What Makes A Great Palindrome? 🐪

If you ask different palindromists what makes a great palindrome, you’ll likely get a variety of responses. At the same time, some repeated themes will emerge. Look at the winning palindromes from a competition like The SymmyS, and you will find more clues.

Palindromist Timi Imit, who operates the MockOK.com website has written essays on this subject. Timi (not his real name) has a particular fondness for repeated letters at the “pivot point.” That phrase refers to the middle of the palindrome, where the right half is the reverse of the left half. In typical palindromes, the pivot point is either one or two letters. If one letter, then that single letter is the exact middle. For the two-letter case, those two letters are the same and the precise pivot point is in between the two. However, you can also think of the two letters as the pivot point.

Here are two examples to show how it works.

Pull up!
- The double-L is the pivot point and the palindrome has an even number of letters
Taco cat!
- The letter O is the pivot point, which means the palindrome has an odd number of letters

Try your hand at identifying the pivot point in these palindromes. Scroll down for answers.

I lob Mort’s Stromboli.
Snort celeb electrons
Yado, trip a tapir today.
Are hot spans snaps to Hera?

Timi likes single-sentence palindromes that have two, three, four, or five repeated letters in the pivot point. In Cia, So Manic In A Mosaic, Timi noticed a palindrome I crafted simply by reversing the name Galilee. He included it in his palindrome list on MockOK.com because it had the letter E four times in the pivot point.

Galilee eel I lag.

I can see the appeal. In contrast, I thought it was only a good starting point, and I explored multiple ways to expand that short palindrome to a medium length. This difference in taste illustrates how palindrome greatness is a squishy concept.

The starting point was too simple for me. All I did was reverse Galilee and insert spaces to separate the obvious words. In my opinion, great palindromes tell stories. While “Galilee eel I lag” is striking in its symmetry and simplicity, it doesn’t qualify as a story. Compare this four-word starting point with my final palindrome.

Am aboard Nassac’s yawl. A Galilee heel, I lag always, Cassandra Obama.

Can you see the speaker’s self-deprecation, the possible romantic connection? This is the sort of complexity I love in palindromes. I also broke the four-letter pivot point by inserting an H in the middle. My approach is to hide the symmetry. It enhances the surprise when a person discovers the truth. Greatness is a matter of opinion or preference. As you read and compose more palindromes, your own sense of what makes a palindrome great will take shape.