Math Is Fun Forum

Jai Ganesh

Administrator

Registered: 2005-06-28

Posts: 48,385

Pangrams

Some Well-Known Pangrams

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This is undoubtedly the best known pangram. It contains all 26 letters of the alphabet (as it must do in order to be a pangram) and is 35 letters long. That means that is not particularly economical with 9 surplus letters.

A keen eye will spot that the word the occurs twice, and so one of them can be considered to be composed entirely of surplus letters. Removal of either the renders the sentence less grammatically correct which is undesirable. However, either of them may be exchanged for the much shorter indefinite article, a, thus saving on 2 letters:

The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.

This is 33 letters in length. That can be beaten with the following, which has just 32 letters:

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.

Perfect Pangrams (exactly 26 letters) have been composed, but none makes good sense, being rather more a string of obscure words than a sentence.

Listed below you will find a number of English pangrams arranged in descending order of length (the number of letters used is shown below). No pangrams over twice the length of the alphabet (i.e. 52 letters) have been included.

(50) We promptly judged antique ivory buckles for the next prize.
(49) How razorback jumping frogs can level six piqued gymnasts.
(48) Sixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bag.
(46) Crazy Fredrick bought many very exquisite opal jewels.
(36) Jump by vow of quick, lazy strength in Oxford.
(33) The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.
(32) Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
(30) How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
(29) Sphinx of black quartz: judge my vow.
(29) Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
(28) Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex bud.

In the remaining pangrams, each letter of the alphabet occurs once and only once. These pangrams are also anagrams of the alphabet. They are called perfect pangrams.

(26) Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.
(26) Cwm fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.
(26) Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.
(26) Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox!
(26) TV quiz drag nymphs blew JFK cox.
(26) Q-kelt vug dwarf combs jynx phiz.

---

It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. - Niels Henrik Abel.

Nothing is better than reading and gaining more and more knowledge - Stephen William Hawking.