Everyone knows what a palindrome is: a word that reads the same backwards as forwards (except for spaces and punctuation). Maybe the fact that everyone knows about them is why it's taken me a year and a half to get around to writing about them.<\/p>\r\n
The most famous palindrome is probably \"Madam, I'm Adam.\" Perhaps the second-most famous (and one of the best in terms of clarity and sticking to a topic) is the short-short story version of the creation of the Panama canal:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA man, a plan, a canal: Panama!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
There have been dozens of variations on that line. For instance, if you don't remember the order of the terms right, you can find yourself saying<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA plan, a man, a canam: analpa!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
(I'm uncertain who to attribute that one to, but I think it may've been Elliott.) One of Mary Ann Madden's \"Near Misses\" contests yielded<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA man, a plan, a canal: Suez!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
And someone playing around with the general structure ended up with<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA fool, a tool, a pool: loopalootaloofa!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
At some point, someone had the bright idea of doing a computer search to expand the Panama original. One expanded version, relayed by John Kaminar<\/a>, goes:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, hero's rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a cat, a mane, paper, a Toyota, rep, a pen, a mat, a can, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal, Panama!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
(I love \"a banana bag again.\")<\/p>\r\n
Dan Hoey's definitive 1984 computer-assisted version starts out:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nA man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac, a liar, a hoop, a pint, a catalpa...<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
152 items later, it ends, predictably (the problem with palindromic phrases is that you can be pretty sure how they're going to end ahead of time):<\/p>\r\n
\r\n...a plat, a catnip, a pooh, a rail, a calamus, a dairyman, a bater, a canal\u2014Panama.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
The complete version, along with plenty of other palindromic fun including dozens of non-English palindromes, can be found in the language section of the rec.puzzles archive<\/a>; the English palindromes are in part 3<\/a> of that section, including such tidbits as the fact that \"footstool\" is the longest English-language Morse Code palindrome.<\/p>\r\n
One last Panama-style item:<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\"To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee
\r\nAnd reverie.
\r\nBut reverie alone will do
\r\nIf bees are few.\"<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\u2014Emily Dickinson<\/i> (roughly)<\/p>\r\n
If only Ipanema were a prairie, the above poem would be nicely summarized by this:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAmen, apian, ana\u2014Ipanema!<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
(where \"ana\" means \"an equal quantity of each\")<\/p>\r\n
There are plenty of books that include palindromes; my favorite is Go Hang a Salami; I'm a Lasagna Hog!<\/a><\/cite>, by Jon Agee, because the palindromes are unusual (if a little surreal sometimes), and the illustrations generally provide amusing situations in which the palindromes make sense.<\/p>\r\n
Besides letter palindromes, there are also word palindromes, such as:<\/p>\r\n
\r\nYou can cage a swallow, can't you, but you can't swallow a cage, can you?<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
and<\/p>\r\n
\r\nSo patient a doctor to try to doctor a patient so.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
There are also poems (and even at least one published short story) which are line or sentence palindromes; I find them generally less interesting than word and letter palindromes, and the lack of sense tends to annoy me more at a greater length.<\/p>\r\n
Finally, a palindrome-related category I believe I invented: words and phrases that are the same if rot-13ed (each letter shifted 13 letters in the alphabet) and then reversed:<\/p>\r\n
- an<\/li>\r\n
- Banana? No!<\/li>\r\n
- bar Eno<\/li>\r\n
- er, gnu hater<\/li>\r\n
- Garp cent<\/li>\r\n
- gnat<\/li>\r\n
- gnu hat<\/li>\r\n
- Karen X [Malcolm's sister?]<\/li>\r\n
- ravine<\/li>\r\n
- robe<\/li>\r\n
- tang<\/li>\r\n
- Xena nark<\/li>\r\n
- Zen arm<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>
For links to some palindrome pages, see this page<\/a> (whose URL is a palindrome).<\/p>\r\n