What do the words Malayalam and racecar have in common?
Click start to play today’s Crossword and find out!
If you haven’t guessed the answer yet, read those words from back to front. They are palindromes – words, sentences, verses or even numbers that read the same backward or forward. The word palindrome derives from the Greek palin, which means again or back, and dromos, which means running.
According to dictionary.com, the Finnish word for soapstone vendor – saippuakivikauppias – is apparently the longest palindrome in everyday use. In English, the longest palindrome is considered to be tattarrattat. It was coined by Irish novelist James Joyce in his 1922 novel Ulysses, and is meant to mimic the sound of a knock on the door.
There are hundreds of such words in common usage and we may not even realise they are a part of our conversations. Some examples are radar, refer, noon, and wow. Even seemingly innocuous phrases like “don’t nod” and “never odd or even” are palindromic!
But palindromes aren’t limited to literature or vocabulary – they have a more specific and serious application, too.
In biochemistry, a palindromic sequence is a nucleic acid sequence in a double-stranded DNA or RNA molecule. In this sequence, reading in one direction on a strand will match the sequence reading in the opposite direction on the complementary strand. For instance, the DNA sequence ACCTAGGT is a palindrome because its complement is TGGATCCA.
Can you figure out all the palindromes in today’s Crossword? Go ahead and play, and let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.
