I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to make a perfectly symmetric Bananagrams word grid using all 144 Bananagrams tiles. I decided to use mirror symmetry, so a word spelled out horizontally on the left hand side would have to be reversed on the right hand side and yet still spell a real word. Can it be done? Let's find out.
First, I consulted my
letter distribution for Bananagrams to see which letters occurred an odd number of times in a Banangrams set. For instance, there are three W tiles, so I knew that at least one (and possibly all three) would have to occur on the center line of the grid to maintain mirror symmetry.
I then tried to build those letters into vertical words. Next I built some horizontal palindromes off of those center-line words. I got some good
palindromic words from Wiktionary.
Finally, I worked on linking everything up. This step took the longest time. Fortunately, I found a list of words, that when reversed, yield different English words (like "tuba" and "abut"). These are called
"semordnilaps". I particularly liked the ERGO/OGRE pair, so I managed to work that one into my grid. After a lot of fiddling around, I wound up with the grid shown below.
 | C H GAG R M OH E HO I MADAM I N A A N KNOW WONK E B E U EYE U R R R R OGRE ERGO BUN NUB O O X J P J X RECAPS A SPACER S I L V L I S L A E A L T T Q DEIFIED Q U A L A U I Z O Z I TIDE EWE EDIT V O O V Y TIN NIT Y F T F STATS D |
Voila! The world's first palindromic Bananagrams grid!