Morse code palindrome puzzle

The Game Room
1

Hi all,

Posted a puzzle on a different message board, for which the answer was: “When you write each word out in Morse code, the dots and dashes look like a palindrome.”

An example would be “tea”: - . . -

After someone found the answer, I thought it would be cool to try and find the longest ‘morse palindrome’ (ignoring the spaces needed to differentiate letters and words), and offered ‘sandings’ as my best attempt. This was promptly beaten by a ten-letter word, but I reckon if anyone can improve on that with an actual phrase, they’d be found here.

So, can you come up with anything longer? Any phrase would have to make at least some sense, but I reckon the bounds of admissibility are reasonably ‘stretchy’. :slight_smile:

2

These are fairly terrible:
oh, pooh: hoop ho.
spit timer–remit tips
top moor stops; mom spots room pot.

I totally cheated. I generated a list of words that consist totally of palindromic letters: ehikmoprstx. Then I filtered out those that weren’t either palindromes themselves (rotor) or didn’t have a matching reverse (step-pets). Then I came up with silly phrases from the rest.spot - tops
pot - top
moor - room
pets - step
spots - stops
remit - timer
sos - sos
sis - sis
sports - strops
tit - tit
hoop - pooh
ports - strop
eros - sore
eke - eke
per - rep
pop - pop
em - me
spit - tips
ho - oh
pep - pep
emit - time
sees - sees
mom - mom
rotor - rotor
pots - stop
sexes - sexes
pit - tip
emir - rime
peep - peep
eh - he
toot - toot
poop - poop
meet - teem
keep - peek
tot - tot
pip - pip
ere - ere

3

Dr Stranglove, that’s still impressive. However, doesn’t your generated list not take into account that the non-palindromic letters can still have an ‘opposite’, like G and W, or F and L? So ‘fool’ works as a morse palindrome, but I don’t know if your list picks it up?

Given the combinations that you can get from one letter with four dots and dashes in it, I think there’s good scope for more examples. What I mean is that D (–.) can be ‘opposite’ to EM or AT or ETT.

4

I don’t think he was claiming that it did. It’s a quick-and-dirty way to get any answers at all, but it probably won’t get the best answers.

5

That’s right. All of these will also be normal palindromes; any normal palindrome that consists of Morse-palindromic letters will also be a Morse-palindrome. So nothing too clever at all, but it was the easiest way to get any kind of answer.

It’s not too hard to write a program that actually handles the Morse directly; I just didn’t spend the time yet.

6

The best single word I can do:intransigence: …-.-.-…–…--…-.-.-…

7

And from a few minutes of playing around:
Racist thinks slinkiest, reviled, shelterless fibber devalues stalest thermite.

I am still enforcing palindromeness on word boundaries, but allow mixing between letters.

8

I’m impressed - and the single word beats ‘wintertime’, which was the best that the other site could manage.

Keen to hear of any other good ones (not necessarily as long), but you’ve easily proved my theory: SMBD has the smartest people. :slight_smile:

9

There are a lot of palindromes! But here are all the ones I found with length >=10:antiquating (.–.-…–.-…-.–…-.–.)
bottommost (-…---------------…-)
incipience (…-.-.-…–…-.-.-…)
initialled (…-…-…-.-…-…-…)
interpreted (…-.-…-…–…-…-.-…)
interstice (…-.-…-…-…-.-…)
intransigence (…-.-.-…–…--…-.-.-…)
predestinate (.–…-…-…-…-…–.)
protectorate (.–…-.----.-.-.----.-…–.)
researcher (.-…-.-.-.-…-.)
shelterless (…-…-…-…-…)
wintertime (.–…-.-…-.-…–.)Also, some words with length >=11 that reverse to a different word:antipathies - shipping (.–.-…–…--… : …–…--…-.–.)
intemperate - preempted (…-.-.–.--…-…–. : .–…-…–.--.-.-…)
internecine - identical (…-.-…-.-…-.-…-… : …-…-.-…-.-…-.-…)
intertwined - fracture (…-.-…-.-.–…-…-… : …-…-…–.-.-…-.-…)
maintenance - urgently (–.-…-.-.-…–.-.-… : …-.-.–…-.-.-…-.–)
secularized - funiculars (…-.-…-.-…-.-…–…-… : …-…–…-.-…-.-…-.-…)

10

Some honorable mentions while I’m at it:
sissies (…)
motto (----------)
kart (-.-.-.-.-)
arc (.-.-.-.-.)

11

Should we be measuring the words by their length in letters, or by their lengths in dots-and-dashes?

12

I went with letter count. If we go with Morse length:[spoiler]intransigence is still in the lead, but in a 3-way tie:
hairballs: …-…-.-…-.-…-…
intransigence …-.-.-…–…--…-.-.-…
shelterless: …-…-…-…-…

The otherwise-unimpressive hairballs puts in a good showing. And I will now forever think of Morse code every time my cat is hacking up something. Perhaps she is communicating to me in hack duration.[/spoiler]

13

Another fun question: what’s the most ambiguous Morse sequence?[spoiler]12 is the best I can do:
-…-…: bah, base, bens, betes, brie, deli, dins, dites, dues, testes, tiers, tsetse

Almost as good with 11:
-…–…: babe, bans, bates, bath, begs, deans, death, digs, dimes, duns, nips[/spoiler]Also, the longest ambiguous Morse sequence:[spoiler]-…—.-…-----…-.-…-.-…-…-.–: biologically, theologically
-.----.-.-…-…-…-.-…-.-…-…-.–: nonclerically, nonclinically

Kinda boring, these, but not surprising.[/spoiler]