Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski revives a classic game of word reversals called Get Back. What palindromic advice would you give to someone who ought to stay away from baked goods? How about snub buns? If, on the other hand, you've highlighted the pastries, then you've stressed desserts. This is part of a complete episode.
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Haven't listened to that episode yet. Will tonite when winding down. I love palindromes, and for whatever reason, my brain notices them in print. My most recent "discovery" was reward drawer. Shared that with a teacher friend who is also a palindrome fan. He liked it so much that he actually made it into a label for the drawer on his filing cabinet where he keeps goodies for his students. He tells me several have pointed out "Hey Mr. Copeland, did you know that spells the same thing forward and backward?" Teachers are always looking for tricks like that to stimulate students' minds.
Like I said, I haven't listened to that episode yet, so I hope reward drawer isn't already in there. But I was excited to find a 6-letter word which, when combined with its palindrome, made a sensible two-word phrase for which clues could be given and a logical meaning extracted. Of course, the frequency of palindromes drops dramatically as the number of letters increases. See this tabulation: Â http://www.springerlink.com/content/l223x6kmu014x316/
What palindromic mad rant might come out of Philip Roth if he were Italian?
I note most of the palindromes in this discussion have an even number of letters, but Robert's long example has an odd number. Are there any statistics? Are the even ones easier to find/make?
Emmett asked: Are the even ones easier to find/make?
According to the article cited in my previous post (you can "look inside" without buying) the odd-number palindromes are easier to make because "the middle letter is not constrained by symmetry." Of course, that's just for single word palindromes. And, of course, any two-word palindrome (like stressed desserts or reward drawer) will necessarily have an even number of letters. I doubt any such rules apply to multi-word palindromes like the one Robert provided.
Speaking of which, I do believe that's the longest palindrome I've ever seen. Purists would balk at the selective inclusion of apostrophes, but that's still an impressive string of words imho.