September 21 2011
Slots and Stols
First a shout for those with a radio handy – or at least live the Podcast Life: this Thursday on ABC Melbourne (which goes nationwide this week), I’ll be joining Jon Faine between 11 and 12 to contort some words, and invite listeners to consider glory on Letters and Numbers. (We start a new series in a few weeks, and lines are open! Come aboard.)
The same conversation is due to be shared by author Sonya Hartnett and a MENSA member named Peter Liston who can profitably apply logic to poker machines. Yes, I’ll be taking notes as well! Or reporting his scam to the proper authorities. I’m sure those silver bandits aren’t designed that way.
And second – on the topic of distorting words – I received an email a few weeks back with an intriguing question. First, I apologise for losing that sender’s name. (Feel free to resend if you’re reading this post.) But the question has stuck in my brain:
Is WAR/RAW the only palindrome of three or more letters that rhymes? Well, is it? Or what else goes ohhhh so close?
Comments
Mauve — 21 September at 08:33AM
Not to disagree with war/raw, but I still have the scars from an argument with a bunch of Americans that Hawn and horn are homonyms. They were almost disbelieving of my claim that Hawn and torn rhyme in Australia. The Yanks pronounce the R.
RM — 21 September at 08:45AM
Maybe trivially, but no.
Warsaw / was raw
DA — 21 September at 08:59AM
At the Tripper brunch a month back, Monica told me that in Houston the name Mary sounds the same as marry and merry. Go figurrrr.
PS - to eradicate any low-hanging fruit, peep/peep, tot/tot etc don't rhyme. Just to preempt the gotcha.
Stig Helson — 21 September at 09:16AM
Is WAR a palindrome?
Stig
DA — 21 September at 09:21AM
True. Let's leave the p-word out of this and talk about reversals. RAW WAR is a palindrome, but our mystery emailer seeks rhyming reversals of 3-plus letters. Could raw/war be unique, despite its controversy?
Boniface — 21 September at 09:29AM
Amora/aroma
An amora is an ancient Jewish scholar.
AS — 21 September at 10:01AM
This is close:
REDRAW - WARDER
anax — 21 September at 10:06AM
If Chambers is our/a bible, looks like we can have OOH / HOO (the latter a Shakespearian interjection expressing boisterous emotion, so it reads).
Boniface — 21 September at 10:19AM
Regna/anger
Where regna is the technical term for kingdoms (in taxonomic classification). OK, obscure I know, but it's there...
DA — 21 September at 10:23AM
OH! HO! Some erudite suggestions. Thanks all. (Even Anax, who's a reversal of his daughter Xana, am I right?)
The stumbling block, of course, is finding a word whose initial matches the sound of that same word's tail when fulfilling that very role. And yet all the while, not be its own palindrome. A rare canary.
DA — 21 September at 10:48AM
Identified the original correspondent, John Bevins, who calls WAR RAW a poemdrome:
www.poemdrome.com
Em — 22 September at 12:14PM
Interesting show DA. But I don't think I'll be hitting the pokies, jackpot or no.
Good luck with the L&N recruitment drive. You made a good point about the numbers - the more exposure you have, the easier they get. All hail tweakage!
Nib — 22 September at 12:41PM
STOPS and SPOTS are close.
DA2 — 22 September at 12:51PM
So is rah-rah (alias rugby) and har-har (Nelson Muntz)
Nib — 22 September at 12:53PM
RETAILER and RELATER were another miss. And I like how 'ROTATOR' is a palindrome.
philth — 22 September at 11:09PM
i think i saw that rotator one in a book, maybe DA's?
i like the combos
bonk knob
gnaw wang,
and the less appealing
stun nuts
as is goes for rhyming, im at a loss to come up with a good example