Since reading The Times’s recent analysis of popular emoji usage, I’ve been thinking about the emoji’s predecessor, the humble emoticon, as well as another feature of early online communication: gramograms. A gramogram is a group of letters that, when said aloud, sound like a word — think FX for “effects” or EZ for “easy.” Because early SMS text messages often had character limits, gramograms became a staple of textspeak during the turn of the 21st century. To avoid a truncated message (and potentially a fee), R U was used in place of “are you,” C U for “see you.” That type of textese has largely fallen out of fashion, but gramograms are still around if you know where to look for them. Maybe you’ve seen a hot rod with a vanity plate that uses “XLR8” to mean “accelerate.” Gramograms have been favored by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who used a French gramogram, “L.H.O.O.Q.,” as the title for his satirical depiction of a mustachioed Mona Lisa, and They Might Be Giants, whose song “I C U” is written entirely in gramograms. William Steig, the children’s book author best known for writing the book “Shrek!,” which the film was based on, wrote and illustrated two books of gramograms: “CDB!” (“see the bee”) and its sequel, “CDC?” (“see the sea”). A gramogram can also be deployed as a trick, putting words in its speaker’s mouth. Duchamp understood this power, as does any elementary schooler who ever asked a classmate to spell “I CUP.” No stranger to bathroom humor, I think Duchamp would have appreciated that one. If you’ve seen a gramogram in an unexpected place, used one in everyday conversation or come up with an especially clever one, send it to crosswordeditors@nytimes.com. If we get some good ones, we’ll share them soon. I’ll C U then. Solve Today’s Capture
Puzzle of the WeekThis week, check out the Thursday, Aug. 20, puzzle by Hoang-Kim Vu. In the Wordplay column, Sean McGowan wrote: “If there’s one thing you’ll learn from solving crosswords (other than everything you could possibly know about Oreos), it’s that the creativity of constructors is limitless. Since the New York Times Crossword debuted in 1942, puzzle makers have taken the standard 225-square canvas and dreamed up fresh, exciting ways to deliver those tiny epiphanies that make solving so satisfying.”
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