sturdy]
- Lust pink Ford? Chevy? BMW? Jag? Z? QX? [Toby Gottfried]
And finally, a couple by Cory Calhoun
- The glib czar junks my VW Fox PDQ.
- My UHF TV zaps J.K. Rowling, ex-D.C. QB.
Antigrams
An antigram, or antonymous anagram, has an opposite
meaning to the subject text. They are quite uncommon and often
accidentally discovered. On the Anagrammy Forum, we use the ‡ symbol to
indicate an antigram. Here are some examples:
- Santa ‡ Satan.
- United ‡ untied.
- Funeral ‡ real fun!
- Forty five ‡ over fifty.
- Militarism ‡ I limit arms.
- Saintliness ‡ entails sins.
- Antagonist ‡ not against.
- Evangelists ‡ evil's agents.
- Protectionism ‡ nice to imports.
- Within earshot ‡ I won't hear this.
- Sweltering heat ‡ the winter gales.
- The Oscar Nominations ‡ It's not a cinema honor.
Word Reversals
A word that is spelled backward to become a new word is sometimes
referred to as a word reversal or anadrome. The
latter term combines "ana-" from anagram and "-drome"
from palindrome. Lewis Carroll called this a semordnilap
("palindromes" spelled backwards), whereas other sources
(Dudeney, 1929) referred to these as antigrams. Examples of this
genre include:
- Pat = tap.
- God = dog.
- Evian = naive.
- Samaroid = dioramas.
