A palindrome is a word, phrase, or number that reads the same backward as forward. The word “noon” is a palindrome because if you reverse the letters, you still get “noon.” Same with “racecar,” “level,” and “kayak.” Your own name might even be a palindrome if you're named Hannah or Otto!

Palindromes can be longer than single words. The phrase “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!” is a famous palindrome. When you ignore the punctuation, capitalization, and spaces, it reads identically in both directions. Numbers can be palindromes too: 121, 1331, or even 12321.

People have been fascinated by palindromes for thousands of years. Ancient Greeks and Romans created palindromic sentences as word puzzles and games. Today, some writers challenge themselves to create entire stories using only palindromes, though that's extremely difficult!

Finding palindromes hiding in everyday language feels like discovering a secret pattern in the world around you. Once you start noticing them, you'll spot palindromes everywhere: on license plates (like “ABBA”), in your calendar (February 20, 2022 was written 2/20/2022), and even in words you use every day like “mom,” “dad,” and “pop.”