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I found that four letters added some ambiguity and some uneeded complexity. Maybe 5 or even 6 letters?

Still, this is a great intro to relativity and it was a fun read. Also a cool literary feat.

I find the fuzzing of proper names gets annoying, and it would be better if the rule were relaxed for proper names.

Personally, I found the abbreviated names made the piece even more hilariously irreverent than it already was. "Izzy" for Isaac Newton? Makes him sound like an 1980's heavy metal star or something.

Also, a quick google serach indicates that "Ike" is a more common nickname than "Izzy". (And that if Newton had any nicknames in his time, none seem to have survived.)

About the cool literary feat: I'm wondering if there are languages other than English in which it'd be possible to write something like this. I speak Spanish and French and I'm sure it's impossible in both -- they just don't have enough short words.

Probably Chinese and Japanese since Chinese characters have such high information density, but non-Western languages might defeat the purpose of the experiment.

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