Writer-turned-politician amuses a nation in his quest to coin the world's shortest pangram
Shashi Tharoor has a way with words. Be it the Oxford Union debate or his non-fiction prose, the former UN official and member of India's parliament can certainly stimulate and provoke with words.
On Sunday afternoon, Tharoor chose a new playground: Facebook.
He took on the age-old pangram 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' (32 letters) and challenged it with a new, shorter one. A pangram is a sentence that contains all 26 alphabets of the English language.
Tharoor mentioned 'Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs', containing 31 letters, and 'How quickly daft jumping zebras vex', having 30 letters, oblivious to the fact that further shorter ones exist too.
Sample this list.
'Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.' That's 29 letters.
'Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.' That's 28.
And then you have the most perfect pangram. 26 letters.
'Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.'
Tharoor, meanwhile, continued his pursuits on Twitter. One user tweaked the old 32-lettered one to make it shorter.
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The Indian writer-turned-politician's Sunday occupation invited some interesting reactions.
Any new pangrams, yougaiz?
Topics Facebook Social Media
