All-Vowel All-Stars
Supervocalics for Every Permutation
In the pantheon of supervocalics, Xochiquetzal reigns supreme. What is a “supervocalic,” you ask? Supervocalics are words, names, or phrases that have five vowels — AEIOU — exactly once each, in any order. (Note: No Y’s allowed here — they are left for a separate exercise.) From “super”+”vocalic” (the adjective form of “vowel”), supervocalic is itself supervocalic.
Careful — once you start looking, you may find them everywhere, hiding in plain sight:
But they remain just elusive enough that finding one still brings a little…
Supervocalics engage both our pattern-matching response and the circuits that fire upon recognizing a familiar person (or place or thing). And if we at Beyond Wordplay are doing our job, they may lead us to interesting stories we may not have otherwise encountered… beyond the words themselves.
How This Came Up
Back in the previous millennium, I asked Ross Eckler — longtime editor of Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics — to suggest some open problems in the field of wordplay.
At the top of his list was a challenge to find entries for each of the possible orderings of AEIOU in one American English dictionary (5×4×3×2×1 = 120 permutations). Previous contributors had done similar exercises for other sources. I took up the mantle, with a full visual pass through the unabridged Webster’s Third. These were still the days of the manual search — though computer word lists did exist, if not for the unabridged Webster’s.
To avoid the haggling about the vowel status of “Y,” I decided to consider AEIOUY words separately. A string of dictionary discoveries followed:
- Untainted Words: ambidextrous, businesswoman, cirronebula, delusional, …
- Multi-Word Phrases: fountain pen, platinum blonde, six-hundred-and-two, …
- Fun Coinages: guesstimator, intraneuron, subchairperson, …
With my scanners attuned to this pattern, I started noticing it everywhere — people, places, songs, movies, bands, brands, sayings (“to err is human”) — the items in the cultural and linguistic space around us that make for good crossword entries. The concept of “Popular Items” was born. This broadened the quest — and the enjoyment — considerably.
I dished these to fellow logophiles at Scrabble tournaments, which Stefan Fatsis described in his book Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players. Two Australians from Brisbane — Patrick Whitman and John Jing Kohn (one likes to imagine South Brisbane, though I’m told there’s not much “there” there) — started a Facebook Group (of all things) for friends to riff irreverently in this style. I wouldn’t have imagined, but 12 years later people are still posting new discoveries and musing about events of the day in supervocalic form:
Tax cuts for the rich?
Don’t catch the virus!
Justice for all!
Known Human Beings
In 2003 I set out to see how many of the 120 slots could be filled with supervocalic personalities of some renown. Even with the search tools of the day, this too was a time-consuming manual quest. For some orderings, scrounging up even one result seemed daunting. In others, multiple choices abounded. With a goal of identifying a “best” entry for each slot, much consideration was given to how to assess a person’s “fame level” and “interestingness” — similar to what Wikipedia calls “notability”, and which they have spent much effort formalizing.
Ultimately, all slots were filled with people claiming at least some minimal accomplishment. Difficult slots were filled however necessary — the last involving an obscure German IMDb reference from 1961.
As time passed, I wondered what the results would look like if updated today, combining newer search tools, crowdsourced results, and of course, the requisite hours of “curation” (a fancy word for “elbow grease”).
To that end, we are pleased to announce a newly updated, curated Known Human Beings list — with Favourites for each ordering and others included for “Just a Mention.” The final list combines a proprietary “Interest Score” — an algorithm developed by the Beyond Wordplay tech team — with a subjective internal selection process most akin to a Name of The Year bracket exercise. The result is no doubt “The Most Interesting of All Possible Lists.”
For a challenge, you may want to attempt the exercise yourself. See how many slots you can fill — go on, make a day of it! Once you’re done, we offer highlights of our results below. If you’re the immediate gratification type — click right to The List.
The “Famous” List
Our goal was to maximize global “Interest” so naturally, many Favourites are well-known celebrities past and present from the realms of entertainment, sports, politics, etc. Often it’s possible to think of a supervocalic clue to describe the person.
Sample clue: Jazz flugelhornist
Answer: Chuck Mangione
That was easy. Now see if you can name the supervocalic person fitting each of the following clues.
- Fun late-night host
- Acted ghoulish
- She put forth Katniss
- Clutch NHL goalie
- Led Catholic Church
- Sung Evita’s songs
- Mr. Smith that hunts Neo
- Diver for USA
Answers are in the Known Human Beings list. But we invite you to find more!
☞ Send us your best supervocalic clues to supervocalic people.
People can be in The List or your own discoveries, but should be reasonably well-known. Put these in the comment section of this article, @BeyondWordplay on Twitter, or the Beyond Wordplay Facebook group. We will assemble top results and share them in a future article.
Much Accomplished
Some slot-winners aren’t household names — but achieved something remarkable or created something known worldwide. All of the following are supervocalic:
- the first woman to summit Mount Everest
- the highest-grossing screenwriter of all time
- the creator of Times Square
- an engineer who likely made manned, powered flights before the Wright Brothers
- the US athlete who competed in the most Olympics
You’ll find them all in The List.
Thematic Groups
Certain related groups start to emerge from the results — for instance, supervocalic gods and goddesses:
We have already met one: Xochiquetzal — the Aztec Mother Goddess.
Like a true mother, she nurtures all — vowels and consonants alike, including the “difficult” X, Q, and Z. And like a mother, she does not need to repeat herself — a solid, 11-letter isogram (a word with no repeated letters). Starting with X, she is a rare specimen indeed, a goddess worshipped by the supervocalic Aztec leader Montezuma I.
Other deities include Juno Regina, Queen of the Roman pantheon, and Shin Upagote, a Burmese storm god.
Nations’ Rulers
A surprising number of world leaders past and present make the list. How many can you name, given their country?
Others include: Sir Edmund Barton (1st Prime Minister of Australia), Perlis of Putra (of Malaysia), Birger Magnuson (12th century Swedish king), and King Zu Geng of Shang (a “Perfect 5” — with 5 words, each containing one vowel).
Nobel Plaudits
Of the 919 people to receive Nobel Prizes from 1901 to 2019, six have been supervocalic:
- Nicholas Butler (1930 — Peace)
- Claude Simon (1985 — Literature)
- Robert B. Laughlin (1998 — Physics)
- Luc Montagnier (2008 — Physiology or Medicine)
- Alice Munro (2013 — Literature)
- David Thouless (2016 — Physics)
Oscar-time Buzz
There is one supervocalic Oscar category — (Best) Supporting Actress — and four supervocalic women have been nominated for it, never yet winning it:
- Beulah Bondi
- Judith Anderson
- Lucile Watson
- Julia Roberts
Home Runs and Hits
Baseball fans may be curious about the all-time supervocalic home run leaders:
- Luis Gonzalez (354)
- Curtis Granderson (344)
- Robin Ventura (294)
- Paul O’Neill (281)
- Raul Mondesi (271)
Note that O’Neill edges out Mondesi for their shared AUOEI slot.
The all-time supervocalic hits leader? Hint: he’s an All-Star shortstop with 2877 career hits. You’ll find him in The List.
Names with Gusto
Some slot-winners and runners-up were chosen based on “name flavor” alone. Here are some that roll off the tongue:
- Fred Louis Wham (district judge)
- Irmgard Flügge-Lotz (pioneering engineer)
- Jacquizz Rodgers (NFL running back)
- Plaxico Burress (retired NFL wide receiver)
- Van Lingle Mungo (former MLB pitcher)
- Vontaze Burfict (NFL linebacker)
Fun with Long Names
Some names are included for their record-holding status.
Longest supervocalic names with:
- 5 words: Flat-Top the Brick Truck (20 letters)
- 4 words: Fritz Konrad Ernst Zumpt (21)
- 3 words: Christoph Ernst Luthard (22)
- 3 words: Carson Smith McCullers (20) (well-known)
- 2 words: Wolfgang Schivelbush (20)
- no repeated letters: Manfred S. Lubowitz (“Manfred Mann”) (16)
It’s Not Just “Fame”
An interesting technical aspect of this exploration is the ongoing advancement in AI to score “fame,” or “notability.” When first applying our proprietary Interest Score, the algorithm matched a 30 of 120 (25%) of the subjective human judgments about which person was “most notable,” with another 25% matching the second suggestion. Considering the variety of considerations — popularity, achievement, “name flavor,” balancing overall list characteristics like gender — that is fairly remarkable.
As tools for applications from natural language processing to crossword construction return more candidate results from larger and larger databases, having such algorithms match subjective human behavior will be key to achieving “natural” outcomes. At that point, we will have achieved a Total Turing Test.
Special thanks: Adam Aaronson, Jeremy Horwitz, Alex Boisvert
