[HN Gopher] Visually symmetric words
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       Visually symmetric words
        
       Author : d4a
       Score  : 78 points
       Date   : 2022-12-27 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.johndcook.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.johndcook.com)
        
       | larsrc wrote:
       | If 'm' and 'u' are symmetric, surely 'n' is as well?
        
       | rex_lupi wrote:
       | Probably the most low-effort blog post I've read in a while
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | Funny 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.
        
         | MontyCarloHall wrote:
         | Usually John Cook's blog posts are extremely high quality, so
         | I'll give him a pass just this once.
        
         | pbnjay wrote:
         | Yeah... I was really interested in thinking about how to code a
         | solution and then the post ended.
        
           | diceduckmonk wrote:
           | It's not that deep. Same algorithm as for palindromes, but
           | with different logical conditions on "equality" /
           | continuation
        
         | omoikane wrote:
         | Seems 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
        
           | cleansingfire wrote:
           | I 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.
        
         | downboots wrote:
         | Perhaps https://youtu.be/qTBAW-Eh0tM at cost of breaking
         | symmetry
        
       | DominoTree wrote:
       | UwU
        
       | sedev wrote:
       | There'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 wrote:
         | > 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/...
         | and
         | https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/streetfighter/images/d/dc/...
        
       | hcs wrote:
       | I once made a little puzzle that involves this idea:
       | https://hcs64.itch.io/fitting-words
        
         | lucasmerlin wrote:
         | That was really fun!
        
       | zuminator wrote:
       | I 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
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | squaredot wrote:
       | I 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.
        
       | _448 wrote:
       | The name of one of the Indian languages "malayalam" is a
       | palindrome, though not visually symmetric.
        
         | jagged-chisel wrote:
         | According to the rules in TFA, this is indeed "visually
         | symmetrical"
         | 
         | Edit: in uppercase only, I suppose
        
           | BugsJustFindMe wrote:
           | > _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 wrote:
       | poq bod dob qop
       | 
       | How about rotational symmetry?                 qp       db
       | pq       bd
        
         | dcminter wrote:
         | Famously the Sun Microsystems logo had rotational symmetry!
         | (While reading "sun")
        
         | arnarbi wrote:
         | "pod" is rotationally symmetric and in the dictionary.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Or vertical:                 p  q  y       b  d  l  ;)
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | 2devnull wrote:
       | wow
        
         | _448 wrote:
         | The HN crowd does not have sense of humour:)
        
           | mrexroad wrote:
           | non
        
       | residualmind wrote:
       | I always liked that "yeah" is point-symmetric if you pick the
       | font right.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | Isn't also the lowercase l and mirror of the upper case I?
        
       | arketyp wrote:
       | Treating 'u' and 'n' as symmetric is a bit cheating. Luckily,
       | they are also rotationally symmetric words, like 'snus' and
       | 'pod'.
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram
        
         | tobr wrote:
         | I 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 wrote:
           | Holy shit. T I L.
        
         | croes wrote:
         | Lower 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 wrote:
           | Yet the uppercase G is symmetric to 6. Case in point: 604.
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | Interesting choice of 'snus' as the example, rather than 'suns'
        
       | shanebellone wrote:
       | "racecar" is a palindrome that you cannot unsee.
        
         | diceduckmonk wrote:
         | I've seen it many times but had to reverify when seeing your
         | comment.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-27 23:00 UTC)