Written in the mark’s own alphabet / every one of these is legal

The mark’s own alphabet

Fourteen letters to say everything with

The rule

Write the line

The alphabet

The deck lists Oulipo: constraint as a machine for making things. The mark supplies one. Its 24 letters use only fourteen of the alphabet, so the festival can write with those and no others: no b, c, d, j, k, n, p, q, u, x, y or z. It is a lipogram that the institution can keep for good, and it gives the voice a grain you cannot fake. The stricter version is the anagram: a line that uses the mark’s letters exactly, all 24, nothing over and nothing left in the tray. There is at least one, and it is not a coincidence that it is hard.

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