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LOGOLOG
a weblog of wordplay by Eric Harshbarger
Pangrams and Movies
Take a look at the Top-13 movies of the U.S. Box Office for this past weekend:
- Zero Dark Thirty
- A Haunted House
- Gangster Squad
- Django Unchained
- Les Misérables
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
- Lincoln
- Parental Guidance
- Texas Chainsaw 3D
- Silver Linings Playbook
- Jack Reacher
- This is 40
- Life of Pi
The combined titles of these movies are pangrammic; every letter of the alphabet is accounted for. This ties the record for Top-N movies being pangrammic (no smaller value of N has ever yielded pangrammic combined titles). At least it ties it for the past 30 years or so... as far back as I can cull the data. Top-13-pangrammacity has occurred twice before during that span. The most recent was over eighteen years ago when, for the week of 23 September 1994, these movies were tops:
- TimeCop
- Terminal Velocity
- Forrest Gump
- Quiz Show
- Clear And Present Danger
- Natural Born Killers
- The Mask
- True Lies
- Milk Money
- Corrina, Corrina
- The Next Karate Kid
- The Little Rascals
- Jason's Lyric
The only other time the Top-13 movies were pangrammic was over seven years before that, during the week of 10 July 1987, when we got:
- Revenge of the Nerds II
- Full Metal Jacket
- Dragnet
- Adventures in Babysitting
- Innerspace
- The Witches of Eastwick
- Beverly Hills Cop II
- Spaceballs
- The Untouchables
- Roxanne
- Predator
- Benji the Hunted
- The Squeeze
The latest batch of movies, here in Januray 2013, is quite interesting in that it is almost a pangrammic Top-10 (which would have handily broken the past records). Only one letter is lacking in the first ten titles... and it is not any of the usual suspects. It is not the Q, Z, X, or J that is missing. Surprisingly, it's the F. It barely sneaked in with The Life Of Pi. That movie crept up last week after getting an "Oscar-nomination bump" from the previous week's news. A similar bump got the only V into the countdown with Silver Linings Playbook jumping to #10. Also note that if the film This Is 40 had spelled out "Forty", we would have had a new record with Top-12.
Who knows, maybe the record can be beaten if those movies continue to inch upward... but already we're on the verge of losing the W (Texas Chainsaw 3D is falling fast). Oh, the perturbations of a movie-loving-pangrammist...
-- Eric
[14 January 2013]
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Archive
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History of Bo... | 1 |
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Well, Moviego... | 6 |
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Front Hook: O | |
Front Hook: N | 1 |
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Front Hook: J | 1 |
Front Hook: I | 2 |
Front Hook: H | 4 |
Front Hook: G | 3 |
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Calculated Wo... | 2 |
Teacher Torto... | 2 |
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Word Dice | 3 |
That Does It! | 3 |
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Morse Code Pa... | 5 |
Bringing Ingo... | 7 |
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Bourne To Run | 4 |
DVDs | 2 |
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Beyond BOOKKE... | 7 |
Not Positive ... | 11 |
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Puzzle | 1 |
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Lightning | 1 |
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Memory of GAM... | 5 |
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Funny | 1 |
Chemical Abbr... | 1 |
Movie Rebuses | 7 |
Television Sh... | 1 |
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More Heterogr... | 3 |
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Those crazy H... | 2 |
NFL | 4 |
Wordmonger | 2 |
Alli says, "A... | |
A Puzzling St... | 3 |
THE MAD ANAGR... | 5 |
Synonymous Co... | 1 |
CARNELIOUS | 3 |
-und | 2 |
Batteries | 2 |
Names | 13 |
Rubik Font | 3 |
Under A Spell | |
State The Rea... | 2 |
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Scrabble Squa... | 4 |
Tube Maps | 2 |
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QWERTY vs. Dv... | 2 |
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Ambigrams | |
Alphabet Soup | 4 |
Logo | |
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Book List | |
Scrabble Tile... | |
D'oh! | |
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Phobias | 1 |
Pentominoes | |
Word Searchin... | 1 |
Welcome | 1 |
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