The Lemon Fool

"Watson, we have a problem..." Holmes vouchsafed as he handed me today's newspaper. "Do you see any sort of odd pattern here?"

After a careful perusal of the front page "Why, no." was my reply, "What clues do your eyes see that are beyond my ken?".

"Elementary, my dear Watson. One key letter of the alphabet has been left out, and a vowel at that."

"How's that even workable? Surely any reasonable monologue needs to employ the full range of vowels?"

"Not so Watson." He responded. "There's a word for these types of "leave out a letter" word games - the author composes paragraphs or longer works where the use of one letter or group of letters must not occur."

A search on the new-fangled Google soon found one such example. Apparently one A. Ross Eckler, Jr. (born 1927) had recreated the famous 'Mary Had...' nursery rhyme half a dozen alternate ways, each had one or more letters of the alphabet suppressed. https://goo.gl/jhpv1P

Soon the nature of the 'lost' letter was apparent even to one of my acumen, 'twas the one between 'H' and 'J'. Seems that some scoundrel had stolen all templates for that letter from under the noses of the newspaper's own typesetters!

"But who could have done such a deed?" was my next query to Holmes.

"There's only one person who would stoop to such a stratagem to keep one's name out of the press. That would be my arch-adversary Professor Mor..."

At that moment Holmes broke off due to the welcome entrance of Mrs. Hudson and the afternoon tea. Perhaps we'll never know what he was about to say...


Bree.

I got as far as:

Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον
μελιβόαν ὕμνον ἀναγνέων
Αἰολίδ᾽ ἂμ βαρύβρομον ἁρμονίαν

PinkDalek wrote:I got as far as:

Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον
μελιβόαν ὕμνον ἀναγνέων
Αἰολίδ᾽ ἂμ βαρύβρομον ἁρμονίαν

OK - My (excellent) Latin teacher offered to teach me Greek, but I declined, since I didn't think it a necessary accompaniment to Natural Philosophy. So you are going to need to help me out with a translation.

I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed Pluto
Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn
In the deep-toned Aeolian mode

AleisterCrowley wrote:I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed Pluto
Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn
In the deep-toned Aeolian mode

You're kidding, right?

Google Translate has it as:

Damasks Fear Cranny Cold Squirrel
melting down not only the alarms
Ioilid by the Bibromonium

So there!

Watis

Watis wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed Pluto
Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn
In the deep-toned Aeolian mode

You're kidding, right?

Google Translate has it as:

Damasks Fear Cranny Cold Squirrel
melting down not only the alarms
Ioilid by the Bibromonium

So there!

Watis

Well both have a full complement of vowels, so I'm not seeing the relevance to this thread

Adrian

It's a particular form , known as 'liposuction' [ leipográmmatos], where the unwanted 'fat' is sucked from the sentence.

I have to confess that I also tried the Google translate, but when I saw the result I decided it was time to admit my ignorance.

I don't think that there is an online translator from ancient greek, but on greek wikipedia there is a page with a translation to modern greek of this. I am not sure that this forum copes with the url encoding of unicode greek. I will copy below the link, but it probably won't work.

https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9B%CE ... F%8D%CF%82

Actually having tried the link it works for me, but it may not work for everyone.

Many thanks to all of the classical Greek scholars who have responded and filled me with enlightenment.

μία ευχαρίστηση

El gusto es mio.

OK - I didn't take a course in Spanish either. The standard Scottish State School offering was French and Latin. As a postgraduate student I was also required to undertake a course in Scientific German - apparently my Latin didn't count, even though Newton favoured it.

I'm going to stray off topic - but then the group title allows such deviations.
I had lunch yesterday with a sadly depleted band of ex-academic Natural Philosophers and Engineers. After the initial health discussions (did you know the waiting list for new knees is 10 months?), we digressed into the relevance of the classical languages of Greek and Latin. One of our number told the tale of his father who had obtained a scholarship to a prestigious Glasgow school. When the time came to select which subjects he could continue with to the Scottish Higher standard, he (the father) decided to go for science. On his first day in the science class, the headmaster spotted him, and without saying a word, he grabbed him by the ear and redirected him to the Greek classroom. I should add that none of us had experienced Greek, but we all had some exposure to Latin. One of our number confessed that he had dropped Latin as soon as he was allowed, but when the time came to select a University, his headmaster (at an English school) had said sorrowfully - "No Latin, so it can't be Oxford or Cambridge. I suppose it will have to be London" . He went to Imperial College.

I had a Lipogram once.

Some postman came up to me and sucked all the fat from my thighs.

Harrowing experience, which I don't recommend to anyone. He used his nasal monotone voice as anaesthetic, and 2nd class stamps as plasters. To seal the wound he used Airmail stickers...