Lipograms

Here's another game to test our linguistic skills. According to Wikipedia: "A lipogram (from Ancient Greek: λειπογράμματος, leipográmmatos, "leaving out a letter") is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided—usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language."

So let's find out if we are true wordsmiths or just hacks

I'll posit these rules for the game:

1. Your lipogram can omit any letter of the alphabet. "E" or "S" are commonly chosen, because they are hard to do, but feel free to omit any letter you choose.

2. Your lipogram may be of any length or style. I have chosen a rhymed couplet for the first one, but you don't need to follow my example. A simple sentence will do.

So let us begin--in this case, omitting the letter "E."


I don't know why that big canyon is thought of as "grand"
But if I walk through all of it, I might start to understand.

Omitting the letter "I"

A well-known member of the games forum would do well to behave as a gentleman here and not try to bamboozle others, lest he lose the name and avatar he loves, and be known, henceforth, as zLzon.

iLion said:

(Maybe we should make entries follow the alphabet in sequence. Just a thought. Might be harder to do if we 'force' the entry to omit a particular letter. )

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An excellent idea, maned one. Let's try that. I hereby decree that the next entry must omit the letter "A," and we will proceed through the alphabet that way. (This method will help us avoid shenanigans on the part of certain irresponsible members. )

Next?

NO C

I know a restaurant where you stand in line and get your food, dish by dish, from a long display. They have all kinds of things--meat and fish and fowl, and all kinds of vegetables and fruit and also plenty of bread and rolls and a variety of desserts. There's a name for this kind of restaurant, but I am prevented from using it in this post.

NO E

Well, E is the hardest of all letters to eliminate, but since I started this game, I'll give it a try--long form:

Making his way up a path along a cliff, Ivan Lyubov thought of ways to accomplish his goal without suspicion falling upon him. A major difficulty was how to find a way into Babushkin Hall inconspicuously. His shabby clothing would bring only a slight frown or two downstairs, and asking to work for scraps of food should not alarm cooks or maids unduly. But finding his way at last into Babushkin Hall would allow him to climb a circular stairway to Count Marinsky's rooms, and with Marinsky dozing, nobody could stop Ivan Lyubov from stabbing His Royal Idiocy with Nicholas Romanov's gold scimitar, thus bringing a final, triumphant blow to a man who had wrought so many travails upon his own land. But with Marinsky a bloody carcass, finding his way out of Babushkin Hall would confront Ivan Lyubov with an array of dismal options, among which was figuring out how to avoid a ghastly act of rancor wrought upon him by Marinsky's dastardly cousin Boris Ilyanovitch Moronsky.*

*Don't look for any of this in the history books.

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JoBird said:

NO I

Very confused here. The start post has an E in understand. Post number 9 has a B. The F a few posts above was already mentioned. What's up? Me not sure me get the rules.

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NO J

The rules is the rules. We slipped up is all, because we not perfect.

This one's easy, since the above letter doesn't appear in a lot of words, so I could go on endlessly without the need to use that letter, saying incredibly boring things as I am doing now, but I think I'll cut this one short, because nobody's reading it, and WTF.