# Longest 3-word palidrome **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 27, 2017, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130 "2017-03-27T09:41:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/1 "2017-03-27T09:41:49Z")
Anyone know what the longest combination of three different English words that’s palindromic? Restrictions: the words must not be related to each other and none may individually be a palindrome. However, capitalized words are acceptable. By googling, I found that the longest two-word combination is probably **shallot ayatollahs** (17-letters). (There’s other, longer ones, but they violate the restrictions. For example, if you remove the restriction about being individually palindromic, then the answer is probably **evitative levitative** (19).) Anyone able to better these? And I have no idea about the 3-word answer, so that’s open to the floor. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/2 "2017-03-27T09:48:01Z")
Borrow or rob? Seems like there should be a longer one, given your 2 word examples, but that’s the longest 3 word one I can think of. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/3 "2017-03-27T09:56:48Z")
A google search brought up this one: Harass sensuousness, Sarah. …but it doesn’t make sense to me, & I have a pet peeve with palindromes that don’t make sense. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/4 "2017-03-27T10:02:03Z")
A Google around the net found some to start with: Amen, Icy Cinema Camel bible, Mac? Is sensuousness I? I moan, Naomi. And a nice two word one - Senile felines ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/5 "2017-03-27T15:22:49Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I moan, Naomi. > > And a nice two word one - Senile felines These two appear in [Bob](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQDzj6R3p4), Weird Al Yankovic’s brilliant palindromic parody of Dylan’s [video of Subterranean Homesick Blues](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/6 "2017-03-27T15:27:53Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > A google search brought up this one: > > Harass sensuousness, Sarah. > > …but it doesn’t make sense to me, & I have a pet peeve with palindromes that don’t make sense. 23 letters. That’s the best so far. I expect there’s longer ones out there, but likely no one’s looked for them. I found one page with all the two-word examples that can be generated from a word list, but not three. The amount of computer time to find them probably goes up exponentially, so perhaps that’s why such a list doesn’t seem to be out there. I agree with you on senseless 'dromes, but only when one is trying to make a sentence. I’m just looking for any three words, so that’s not an issue here. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/7 "2017-03-27T18:24:39Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > 23 letters. That’s the best so far. I expect there’s longer ones out there, but likely no one’s looked for them. I found one page with all the two-word examples that can be generated from a word list, but not three. The amount of computer time to find them probably goes up exponentially, so perhaps that’s why such a list doesn’t seem to be out there. It does indeed. I wrote a simple python program to randomly test 3-word pairs (I used the wordlist at [this site](https://github.com/dwyl/english-words)), and, without doing any optimization, it can test a bit over 320,000 triples a second, so it should finish testing in about 4,000 years. Except it’s picking words at random (since an ordered search is really unlikely to find anything at the beginning), so it is repeating a small amount of work. I’m gonna let it run for a while and see if it finds _anything_, but I don’t have high hopes. There are some pretty obvious optimizations I could make, though, like pre-testing which pairs could conceivably be start/end words, so I’ll probably do those if I have time. I bet I can get the expected runtime under 100 years, easy. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/8 "2017-03-27T19:11:13Z")
Good luck with your search, walrus. I should note that you can construct a long triple by taking the longest reversal pair (stressed/desserts) and inserting the longest single word palindrome (tattarrattat) between them. But that violates the rule against an individual word being a palindrome. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/9 "2017-03-27T19:15:42Z")
So, I have now running a version that pre-searches for all sets of pairs of words that could be the start/end of a palindrome triple. I’m limiting it to words that are at least 4 letters long. For example, it recently found “acataposis” and “pataca”. Those are getting written to a file, and based on progress so far, it’ll be done in a few days. Testing all the words as a middle word will be very quick once I have that list. So, here comes. I expect that someone could write something even faster given that few days, but we’re now in the range where I’m going to let the machines do the work. I will report back. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/10 "2017-03-27T19:23:20Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > Harass sensuousness, Sarah. Sensuousness is almost palindromic itself. So, we just need to find the longest http://www.dcode.fr/semordnilap-generator that works when adding s. “Teragram’s sensuousness, Margaret.” ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/11 "2017-03-27T19:55:50Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I expect that someone could write something even faster given that few days, but we’re now in the range where I’m going to let the machines do the work. I will report back. Will be looking forward to it. > [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > Sensuousness is almost palindromic itself. So, we just need to find the longest http://www.dcode.fr/semordnilap-generator that works when adding s. > > “Teragram’s sensuousness, Margaret.” Don’t need the apostrophe; these don’t have to make any kind of sense and teragram is a noun. So we may have a winner here with 29 letters (which is actually one more than the one I suggested constructing.) We’ll see if walrus’ program does any better. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/12 "2017-03-27T20:00:07Z")
redividers redividers redivider? (29) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/13 "2017-03-27T20:05:53Z")
I know it violates your rules, but I like “Madam, I’m Adam.” To which she replies: “Eve”. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/14 "2017-03-27T20:11:44Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > redividers redividers redivider? > > (29) Violates both restrictions and the requirement that they be three different words. Otherwise, good answer. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2017, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/15 "2017-03-28T03:14:28Z")
The 100,000+ word list I use cannot improve on **enalzi** ’s 29-letter solution. Other 29-letter palindromes include rednesses: sensuousnesses sender Dropping the restriction that words be unrelated we have a 35-letter solution Kinnikinniks’ sensuousness: kinnikinnik which is more-or-less meaningful: “A small-time Colorado-based mountain music group uses as their sensual indulgence, the Native American smoking mixture after which the band was named.” ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/16 "2017-03-29T23:21:12Z")
My script has completed! It didn’t find any longer than 29 that satisfy all the requirements, although it did find this 29-letter one that I quite like: “retrovaccinate tetanic cavorter” It’s actually an on-topic sentence with reasonable meaning (assuming cows can get tetanus?) that requires no punctuation or proper nouns. This is cool! My script also found a missing newline in the wordlist I was using, since it thinks “redrawerredrawers” is a word, which it is not. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/17 "2017-03-29T23:30:43Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > “retrovaccinate tetanic cavorter” Absolutely awesome! I love it. You should put it in your signature. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/18 "2017-03-29T23:33:49Z")
Man why did I put a space in my username… ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2017, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/19 "2017-03-29T23:52:49Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Man why did I put a space in my username… It’s still a palindrome. We ignore spaces and punctuation for them. Any other SDMB palindromic usernames? I seem to remember there was one more (at least) but can’t remember what it was. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130/20 "2017-03-30T00:09:10Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > It’s still a palindrome. We ignore spaces and punctuation for them. Any other SDMB palindromic usernames? I seem to remember there was one more (at least) but can’t remember what it was. I Love Me, Vol. I. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-3-word-palidrome/783130.md?page=2)