Pangrammatic Windows

All twenty-six of you, jump in!

A pangram is a piece of writing that includes all twenty-six letters. A pangrammatic window is a pangram that is a selection from a larger piece of writing, usually one that’s not designed to be (or include) a pangram. The shorter the pangram (or pangrammatic window), the more notable it generally is.

Ralph G. Beaman discussed these in Word Ways #5.3 (1971), but struggled to come up with a pure example, settling for a couple of “pangram minus one letter” versions. Wikipedia cites a few pure examples, many taken from Malcolm Rowe’s study of the subject. At 36 letters, his shortest find is pretty notable (coming from a review of the movie Magnolia):

Further, fractal geometries are replicated on a human level in the production of certain “types” of subjectivity: for example, aging kid quiz show whiz Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) and up and coming kid quiz show whiz Stanley Spector (Jeremy Blackman) are connected (or, perhaps, being cloned) in ways they couldn’t possibly imagine.

It is still one letter longer than “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” though.

Rowe did his work in 2014. In the last decade, this field has seen no real advancement—works published after 2014 on the subject only cite earlier discoveries. That’s not because people haven’t been trying! The odds of a pangrammatic window that short just appearing are millions to one at least.

Still, if you want to give it a go yourself, you can try entering any text you want at this link. (Set it for “pangrammatic window.”) Or if you’re more of a programmer at heart, you might prefer to play with this Python file.

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Louis Phillips and Don Hauptman pointed out that my roundup of definitions for arch was a little too, well, arch. While the definitions of arch do all go back to the root meanings of “upside-down U shape” or “first/superior,” a couple of them are far enough removed from those roots as to bear no trace of them in the minds of people who use them.

For instance, arch can indicate mischief without smugness or malice…though that sort of mischief was once thought of as springing from a superior attitude. Some uses derive from archer too…though archer itself derives from the curved shape of the bow.

In short, the arch of arch meanings is longer than I thought, with a bit more of a heavy base.

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In that same issue, Mary Youngquist produced a few downer poems…

DEGRADATION

This skid row burn will win no more.
He'll strive and lose in his sad war.
On gin he’s hooked—that demon booze!
And now he’ll loudly sing the blues.
He’s chased away all hope today.
Will Spring have cheer? No—more decay.

…followed by this set of brighter poems, which use exactly the same words in the same order as the depressing ones (except, of course, for the titles):

REDEMPTION

This skid row burn will win!
No more he'll strive and lose
In his sad war on gin,
He’s hooked that demon, booze.
And now he’ll loudly sing,
The blues he’s chased away.
All hope today will spring:
Have cheer—no more decay!

I know I’ve seen these kinds of works elsewhere, but I’m a little stuck on what they’re called. Reparsed poems? Redivided poems? Ambiditties?

Tomorrow: The proto-comic narratives of 1936! And after that, all about a new species of crossword I’ve noticed emerging in the last few years…