An Open Letter From a Puzzler to the Scientific Community

Dear Scientific Community,

There is a grave error that must be dealt with at your earliest possible convenience:

There is no “E” on the Periodic Table of the Elements.

A periodic table of the elements.

Don’t come at us with Helium (He), Beryllium (Be), Neon (Ne), Iron (Fe), Selenium (Se), Tellurium (Te), Xenon (Xe), Rhenium (Re), Cerium (Ce), Europium (Eu), Erbium (Er), and Einsteinium (Es).

Puzzle designers really need a straight “E” for their designs. Now, look… we’re not unappreciative of Erbium and Einsteinium. Er and Es certainly are useful in crafting messages.

We’ve already got I, O, and U from Iodine, Oxygen, and Uranium… why no E? And while we’re at it, T, R, and A would be extremely helpful.

So please go find another element or 4 and give them symbols that the puzzle community could really work with. And while you’re at it, quit doing shit like abbreviating Ytterbium with Yb. That kind of passive aggression doesn’t help anyone.

6-2-68-16

David & Lisa

4 Comments

  1. Clearly this calls for renaming some of the symbols with less-common letter pairs.

  2. E is for Escapium, it is found on the original chart as the element 0. At least that is what I heard from a guy in a lab coat one time.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: