I is for Illustrations!

Our I winner: "Isn't it interesting imagining icy igloos indoors?" Ian inquired. Congrats to Brady!

I also have 3 new illustrations ready for the alphAmuse book. B, C, & D.

Remember, submit ideas for J sentences until Saturday.

Results for C

In a shocking turn of events, we had a tie for the letter C sentence.

Sentence 1: Clara's colorful cookie crumbs completedly covered Connie's comfortable couch cushions, causing Connie considerable consternation.

Sentence 2: Cunning chefs create camouflaged cupcakes causing customer confusion concerning clandestine confections.

According to the official alphAmuse rules, a winning sentence is chosen from the tied sentences by a random process using http://www.random.org/. I asked random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 2. If the number was 1, then Sentence 1 won; if the number was 2, then Sentence 2 won.

The result? 2. Cupcakes for everyone.

(full disclosure, sentence 2 was mine...)

Which sentence should go into the alphAmuse book for the letter "C"?

Best of B

Results are in! The winning B sentence is "Bob's bassoon bellows beautiful ballads but Bertha's bagpipes bewilder bystanders" by Sarah Black.

With so many outstanding choices, I can't help but think that the alphAmuse book will have to come with an appendix listing all the sentences for each letter!

You have until Thursday (tomorrow) night to comment with your C sentences. Voting will begin on Friday. So far the competition includes cheetahs, canines, credit cards, and cupcakes.

Crafting C

A cordial call for C sentences, and a few C considerations to court your creativity.

Origins: possibly an Egyptian staff sling or camel (1)
Greek: gamma
Frequency: 12th most frequent letter in English (2)
"C" from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755): "The third letter of the alphabet, has two sounds; one like k, as, call, clock, craft, coal, companion, cuneiform; the other as s, as, Cæsar, cessation, cinder. It sounds like k before a, o, u, or a consonant; and like s, before e, i, and y." (3)

Of Interest:

C does not appear anywhere in the spelling of the English counting system (one, two, three, etc) (4)

Although C words appear only 6 times on the list of top 200 most commonly used words, they makes up a substantial portion of our grammar vocabulary (clause, comma, colon, conjugation, capitaliz

ation, conjunction). (5)

Tip! Check out this reference for unusual words beginning in each letter of the alphabet: http://phrontistery.info/c.html