Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Cwm glyphs

The shortest sentence in English which uses all 26 letters is only 26 letters long:

Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz.

Pretty clever! Except it needs translation so maybe not high on the communication end ;-)

"The carved symbols in the mountain hollow at the edge of the fjord irritated an eccentric person."

So why was he or she vexed? Why were the symbols carved around the hollow? What were they?

There's lots of carving going on. Did the glaciers or some powerful being carve the symbols along with the hollow and the fjord?

(A cwm (pronounced coom, in Welsh the w is a "double u") is a steep bowl-shaped mountain basin; a fjord is long, narrow inlet with steep sides; vext is another form of vexed; quiz is an eccentric person. Inspired by Wordsmith.org and The Straight Dope.)


Can you read the glyph in the image or does it vex you? Click the picture for another clue. If you're still stumped, click here.