This question is based on a Puzzler that was broadcast on the radioprogram Car Talk1:

“I was driving on the highway the other day and I happened to notice myodometer. Like most odometers, it shows six digits, in whole miles only. So, if my car had 300,000 miles, for example, I’d see 3-0-0-0-0-0.“ Now, what I saw that day was very interesting. I noticed that the last 4 digits were palindromic; that is, they read the same forward as backward. For example, 5-4-4-5 is a palindrome, so my odometer could have read 3-1-5-4-4-5. “One mile later, the last 5 numbers were palindromic. For example, it could have read 3-6-5-4-5-6. One mile after that, the middle 4 out of 6 numbers were palindromic. And you ready for this? One mile later, all 6 were palindromic!

“The question is, what was on the odometer when I first looked?”

from Thinking in Python