Back and Forth
Most people think of palindromes as being symmetrical arrangements of letters:
SIT ON A POTATO PAN, OTIS.
But they can also work at the level of individual words:
FALL LEAVES AFTER LEAVES FALL.
YOU CAN CAGE A SWALLOW, CAN’T YOU, BUT YOU CAN’T SWALLOW A CAGE, CAN YOU?
And even phonetically: The Hungarian phrase a bátya gatyába (“the brother in underpants”) and the Japanese ta-ke-ya-bu ya-ke-ta (“a bamboo grove has been burned”) (both transliterated here) sound the same when reversed.
Bonus palindrome, from Stephen Fry:
RETTEBS IFLAHD NOCES, EH? TTU, BUT THE SECOND HALF IS BETTER.
