Photo Synthesis
Find the bond and extend the wordplay chain.
We recently offered a challenge originally posed by Ben Zimmer in the Only Connect Questions Facebook group, inspired by (but not affiliated with) the great UK quiz show. We gave the first four images in a series, and challenged our readers to continue it — see if you can identify the commonality and extend the series (spoilers below).
As you may have deduced, each image shows two people whose initials form a consecutive alphabetical chain:
AB/BC — Alec Baldwin, Bill Clinton
and each successive image continues the chain:
BC/CD — Billy Crudup, Claire Danes
CD/DE — Charles de Gaulle, Dwight Eisenhower
DE/EF — Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald
The challenge here is not only to find recognizable people with consecutive alphabetical initials (not always so easy!), but to find images of them with someone next in the chain, i.e., from the same era and with enough in common to be in the same photograph (definitely not always so easy).
The examples above are all high-quality, with nary a quibble about celebrity level to be heard. But how far down the alphabet can the chain be extended? Or should we ask, how obscure might we need to get to fill all slots — if they could even all be filled? Harder letters lie ahead, in pairs (and pairs of pairs). How creative — or devious — will our methods need to be?
We have pulled out all the stops in our quest to complete the chain — and we include finds from our loyal Twitter crowd. In some cases, neither we nor our readers unearthed a suitable picture — the dreaded “Image Not Found.” Overall, you may be very surprised at what slots we were able to fill, and which remain unfilled.
The challenge combines all the elements we enjoy at Beyond Wordplay — a broad swath of pop culture deep dives, multicultural linguistic thinking, and good old-fashioned elbow grease. Googling and computerized lists help, but a simple flash of inspiration might do just as well.
If you want to try, now would be the time to make your list — EF/FG, FG/GH, GH/HI… — and see how many images you can find online. Then peruse our best efforts, below. The challenge can be enjoyed by all from the most casual to the most hardcore. Suffice to say, if you aren’t prepared for a full scan of Finnish hockey players, the latter won’t apply to you. But enjoy nevertheless.
EF/FG
We continue the chain with actors Eileen Fulton and Farley Granger, who played a married couple on As the World Turns, where Ms. Fulton reigned for a remarkable 50 years, concurrently appearing on Broadway as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf for some of that time.
On Twitter, @Kid Beyond supplied the more current Elle Fanning and Frankie Grande — both famous in their own right, and siblings of quite more famous sisters Dakota and Ariana, respectively.
If needed, we could have allowed birth names, as in this shot of Eddie Fisher and Frances Gumm (aka Judy Garland, of course).
But if we’re going down that road, why not this double whammy?
Billie Holiday’s birth name was Eleanora Fagan, giving us two EF/FG pairs in one image. (Of course, wherever possible we prefer actual photos of two people actually appearing together, but in a pinch we’ll allow composites.)
FG/GH
The GH slot is one of the most fertile, with mega-celebs like George Harrison, Gene Hackman, Goldie Hawn, Gigi Hadid, and Geri Halliwell, not to mention The Band’s Garth Hudson, football legend George Halas, and Brooklyn Dodger Gil Hodges.
But to pair with an FG, here are Frank Gorshin (later TV’s Riddler) and George Hamilton (of tanning fame), along with Connie Francis, in the 1960 movie Where the Boys Are…
Beyonder David Cohen found Mariners Franklin Guttierrez and Greg Halman in this pic.
GH/HI
Continuing the Seattle Mariners theme, above is the result of a time-consuming search: a picture of teammates Hisahi Iwakuma and Guillermo Heredia. Iwakuma’s major league résumé includes a no-hitter, and Heredia’s includes a World Series ring with the 2021 Braves. This was a surprisingly difficult slot.
On the surface, GHI seems like relatively easy sailing. But in fact, we had a hard time getting HI on our own supply (of photos). One would think someone like Democratic politico Harold Ickes (Senior or Junior!), or 3-time golf U.S. Open winner Hale Irwin would have paired with our plentiful GH crop, but for a long time we were faced only with tantalizing near misses:
- Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote lyrics for a work by Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets. But sadly, we found no photo of them meeting.
- South African golfers Graham Henning and Hugh Inggs finished 1st and 2nd at the 1969 General Motors Open. No doubt, pictures were snapped. But none we could find.
- Relatives George Harper and Henry Isley were notable courtiers of Tudor times. Henry and his brother Thomas participated in Wyatt’s Rebellion in 1554 — one of the the earliest known Isley Brothers collaborations. (We’ll be here all week.) But — no shared portraits.
- Our vote for “Photo Op Most Likely to Happen” would be between supermodels Gigi Hadid and Hanan Ibrahim — they have not to our knowledge posed together yet, but surely a joint photo must be coming soon to a runway near you. Work it, ladies!
But ultimately the the key to the GH/HI slot lay in the Japanese language’s friendliness to both I surnames and H first names like Hiroshi, Hideo, and Hisahi. This led to hundreds of Japanese HI notables to be found, if you manually drill in on Wikipedia’s Surnames by Language page. Which we did.
HI/IJ
As mentioned, our stock of prominent HI people is scant. And while IJ is a narrow lane, there is some promise, including: boxer Ingemar Johansen, jazzman Illinois Jacquet, and the fictional Indiana Jones and Inspector Javert. English architectural pioneer Inigo Jones and General Henry Ireton had portraits done by the same artist, but not sitting at the same time.
So, we will leave you with the 2021/2022 Penn Quakers football roster — featuring defensemen Henry Iloanya and Isaiah Jordan.
IJ/JK
We tip our hat to Patrick Friel from the Only Connect Questions Facebook group for finding married French actors Irène Jacob and Jérôme Kircher to fill this tricky slot.
Chart-topping 1920s bandleader Isham Jones appears here with the “best tuba player in the United States,” John Kuhn (born Red Cloud on a Sioux Reservation).
Never heard of Isham Jones? Well if you’ve heard You’re In the Army Now or It Had to Be You — he wrote those.
In the Near Miss category, Ingemar Johansen was heavyweight champ while John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy were in the White House— and while we have no record of them meeting, they did all share a Life magazine cover.
Henry “Indiana” Jones would be an HIJ all by himself, which is a whole ’nother exercise. But for fun, here’s Indiana Jones and a Jedi Knight:
JK/KL
With thousands of guests, Jimmy Kimmel gives us ample opportunity to pair with a KL. Here he is with three: Kawhi Leonard, Kenny Loggins, and Kevin Love.
Putting our Finnish hockey deep-dive to use, here are Edmonton’s Jarri Kurri and Kevin Lowe flanking Mark Messier, celebrating their 1990 Stanley Cup victory.
KL/LM
The fabulous Karl Lagerfeld and Liza Minnelli fill this slot.
LM/MN
Broadway and film luminaries Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky, better known as Mike Nichols, oblige us with a picture.
MN/NO
Yes, there are NOs — like Nick Offerman and Norah O’Donnell, but as they offer no opportunities, it now occurs to us to look to net opponents. Early in our search, we found this composite image of Martina Navratilova and Naomi Osaka — though they didn’t actually appear together.
But then we found the Japanese national team, where Naomi is accompanied by Makoto Ninomiya (2nd from right, below).
Women’s tennis will prove fertile ground later in our quest.
NO/OP
Here’s a nice find in the very difficult NO/OP slot, which we will claim as TOTALLY LEGITIMATE, for reasons detailed below.
It features Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, with his new sidemen — Danish jazz bass prodigy Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and euryvocalic drummer Louis Hayes. If you’re questioning any bona fides here, NHØP, as he is known, is considered one of the best bassmen in jazz history and won a Grammy for Best Jazz Group performance alongside Oscar in 1974.
Let’s examine let’s examine some curiosities of the NHØP name. First, he does go by the hyphenated first name Niels-Henning — a legitimate N. Next, he is commonly referred to as “Ørsted Pedersen.” The Ø — commonly called a “slashed O” — is generally considered an accented version of the English letter O, which does fit our bill, though it is considered separately in Danish and alphabetized after Z, along with other accented letters.
Unhelpfully described as “named just as it sounds,” the letter Ø is used in Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Southern Sami languages, and sounds somewhere between a schwa sound and the French “eu” as in bleu, or German ö, as in “coöperate.” (Just kidding, New Yorker editorial staff — keep that diaeresis hand strong! 😎)
Which is all to say: this is a totally legit NO/OP. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Readers may see outsized potential in other prominent OPs like: Oliver Platt, Otto Preminger, or possibly Olaf Palme.
OP/PQ
Here, we dive into the mysterious world of Q.
The title of coolest PQ we found was a tie between Patti Quatro — Suzi’s older sister, who founded The Pleasure Seekers and played with Fanny — and Patricia Quinn, aka Rocky Horror’s Magenta (’nuff said). Kinks’ bassist Pete Quaife and mesmerist Phineas Quimby also have their pleasant qualities, but none pair quite with an OP.
We will note the film My Son the Fanatic which stars Om Puri and also features an actor named Pervez Qadir. But: image not found.
For an actual photographic OP/PQ overlap, we turn to the 2002 Los Angeles Dodgers. Their staff featured #43 Odalis Perez occasionally closing out games started by #46 Paul Quantrill. And although we’d prefer a 2-shot, their Topps team card features them both, and is thus a slot-filler.
PQ/QR
We’ve worked long and hard to crack the QR code, leading to such viable celebs as hip hop’s Quando Rondo and basketballer Quentin Richardson. Still, the overlapping Q in the PQ/QR slot makes this one a toughie. But, with a bit of imagination we offer this duo:
“But that’s only one man!” you remark, astutely.
Ah yes, but that one man is Australian actor Philip Quast, in the 2020 TV miniseries Operation Buffalo, playing another man — Professor Quentin Ratchett (himself a PQR, but we digress). Such efficiency must be honored, and thus, we claim the slot.
QR/RS
Here, with some effort, we are able to sharpen our Q.
In the QR slot, we focus on the very photogenic and socially connected Queen Rania of Jordan, here looking regal with her husband King Abdullah…
…but more usefully, here she is with Rupert Scofield, founder and CEO of FINCA International (the Foundation for International Community Assistance). Yes, there are literally thousands of pictures of her online in glamorous international settings, but for our purposes standing awkwardly next to an agricultural economist gets the job done.
Near Miss Department: Basketballers Quentin Richardson and Rod Strickland are both DePaul University alums and former New York Knicks. They attended this charity event together, but we can not find a press photo. In the picture below, Quentin (on right) appears with his childhood friend and fellow Blue Demon, Bobby Simmons — but with no conclusive proof he was born “Robert” at birth, this remains a Near Miss for now.
RS/ST
Here’s an interesting one: the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album — perhaps the most iconic collage of famous faces in modern pop culture. Do any combinations offer an alphabetic chain link? Surely, one must be findable in there. To this end, first we note the presence of not one but two alphabetical Beatles — George Harrison and Ringo Starr (though not, as some think, resident sitarist Ravi Shankar). This gives us four neighboring pairs to work with: FG, HI, QR, and ST. Surely, there’s got to be one apt celebrity amongst all those cutouts.
As it turns out there is exactly one — appearing three times. Surely by now you’ve figured out it’s…Shirley Temple. And while the album cover could suffice, here’s a picture with her daughter Lori Black, backstage with the Fab Four at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on August 19, 1964, at the first date of their North American tour.
Wouldja believe that ten-year-old would grow up to play with grunge pioneers The Melvins, under the name Lorax? Go figure.
Less excitingly, here’s Ryan Seacrest and Steven Tyler on American Idol.
ST/TU
Et tu, TU? With the challenging TU pair, the quest to fill this slot quickly converged around one person: Tracey Ullman — the most gifted and versatile comedic actress of our time (go ahead: fight us), whose sketch shows have featured numerous other comedic celebs. A search for images with Carrot Top (born: Scott Thompson) was fruitless (and vegetable-less). But an episode of Tracey Takes On… did feature Tracey and The Kids in the Hall’s Scott Thompson — interestingly, known for his portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, as is Ms. Ullman. In this scene, shown below, Tracey is the one in drag.
Along the way, we noted a remarkable event — the 34th Kennedy Center Honors. See how many alphabetically initialed celebs you can spot in the Red Carpet composite below.
Not only do we have a 3-person RS-ST-TU chain in: Raphael Saddiq, Stanley Tucci, and Tracey Ullman, but also in attendance were a BC, JK, and MN — Barbara Cook, John Krasinski, and Mike Nichols (whose wife Diane Sawyer is pictured).
TU/UV
As we move into the TU/UV/VW area, our search beam focuses on Germanic and Nordic names. If you were thinking we haven’t gone through placekicker Uwe von Schamann’s Twitter feed — we have. (Spoiler: it’s still mostly about his 1977 field goal for Oklahoma that beat Ohio State.) Finnish hockey again provides hope in the form of Urho Vaakanainen, but with no TU payoff. All attempts to pair sci-fi author Ursula Vernon, or any of Popes Urban V — VIII have fallen flat.
But on our TVs lately, we couldn’t help but notice trailblazing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to serve as Germany’s Minster of Defense (or “Defence,” in Eurospeak). Is it just us, or is she not a Tracey Ullman character waiting to happen? Until that portrayal occurs, we offer a side-by-side comparison:
One might quibble about the alphabetization of frau von der Leyen’s last name, which would presumably be listed under L in a German phone directory. But that will not deter us here.
UV/VW
In this challenging slot, Ursula von der Leyden obliges by appearing alongside Volker Wieker, then Chief of Staff of the German armed forces.
We leave it to our readers to suggest suitable U-V-W captions that make sense in German.
VW/WX
The VW slot serves up options for well-known figures including Vanessa Williams, Vanna White, and Vera Wang. But as we enter the perilous latter stages of the alphabet, we must get creative to find X-men and women.
X is, of course, a rare starting letter in most languages, notwithstanding the occasional William Xavier or Wilmer Ximenez sighting.
But if we broaden our cultural thinking, we find some daylight in Chinese, where W, X, Y, and Z are all quite common initials of Romanized Chinese names. We submit this list of Chinese tennis rankings as Exhibit 诶.
In the women’s game, both Venus Williams and Wang Xiyu competed in the 2022 US Open. An early exit by Venus prevented a matchup, and if they posed together we could find no evidence. The slot remains unfilled.
Orthographically speaking, the VW/WX combination will likely require a meeting of West and East. However…
WX/XY, XY/YZ
Though things may look impossible this far down the alphabet, they are about to get interesting.
We can look to Spanish names including Aztec/Nahuatl assimilations for possibilities with all of these combinations: Xóchitl — from the Nahuatl for “flower” — is a common Mexican girl’s name. One can imagine a Xóchitl Ybarra posing for a selfie with an Ynez Zamora somewhere on Instagram.
However, furthering our Chinese women’s tennis deep dive bears fruit. We note that — helpfully, for us — Chinese names are commonly displayed both in traditional ordering (family name first), as well as Western ordering (family name last). You may even see both on a given WTA results page at the same time, as in this example containing both “You Xiaodi” and “X. You”:
So we are on solid ground using either one for this exercise, as per our own impeccable standards of quality. With that in mind we present the following:
Here we have both Wang Xiyu and Wang Xinyu, along with (in Western form) Xiaodi You and Yuxuan Zhang, thus filling the WX, XY, and YZ slots in one image — or what we would call Game, Set, and Match, to finish the challenge.
Now, if we had told you at the start that we would find one image in which three consecutively initialed people of some notability appear together, would you have guessed they would span WXYZ? We wouldn’t have.
We hope you have enjoyed taking on Ben Zimmer’s challenge to form an alphabetic image chain of notable people. We made it from Alec Baldwin and Bill Clinton to Wang Xiyu, Xiaodi You and Yuxuan Zhang, with help from a few creative efforts in some slots. Can they be filled by you, our fearless readers? We invite you to share your findings on Facebook and Twitter.
And we hope you will join us for other alphabetical excursions in future.
