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O and I, or E and A? Our Best Guess at the Missing Vowels in YRD FST

This year's Yird Fast graphics showed a minimalism matched only by the CEB's budget.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The Tercentenary Theater was a sight to see this past Sunday afternoon, as linguists swarmed the yard to tackle the most pressing intellectual caper in the department's history. Their quest? Deceptively simple. Deduce the missing vowels in CEB’s tastefully yet confusingly abbreviated moniker for the day’s revelry: YRD FST.

PhD candidate Trevor Morris remarked, “Nothing gives me more of a rush than solving real world issues with my soon-to-be doctoral knowledge. Do you see how confused these kids are? This whole thing is clearly already quite upsetting. I’m just trying to stop the suffering.”

Running from port-a-potty to port-a-potty, the team of intrepid researchers surveyed students, randomly sampling among fanny-pack-clad attendees and stratifying for sobriety. Even after collecting a smattering of remarks, the experimenters were reaffirmed that no one knew what the hell the CEB was getting at.

“Ya, this thing has definitely had a name in the past, but now that it’s been aesthetically shortened to fit on this neon wifebeater, I just have no fucking idea,” noted Thomas Yang ’20. 

“My money’s on YURD FUST. Write that down,” said Jessica Turner ’22. Meanwhile, her blockmate Ellie Lou took an unexpected stance, retorting “I won’t stand for the continued exclusion of the letter Y from the vowel narrative. YYRD FYST is for lovers.”

After polling the 12 people who remembered where they were, the researchers found a divisive 50/50 split between YORD FIST and YERD FAST. One write-in vote was tallied for ‘YARD FINGERBLAST,’ which was heralded as “tantalizingly close” and “descriptive of my experience in the port-a-john” but quickly annulled for violating Occam’s Razor.

Skulking back toward Boylston, the defeated linguists washed away their sorrows in cucumber water from a paper cone, taking heart in the fact that they could never re-enter these sorry, sloppy premises.

At press time, a small protest could be seen erupting in the Sever archway over Kiiara’s monopoly on the letter 'i'. Oh, and Bazzi was also there.

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