H E L L O
my name is
Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Wednesday, January 27
My sister and I both have beef with Amazon (the company, not the river). I have a minor beef because Amazon appropriated my initials, AWS, for Amazon Web Services. My sister has a major beef. What is her name?

Hint Look, if you know what's good for you, turn on the lights yourself.

   


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

Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

Which baby accessory has a name that literally means "that which makes peaceful"? In Dr. Shapiro's experience, this item never fails to make his daughter at least as peaceful as the roaring ocean.

Solution It's a pacifier! As you may have surmised, the Pacific Ocean is nominally "peaceful" as well, having been named that by Magellan. I suspect irony was involved.

Pacifism, pact, and peace itself all come from the common root. So does pay... which is one way to pacify some enemies.

There's no pacifier emoji (???), but congratulations to yesterday's solvers Zachary Z., Jacob C., Anna J., Maddy, Hazel, Connor, Peter M., Yana, Charlie, Jason, Mr. Gregg, and Dr. Yetman. 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.