What I did was simply go through every pair of letters in the entire alphabet systematically and tried to match each to a real-world entity. Starting with AA, AB, AC and going all the way to ZX, ZY, ZZ you will consider 676 pairs (26 times 26). It is interesting to see how many answers you can come up with, and also how many you can't. I'm sure every person's list will be different. Here's how mine started off:
AA - American Airlines, Alcoholics Anonymous
AB - Alberta (province of Canada)
AC - air conditioning
AD - Anno Domini (Year of our Lord)
AE - initials of the poet A.E. Housman who wrote "When I Was One And Twenty" and "Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now"
AF - Air Force
AG - Attorney General
AH - Anno Hegirae (Year of the Hijrah), the Islamic calendar which commemmorates the beginning of the Prophet Mohammed's journey from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD
AI - artificial intelligence
and so on through AZ (Arizona) and on to BA (Bachelor of Arts), all the way to ZZ. It may take awhile. Several days. Several months. Knowing the periodic table helps (AU is gold, FE is iron, PB is lead).
The only rule is that each answer must come out of your own memory banks spontaneously without referring to anything in a book or on your phone or computer.
It won't put you to sleep, though. Just the opposite, actually. It will keep you awake. To go to sleep, try doing something really useful like praying for your family and friends. It works every time because our old enemy doesn't want us to do that, ever.
This has been another
P.S. - PB is also peanut butter.
That is an interesting alternative to simply going through the alphabet and finding names for each letter. As an aid to sleep, it's no good for me, though. The other day I read that saying 'Yahweh' while breathing in on the first syllable and exhaling on the second is supposed to help. I haven't tried it yet.
ReplyDeleteMy post's subject set me on a whole flotilla of games like five-syllable adjective alphabet, one-syllable verbs alphabet, five-syllable adverb alphabet, North American indigenous people (Indian tribal names) alphabet. Endless possibilities, but still not conducive to sleep!
ReplyDeleteRegarding "Yahweh", it's not even really a word. The four Hebrew letters (called the tetragrammaton in Greed) have no vowels, just the equivalent of our YHWH, unpronounceable. The words Yahweh and Jehovah came along as the alphabet developed and I spawned J and Y, and V and W became interchangeable. It's true, you can look it up. Observant Jews not only consider the 4 letters too holy to utter, they wash they hands before and after writing it. In English they write G-d instead of God. When reading scriptures aloud they substitute the word "Adonai" (Lord) instead, as in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). As a breathing exercise to go to sleep by it borders on the sacrilegious in my opinion, but that's just my opinion. Thank you, Janice!
Greek, not Greed.
DeleteAlso, they wash their hands, not they wash they hands!
DeleteI always pray if I have trouble sleeping and it always puts me to sleep. I assumed it was because it calms me. I never thought about the enemy.
ReplyDeleteThat's worth pondering.
Thank you, Robert
Lulling us into inaction is one of his favorite tricks. When insomnia doesn’t work he tries narcolepsy. We are not ignorant of his devices. If you have never read it, I recommend The Screwtaoe Letters by C.S. Lewis. Thank you, kylie.
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