PALINDROME GENERATOR (1K ZX81)
by Tim Goldingham, Maidenhead, Berkshire
from Your Computer, December 1981, Pages 77-78

SEX AT NOON TAXES. Apart from its biological significance, this observation
by John Julius Norwich is interesting because it is a palindrome - that is,
it reads the same backwards as forwards.

Palindromes have always fascinated literary men. In a Charles Osbourne's
recent biography of W H Auden, The Life of a Poet, the following is quoted:

T Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is
sad, I'd assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab
pot toilet.

This has 85 letters; but according to the Guinness Book of Records the
longest palindrome, devised by Jeff Grant of New Zealand, has 11,125 words.

You may not be able to match that record, but you can have some fun with
this ZX-81 program, which displays text both fowards and backwards on the
screen as you type, thus:

SS
SEES
SEX XES
SEX AAXES
SEX AT TAXES
SEX AT NN TAXES
SEX AT NOON TAXES

Because the program uses Inkey$, the space key would be interpreted as
Break, so the adjacent key is used for spacing: a full stop gives a space on
the left, and a comma on the right: **, shifted H, clears the screen ready
for you to try and create more new palindromes.

As an extra refinement, if the palindrome pivots about a single letter as in
the Auden example, a single * will remove the duplicate. The Rubout key can
be used in the normal way.
