Pilish

Pilish is a style of writing in which the lengths of consecutive words match the digits of the number π (pi).

Examples

The following sentence is an example which matches the first fifteen digits of π:

How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!

The following Pilish poem (written by Joseph Shipley) matches the first 31 digits of π:

But a time I spent wandering in bloomy night;

Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.

Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,

The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

And this Pilish epitaph (written by Dan Mertz) matches the first 32 digits of π up to the first 0:

Was a time I lived wandering in sorrow.

Often the night weighing anxiously;

mooring unsoundly the id.

And lifeless form became me.

Anomie made the man obsolete

and it spawned absurdist death.

A full-length Pilish novel has been published,^[1] which currently holds the record of the longest Pilish text with 10,000 digits.

Rule sets

In order to deal with occurrences of the digit zero, the following rule set was introduced (referred to as Basic Pilish):

In Basic Pilish, each word of n letters represents

(1) The digit n if n < 10

(2) The digit 0 if n = 10

Since long runs of small non-zero digits are difficult to deal with naturally (such as 1121 or 1111211), another rule set called Standard Pilish was introduced:

In Standard Pilish, each word of n letters represents

(1) The digit n if n < 10

(2) The digit 0 if n = 10

(3) Two consecutive digits if n > 10

(for example, a 12-letter word represents the digits 1,2)

See also

• Cadaeic Cadenza
• Constrained writing

References

External links

• Writing in Pilish
• Pilish Checker
• Accidental Pilish