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Not solvable by computer (?) (Posted on 2015-04-24) Difficulty: 3 of 5
Winners never quit and quitters never win.

Please provide some examples of proverbs, quips, catch phrases, punch lines having a similar structure i.e. A B C D C' B' A'.

A', B', C' are grammatical alterations of (or exactly equal to) A, B, C.
D stands for one of the (and, but, while ) or (comma, hyphen, empty space)

No Solution Yet Submitted by Ady TZIDON    
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Solution computer plus human finds only one | Comment 1 of 6
The program reads the html file from the Wikipedia List of Proverbs article and narrows down, for human perusal, those proverbs the initial letters of whose words form a palindrome.

DefDbl A-Z
Dim crlf$


Private Sub Form_Load()
 Text1.Text = ""
 crlf$ = Chr(13) + Chr(10)
 Form1.Visible = True
 
 Open "proverbs.txt" For Input As #1
 Do
  Line Input #1, l$
  p$ = ""
  For i = 1 To Len(l$)
    c$ = Mid(l, i, 1)
    If c = "<" Then lvl = lvl + 1
    If c = ">" Then lvl = lvl - 1
    If lvl = 0 Then p = p + c
  Next
  While Left(p, 1) = ">"
   p = Mid(p, 2)
  Wend
  ix = InStr(p, ">")
  If ix Then p = Left(p, ix - 1)
  p = LCase(LTrim(RTrim(p)))
  chk$ = Left(p, 1)
  p2$ = p + " "
  While p2 > ""
    ix = InStr(p2, " ")
    If ix Then
      p2 = LTrim(Mid(p2, ix + 1))
      While InStr("abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz", Left(p2, 1)) = 0
        p2 = Mid(p2, 2)
      Wend
      If p2 > "" Then
       chk = chk + Left(p2, 1)
      End If
    End If
  Wend
  If isPalin(chk) Then
   p = LTrim(RTrim(p))
   If Len(p) > 1 Then
    Text1.Text = Text1.Text & p & crlf
    DoEvents
   End If
    
  End If
  
 Loop Until EOF(1)
 
 Close
  
  Text1.Text = Text1.Text & "done"
  DoEvents

End Sub

Function isPalin(s$)
 good = 1

 For i = 1 To Len(s$) / 2
   If Mid$(s$, i, 1) <> Mid$(s$, Len(s$) + 1 - i, 1) Then good = 0: Exit For
 Next
 isPalin = good
End Function

The "winners never quit" proverb doesn't seem to be present at all, and many red herrings are present in this complete list:

enough is enough
failing to plan is planning to fail
first things first
forewarned is forearmed
manners maketh man
many a mickle makes a muckle
never say never
practice makes perfect
slow but sure
speech is silver
the
time will tell

Only "failing to plan is planning to fail" seems to fit the format asked for.

  Posted by Charlie on 2015-04-24 12:59:57
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