Fun With Years

It was quite a few years ago when my wife and I were in a Tech-HiFi in the West 40s buying a cassette player. That sentence alone should tell you how long ago this was.

I distinctly remember the FM voice on the store radio informing us that it was a rare day. The digital time and the date and year lined up to be: 12345678. 12:34 for the  time; May 6, 1978 for the date. I always thought that was helpful because after watching so many Perry Mason episodes as a kid I was always afraid some courtroom attorney was going to question me where I was on the "day in question" and I wouldn't be able to tell anyone and I'd be convicted. But, 12345678 gave me an alibi on my whereabouts and when.

One night on Jeopardy one of the categories was palindromic years: same year forward and backwards. The clue was an event in that year; you guess the year. I 'm not sure what the clues were, but the years I remember are: 1001, 1661, 1881, 1991, 2002.

All this brought me back to my days of buying MAD magazine at Siegal's corner candy store in Flushing by the Murray Hill LIRR station when I was a kid. I never forgot the issue that shows Alfred E. Neuman, beside pointing to the IND pointing out that 1961viewed upside down is still 1961. It's not a palindrome. I don't know what you'd call it, but 1001, and 1881 are similar upside down years.

And ever since that 12345678 revelation at Tech-HiFi, I've looked at digital clocks a bit differently. I love to see 11:11; 12:12; 10;10; and of course the best one, 12:34

Of course numbers aren't the only source of palindromes. Words and their letters can be too. The one I remember most is FRED DERF from a long ago 'I Love Lucy' episode. There are many others, and I'm sure those who are great at Scrabble can easily supply more.

But why wonder what other words or phrases are palindromes? Let's just ask the latest software expert for help: ChatGPT.

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ChatGPT

Palindrome phrases are sequences of characters that read the same forward and backward. Here are some examples:

1. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama

2. Madam, in Eden, I'm Adam

3.  Able was I ere I saw Elba

4. A Santa lived as a devil at NASA

These phrases remain the same when you read them from left to right, right to left, ignoring punctuation and capitalization.

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Will IBM's Watson and ChatGPT ever square off in the Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy?

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