The Ultimate Alphabet
The Ultimate Alphabet (
Each letter is itself represented several times, typically in braille, morse code, semaphore, and sign language as well as in its printed form.
According to Wilks the book contained depictions of 7,777 words in total,. However, as Wilks points out in his Introduction, "anyone with expertise in any particular subject will certainly be able to identify more in these images than I have intentionally included".
For competition purposes the book was accompanied by The Ultimate Alphabet Workbook, a smaller, saddle-stitched volume containing a checklist of 12,000 words: the 7,777 words depicted in the paintings plus 4,223 that were not. Contestants were to receive one point for each correct word checked, but would lose two points for each incorrect word. The winner was to be the contestant with the highest number of points, regardless of whether they correctly identified all of the words. Additional workbooks were available for purchase by mail order. Completed workbooks were to be submitted by post, to be received before April 1, 1988.
In 1988, after the competition had closed, Wilks produced The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet (
A number of omissions are still apparent. For instance the
The Ultimate Alphabet was the first book in Wilks' 'Ultimate' trilogy. The other books are The Ultimate Noah's Ark (
The Ultimate Alphabet Game was released in June 2010 for the iPad, by Toytek, a UK-based independent games developer.
Reviews
- Games #85[2]
References
- ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (4 December 1986). "Books of the Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 April 2014.
- ^ https://archive.org/details/games-85-1987-april/page/n45/mode/2up