Sator Square

Found in the ruins of Pompeii, the Latin inscription SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS (“The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort”) may be the most symmetrical sentence ever composed. If it’s written conventionally, it’s a palindrome, reading the same forward and backward. And if it’s written into a square:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palindrom_TENET.svg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

… it reads the same left to right, top to bottom, right to left, or bottom to top.

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A Verbal Palindrome

Most palindromes are spelled symmetrically, so their letters produce the same phrase whether read backward or forward:

Able was I ere I saw Elba.

But it’s also possible to do this at the level of words, as in this example:

You can cage a swallow, can’t you, but you can’t swallow a cage, can you?

When this is read backward, word by word, it produces the same sentence as when read forward. And it’s true!

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Judging a Book by Its Cover

Because of its cover design, some readers briefly imagined that SF author Jack Dann’s 1984 novel The Man Who Melted was called The Man Who Melted Jack Dann. That inspired some readers to search for other such titles, with some success:

  • The Joy of Cooking Irma S. Rombauer
  • Captain Blood Returns Raphael Sabatini
  • Flush Virginia Woolf
  • Contact Carl Sagan

Any others? You’ll get extra credit for bending parts of speech (Two Sisters Gore Vidal).

| Language · Literature

Oxymora

“Military intelligence,” said Groucho, “is a contradiction in terms.” Other examples:

  • Almost exactly
  • Detailed summary
  • Dry lake
  • Elevated subway
  • Exact estimate
  • Found missing
  • Guest host
  • Limited omniscience
  • Liquid gas
  • Local long distance
  • Mandatory options
  • Neoconservatism
  • Only choice
  • Open secret
  • Original copy
  • Virtual reality
  • Wireless cable

Also: Dodge Ram.

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