h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

s, c, m, and g are the only consonants. a, e, i, o, and y are the vowels. No w, no u.

a, e, and o are common to both expressions.

My memory is rusty so I don't remember the grammatical term, but both expressions involve the comparing of opposites: come versus go, and this versus that.

The number of words [4] is the same for both, as is the number of letters [14].

None of which seems to be earth-shaking enough to justify the efforts involved in the exercise. But the search for answers is often like that. Many of the patterns that we perceive are just random noise. if the price of butter in Tibet seems to correlate well with the movements of stock markets, there's no apparent reason why this should be more than mere coincidence. And yet, we kick ourselves when later discoveries point to things we chould have guessed....

I think the coincidences here are remarkable when you consider them together, but if the concensus is that you don't want to do the final step with the letters, let me know and I'll explain.

I give up. I figured out the original two phrases in less than 30 seconds but days have gone by and I can't see any remarkable property.

ok, let's knock this one on the head - you're almost there.

The phrases 'Easy come easy go' and 'Comme ci comms ca' are not related linguistically, but they have a very similar meaning. Both are often said with a shrug, as someone pointed out. They are both 14 letters long, and consist of 4 words, the first and third of which are the same. The other property I was trying to elicit was that they only use odd letters of the alphabet (a, c, e, ... are ok; b, d, f, ... are not)

It's certainly true that the odd letters are generally more commonly used - all the vowels are odd, for example - but the chances that two phrases similar in so many other ways should also share this property is something I find remarkable.

Now that is worth noting.

Odd letters. Yes, that is noteworthy. Thanks for explaining.

I've never considered the concept of "odd letters" and likely never would have otherwise.

[Amy P]