Ok, here is something that I thought might be of some fun for all of us. If this has already been done then I do appologize.
The object is to figure out this brain teaser. I figure I will wait a week and then give the answer. Anyway, let the fun begin.


Brain Teaser!

This is an unusual paragraph.
I’m curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it?
It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it! In fact, nothing is wrong with it!
It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd.
But if you work at it a bit, you might find out!
Try to do so without any coaching!

Rev. Alimae

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!

What part of "no coaching" did you not understand, Faldage? But thanks.

You din't have to read it.

Nosy!

You should know that white print is a red flag that says Read Me.

Context, woman.

You two crack me up. Thank you for the laugh.

Rev. Alimae

Rev Ali - you may rest at eeeese !!!

but I did have to read it twice!!

Now that Rhuby has responded in black , I'd like to point out that this stylistic trick is called a lipogram: Probably the most well-known lipogrammatic novel is A Void (La Disparition) written in 1969 by Georges Perec. His is not the first effort, though.

I found I wasn't quite at eeeese reading it.

My favorite lippogram doesn't exist anymore. It was a version of the Iliad that lacked the Greek letter of the alphabet that numbered the chapter. In Greek, alpha also stood for the number one. Etc. Forget who wrote it, but it's lost. Along with the Aeneid that was so tiny it fit in a nutshell.

Oh, sorry, I didn't see that at all.

I just thought it wasn't really a paragraph because the sentences didn't follow one-another (they're all one below each other like a poem) and the punctuation is completely wrong on most of the sentences.

Back in the dear, dead days beyond recall, Sparteye started a thread in this vein, where we all had to get our ideas across without ease.

She sure did! That would be fun to drag back up, if anyone without a creepy-crawly dial-up would do the honors of searching for it. (what's wrong with this syntax??)

I keep having this image of a "lipogram" as just a picture of all the fatty tissue in your body! Couldn't they come up with a better name for it?

The word exists in Greek, lipogrammatos 'wanting a letter', so it predates liposuction. The word lipos 'fat' has a short "i" anyway, whereas lipogrammatos has a long one, as it came from leipo 'to lack, want; be left behind'.

Thanks, JH, that's just the info I was asking for!

De nada, wofahulicodoc.

Adding my thanks, jheem: I have been pronouncing both with a short i, and, although I'm TLTLIU, now I know better!

LOL. I was talking about Greek, but now it dawns on my that liposuction can be prounounced /lajpos@kS@n/ and lipogram is /lIpowgr}m/. So the long {i], short {i} distinction holds in English, too. Thanks, nancyk.

I'm on dialup, but I bet I can find the thread anyway.


And I thought the above paragraph was noteworthy as purple prose. :)