Today's Puzzle
Tuesday, January 12
MNESOTA VIKGS UNID STAS EAT ANDSON AOUNT AESS POPAR CTURE INDIGENO ATRALIAN
What Prf Schl–related phrase is encoded in this strange message?
Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution
There are two reasons I didn't include Raymond Queneau's book
Cent mille milliards de poèmes (One Hundred Trillion Poems) in Friday's puzzle. First, probably nobody would have heard of it. Second, I would have had to extend the "ruler" much farther.
Queneau's book really does contain a hundred trillion poems, though... or perhaps I should say potential poems. How is this possible?
Solution
This is probably best explained pictorially:
With 10 choices for each of 14 lines, the reader can create 1014 sonnets.
Check out this online version of the book with rhyming English translations!
Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Atticus, Inca, Jacob C., Maddy, Charlie, Jason, and SG Zach. 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.