Sunday, June 14, 2026

mnemonic devices and pangrams that could be real sentences

A mnemonic device is a sentence where the first letters of the words are helpful to remember something. My favorite one is


                              My Very Educated Mother Just Said Uh, No Pluto

You probably know what it's for. If not you can type it into Google and you will find:

                             Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

and of course NOT Pluto anymore. 

Consider 

                              Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Tomatoes

Again, if you just google that sentence you will find that it is a mnemonic for biological taxonomy: 

                          Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

I came across the mnemonic device

                          Do Men Ever Visit Brighton Beach?

The place I read this did not say what it was a mnemonic device  for. So I typed it into Google and found out:

Yes, they do! If you are refereeing to the Metropolitan museum of Art (The Met) staff, researchers or groups from New York, they frequently travel to the seaside city of Brighton, England, or its coastal namesake Brighton Beach, NY, for educational trips, research, and cultural exchange.

(This is word for word--- so any misspelled words odd phrasing is from Google, not from Bill.) 

What happened? Most mnemonic devices are not sentences you would say in normal conversation. This one is! So what to do? I Googled

                  What is ``Do Men Ever Visit Brighton Beach' a mnemonic device  for? 

It is British nobility:

                           Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, Baron, Baronet.

1) Are there other mnemonics that are sentences one might actually say?  I asked Google and the Google AI overviews gave me the following:

Sam's Horse Must Eat Oats.  This is a mnemonic for the great lakes. 

A big secret conceal her past. This is a mnemonic for the last names of King Henry the 8th's wives. Not quite last names- Catherine of Aragon is regarded as having Aragon for a last name. Bonus: By looking all this up I found out that 3 of the 6 wives has first names that sounded the same: Catherine of Aragon, Catherine Howard, and Katherine Parr. So, he had a type. He had 2 of his 6 wives killed, so 1/3 and he had 1 of the 3 C/K atherine's killed, also 1/3. 


Big gorillas eat hotdogs, not cold pizza. Really? I thought they liked cold pizza. I am more surprised that Google thinks someone might say this sentence in normal conversation, and not just when they are trying to remember the countries of Central America: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama. 

2) I would normally see if Chatty or  Claude does better, but at this point I'm beating a dead horse (maybe Sam's).

3) My favorite pangram (sentences with every letter) that one might actually say is (or was- you'll see why)

                     Watch Jeopardy!---Alex Trebek's fun TV quiz game

Maybe put `show' at the end to make it more something someone might say- or would have said before Alex Trebek passed away.

Google AI overview game me those below. Are they sentences people would say? I leave that as an exercise for the reader 

                         Jim quickly realized that those beautiful gowns are expensive   


                         The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf. 

                         (I uttered that sentence just the other day!)


                         Just keep examining every low bid quoted for zinc etchings.

                         (This was a reasonable sentence until the word  etchings.)


                       Bored? Craving a pub quiz fix? Why, just come to the Royal Oak!  

                       (I prefer the Alex Trebek pangram more.)   

4) Google AI overview seems to not quite know what a sentence one might actually say is.

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