Leigh Mercer (1893–1977) was aBritish writer ofwordplay andrecreational mathematics who is best known for devising thepalindrome "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!".[1][2]
Word Ways called him "a luxuriant source of verbal exotica and linguistic curiosa."[3] Among his palindromes are "Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus."[3]
Leigh Mercer was born in October 1893, the brother of journalist and historian Tom Mercer. His father was a parson inChurch of England who enjoyed wordplay likepalindromes andspoonerisms, and Mercer says he grew up knowing Lewis Carroll "almost by heart". Mercer regarded himself as "fool of the family, a professional ne'er-do-well" and rarely held jobs for very long, working as many as 60 to 85 different jobs between 1910 and his retirement in 1959. His first and longest job was atRolls-Royce in Derby, and as many as 30 other jobs, particularly in his early career, were in engineering shops of car companies despite Mercer never learning to drive. When he became bored with engineering, his jobs included clerk of the Post Office Savings Bank, temporaryCrawley postman on Christmas Day, handyman at a circus, owner of a yo-yo store, and various others. In 1946, he published an account in theNew Statesman of being a "pavement artist" making coins from passersby for his chalk art, and the article earned further coverage including a five-minute appearance onBBC.
Leigh Mercer obfuscated details about himself, using pseudonyms such as the palindromic "Roger G. M'Gregor" when he registered to join theNational Puzzlers' League. In a 1991 profile of Mercer inWord Ways,A. Ross Eckler Jr. wrote that Mercer had stressed he was not merely a "'drome man" and had "a number of hobbies".
The London Times called him "a king-pin of this game called palindromes, and whenever you pick up an American book on the subject you are likely to see his name indexed."
In the 1940s, Mercer collected thousands of index cards that has been left in the trash by his employer,Rawlplug, and used them to copy the centers of potential palindromes.[4] In 1946, he came up with "Plan a canal p" which he admitted was "not very hopeful looking" though it became "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama!".[4]
Mercer made many palindrome submissions toNotes and Queries but did not always claim authorship even when he had indeed penned the palindromes.[4]
The followingmathematical limerick is attributed to him:[5]
This is read as follows: