Original Palindromes Oldest

Time: half-hour. I started with trucker, naturally, and I used the palindrome composer. I was surprised by the words available for the split rek-curt. I chose trek for the left word, which made a short palindrome right off the bat! Then I played with the words starting with curt. I liked curtailed because it made sense; an organized convoy of truckers on a trek that got canceled.

What I had: Delia trucker trek curtailed.

Going beyond that was harder. Since the words were all complete, I had to find new ones to expand the sentence. I noticed that "trucker trek curtailed" felt poetic and it could be the middle of a haiku. A haiku palindrome would be cool, so I went with that flow.

With Delia on the first line of the haiku, and the trek canceled, it just occurred to me that maybe a trek organizer would start telling the drivers the bad news. "Go home" felt like a good phrase, and to my surprise, it worked just as well in reverse. I'll let you figure out what the last line means. After all, art is in the eye of the beholder.

And that was it. Finished. As people used to say where I grew up, "It ain't perfect, but it'll do.”

I was in the bathroom and spaced out on my mouthwash for healthy "gums", and reversed it into smug. Then I played on the reversal thing on the Palindrome Composer until, I came up with "spits", which is the last step in mouthwash. Having slight dyslexia helps, because I reverse words anyway.

Like any well-read, intelligent personage with a loving family, I spend most of my free time wondering what would happen if Red Sonja, the chainmail-bikini-wearing counterpart of Conan the Barbarian, took up arms against the Dark Elves of Menzoberranzan. After nigh-interminable research and rumination, I came to a three-part conclusion:

Drow spot a top sword:
Red dame, none madder.
Flee, ye gog-eye elf!

Regarding the first line, the drows, or drow, are the Dark Elves of D&D’s Menzoberranzan. The genesis of this line was, of course, the reversal of drows and sword. I realized immediately that no palindrome can withstand a word like “fight,” cursed with the unmatchable “thg” clump when reversed, so I fell back on reader inference. Elves of any stripe tend to be aloof—in the eyes of impatient mortals, at least—and once I had that word, the word “fool” sprang out at me. Given that, it hopefully goes without explication that the “ah, ha” interjections, coupled with the image of a sword, add up to their foolish aloofness being under direct assault.

The phrase “red dame” was actually the seed of this whole triplet. I was swapping palindromes with a lovely red-haired friend of mine, and paring this line down to four coherent words took over six hours. When it did finally “click,” it was more like an earthshaking ka-chunk.

This one grew naturally out of seeking reversals for elf. I figure an elf who lives underground is likely to develop a bit of a goggle—especially when suddenly assailed by a spectacularly beautiful woman decorated by the entrails of his legionnaires. The Dark Elves worship Lolth, Spider-Goddess of Chaotic Evil, so it’s not out of court for a more or less heroic blade-maid to take issue with them. Personally, I bristle at the almost-but-not-quite palindromable name Lolth: again, that wretched “ht” reversal. This calls for some neologisms; who’s with me? Let the Rise of the Htocracy begin!

Time:  15 minutes
Seed:  electrons

Browsing the Main list, I saw the entry for electrons. The reverse split stood out:  snort-cele. At the very least, I wanted to know how many words ended with snort so I entered electrons into the Word Explorer field in Palindrome Composer. Then I selected the snort-cele split. 

So how many words end in snort? Just one, snort, but that was enough. I wrote "electrons snort cele" in the Current Composition field. Somehow that didn't sound useful, so I reversed the phrase to "snort cele electrons" and saw a possibility. The first word that begins with cele is celeb. I added the b to the end of cele and got "snort celeb electrons." That's a truly surreal phrase. It also solved the doubled-letter in the middle problem. Now the palindrome isn't quite so obviously symmetrical. But I didn't want to stop there.

Playing around, I expanded the phrase to "I snort celeb electrons i." For no particular reason I expanded the right side to the word inactive. Then the left side became evitcani and I added some spaces to make "evit can I snort celeb electrons inactive?"

That sounded unsatisfying, and, the only word ending in evit is the name Levit. Dropping evit, I looked at the remainder and came up with "can I snort celeb electrons in a c," which has a nice grammatical flow. Randomly trying cup for the last word, I decided it was finished. "Pu, can I snort celeb electrons in a cup?"

Pu is a name and also the atomic symbol for Plutonium, a rich source of electrons, both ordinary and celebrity.

One of the most famous examples of ancient palindrome play, The Sator Square, is something I’ve always been inspired to recreate—except in English rather than Latin. The central word to the Sator Square is tenet. At the time of writing, Tenet was Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic production in the UK. After restrictions on movement and cinema openings, due to COVID19, were eased in the UK, Tenet was one of very few of the major studios’ films to get a theatrical release.

The film even had a “palindromic” time structure.

I nod with approval.

Now I know to an outsider, this will sound like the most British thing you could read, but it is true. In the UK, we have a celebrity chef called Nigella Lawson. She is the daughter of Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and former wife of billionaire Charles Saatchi. Nigella is exactly how you would imagine a person from the elite section of society to be. She—I do believe unfairly—comes into a lot of flack for her differences to the average working population, with her turn of phrase and her inclusion of the most unheard of and unfindable ingredients.

During her cookery shows, she will often regale us with tales of her past and heritage—worlds that are completely alien to the viewers. On one particular show, Nigella told us about her Norwegian heritage, and the divine smells from the village bakery as a prompt for her “boller” recipe—traditional Norwegian buns. The viewer thinks this will actually be something I can make myself. After all, what can be so difficult about buns? Then she pulls the table cloth from beneath. “Make sure to add cardamom, a sneaky little spice coming from Indonesia.”

And with that one sentence, your ten-minute-long dream of baking Norwegian buns is taken away.

This palindrome is inspired by those trainsets you get and ignore as child, but become obsessed with as a retired Grandfather. These old men in their attics and sheds create this idyllic landscapes in the most minutiae detail based upon the sceneries invented by their rose tinted nostalgia. But as Simone Signoret said in 1975, "nostalgia isn't what it used to be," and they are missing the truth of history.

Old men hobbyists,
And young novelists
Create their own little worlds.

Based on reality
Letting their mind flee
A power of God unfurled. 

But it isn't true
Skies aren't always blue
Quaint, peaceful and full of bliss

These make believe lands
Crafted by many hands
by men who just need a kiss.

When I first learned of palindromes at school in the 80s, a lad in the class pointed out his name was one: Lee Peel. I always wanted to base a character in a story on this idea. For example, an assassin known only as “The Palindrome,” but I just couldn’t come up with the right name to suit that was as good as Lee’s.

This surreal submission about an evil citrus fruit assassin ultimately came from these ideas that have followed me around for over thirty years.

Seed word:  sadistic.

I found multiple palindromes from this seed word, but the search took quite some time and spanned several splits of the reversed word, citsidas.

Split:  c-its-idas
I first wrote this with the split on the left and sadistic on the right.

C it’s Ida’s sadistic

I dropped the possessive S from Ida’s to improve the palindrome.

C it’s Ida, sadistic

To grow the palindrome, I needed words that ended with C for the left side. I started reviewing the Reversed word list of words that begin with C. That group spans thirteen pages in the Palindromedary.

I used the Reversed list because that groups words by their endings. Fewer words end with C than begin with C. A sample from the Reversed list shows how this helps me.

Cinerie eirenic

The word on the left is the reverse of eirenic, so it begins with C. The word eirenic would go on the left of the palindrome, to replace the lonely C. The reversed word, cinerie, minus the C goes on the right after sadistic. As I was scanning the list, I was looking at the reversed word, ignoring the C, and checking if what remained was a string of words I could use. For the example above, “inerie” becomes the simple phrase “in Erie.” I found a number of words that fit this pattern. After exhausting the Reversed list, I had the short list of palindromes below.

Eirenic, it’s Ida, sadistic in Erie.
Runic, it’s Ida, sadistic in Ur.
Boric, it’s Ida, sadistic I rob.
Music, it’s Ida, sadistic I sum.
Problematic, it’s Ida, sadistic I tame L. Borp.
Kinematic, it’s Ida, sadistic I tame Nik.
Hepatic, it’s Ida, sadistic I tap, eh?
Antistatic, it’s Ida, sadistic, I tat Sitna.
Metic, it’s Ida, sadistic item.
Marc, it’s Ida, sadistic ram.

I also toyed with a variant and found one that isn’t terrible.

Rueta! Mac! It’s Ida, sadistic amateur.

Of all these, I like only two. The first one is fun because it uses both eirenic and Erie in a sentence, but eirenic and sadistic have conflicting meanings. A sadistic amateur also has some appeal, but I figured I could do better if I changed splits.

Split: cit-sid-as

The middle fragment is clearly a name, Sid. With the right fragment, it sounded like a phrase used on movie posters and advertisements: actor so-and-so as some character name. I thought it would be amusing to put sadistic on the left, which becomes an attribute of the actor, not the character in the film. I needed to expand this palindrome in the middle. That would require one or more words that ended with cit, where the rest was symmetrical. The palindromedary lists only eight words that end with cit. In one of them, everything before cit was symmetrical!

Sadistic illicit Sid as

Perfect! I have a very unflattering description of an actor named Sid, starring as some character. The easiest way to expand this particular pattern is to find an ananym pair. Each pair must include another adjective to use before sadistic, and a word that is or could be a name for the right side. So I went searching through the Ananyms word list. I found a surprising number of matches.

Rimy sadistic illicit Sid as Ymir
Asset sadistic illicit Sid as Tessa
Sore sadistic illicit Sid as Eros
Star sadistic illicit Sid as Rats
Stressed sadistic illicit Sid as Des Serts
Rama's sadistic illicit Sid as Samar
Rat sadistic illicit Sid as Tar
Raw sadistic illicit Sid as War
Regal sadistic illicit Sid as Lager
Repaid sadistic illicit Sid as Diaper
Deliver sadistic illicit Sid as Revi Led
Naive sadistic illicit Sid as Evian
Made sadistic illicit Sid as Edam
Anal sadistic illicit Sid as Lana
Lone sadistic illicit Sid as Enol
Able sadistic illicit Sid as Elba
Sued sadistic illicit Sid as Deus
Trodden sadistic illicit Sid as Ned Dort
Rewarded sadistic illicit Sid as D. E. Drawer

The first palindrome I composed turned out to the the best:  Rimy sadistic illicit Sid as Ymir. I loved this one and imagined a crazy adventure movie centered around Ymir, a Norse god. To expand this theme, I looked up Norse mythology and listed some names I thought might have potential. I found two more palindromes using the same pattern, actor as so-and-so. Here’s the final marketing press release for this palindromic Norse adventure film. Can you find all the palindromes?

Shocking new film! Icy Death! Valiant humans battle alongside Norse gods against frozen evil. Will Asgard prevail? Can humanity survive? Cast of sevens.

Starring:
Rimy sadistic illicit Sid as Ymir
Red Labs’ Adder Edd as Balder
Doh! Sabrina Nirb as Hod

Scintillating dialogue:
“Sad Ymir, Ema namer. I Mydas.”
“Red Damion ale, Delano?”
“I’m Adder.”
“Hew-ha, Ymir. I’m Yahweh.”

Critiques rave:
“Red daffodil slid off Adder.”

Seeds:  sadistic and words ending in “nic”

After working on sadistic, I set that aside for over a week. When I went back to my notes, eirenic called out to me. By the way, eirenic is the British spelling. In US English, the word is irenic. Both spellings mean making peace between religious sects or denominations. I plugged eirenic into the composer. It has one split, cin-erie. That makes a simple palindrome by dropping one C.

Eirenic in Erie

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.

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:  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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

“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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

This could be the name of a trendy new gallery.

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!

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....