Puzzle of the Day

Wednesday, April 1

What famous tongue-twister is widely thought to commemorate the woman seen at right, a pioneering 19th century paleontologist who supported herself by purveying marine fossils?

Triple bonus points if you can tell me her name!

   


Check back tomorrow for the answer, a shoutout to all the solvers, and a new puzzle!

Yesterday's puzzle:

One standard list of the colors of the rainbow is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. (Sorry not sorry to the indigo defenders.)

The colors are listed above in rainbow order, naturally. Where might you instead encounter those colors in the following orders?

  1. yellow, blue, red, violet, orange, green     (Knowing that the answer can be found on the lower level of 973 Mission might be a helpful cue.)

  2. blue, green, orange, red, violet, yellow     (Do you ever feel like just looking the answers up somewhere? For reference, this is a hint.)

These last two are probably easier for folks my age and up, but you never know:

  1.          4.

Answer:

  1. These are the colors of pool balls 1–6 (or 9–14!), in order.
  2. This is an alphabetic listing of the colors, as you would find in a dictionary. (My hint led a lot of people to guess the Google logo, which unfortunately does not include orange or violet.)
  3. These are the colors of the NBC television network logo.
  4. These are the colors of the old Apple logo. To the person who guessed a child's stacked-ring toy, nice try!

Speaking of old logos, NBC's logo (like many) has gotten more abstract over time, but the original peacock was much cooler. Compare:

       
Old New Which one says "Think Different" to you?

(Though I've just noticed for the first time that the colors in the original peacock are asymmetric and frankly a little odd.)

Congrats to the following solvers who got one or more: Leo S., Zachary Z., Peter M., Anna K., Charlie, Hazel, and Kathy. Quadruple congrats to those who got all four: Jessica and Mr. Gregg (who shared credit with Mrs. Gregg).