My answer to that ubiquitous question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was always “a Doctor or Martin Gardner” (with the usual follow up “you know, the famous puzzler, mathematician, essayist, magician, and writer extraordinaire??”)
David Suzuki once did a “Nature of Things” documentary on Martin Gardner entitled “Mathe-magic.” The 1 hour special was fascinating beyond my imagination, with discussions about the mathematics of juggling, John Conway’s “Game of Life,” hexa-flexagons, and myriad other mathematical simulacra. (you can actually watch/download the documentary here.)
In one of the introductory scenes, a puzzle designer named Scott Kim began drawing the the first name “Martin” in a fancy script. When he finished, he rotated the paper over 180 degrees, and it read “Gardner.” In-frieking-credible.
I would later learn text like that was called an AMBIGRAM1 – a word or phrase that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point.
Peter Newell’s “invertible illustrations” were sort of the precursor to ambigrams (Mental Floss has a nice collection of some of Newell’s work here). The last page in his first book of illustrations, Topsys & Turvys, reads “the end” but also when inverted reads “puzzle”:
And, ambigrams have shown up in a lot of pop culture over the years:
The other day, I re-discovered Erich Friedman’s page of wonderful ambigrams, which can be found here.
Remembering that Martin Gardner documentary, I became inspired to try my hand at an ambigram of my own name and doodled on scraps of paper for what seemed like hours… But, I eventually came up with something. So, here’s my name in two images one of which is just the other but rotated 180 degrees:
Before I could develop an addiction (and start drawing everyone’s name I knew in similar fashion), I did some quick google/flickr searches and the results were disheartening – so many talented, imaginative folks out there.
- the term “ambigram” looks like it originated with Douglas Hofstadter [↩]