The Ultimate Alphabet

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The Ultimate Alphabet (in German: The Ultimate Alphabet ) is an illustrated book by Mike Wilks . It is a collection of 26 illustrations, each of which depicts a collection of objects thatbeginwith a specific letter of the alphabet. The book was first published in 1986 as part of a competition that was endowed with a prize of £ 10,000. The competition ended in 1988. In contrast to alphabet books for children, it contains unusual words, and the realistic design is very complex, but looks rather surreal because of the unusual juxtaposition of the material.

According to Wilks, the book contains images totaling 7,777 words. While the page for the letter X only contains pictures of 30 objects, there are 1,229 images for the letter S. Because of the complexity of the illustrations, the book took 18,000 hours to complete. A single object can also be described with different words: e.g. As a dalmatian ( dalmatian) is also a dog ( dog ), and a witch ( Witch ) is also a woman ( woman ). Conversely, the same word can refer to different classes of objects: the leg of a tripod and the leg of a person count as two different words, and the image for the letter K represents different types of kings. Wilks himself explains in his introduction that each with certain specialist knowledge, I would certainly find more in the pictures than he intended.

For competition purposes , The Ultimate Alphabet Workbook (a workbook bound in file stitching ) was published in addition to the book itself . It contained a checklist with 12,000 words: in addition to the 7,777 words that were shown on the paintings, there were also 4,223 that could not be found. Contestants received one point for each correct word but lost two points for each incorrectly crossed word.

After completing the competition in 1988, Wilks produced The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet , a solution book with numbered line drawings of the images referring to word lists with brief definitions. These lists also included sketches of some relevant items. As Wilks had also predicted, a number of words were discovered between the two editions which he had omitted from the original list. A total of 7,825 words were listed in this edition: the letter S now had 1,234 words.

There are still gaps; z. B. on the picture for the letter A there is a statue of Adam (which is listed), but his Adam's apple (also visible) is missing. So there are many other examples.

The Ultimate Alphabet is the first book in Wilk's Ultimate trilogy. There is also “Die Ultimative Noahs Ark ” The Ultimate Noah's Ark ( ISBN 0-7181-3596-2 ) and “ The Ultimate Spot-The-Difference Book ” The Ultimate Spot-The-Difference Book ( ISBN 0-670-87856 -1 ). This last title was published in North America under the name Metamorphosis ( ISBN 0-670-87666-6 ).

The Ultimate Alphabet Game for iPad was released in June 2010 by Toytek (an independent game developer based in the UK).

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  1. ↑ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt: Books of The Times In: The New York Times , December 4, 1986. Retrieved April 16, 2014.