CRISPR stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. A palindrome, of course, is a sequence of letters that spell the same words in either direction, front to back or vice versa. In the verbal realm, that’s wordplay, yielding gambits of strained cleverness such as “Able was I ere I saw Elba,” in the voice of Napoléon, and “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama,” referring
