Qoz

Pronounced pretty much like it's spelled - kóz

Recruitment

Recruited by his brother, Vroo, and Gordot.

First Issue: Apr 2002

Nom Story

Qoz is a simple, mathematically-equivalent transformation of Roy. It's short, and worth 21 points in Scrabble and 15 points in WIM.

My original nom (see below) was invented before I'd ever met a member of the NPL. While appropriate to me, it seemed less appropriate to the NPL.

Previous Noms

July 2007 - July 2008

This combines the first two letters of my first name (pronounced /reg/ and can be transliterated as (R) if the ® symbol isn't available).

2002 - July 2007

Ambigrams are words or phrases which can be read in more than one direction. Some ambigrams read the same phrase in all directions, other read one phrase one way and a different phrase another way. Some trivial examples: “pod” rotated 180 degrees is still “pod”; “up” rotated 180 degrees is “dn” (common on boxes); and MOM in a mirror is still MOM. I started creating ambigrams more than 20 years ago and have created hundreds of them, so when I was trying to pick a nom, it was natural for me to do something with ambigrams (especially, since I've never come up with an anagram for my name that I liked).

My normal ambigram for my name uses 180-degree symmetry:

But using it would mean that my nom was just my name. So, I decided to refine the mirror-image ambigram that I had done and create one that would fit well with a san-serif font such as Helvetica or Arial, so it would look appropriate in normal usage.