From: hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.mike-jittlov,sci.skeptic,alt.politics.kibo
Subject: Re: WIZARD - the Nostradamus of Movies!
Date: 18 Dec 92 14:05:03 GMT
Organization: Computing and Telecommunications Services, UCSC
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu
In-reply-to: jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu's message of 16 Dec 92 13:33:59 GMT

In article <1gnb87INNp40@gap.caltech.edu>, jittlov@gumby.cs.caltech.edu (Mike Jittlov) writes:
) By the by - the letters in "wizard" are exactly alpha-numerically
) palindromic.  How many English words even DO that?  (Let's see...)

) WIZ-MATIC            A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M 
) Alphocryptic         1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10 11 12 13 
) Decoder             26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 

) (WizMAD,             N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z
) Part 2)             14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
)                     13 12 11 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

) A studious glance reveals a mere handful:  by, lo, bay, boy, buy,
) dew, dow, flu, got, get, leo, man, men, ssh, tag, teg, tog, tug,
) wad, wed, vole (love), bevy, trig, girt, wold, world, Ariz(ona).

) Mmm... "ghost"  <gasp> Another movie I acted in!!   =)-oooeeeeooo

Well, I took a different approach than Kibo.

I already had a generate-palindromes C program from a recent programming
class, so I modified it to do the following before looking for
palindromes:

1. Convert to all lowercase.
2. Sort the letters in the word.
3. Exit if any non-letters are found.
4. Change n-z to m-a.

The resulting output:
Wizard Palindromes from file /usr/dict/words:

             a           AAA            AZ             b          bevy
           bey       bigotry           boy         briny           buy
            by           bye             c        cervix           cox
         Croix             d           dew           Dow             e
         Ervin           eve        evolve             f      flourish
           flu         flush          foul      fugitive          full
           fum           fun           fur       furnish          fuss
             g         ghost           GMT           got          grit
             h           his        hooves             i            ii
           iii            IR         Irish           irk             j
             k         Kirby          kirk             l           Lev
         livre            lo      loblolly          loll          love
             m        Mervin         Mizar            MN             n
            NM         novel             o        Oliver       Orville
             p           Paz          Polk             q             r
           rev        revive            RI          rill           rim
           Rio           rip         riven         river          roil
             s         shirk         shish        shiver          shoo
         shove        shovel        shrill        shrive       shrivel
         sight             t           tog          Togo          trig
          tuft             u           UHF             v           vee
        vermin       vertigo         verve           vet           vie
             w           wed          weed        wizard          wold
          wood             x             y             z           zag
           Zan           zap

Number of wizard palindromes found: 122
Longest wizard palindrome:          flourish
Number of words in file:            25144
Longest word:                       electroencephalography

I suppose I should attribute the copyright on the /usr/dict/words
file, since this output is a derived work.  Copyright(C) Sun
Microsystems and maybe AT&T Bell Labs.

If anyone wants the modified palindrome C program, mail me and I'll
send it to you.
--
William R Ward                         __o   Bay View Software
VoiceMail: +1 (408) 479-4072         _ \<,_  Internet:  hermit@cats.ucsc.edu
SnailMail: 1803 Mission St. #339    (_)/ (_) BITNet:    hermit@cats.bitnet
           Santa Cruz CA 95060 USA