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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Wednesday, January 6
What town's name is covered up on this map? (Don't know it? You can still guess!)

   


     Note: Clicking "Submit" will send your response to Dr. Shapiro.

Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

I recently saw the custom license plate SUERTE8. This gave me enough information to make a reasonable guess that the owner speaks two specific languages (other than English). What two languages?

I'll allow Google for this puzzle. (Note: The answer has nothing to do with alcoholic beverages.)

BONUS: When you think about it, SUERTE8 is a marvel of efficiency. It isn't easy to convey in just 7 characters that you are familiar with two languages—and what those languages are. Can you create another vanity plate that does this? The DMV allows letters, numbers, ✋, ♡, ☆, and ＋.

Solution Suerte is Spanish for 'luck', and the number 8 is lucky to many Chinese speakers (and some nonspeakers—I did say it was just a reasonable guess). Though as some of you pointed out, Chinese is really a language family.

Peter pointed out that suertate means 'luck' in Basque, at least according to Google Translate, so there is a remote possibility of a Basque/English pun here. Lucia made a similar but likelier suggestion that it could just be a Spanish/English rebus for 'fortun-ate'.

For the bonus, Yana suggested I♡IKRA (ikra is Russian for 'caviar').

Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Cloe, Yana, Peter V., Lucia, and Graham. Thanks to everybody who made a guess!

About This Site

Though he now teaches mathematics, Dr. (né Mr.) Shapiro's first job in a K–12 school was as a lunch monitor in Davis, CA. It was there that he originated the Puzzle of the Day, even rewarding correct answers with tickets in denominations like "15 points" (though without a clear idea of how he'd ultimately redeem these). Dr. Shapiro's favorite puzzle from this pre-professional era was "Tell me the location of the beehive on this campus."

Ten years later, Dr. Shapiro revived Puzzle of the Day at Proof School, writing each day's puzzle on a name tag. After 600 puzzles or so, he was just starting to feel normal about students reading his chest all the time when campus closed and the puzzle, like the rest of our lives, moved online. New puzzles are posted daily on school days.

Want to catch up on old PotDs? There's an archive currently containing puzzles from March to December 2020.