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True story which I thought worth sharing: I recently came across a scrawled diagram on a scrap piece of paper while tidying my house. It was clearly my handiwork (probably a rough idea for a puzzle), consisting of an arrangement of letters and arrows, and I had absolutely no idea why I had considered it worth creating.

However, I gave it a little thought and soon smiled as I realised what I had been playing around with. I wonder whether you might be able to work it out too?

I have reproduced the diagram here (much more neatly than I had originally scrawled it) but - to make it more of a puzzle for you - I have obfuscated the 5 English vowels (A, E, I, O and U) and their 'special friend' Y with question marks. The challenge for you is to put them in the right places, and explain why they belong there...

TASK: Explain the arrangement of letters and arrows in the diagram and which of the question marks should be replaced by A, E, I, O, U and Y. What was I playing about with when I constructed this diagram?

A diagram to explain, letters connected by arrows with 6 question marks

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This represents

the NATO Phonetic Alphabet.

More specifically,

Each letter points to the last letter of its corresponding NATO phonetic alphabet word: A diagram to explain, words connected by arrows

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    $\begingroup$ Aside from the Case of the Vanishing Shakespearean Title Character, this is exactly correct, yes :) Out of interest, how long did it take for the penny to drop for you, and what gave it away? $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Aug 13 at 9:33
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    $\begingroup$ I've seen this exact graph before! rot13(uggcf://chmmyr.havirefvgl/chmmyr/p-vf-sbe-pybfvat-oryy.ugzy) $\endgroup$
    – noneuclideanisms
    Commented Aug 13 at 19:09
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    $\begingroup$ Wow, interesting - I had no idea this had been done before! Nothing new under the sun, hey? $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Commented Aug 13 at 21:03

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