9 ms·
Visually symmetric words
- rex_lupi 4y agoProbably the most low-effort blog post I've read in a while
- pbnjay 4y agoYeah… I was really interested in thinking about how to code a solution and then the post ended.
- diceduckmonk 4y agoIt’s not that deep. Same algorithm as for palindromes, but with different logical conditions on “equality” / continuation
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoUsually John Cook’s blog posts are extremely high quality, so I’ll give him a pass just this once.
- Waterluvian 4y agoFunny enough, I came to the comments section to say how much I enjoy the occasional short post that touches on one thing and moves on. I don’t need my life to be chock full of deep dives into ideas.
- omoikane 4y agoSeems like there isn't much material to expand upon "()()" versus "())(". I prefer this other article about palindromes: Was It A Cat I Saw? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33285198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33285198
- cleansingfire 4y agoI had to work harder than expected to get this. I interpret the cartoon as distinguishing between meaning and form. Until I read it aloud, I couldn't stop interpreting the strings as open close open close in both directions.
- hettygreen 4y agoThanks for explaining this.. I honestly had no idea, even tried to google it.
- downboots 4y agoPerhaps https://youtu.be/qTBAW-Eh0tM https://youtu.be/qTBAW-Eh0tM at cost of breaking symmetry
- squaredot 4y agoI didn't expect to be surprised by this! After thinking about it, it reminds me that game about reading some color names as fast as possible, where the names are painted with another color.
- arketyp 4y agoTreating 'u' and 'n' as symmetric is a bit cheating. Luckily, they are also rotationally symmetric words, like 'snus' and 'pod'.
- croes 4y agoLower case u not so much because in some fonts it's just a smaller upper case U. But the y is as symmetrical as j or g.
- Fnoord 4y agoYet the uppercase G is symmetric to 6. Case in point: 604.
- 082349872349872 4y agocf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram
- tobr 4y agoI always appreciated the rotational symmetry of “up”/“dn” (as seen on some keyboards in the context of Page up and Page down).
- green_on_black 4y agoHoly shit. T I L.
- sokoloff 4y agoInteresting choice of ‘snus’ as the example, rather than ‘suns’
- DominoTree 4y agoUwU
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- croes 4y agoIsn't also the lowercase l and mirror of the upper case I?
- sedev 4y agoThere's also the niche use case of vertically arranged English letters — you see this once in a while on signage, but my favorite example is from _Street Fighter 3,_ where the character DeeJay has pants with "MAXIMUM" written down the leg, which means that you can flip the sprite (i.e. to have the character face left or right) and the word stays intact.
- flobosg 4y ago> Street Fighter 3 I think it’s Street Fighter Alpha 3, and it happens in a previous game as well: Super Street Fighter II – see https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/streetfighter/images/8/88/DeeJay_breathe.gif https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/streetfighter/images/8/88/... and https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/streetfighter/images/d/dc/DeeJayGifFlipped.gif https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/streetfighter/images/d/dc/...
- nh23423fefe 4y agosf4 as well, but not in 6 yet. one assume capcom will have a "classic" costume pack with that one
- 2devnull 4y agowow
- larsrc 4y agoIf 'm' and 'u' are symmetric, surely 'n' is as well?
- _448 4y agoThe name of one of the Indian languages "malayalam" is a palindrome, though not visually symmetric.
- jagged-chisel 4y agoAccording to the rules in TFA, this is indeed “visually symmetrical” Edit: in uppercase only, I suppose
- BugsJustFindMe 4y ago> According to the rules in TFA, this is indeed “visually symmetrical” Only if you ignore case and mix uppercase A and lowercase l. > Edit: in uppercase only, I suppose Not even. Uppercase L is not a symmetric character.
- EGreg 4y agopoq bod dob qop How about rotational symmetry? qp db pq bd
- shanebellone 4y ago"racecar" is a palindrome that you cannot unsee.
- diceduckmonk 4y agoI’ve seen it many times but had to reverify when seeing your comment.
- wunderbaba 4y agoActually "butt tub" is a palindrome that you cannot unsee. Even at a young age I had a very sophisticated sense of humor....
- hcs 4y agoI once made a little puzzle that involves this idea: https://hcs64.itch.io/fitting-words https://hcs64.itch.io/fitting-words
- lucasmerlin 4y agoThat was really fun!
- graypegg 4y agoHey that was really good! Took me a minute to figure out the concept and then suddenly 20min was gone, a sign of a good puzzle! You should totally try expanding on this
- blueblimp 4y agoI spent a minute thinking ROTOR was impossible until I realized the asymmetry in the ruleset. Neat puzzle.
- prng2021 4y agoFun game! I got stuck on Monotone
- residualmind 4y agoI always liked that "yeah" is point-symmetric if you pick the font right.
- zuminator 4y agoI don't see how you can allow lowercase "m" and "u" as symmetrical without also by the same principles including "n." In which case there are other words like "nun" and "non." Also "MAM" and "MOM" are symmetrical and are words (at least, Scrabble words. He only includes "MAAM" which oddly enough is not a Scrabble word.) More along those lines here: http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_records.html http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_records.html
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> He only includes "MAAM" which oddly enough is not a Scrabble word. What's odd about that? ISNT, DONT, ARENT, COULDNT, SHOULDNT, none of them are Scrabble words. More generally, you're not allowed to misspell words in Scrabble.
- scbrg 4y agoThere's an Swedish fantasy role playing game/novel[0] in which there's a city called HOXOH (all uppercase). It's also known as the "City of Illusions" and home to the magical Academy of Illusionists (who are often practicing their art in the streets). It was given its name partly due to the fact that the word could be read and mirrored in any direction without becoming distorted/assymetric. [0] The RPG is called Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons) and is roughly the Swedish equivalent of D&D, though it's actually based on the BRPG rules. The supplement that introduced HOXOH was eventually used as a basis for a series of (quite interesting) fantasy novels written by the very author that originally wrote the RPG supplement.
- TacticalCoder 4y agoThe brand "newman" was a thing when I was a kid. My mind got blown out the day someone made me notice you could rotate the logo 180 degrees and end up with the same logo. Wikipedia has the official logo and animation showing it in action: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Man https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Man
- amluto 4y agoYou can take words that aren’t naturally symmetric and draw them symmetrically. You get ambigrams, like this: https://scottkim.com/2020/07/17/origami/ https://scottkim.com/2020/07/17/origami/
- azatom 4y agoWhat about cursive, where mirroring/rotating does not even produce the same number of letters? (eg.: google love hate mirror image)