Original Palindromes Newest

Was that a rod on a rail? Nope, just an odor. Weird.

I’m sure Jonathan has figured this one out before!

While there are so many that I enjoy that make me laugh, I really like this palindrome because it actually makes sense.

???? Time keeps on slippin’ into the future...

I don’t really have a story for every palindrome I’ve thought of, especially since many of them were over the last couple years.

Muse: one of the nine ancient Greek and Roman goddesses believed to be in charge of particular arts and sciences.

Mime: an ancient dramatic entertainment representing scenes from life, usually in a ridiculous manner.

I can’t say what the two of these would equal (sum), but they seem to be well matched.

Alligators need lots of instructions.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s impossible to find a red nun who would get in a bus and allow you to drive her under a submarine. Believe me, it’s easier when the sub is dry-docked!

Doctor backward was just begging to be used, so I told ol’ sawbones what I do and don’t do to see if it would help him diagnose my obsession with words. It didn’t.

See?

This age-old question is clearly answered by the next palindrome.

It hurts when you run into the handle of a door!

Everyone has a laminate piece of identification, but I’ll bet there aren’t many who have a diet animal trap!

For those who are not aware, Strohs is the name of a beer that they do not make anymore. I tried it before and it did stink. As for my gym knitting shorts, well....

There is something dark and foreboding about this palindrome, and it almost seems to make sense. For me, that is a rarity in my composition, but I still like it!

This could be the name of a trendy new gallery.

Clearly, Nigel is a pilot, albeit one with a conspicuously-shaped lip. It seems the air traffic controller sees that Nigel is in danger and is instructing him on how to avoid it with his airplane.

I thought of this palindrome a few years ago, when it seemed everyone was using Uber, and it seemed like I heard the word several times a day. As for the word “Luft,” you can hear Nena—the German band—sing about it in the 80s song “99 Luftballons” on the same-named album. Who has ever heard of a floating bullet, right? And who wouldn’t want to tell Uber about a sly red nun in under one?

This palindrome started with amygdala, which is part of the limbic system of the brain. Not sure why I know that but this word backwards is pretty much the start or middle of a sentence, so it just progressed from there.

This palindrome started with the word step, and I just kept playing around with it and came up with this. I have never submitted palindromes before, so I haven’t tried the composer yet, but I am looking forward to it.

It has been somewhat difficult not to think about Russia over the last four years, so why not use it in a palindrome?!

This is the result of my playing with sentences using the words Ma and am. It is a little dark, and it sort of makes sense, two things which are somewhat unusual in my palindromic attempts.

“God” and “Ma” are somewhat easy pickings for making palindromes but for me, this is one of those rare ones that almost make sense. I started with the word dogma and went from there.

Not India the country, they would need to aid far more, but India the Nightingale-esque heroine.

Marked rejected 7/12/2021 14:54 by rayf, discovered not original

The old Greek Titan has enough riding on his back without the likes of us adding to his burdens.

Who knows what error this lad has made. Has he spoken out about politics in polite company, or is it more anatomical? What I do know is that he needs to be called out—somewhat condescendingly—for his actions.

While pursuing a palindrome using the word stomach, I happened upon the name Galilee, which reverses to eelilag. So I began playing around with Galilee and eel I lag.

Galilee eel I lag
drag Galilee eel I laggard
s yawl a Galilee eel I lag always

I liked something about the phrase “Galilee eel I lag always” and decided to explore that further.

Because a yawl is a a two-masted sailing boat, the word aboard came to mind. The verb am seemed a nice addition. I considered “I am aboard” for a bit, but decided to take the smaller step of using only “am aboard.” The trigger for adding am came when I entered aboard into the Word Explorer field. The split dra-oba listed only six words starting with oba and I chose Obama.

Am aboard s yawl a Galilee eel I lag always dra Obama

This change introduced a new problem. Now, in addition to the middle of the palindrome and each end as places to expand, I have added two more. I wanted to fix these two new nodes before resuming the usual searches. On the left I have an S between aboard and yawl. The expansion node is between aboard and S. The matching node on the right is between always and dra.

On the left side, I needed a word ending with S. A common solution is to use a possessive form, which makes sense with what’s there. For example, “Am aboard Tom’s yawl.” To meet the symmetry requirement, I must reverse what I add on the left, and put it before dra on the right.

In the first item in the list below, I put a * where I need to add letters and words. I’m searching the Reversed list for words that end with dra, meaning I look at reversed words that begin with ard.

Am aboard *s yawl a Galilee eel I lag always *dra Obama
am aboard nuts yawl a Galilee eel I lag always tundra Obama
am aboard Nek’s yawl a Galilee eel I lag always Kendra Obama
am aboard Nassac’s yawl a Galilee eel I lag always Cassandra Obama

While I liked the last construction best, the two words “Galilee eel” expose the symmetry in too obvious a fashion for my taste. So I went looking for a way to fix that. For some time I played around with Galilean, which meant replacing eel with ael. I first intended to make the N at the end of Galilean be the center of the palindrome. However, it quickly became hard to find any words ending with ael that could fit in that spot.

Maybe I could just put a single letter in front of eel. I came up with these:  feel, heel, keel, reel, weel. A weel is a wicker fishing trap, specifically for eels. Ooh, eels! However, that thought is another kind of trap because when I add the W, the word eel is no longer in the palindrome. I encounter that situation often. I’ll be hanging onto a previous word, mistakenly thinking it is an important subject of the sentence, when I am actually exploring new words that replace an old one. It’s better to remain in the present and work with what is actually there after making an exploratory change.

Skipping weel, I settled instead on heel, referring to the owner of the yawl.

Am aboard Nassac’s yawl, a Galilee heel I lag always, Cassandra Obama.

The grammar is a bit tortured. A technically correct interpretation would mean that the sailboat is a Galilee heel. However, palindromes often stretch and twist accepted grammatical norms. I think it’s quite easy to get the gist and conclude that Nassac is the Galilee heel.

If I put a period after yawl, and a comma after heel, then the interpretation shifts, and the speaker is self-deprecating, perhaps angling for sympathy from Cassandra.

Am aboard Nassac’s yawl. A Galilee heel, I lag always, Cassandra Obama.

Amaryllis is another example of a word that just came to me and made something wonderful when I dropped it into the Palindrome Composer. Amaryllis is the name of the bulb that many people like to force for winter blooms. Each bulb usually has one flower stalk, a large hollow tube topped by one or more large blossoms. My father grew them by the dozens in central Texas and gave them away to people who visited the house.

The word amaryllis has three splits.

amaryllis silly-rama
amaryllis sil-lyra-ma
amaryllis silly-ram-a

Amaryllis sillyrama has been a known palindrome for some time, but I have not seen any other palindromes based on amaryllis, so opportunities abound.

Split:  silly-ram-a

silly ram amaryllis

I thought of the kids cereal, Trix. Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.

era silly ram, amaryllis are

Using the Reversed word list, I looked for words ending with era. While reading the list, I paid attention to two things. Would the forward word make sense on the left? Was the remainder of the reversed word useful on the right?

Opera, silly ram. Amaryllis are po
No. Si. Opera. Silly ram, amaryllis are poison.
Monera silly ram, amaryllis are nom
womera silly ram, amaryllis are mow
Woomera silly ram, amaryllis are moo w
Tamera silly ram, amaryllis are mat
camera silly ram, amaryllis are mac
valera silly ram, amaryllis are lav
Hera silly ram, amaryllis are h
hetaera silly ram, amaryllis are ate h

That approach was not working out. Here’s one of the most complete examples.

Snog a woomera, silly ram. Amaryllis are moo wagons.

In case you’re not familiar with Australian words, a woomera is a spear thrower, like an atlatl. Kiss a spear thrower, silly ram? Amaryllis are moo wagons? That was nonsensical even for a palindrome, which often stretches the concept of grammar. Most of the other variations had similar fates.

Tamera silly ram, amaryllis are mat
Us, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are Matsu.
Let Tamera, silly ram, amaryllis are Mattel.
Set Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are mattes.
Gnit, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are matting.
Diot, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are mattoid. (Diot is a French sausage)
Etaru, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are maturate. (Etaru is a Japanese restaurant in FL)
Eru, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are mature. (Eru is the supreme deity of Arda, LoTR)
Oz, Tamera, silly ram. Amaryllis are matzo.

Another variation and the results.

camera silly ram, amaryllis are mac
To Herb, a camera. Silly ram, amaryllis are macabre hot.
Anera camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are macarena.
Node camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are Macedon.
No, I tare camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are maceration.
Oh camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are macho.
Elk camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are mackle. (Mackle, a blurred impression in printing)
No camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are Macon.
Nor camera, silly ram. Amaryllis are Macron.

Here’s the only two I consider to be decent, but not necessarily great, palindromes.

Eru tamer, a silly ram. Amaryllis are mature.
Oh, camera. Silly ram, amaryllis are macho.

Seeds:  eirenic and other words ending in “nic”

The last terrific word I found that ends with nic, was titanic.

titanic cinatit

I used the Word Explorer to find the split c-ina-tit. The middle fragment contains the two consecutive words “in a.” The right fragment has fifty-eight matching words. Scanning that list, I stopped on titfer, a word I had heard but couldn't define until I looked it up. The bonus factor was how the reverse fit onto the left side of the palindrome. The only part I needed before titanic was ref.

Ref titanic in a titfer

Great. So what does titfer mean? That odd little word is from Cockney rhyming slang. Titfer is short for tit-for-tat, which rhymes with hat. So titfer means hat. Add barney and you have the sum total of my Cockney vocabulary.

For the illustration I chose the sport of baseball. The home-plate ref is the most iconic referee in all of sports, in my opinion. Other sports are awash in vertically striped shirts, but the jet black chest-protector-wearing umpire at home plate stands above them all.

Seeds:  eirenic and other words ending in “nic”

Another word I found in the nic group was manic. Manic reverses to cinam. Using the Palindrome Composer, I entered manic in the Word Explorer and found seven splits. This one just called out to me: c-ina-m. Blank-c in a m-blank. I put this split to the right of manic and removed the lone C.

manic in a m

The palindromedary has over sixty pages of words beginning with M, but I just tried a few that came to mind at random. Mosaic was one, and it was magical.

Cia, so manic in a mosaic

I loved this one so much, I decided to use it as the title of my first palindrome collection. Later, I thought it would make a perfect illustration for the cover, as a mosaic.

Seeds:  sadistic and eirenic

My earlier palindrome, “Eirenic in Erie” inspired more exploration. Looking at words ending with nic, I found two pages worth in the Reversed word list. That resulted in a series of simple palindromes that just appeared to me as I entered each word into the composer. I spent no more than a few minutes on each one.

One such word I explored was arsenic, which reverses to cinesra. Out of habit, I dropped the leading C, which resulted in the intriguing phrase “arsenic in esra.” I could have consulted the Ananym list for a pair of words to add to each end. However, my first thought of a word to precede arsenic was the adjective some. That handily reverses to another name, Emos. The consequences are murderous.