For those who like word games, palindromes can be fun in Spanish or English.

Palindromes are words, phrases or sentences that use the same letters both backward and forward. One of the most famous in English may have been Adam's first words to Eve: "Madam, I'm Adam." To that, she learned fast and replied with a palindrome of her own: "Eve."

Spanish too has palindromes, and like many of the ones written in English they often rely on obscure words or unnatural word order to work.

As in English, spaces and capitalization don't count, and neither do accent marks.

The longest common single-word palindrome in Spanish is reconocer, "to recognize," which has the same number of letters as sometemos, a conjugated verb meaning "we submit." Some Spanish-speaking word gamesters have proposed the longer word soplapalpos, but it was coined for this purpose and doesn't appear dictionaries.

Perhaps the best-known sentence in Spanish that's a palindrome is "Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad," which uses an inverted (but still grammatically correct) word order to say, "The abbot gave rice to the vixen."

Following are some other Spanish palindromes. Most of these are straightforward and avoid the use of unusual names to achieve the palindrome.

Spanish Palindromes
Adán no calla con nada.
Adán no cede con nada.
A Mercedes ése de crema
Ana lleva al oso la avellana.
Amad a la dama.
Amo la pacífica paloma.
Amó la paloma.
Anita lava la tina.
Así Ramona va, no Marisa.
A ti no, bonita.
Échele leche.
Es Adán, ya ve yo soy Eva y nada sé.

La moral, claro, mal
La ruta natural
La sal
Le avisará Sara si va él.
Luz azul
No bajará Sara jabón.
No deseo yo ese don.
Ojo rojo
Somos o no somos.
Son robos y sobornos.
Yo hago yoga hoy.