This is, apparently, an old word game, now rather obscure. The point is to make squares out of words, such that they read the same way left-to-right and top-to-bottom. The classic Sator Square is the best known example now:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
(Putting these things in code blocks makes them easier to read, but you don’t have to put spaces between letters.)
I’ve been doing them recently, and I find them a nice little alternative to crosswords. A few examples:
red
era
dab
hate
aces
temp
espy
word
okay
raga
dyad
time
item
meti
emit
(METI is Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, or Active SETI. Hey, the Sator Square uses a proper noun, too!)
(Needless to say, doing them entirely in palindromes is not necessary for something to be a word square.)
cream
rumba
ember
abets
marsh
So, maybe we could each do one, and post the top word as a challenge for the next poster. (You might want to do the challenge, too, just to make sure it’s not too much of a pain. Order five squares are doable, but, as you might imagine, they get more of a pain the larger they get.)
So, since I’ve already posted “hate”, my challenge is “love”.