He aimed academia, eh?

As I was bouncing around math blogs I happened to run into Deborah Mayo’s Error Statistics Philosophy blog / website. And there I noticed a Palindrome contest! (Not to mention all the fun statistics talk. But palindromes!)

So the July Palindrome contest required that in addition to using “Elba”, the palindrome also had to use “fanatic”. There was an optional, bonus word “trap”. Click on the previous link to see the full rules and several clever palindromes presented by Dr. Mayo.

If you’re a regular reader, you know how much I like word lists, wordsmithing, anagramming, and palindromes. So, I couldn’t resist and submitted my entry into the contest.

My palindromic submission:

“Trap May Elba, Dr. of Fanatic. I fed naan, deli-oiled naan, deficit an affordable yam part.”

I was over the moon to get the message that I won! The prize is one of ten statistics-related books.

The August palindrome contest has begun and it requires the use of “correlate” with the optional word “doom”. Elba of course has to be used. Submit a palindrome! It’s not as hard as it may seem to construct one! It took me about 20 minutes of noodling around to come up with my entry. And once you get started, the next ones come much more easily.

For example, with “fanatic”, recognize that it’s “citanaf” backwards. Then if we want to build words around fanatic/citanaf, we have to start thinking of words that will hook to either side of fanatic/citanaf. Some examples of front-hooks to citanaf are “tacit”, “solicit”, “deficit”, “implicit”, “complicit”, etc. But we can see that “implicit” and “complicit” are difficult to work off of because the impli/compli part is annoying backwards. On the other hand “tacit”, “solicit”, and “deficit” are easier to work with. You’ll notice that my submission works off of “deficit”.

Once you start building in this way, you can’t help but continue to build! For example could you build something from, ” … deficit Ana faced …”?

Another interesting thing I learned was that there are “professional palindromists”! What does it take to become one? How do I apply?! And more importantly what’s the pay? Haha.

So that web comic I’ve mentioned that I’m developing? Well, I think I’ve figured out the name of at least two characters: Dr. Awkward and Mr. Alarm. Maybe they can be mortal enemies.

Anyhow, I was very excited to have discovered a palindrome contest and to have won one!

Please do check out errorstatistics.com and add it to your blog reading.

Here are some silly short palindromes:

• Eep! Repaid diaper pee
• Shallot ayatollahs
• Redleg elder (Hey! That’s a great character name!)
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