River House Home / Parlor Games

Two Constraints of the OuLiPo

N + 7 is an OuLiPo constraint invented by Jean Lescure.

Replace every substantive noun in a text with the seventh following noun in a dictionary of your choice.  N + 7 is often performed on famous works ( a poem by Dickenson, a paragraph from Faulkner, etc.)  The word should not be a compound derivative of the original or share a similar root.

The Knights Tour literary constraint was used as early as the 9th century in Kâvyâlankâra by the Kashmirian poet, Rudrata.

Essentially, this constraint derives from a mathematical problem: A knight is placed on a chess board and, moving according to the rules of chess, must visit every square exactly once. Georges Perec used a 10 x 10 Knights Tour to construct his novel LIFE, A USERS MANUAL.

More on OuLiPo: OuLiPo - the evolution of the movement led by Raymond Queneau / In Quest of the Oulipo / Oulipo Links Gallery.

All images on this webpage, unless otherwise noted, are found on WikiMedia Commons and used here in accordance with the Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.

The Knight’s Tour animation was created by llmari Karonen and has been licensed for use as follow:

I, the author of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.
In case this is not legally possible:
I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.