Pelmanism Explained

Vocabulary-challenged reader Priti Lostfowords has written to complain about yesterday's post, parts of which were, according to Priti, unintelligible to some readers and an example of the kind of interweb elitism which should no longer be tolerated in a modern, egalitarian society.*

* The Editor reserves the right to rephrase readers thoughts in order to allow other, better

educated, readers properly to understand their intended drift.

THAT COMPLAINT IN FULL

Dear person in charge

I am writin to say that I like your stuff quite a lot and genrally get it. But yesterday was

takin the piss. I think I am up to most of your stuff but how the f**k am I sposed

to know what pelmetism is - unless its somfink to do wiv curtins?

Your friend

Priti Lostfowords

PS Do you give cash prizes for the best letters?

OUR RESPONSE

Pelmanism /ˈpɛlmənɪz(ə)m/

noun is a system of memory training originally devised by the Pelman Institute for the Scientific Development of Mind, Memory, and Personality in London. It is also a card game in which matching pairs must be selected from memory from cards laid face down.

And no we don't give cash prizes.

An example of the kind of cards that make up a Pelman [ie "matching"] set of two. The object of a Pelman-based game is to turn all the cards face down and reveal two at a time, turning them back face down if they do not match and then trying to remember their location. When a matching pair is discovered, the successful player keeps the cards. The player with the most "sets" is generally regarded as the winner [Chetnole Modified Rules [1946B]]. The cards illustrated are, in fact, late 19th century and pre-date the Pelman Institute's findings. Accordingly they are not strictly Pelman cards but rather the King of Spades.

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NOT WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES

A well-known High Street stationer is selling Adult or "Naughty" Pelman Cards which in addition to the normal game offers the option of a second round in which players try to make sentences from the cards they have won in the previous round.

Those behind the Professor Thrupiece worldwide interweb site will be hoping that this unfortunate incident is now behind them, says worldwide interweb expert Eather Nette, though hopes amongst Great Heaving executives that the matter has been settled by their prompt response were fading fast this morning when DCftUoCUL [the Dorset Campaign for the Use of Clear and Understandable Language] announced that they were closely monitoring the situation. "We are closely monitoring the situation", a spokesperson said, "and any hopes that the matter has been settled by the PTB's prompt response are probably fading fast". "This is an apprehensible example of unwarranted linguistic nebulosity, in a situation where ingenuous transpicuity would have better served the collective interest", the spokesperson continued. "We strongly deprecate this egregious example of the expedient forfeiture of ecumenical and cognoscible penetrability which has encouraged an exclusionary abstrusity to preponderate; it is an inadvertence, a malfeasance and a transgression to be discommended in the most categorical and transpicuous terms. Here at DCftUoCUL we deprecate all forms of desciminative grammatical, lingual, dialectal, etymological, lexemic, lexical, morphological, philological, phonemic, phonetic, phonological and syntactical praxis."

We stand corrected. [Ed]