Ambigrams Revisited

I call this a "basic" font because working with ambigrams usually involves much more complexity; merging adjacent letters, getting very creative with formation of letters, and rarely relying on a single set of typographic glyphs. For example, I never would have been able to create the ambigram reading PUZZLES FROM WONDERLAND (used at one of the Puzzle Parties) with the font above.

But I wanted to create the above font just to give readers a taste of basic ambigrams in action. Most of the letter designs are quite natural (the "f/j" combo is the only real stretch). I stuck with lowercase letters, but at the end I included a capital "N" and "H" as an alternatives just because the glyphs are so useful.

With the above font one can write words which, when rotated, remain unchanged. A classic example is the word "dollop":

Other words are rotated to become different valid words, such as "pallets" and "stalled":

This may lead one to search for phrases (or maybe even whole sentences?) that are ambigrammic. For example:

If one uses the alternate (captial) "N" glyph, one of my favorite ambigrams is the word "NewsmaN":

For those as fascinated by this topic as myself, I have compiled a few lists of words based on the North American Scrabble Tournament word lists. These new lists include all words that rotate and remain valid (possibly different) words.

• all lowercase
• upper H
• upper N
• upper H & N

-- Eric

Comments about this article:

Posted by: Michael. Beyond that I refuse to tell you because Internet safety.

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