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World's Longest Palindrome Sentence? 15,139 17,826 words

At 8:02 PM on the 20th of February 2002 it was 20:02 02/20 2002 (if you live in the US), or 20:02 20/02 2002 (if you live in the rest of the world). Either way, it was the best of times, it was the tseb of times, it was a palindromic time. In honor of the event, I wondered if I could create the world's longest palindrome. A search for world's longest palindrome revealed that "In 1980, Giles Selig Hales claimed to have written the world's longest palindrome, which consisted of 58,795 letters." That didn't seem too hard to beat. And in fact, in a few hours I was able to write a program to create a palindrome with 63,647 letters (and later Iupdated the program and got 74,633 letters).
Cognoscenti such as Mark Saltveit, editor ofThe Palindromist, rightfully point out that my creation should not be called a true palindrome, because it makes no sense. But Saltveit says that I am probably safe in calling this "the world's longest palindromic sentence, or the world's longest parody of `A man, a plan.' " I'm satisfied with that assessment.
Jerry Berns has his candidate longest palindrome, consisting of 31,358 words or 119,180 letters, so he's got me beat. His is not in the form of a sentence, but it does have restrictions on how many times a word can be repeated (otherwise you could just do "A radar, a radar, a radar, a radar, ..." and have an infinitely long palindrome).

How I did it

I knew that Dan Hoey had generated a longish palindrome beginning with "A man, a plan" and ending with "Panama". Another search revealed it was a 540 word versioncreated in 1984. Hoey writes "This was done with the Unix spelling dictionary and a fairly simple-minded program. With a better word list and a smarter program I'm sure the palindrome could be ten times as long."Now if that's not a challenge, I don't know what is.
Luckily for me, I had a better word list: the very nice Moby Word list from Grady Ward (also available at Project Gutenberg), from which I was able to extract the 126,144-word npdict.txt. I thought it would be easy to create a smarter program: I already had a short Python program to look up words in a dictionary given a prefix. All I would have to do is extend it to allow suffix lookup, and implement a search algorithm. Also, importantly, I had an ordinary laptop computer which was at least 1,000 times more powerful than the minicomputer Hoey had in 1984.
The resulting program wasn't too hard to put together: starting at 10:00 PM after the kids were asleep, I thought I might get a long palindrome generated before 02/20 was over. It actually took until 1:00 AM to get something that seemed good (at 1:00 AM), and then in the light of day three more hours to fix two bugs (one reported by Jasvir Nagra and one found by me), and replace a recursive algorithm with a stack to overcome a bug/limitation of Python.
Given that, here's what I was able to come up with, both back in 2002 and more recently:

Original 15,139 Word Palindrome

Created:	20 February, 2002
Words:	15,319
Letters:	63,647
Phrases:	12,400 comma-separated noun phrases
Program:	pal.py
Excerpt:	A man, a plan, a caddy, Ore, Lee, tsuba, Thaine, a lair, ... (rest here) ..., Hell, a burial, Aeniah, Tabu, Steele, Roydd, a canal, Panama.
Full palindrome:	here
Storyboard:	... A man, a plan, a caddy,

Commentary: Maybe I'm biased, but I think the palindrome starts out quite strong. "A man, a plan, a caddy" is the basic premise of another fine piece of storytelling. Unfortunately, things go downhill from there rather quickly. It contains truths, but it does not have a plot. It has Putnam, but no logic; Tesla, but no electricity; Pareto, but no optimality; Ebert, but no thumbs up. It has an ensemble cast including Tim Allen, Ed Harris and AlPacino, but they lack character development. It has Sinatra and Pink, but it doesn't sing. It has Monet and Goya, but no artistry. It has Slovak, Inuit, Creek, andItalian, but it's all Greek to me. It has exotic locations like Bali, Maui, Uranus, andCanada, but it jumps around needlessly. It has Occam, but it is the antithesis of his maxim "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." If you tried to read the whole thing, you'd get to "a yawn" and stop. Or you might be overcome by the jargon, such as PETN, ILGWU, PROM,UNESCO, and MYOB. Most serendipitous of all is that Steele, who collected severalshorter versions of the Panama oeuvre in a book about a Lisp, shows up in the very last line. Steele and some others have somecomments. You can read the results from top to bottom (if you don't get bored) or you can start in the middle; the letter "y" in "Moray".
Speed: Once I started running my program, it seemed almost too easy. I had it print a message every time it finds a palindrome that is 200 words longer than the last one, and it consistently prints this message every second; so in 3 or 4 seconds it breaks Hoey's record, and in 30 seconds it is over 6000 words. At around 8000 words progress slows to about 1,000 words per minute, and by around 10,000 to 12,000 words progress is sporadic. This is because we are running out of good words: there are 126,000 words in the dictionary, but only about 10% of them are easily reversible. For example, there are 426 words that contain "eq" or "sq", but these are hard to use in a palindrome because there are no words containing "qe" or "qs", and only a few words that end in "q" (and could then be followed by a word starting with "e" or "s".

Latest 17,826 Word Palindrome

Created:	11 November, 2007
Words:	17,826
Letters:	74,663
Phrases:	14,382 comma-separated noun phrases
Program:	pal2.py
Excerpt:	A man, a plan, a cameo, Zena, Bird, Mocha, ... (rest here) ..., Lew, Orpah, Comdr, Ibanez, OEM, a canal, Panama!
Full palindrome:	here
Storyboard:	... A man, a plan, a cameo, Zena,

Commentary: Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to attempt a witty commentary on this one, but I can detail the history of this version. After a reader sent in a suggestion, I made 4 changes:

1. I added the function reversible_words, which finds all pairs of words in the dictionary that are palindromes of other words, such as "Camus" and "Sumac". There all 1100 of these, and adding them all at once helps a little, but not much, because they tend to be found by the search routine anyways.
2. The old program would only add a new word that is equal or longer than the missing part on the other side. I added a capability called tryharder to add words that are shorter as well. That is, when I'm looking for a word that starts with "aca", I consider "a caddy" and "a canoe", etc., but this change allows me to also consider "A/C". This helps a little, but it also slows the program down a lot.
3. I made the program faster. Profiling showed that reverse was a bottleneck, so I used the [::-1] idiom. I also dump the results to file every 1000 words rather than every 200, until we get near the end.
4. I added unit tests, because that's the way things are done these days.

Speed: The program now starts out increasing by 1000 phrases per second, consistently gets over 10,000 phrases in under 30 seconds, and usually gets to 12,000 phrases in the first minute. Things slow down from there, but in ten runs all but one were over 17,000 words, which takes about an hour.

Language Induction

I thought I had leaped past Hoey's 540-word Panama Palindrome by a factor of 30, but when I showed him my palindrome, he said that he was really thinking of sticking with noun phrases of the form "<indefinite article> <noun>."
This is an example of the venerablelanguage induction problem: given the single sentence "A man, a plan, a canal--Panama" as evidence, what language does it define? It seems clear that it consists of a series of any number of noun phrases. That is,

    S => NP*

But from one example, you can't say much more. If we look at the examples from Hoey and Steele, we can see they all start and end the same, so we can say:

    S => "A man" "A plan" NP* "A canal" "Panama"

But Hoey says that every noun phrase must have an indefinite article:

    NP => IndefArt Noun
    IndefArt => "a" | "an"

while I was allowing:

    NP => ProperNoun
    NP => IndefArt Noun
    IndefArt => "a" | "an"

Guy Steele suggested I should also try allowing other noun phrases, such as "two Xs". Gold said the language induction problem can't be solved in general, but others (e.g. Horning, Mooney, Muggleton,de Marcken) have shown that it can be solved probabilistically if you use a probabilistic rather than a strictly logical formalism. With Hoey in mind, I also generated a solution with all indefinite articles:

2,211 Word Palindrome with only indefinite articles

Created:	November, 2003
Words:	2,211
Letters:	5,842
Phrases:	1,106 comma-separated noun phrases
Program:	pal2.py with a restricted dictionary
Excerpt:	A man, a plan, a casa, a bait, a lag, a malt, ... (rest here) ..., a natl, a mag, a lati, a baas, a canal, Panama!
Full palindrome:	here
Storyboard:	... A man, a plan, a casa, a bait, a lag, a malt,

Commentary: Hoey said he thought that a better word list and a smarter program could get to ten times his 540-word palindrome, using only noun phrases with indefinite articles. I'm pretty sure that will never happen. The problem is a dirth of "a"s. According to Hoey's rules, every phrase must start with the letter "a". That means that either the rest of the word must be an exact reverse of another word (and we know there are 1100 of these) or the phrase must have another "a" in it somewhere, and it must be matched by two or more other phrases. Phrases such as "a man", "a plan" and "a canal" work well because they contain multiple "a"s. Now consider a phrase such as "a biologist". If that appears in the palindrome, then somewhere else the letters "tsigoloib" must appear. But note that those letters must all appear in one word/phrase, because there is no "a", and we only get word boundries at "a"s. And of course, there is no single word that contain those letters. In general, take a word (such as "an asparagus" or "a biologist"), split it into components around the "a"s (yielding ["n", "sp", "r", "gus"] and ["biologist"]). Collect the set of all such segments, from all the phrases in the dictionary. Now go back through the dictionary, and for each word, see if the reverse of each of its components is in this set. So "an asparagus" is good, because its reversed components all appear in the set: "n" appears in many places (including "an asparagus" itself), "ps" appears as a component in "a psalm", "r" appears in many places (such as "a karat"), and "sug" appears in "a sugar". On the other hand, "a biologist" is no good, because the component "tsigoloib" does not appear.
When I first applied this test, I started with the 69,241-word anpdict.txt (containing only noun phrases starting with "a" or "an"). I checked to see whether each reversed component of a phrase appeared anywhere in any other phrase. That eliminated "a biologist", but it let "a zoom" stick around, because the reversed component "mooz" appears in "a schmooze". Doing this level of reduction gets us down to a dictionary of 11,065 phrases. But on reflection I realized that not only does each reversed component have to appear in some word, it must appear as a component of some word. The fact that "mooz" appears in "a schmooze" is not good enough. That would only work if "a zoom" could be followed by the letters "hcsa", which of course it cannot; it must be follwed by the letter "a". Using that stricter test, we get down to only 4,528 noun phrases that are actually usable. So to get a 5,400 word palindrome we would need to start with a bigger dictionary.
Speed: My program consistently generates palindromes of over 2000 words in under 10 seconds using the 4,528 word dictionary. It doesn't go much beyond that.

---

Peter Norvig, 20:02 02/20 2002

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1 millions disclosed English on earth

The Vocabulary.com Top 1000

May 19, 2011 By Vocabulary.com (NY) 

The top 1,000 vocabulary words have been carefully chosen to represent difficult but common words that appear in everyday academic and business writing. These words are also the most likely to appear on the SAT, ACT, GRE, and ToEFL. 
To create this list, we started with the words that give our users the most trouble and then ranked them by how frequently they appear in our corpus of billions of words from edited sources. If you only have time to study one list of words, this is the list.

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show: definitions & notes only words   in list order  from A to Z  from Z to A  from easy to hard  from hard to easy 

1. consider
   deem to be
   At the moment, artemisinin-based therapies areconsidered the best treatment, but cost about $10 per dose - far too much for impoverished communities.
   — Seattle Times (Feb 16, 2012)
2. minute
   infinitely or immeasurably small
   The minute stain on the document was not visible to the naked eye.
3. accord
   concurrence of opinion
   The committee worked in accord on the bill, and it eventually passed.
4. evident
   clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment
   That confidence was certainly evident in the way Smith handled the winning play with 14 seconds left on the clock. 
   — Reuters (Jan 15, 2012)
5. practice
   a customary way of operation or behavior
   He directed and acted in plays every season and became known for exploring Elizabethan theatrepractices. 
   — BBC (Feb 16, 2012)
6. intend
   have in mind as a purpose
   “Lipstick, as a product intended for topical use with limited absorption, is ingested only in very small quantities,” the agency said on its website. 
   — BusinessWeek (Feb 15, 2012)
7. concern
   something that interests you because it is important
   The scandal broke out in October after former chief executive Michael Woodford claimed he was fired for raising concerns about the company's accounting practices. 
   — BBC (Feb 15, 2012)
8. commit
   perform an act, usually with a negative connotation
   In an unprecedented front page article in 2003 The Times reported that Mr. Blair, a young reporter on its staff, had committed journalistic fraud. 
   — New York Times (Feb 15, 2012)
9. issue
   some situation or event that is thought about
   As a result, the privacy issues surrounding mobile computing are becoming ever-more complex. 
   — Time (Feb 16, 2012)
10. approach
    move towards
    Spain’s jobless rate for people ages 16 to 24 isapproaching 50 percent. 
    — New York Times (Feb 15, 2012)
11. establish
    set up or found
    A small French colony, Port Louis, was established on East Falkland in 1764 and handed to the Spanish three years later. 
    — BBC (Feb 16, 2012)
12. utter
    without qualification
    No one can blame an honest mechanic for holding a wealthy snob in utter contempt. 
    — Ingersoll, Robert Green
13. conduct
    direct the course of; manage or control
    Scientists have been conducting studies of individual genes for years. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 15, 2012)
14. engage
    consume all of one's attention or time
    We had nearly two hundred passengers, who were seated about on the sofas, reading, or playing games, or engaged in conversation. 
    — Field, Henry M. (Henry Martyn)
15. obtain
    come into possession of
    He delayed making the unclassified report public while awaiting an Army review, but Rolling Stone magazineobtained the report and posted it Friday night. 
    — New York Times (Feb 11, 2012)
16. scarce
    deficient in quantity or number compared with the demand
    Meanwhile, heating oil could grow more scarce in the Northeast this winter, the Energy Department warned last month. 
    — New York Times (Jan 21, 2012)
17. policy
    a plan of action adopted by an individual or social group
    Inflation has lagged behind the central bank’s 2 percent target, giving policy makers extra scope to cut rates. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 15, 2012)
18. straight
    successive, without a break
    After three straight losing seasons, Hoosiers fans were just hoping for a winning record. 
    — Seattle Times (Feb 15, 2012)
19. stock
    capital raised by a corporation through the issue of shares
    In other words, Apple’s stock is cheap, and you should buy it. 
    — Forbes (Feb 16, 2012)
20. apparent
    clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment
    But the elderly creak is beginning to become apparentin McCartney’s voice. 
    — Time (Feb 16, 2012)
21. property
    a basic or essential attribute shared by members of a class
    Owing to these magic properties, it was often planted near dwellings to keep away evil spirits. 
    — Parsons, Mary Elizabeth
22. fancy
    imagine; conceive of; see in one's mind
    For a time, indeed, he had fancied that things were changed. 
    — Weyman, Stanley J.
23. concept
    an abstract or general idea inferred from specific instances
    As a psychologist, I have always found the concept of speed dating fascinating. 
    — Scientific American (Feb 13, 2012)
24. court
    an assembly to conduct judicial business
    When Brown pleaded not guilty to assaulting Rihanna, their violent past came out in court. 
    — Slate (Feb 16, 2012)
25. appoint
    assign a duty, responsibility or obligation to
    In 1863 he was appointed by the general assembly professor of oriental languages at New College. 
    — Various
26. passage
    a section of text, particularly a section of medium length
    His interpretation of many obscure scripturalpassages by means of native manners and customs and traditions is particularly helpful and informing. 
    — Sheets, Emily Churchill Thompson
27. vain
    unproductive of success
    An attempt was made to ignore this brilliant and irregular book, but in vain; it was read all over Europe.
    — Various
28. instance
    an occurrence of something
    In many instances large districts or towns would have fewer representatives than smaller ones, or perhaps none at all. 
    — Clarke, Helen Archibald
29. coast
    the shore of a sea or ocean
    Martello towers must be built within short distances all round the coast. 
    — Wingfield, Lewis
30. project
    a planned undertaking
    The funds are aimed at helping build public projectsincluding mass transit, electricity networks, water utility and ports, it said. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 17, 2012)
31. commission
    a special group delegated to consider some matter
    The developers are now seeking approval from the landmarks commission. 
    — New York Times (Feb 16, 2012)
32. constant
    a quantity that does not vary
    In 1929, Hubble independently put forward and confirmed the same idea, and the parameter later became known as the Hubble constant. 
    — Nature (Nov 15, 2011)
33. circumstances
    one's overall condition in life
    The circumstances leading up to the shootings was not immediately available. 
    — Chicago Tribune (Feb 19, 2012)
34. constitute
    to compose or represent
    Oil and natural gas constituted almost 50 percent of Russian government revenue last year. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 19, 2012)
35. level
    a relative position or degree of value in a graded group
    Only last month did the men’s and women’s unemployment rates reach the same level. 
    — New York Times (Feb 19, 2012)
36. affect
    have an influence upon
    The central bank will start distributing low-interest loans in early March to individuals and small- and medium-sized companies affected by the flooding. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 19, 2012)
37. institute
    set up or lay the groundwork for
    Corporations have to be more and more focused oninstituting higher labor standards. 
    — Washington Post (Feb 7, 2012)
38. render
    give an interpretation of
    But authorities had rendered the weapon and the explosive device inoperable, officials said. 
    — Chicago Tribune (Feb 17, 2012)
39. appeal
    be attractive to
    To get traditional women’s accessories to appeal to men, some designers are giving them manly names and styles. 
    — New York Times (Feb 19, 2012)
40. generate
    bring into existence
    Qualities such as these are not generated under bad working practices of any sort. 
    — Hungerford, Edward
41. theory
    a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the world
    Testing that theory begins Saturday night, as the Capitals take on Tampa Bay in another important contest. 
    — Washington Post (Feb 18, 2012)
42. range
    a variety of different things or activities
    Like American community colleges, admission at an open university is not competitive, but the schools offer a range of programs, including doctoral degrees. 
    — Time (Feb 19, 2012)
43. campaign
    a race between candidates for elective office
    At the same point in 2004 — as an incumbent facing re-election — Mr. Bush had taken in about $145.6 million for his campaign. 
    — New York Times (Feb 18, 2012)
44. league
    an association of sports teams that organizes matches
    "When I broke into the big leagues until a month ago, Gary kept in touch," Mets third baseman David Wright said. 
    — Seattle Times (Feb 17, 2012)
45. labor
    any piece of work that is undertaken or attempted
    More labor is entailed, more time is required, greater delay is occasioned in cleaning up, and the amount of water used is much greater. 
    — Hoskin, Arthur J.
46. confer
    have a meeting in order to talk something over
    Ms. Stewart said Mrs. Bachmann conferred with her family and a few aides after her disappointing showing on Tuesday evening. 
    — New York Times (Jan 4, 2012)
47. grant
    allow to have
    He had been granted entry into the White House only for the daily briefing, later that afternoon. 
    — New York Times (Feb 17, 2012)
48. dwell
    think moodily or anxiously about something
    But it is hardly necessary to dwell on so normal an event. 
    — Vinogradoff, Paul
49. entertain
    provide amusement for
    The first Super Bowl in 1967 featured college marching bands entertaining the crowds at halftime. 
    — Reuters (Feb 6, 2012)
50. contract
    a binding agreement that is enforceable by law
    Contracts with utilities will be signed starting next month, he said. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 16, 2012)
51. earnest
    characterized by a firm, humorless belief in one's opinions
    Too much praise cannot be given to the earnest and efficient missionaries who founded and have maintained this mission. 
    — Miller, George A.
52. yield
    give or supply
    It is a very important honey plant, as it yields an exceptionally pure nectar and remains in bloom a long time. 
    — Parsons, Mary Elizabeth
53. wander
    to move or cause to move in a sinuous or circular course
    While each animal wandered through the maze, its brain was working furiously. 
    — New York Times (Feb 16, 2012)
54. insist
    be emphatic or resolute and refuse to budge
    Interior Department officials insisted that they had conducted an extensive scientific inquiry before moving ahead with the spill response plan. 
    — New York Times (Feb 17, 2012)
55. knight
    a person of noble birth trained to arms and chivalry
    The knight was gallant not only in war, but in love also. 
    — Crothers, Samuel McChord
56. convince
    make realize the truth or validity of something
    But though he listened he was not convinced. 
    — Reade, Charles
57. inspire
    serve as the inciting cause of
    His surprising performance inspired an outpouring of fan adoration that has been dubbed "Linsanity." 
    — Chicago Tribune (Feb 19, 2012)
58. convention
    a large formal assembly
    Last year, the industry’s main trade convention, the Inside Self-Storage World Expo, organized workshops in Las Vegas focusing on lien laws and auction sales. 
    — New York Times (Feb 17, 2012)
59. skill
    an ability that has been acquired by training
    He says many new drivers are terrified of motorway driving because they do not have the skills or confidence needed. 
    — BBC (Feb 20, 2012)
60. harry
    annoy continually or chronically
    There’s something uplifting about hearing a string instrument when I’m feeling ragged or harried. 
    — New York Times (Feb 9, 2012)
61. financial
    involving fiscal matters
    Meanwhile, universities have raised tuition every year, putting many students in a financial bind. 
    — New York Times (Feb 20, 2012)
62. reflect
    show an image of
    Teens ranting over chores and whatnot can oftenreflect deeper feelings of alienation or perceived uncaring on the part of parents. 
    — Time (Feb 17, 2012)
63. novel
    an extended fictional work in prose
    Before Robert Barr publishes a novel he spends years in thinking the thing out. 
    — Anonymous
64. furnish
    provide or equip with furniture
    Instead, according to court documents, the money went toward furnishing mansions, flying in private jets, and retaining a $120,000-a-year personal hairstylist. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 1, 2012)
65. compel
    force somebody to do something
    But the flames grew too large, compelling firefighters to call off the rescue. 
    — New York Times (Feb 18, 2012)
66. venture
    proceed somewhere despite the risk of possible dangers
    Clearly he would not venture to descend while his enemy moved. 
    — Strang, Herbert
67. territory
    the geographical area under the jurisdiction of a state
    On Friday, West Africa regional group Ecowas condemned the rebels, urging them to end hostilities and surrender all occupied territory. 
    — BBC (Feb 18, 2012)
68. temper
    a characteristic state of feeling
    Oscar Wilde, to do him justice, bore this sort of rebuff with astonishing good temper and sweetness. 
    — Anonymous
69. bent
    fixed in your purpose
    The business-oriented constituency of the Republican Party, Jacobs said, has been weakened by a factionbent on lowering taxes and cutting spending. 
    — BusinessWeek (Feb 17, 2012)
70. intimate
    marked by close acquaintance, association, or familiarity
    The female spider can choose when to cut offintimate relations by eating her partner, or kicking him out. 
    — Scientific American (Jan 31, 2012)
71. undertake
    enter upon an activity or enterprise
    An autopsy has reportedly been undertaken but the results are not expected for several weeks. 
    — The Guardian (Feb 13, 2012)
72. majority
    more than half of the votes in an election
    Republicans need just four seats in the Senate to take control as the majority party. 
    — Reuters (Feb 7, 2012)
73. assert
    to declare or affirm solemnly and formally as true
    In your talk you asserted the pill's risks of blood clotting, lung artery blockage, heart attack and stroke are minimal. 
    — Science Magazine (Feb 18, 2012)
74. crew
    the men and women who man a vehicle
    Several pilots and crew members would have to escape at once, while safety divers watched, ready to rescue anyone who became stuck. 
    — New York Times (Feb 6, 2012)
75. chamber
    a natural or artificial enclosed space
    "Today," said the old man, "you must push through with me into my most solitary chamber, that we may not be disturbed." 
    — Carlyle, Thomas
76. humble
    marked by meekness or modesty; not arrogant or prideful
    “Challenging yourself, playing up against stronger, tougher, and overall better competition will keep youhumble.” 
    — Washington Post (Jan 17, 2012)
77. scheme
    an elaborate and systematic plan of action
    Some companies in the Globe District of Arizona have started extensive underground schemes for mining large tonnages very cheaply by "caving" methods. 
    — Hoskin, Arthur J.
78. keen
    demonstrating ability to recognize or draw fine distinctions
    Not one of his movements escaped her keenobservation; she drank in every shiver. 
    — Wingfield, Lewis
79. liberal....subscribe for more...funny comedy at www.YouTube.com/drcrazie