Ambigrams

We got a call from Brandy Noon here in San Diego.

She spells her name N-O-O-N, and she notes that that’s a palindrome.

But she also notes that it’s the same upside down as it is backwards and forwards.

Freaky.

Right?

So Brandy Noon wants to know what you call that.

Is there a word for that kind of word that looks the same upside down and goes back and forth like that?

Do you have an answer?

I do.

There are a couple of names for that.

One is ambigram and another one is invertogram.

Invertogram.

Yeah.

And I also found a rather long one.

This is something you might see maybe at a swimming pool if nobody can swim anymore on Mondays.

Now no swims on mun.

Now, ambigram is also the one where somebody will cleverly write the letters in a quasi-cursive format.

So that it says one thing looking one way, but it’s a different message the other way.

Right.

So it’s not necessarily the same message upside down, but still a good word.

Yeah, that’s cool stuff.

Still a very good word, yeah.

Which reminds me of this weird thing that happened to me in college.

One day I woke up and there was this little piece of metal on my floor that said Zunes.

It was tiny, and it said Zoon, Z-O-O-N-S, and I thought, my gosh, what did I do last night?

Why is there something on the floor that says Zoon’s?

And it took me forever before I realized that I had hit the snooze button on my alarm clock really hard.

It was the snooze button.

It was just the top of that.

But it really freaked me out for a while.

Zoon’s.

Right, who came in here and left a secret message for me?

877-99-9673.