Original Palindromes Oldest

Seed:  Bahamas.
Time: about 15 minutes.

I began the selection process by reading Main-H and clicking on the "bah" fragment in Habsburg. There, I chose Bahamas as a likely seed, thinking of Captain Ahab. From Bahamas, the "sam" fragment lead to "balsam", which proceeded to the Bahamas lab. The verb "from" reversed to "morf" and I considered using it as a misspelling of morph, but soon changed my mind.

* Bahamas sam Ahab
* Bahamas lab a balsam Ahab
* From Bahamas lab a balsam Ahab morf
* From Ma's lab, a balsam Morf.

After adding "From" in the third version, I looked up "morf" online and found the wonderful Edinburgh street musician. Reading about Morf's style and watching some of his videos, I changed direction. I found that I could remove Ahab and tweak the left-hand side to make a valid palindrome.

Seed:  water
Time:  5 minutes

I first explored the re-taw split of water, ignoring words that end in "re" (there are 905), and focusing instead on words that start with "taw". I quickly took a shine to tawnier and the palindrome soon fell into place. With "re" at the beginning, it looked like a legal title and I decided to stop there.

Seed:  wasted
Time:  20 minutes

I started this on the verbs list and landed on wasted. The rest followed fairly quickly. I strongly associate the word cadet with sailing ships, and mealworms with the hardtack sailors ate. Going with the nautical (or maybe spacefaring) theme, the word embark seemed like a good way to expand "em". Krab naturally follows, which is a marketing term for fake crabmeat. I liked the image of a cadet drunk on whatever makes Krab mealworms tolerable. Perhaps the combination ferments without any further assistance.

* wasted det saw
* wasted a cadet saw
* mealworm wasted a cadet saw Mr. Owla em
* Krab-mealworm-wasted, a cadet saw Mr. Owla embark.

This was the first palindrome I composed during an experiment to see how many I could create in a relatively short amount of time.

Seed:  water
Time:  30 minutes

I returned to the word water and took the split ret-aw along a different path.

* water ret aw
* water a caret aw
* era water a caret aware
* era water al claret aware

When that path ended, I tried the ret-a-w split instead. The left fragment revealed words ending in ret such as egret, regret, and margret. That last one got me thinking of names and I chose Greta. This is not actually in the Palindromedary, nor is the split reta-w. However, it does illustrate how a list of words can trigger other ideas.

Next I started looking for words to extend the palindrome on either end. The dial-laid ananym pair looked interesting. In the Reversed list, eight entries start with dial and I chose plaid. I found the absurd notion of plaid water appealing. The word dial gave the composition a marketing feel, so it seemed natural to make it into a sales pitch with a clear call to action.

* water reta w
* water Greta W.
* said water greta w dias
* laid water greta w dial
* plaid water greta w dial p
* for plaid water greta w dial prof
* Ban for plaid water greta w dial prof-nab
* Bats for plaid water greta w dial prof-stab
* Mad for plaid water, Greta W? Dial Prof. Dam.

Seed:  spool
Time:  59 minutes

Spool is another ananym. "Spooling it up" is a phrase I've heard often in an engineering context, usually about getting a motor, engine, or other rotating machinery up to speed. Since the common suffix "ing" is so hard to use in reverse, I went with the contraction spool'n. That's where Putin emerged. As the list below shows, I tried many variations and never landed on anything satisfying.

* spool loops
* spool'n it up, Putin. loops
* creep spool'n it up, Putin. Loops peer c
* unlive spool'n it up, Putin. Loops evil nu
* n inward spool'n it up, Putin. Loops drawn in
* ward spool'n it up, Putin. Loops draw
* deef ward spool'n it up, Putin. Loops draw feed
* wolf spool'n it up, Putin. Loops flow
* fore wolf spool'n it up, Putin. Loops flower of
* I'm a giro spool'n it up, Putin. Loops origami
* nori spool'n it up, Putin. Loops iron
* wonk spool'n it up, Putin. Loops know
* Hey, knit spool'n it up, Putin. Loop stinky, eh?

So I tried a different seed, giving up on spool and focusing on Putin instead. The result is appropriately disrespectful.

* n it up, Putin
* Turn it up. Putin rut.
* Turn it up turnip pin. Rut, Putin, rut.

Seed:  origami
Time:  30 minutes

Starting from the seed origami, the first line below almost leapt off the screen. I chose the im-a-giro split. Though the contraction "I'm" is not in the Palindromedary, it was an obvious possibility. Both giro and giros were in the words list for the right fragment. Originally, giro was short for autogiro, an early precursor to the helicopter. Some also use that spelling for the Greek sandwich, properly called a gyros. Though I spent half an hour trying to expand the palindrome, the first line remains the best.

* I'm a giros origami
* llama I'm a giros origami a mall
* Alive! I'm a giros origami evil A.
* Liam, I'm a giros origami, mail
* Liana, I'm a giros origami, a nail.
* Sega, listen. I'm a giros origami, net silage's
* Mao, listen. I'm a giros origami, net Siloam
* So, listen. I'm a giros origami, net silos.

This palindrome wrapped up my experiment. I managed to produce four palindromes in two hours and twenty minutes, spaced out over half a day, an unqualified success in my opinion.

Origami was also the springboard for a poem containing three more palindromes. With another hour of work, I had a poem in four quatrains, an enigma of mi, and a plurality of palindromes. I'm saving that poem for a future publication, probably the first Palindromedary anthology.