Playing with Palindromes
gallery | 25 riddles — making sense of nonsense
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A palindrome is a word or set of words that is spelled the same forward and backward. For example the name “Hannah” is a palindrome, and so is “Did Hannah see bees? Hannah did.” I have no idea how people figure these things out!
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After my inner 10-year-old finished this project, I noticed this creative process was related to how I perceive reality and make sense of the world.
I first started making up these palindrome riddles in early 2020, just as news of the pandemic was getting real and things were starting to not make as much sense as before.
As a relief from solving the unsolvable riddle of pandemic preparation, I poked my nose into the world of palindromes. I found myself making sense of the many odd phrases I found there. In what scenario would someone say “Too bad I hid a boot.”? Who would merit the nickname “Dr. Awkward”? I made sense of the odd ideas by creating a scenario (the riddle question) in which a particular string of words (the palindrome) fit in. All in fun. I thought of it as a sidetrack from “real life.”
But then again, isn’t this what we do in real life? We see odd or unexpected happenings around us (e.g. a dawning pandemic) and want so much for it all to make sense. So, we conjure stories in which the new and unfamiliar fit right in.
The ability to conjure up stories and scenarios is a built-in creative capacity we all have and exercise regularly without even realizing it. It is a basis for functioning in an infinitely complex universe. But we can and do take it too far! The pandemic is teaching us that — among many other things.
How’s it going for you? Are there any old or new stories in need of a re-write?
I wrote the riddle questions to lead into the palindrome “answers” I found online. Thank you to the unknown authors of the palindrome answers below.
Click on an image to see the full riddle and scroll through the gallery.
Want more palindrome riddles?
If you have a word nerd part of you that wants to see more, find all my palindrome riddles here.
Find even more similarly silly stuff on my Kooky Koans page.