Uploaded March 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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If you like wordplay, you'll love this brief guide to palindromes: words and phrases that say the same thing forwards & backwards (think "wow", "RADAR" or... "taco cat").

What's the longest palindrome in English? What's the longest in any language? What's the oldest palindrome we've found? And what does it have to do with the movie Tenet? I'll answer these questions and more.

Including...
🔠 What is the Sator square?
🖊 What is a "palindromist"?
🖊 What was the best palindrome of 2020?
🖊 What palindromes to French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Chinese have to offer?
🖊 What's the longest word with rotational symmetry?
🖊 What's the longest word with reflective symmetry?
🖊 What is a semordnilap?

Check me out on Twitter & TikTok:
twitter.com/robwordsYT​​
tiktok.com/@robwords

==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Intro - What is a palindrome?
0:46 Longest palindrome words in English
1:32 Palindrom phrases - Elba & Panama
3:05 Palindrome poem - Dammit I'm Mad
3:30 The palindromists
4:00 2020's best palindromes
4:49 World's oldest palindrome - Sator square
5:53 Tenet and the Sator square
6:25 World's oldest - Le Grand Palindrome
7:05 Spanish, Italian, Russian & Chinese
8:00 Symmetrical words
9:05 Semordnilap
9:22 Goodbye