A Stuck Key Letter Puzzle Poem

This week one of the keys on my laptop got extremely stuck. In an attempt to control my frustration while typing, I wrote this post without using that infuriating key. Can you work out which letter is absent? Every other letter is present somewhere in this post.

The vowels are pretty crucial, you may well say. You won’t get far in English bereft of I, E, or A. O often works with U, but also toils in isolation. All five are in cauliflower, vexatious, even perambulation.

There’s a veritable mob of consonants that monopolise the alphabet. Twenty-one, in fact, in case you were to forget. There are your big hitters, the top brass like R, S, or T. Then there’s the bit parts, the minor roles like J, K, or P.

In every group there are outliers, the ones that appear a little strange. They’re rarely seen, barely present, or buck the rules of the game. First off there’s Q, a shy little critter. It can’t be seen without U or it gets all a-twitter.

Another anomaly is the very last letter, the final suspect in our rogues gallery, All angles, all zigzags, it is of course Z. Last but not least, the final maverick I’ll mention, Is obviously X, that’ll relieve the tension.

By now you’ll have got it, the letter I’m missing. It isn’t in whistle, holler, or hissing. It’s also not present in frog, bat, or bee. The culprit of course, you’ll now know, is . . .

Answers on a postcar.