Is there a logical method in composing palindromes?

And; one which I reckon as on the borderline between “acceptable”, and “cleverly wrought, but meaningless and silly”. Passing off a palindrome as the ravings of a mentally deranged person, is perhaps a cheap-and-easy trick; but this one would seem at least to have a kind of theme to it.

“Marge, let dam dogs in. Am on satire ! Vow I am Cain. Am on spot. Am a Jap sniper. Red, raw murder on GI ! Ignore drum. (Warder repins pajama tops.) No maniac, Ma ! Iwo veritas: no man is God – mad telegram.”

And here’s a bit of a tautological one: “A Toyota’s a Toyota.”

It’s not incomprehensible, but “in girum” (Classical spelling “in gyrum”) is weird. I’d say “At night, we spin around and are consumed by fire.”

If I were to write a computer program to find palindromes, I wouldn’t completely brute-force it. I’d start with a dictionary of words, and make a reversed copy of it, and look for large overlaps between the words and reversed words. So, for instance, I’d find that “slut” reversed is “tuls”, which has a large overlap with “Tulsa”. Or “oscillate” reversed is “etallicso”, which has a large overlap with “metallic”. Then I’d look for the “handles” on the ends of the words, the parts that didn’t have the large overlaps, and I’d try to find word-pairs with matching handles. And I’d finish it up by finding either words which overlap themselves, or word-pairs with palindromic “handles” (usually either zero or one letters) to use for the middle.

I hope you’re not disappointed to learn that you aren’t the first to discover that one.

Maybe they’re the longest you know (and you do get some mild kudos for knowing the word “reifier”), but hardly the longest in English.

Detartrated and kinnikinnik are the longest English palindromic words. (Google on >>detartrated grape juice<< for lots of citations of the former word used in ordinary text. That is, citations that a lexicographer would use to establish that it is indeed a word in regular use.) The OED has a longer palindrome (tattarrattat), but it’s a nonce word from James Joyce.

See page 10 of this pdf for a palindrome about Robert Abplanalp, bat reborn.

I’ll contribute my favorite.
I’m pretty sure I first saw this one in the palindromes book Ana Nab a Banana.

No, son! Onanism’s a gross orgasm sin! A no-no, son!

Love it!

When I was in college I saw a cartoon where one character notes that the president of the palindrome society got a new car. "What did he get? “A Toyota!”

But yours is better. Needs no setup.

I named my son “Nathan” partly because it is (kind of) palindromic. I lament that English does not have a single letter for the “TH” sound. :slight_smile:

It used to: with two letters in fact, one (Þ) for th as in “thin”, and another (ð) for th as in “thus”. Around the 14th century, these were falling out of use in favour of “th” for both: printing’s being adopted in a big way, was more or less the last nail in their coffin.

(Þ): What do you call this letter?

I’vre been to Tulsa. This is palindromic truth. :smiley:

Yet Otto was right there, staring at you …

Knock yourselves out.

“Thorn” I believe was the English name for it “way back when”.

Thorn: capital Þ, lowercase þ
Eth: capital Ð, lowercase ð

ETA: or, what vontsira said.

Too much like “Evil Otto” of Berserker fame. :slight_smile:

On a Theatre marquee: EVIL OTTO, LIVE!

If he got a degree, he could be Bob Abplanalp, B.A., with both forename and surname (plus post-nominal letters) palindromic. That could be inserted in the middle of another palindrome if the centre falls at a word boundary:
…Bob Abplanalp, B.A.? Bob…
I extended the Panama one a few years ago, by means of working from both ends:

A man, a plan, a case of reviled Spam. Onward, go deliver a dare, vile dog! Draw no maps, deliver foes! A canal, Panama!
And then there was this. (See whole thread for context.)

You mean,

“Do nine men interpret?”
“Nine men,” I nod.

No ‘X’ in Nixon.

The poet W.H Auden has been credited with:
Was it a car or a cat I saw?
Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus.