• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    For anyone unaware:

    SATOR
    AREPO
    TENET
    OPERA
    ROTAS

    A grammatical but boring sentence in Latin which is like eight different kinds of palindrome. It was the “cool S” of ancient Rome.

    I got nerd-sniped by this a while back and tried finding any English equivalents, and long story short, there really aren’t any. It takes one palindromic word, two words which are also words when reversed, and some implications about matching letters between words. I just wrote a function that recognized when a fifteen-letter string matched the requirements (the latter ten letters being a reversal of the first ten) and trimmed down a dictionary.

    The results still rely on a lot of… almost-words. Like “apart paler alala relap trapa.” Some of these are loanwords and some of these are nonsense. “Darts apart radar trapa strad” is closer. “Farad acara radar araca daraf” highlights two things: ACARA is an Australian agency, because my dictionary was a spellcheck file, and the daraf is a unit proposed by one guy who was explicitly spelling farad backwards, because us STEM types are all huge dorks.

    After some editing, here’s a list of what didn’t seem like complete bullshit: Asses stime siris emits sessa. Cares amene refer enema serac. Damon animo minim omina nomad. Darts apart radar trapa strad. Dedal enema dewed amene laded. Detar enema tenet amene rated. Farad amora rotor aroma daraf. Gater amene tebet enema retag. Gnats nonet anana tenon stang. Hales amene level enema selah. Kayak amapa yaray apama kayak. Lasso amahs sagas shama ossal. Lasso artus stats sutra ossal. Laton animo tipit omina notal. Marts apart radar trapa stram. Mural ulema rever amelu larum. Namer amene mesem enema reman. Paler amene lemel enema relap. Parts apart radar trapa strap. Rater amene tenet enema retar. Redes edile divid elide seder. Sarah aroma rotor amora haras. Stats tenet anana tenet stats. Straw trapa radar apart warts. Sumac ulema mesem amelu Camus.