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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Friday, February 5
English borrows two contrasting words from Spanish for weather phenomena involving strong, sometimes destructive winds. One of those words is derecho, which means "straight". The picture at left is of a derecho over Chicago.

What's the other word?

   


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Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

One of the first things you learn in a linguistics class is that the sound of a word has nothing to do with its meaning... except when it does. Onomatopoeic words like buzz and click are the obvious exception. But there are also word families like
bash, clash, crash, dash, gash, gnash, hash, lash, mash, slash, smash, splash, thrash
These verbs don't share a root word, but it sure looks like the -ash sound symbolizes collision and violence in English.

So, two questions:

  1. How many sn- words can you think of that have something to do with noses? Send me your list!
  2. Think of as many words as you can starting with gl-. What element of meaning do a lot of them have in common?

Solution
  1. sniff, sniffle, snout, sneeze, snarl, sneer, snore, snort, snuff, snuffle, snicker, snorkel, snot, snoot, schnoz, snob?, snub?, snide?, snark?, snivel?, snit?, snipe?, snoop?, snitch?, snood??, snooze??, snag??, snail??, snack??

  2. There might be more than one group of gl- words! These ones have to do with shiny shiny:
    glow, glimmer, gleam, glance, gloss, glitz, glass, glaze, glitter, glimpse, glisten, glint, glare, glory?, glamour?

    In the opposite direction, there's gloom, gloaming, and glower.

    But these gl- words seem to have more to do with soft, slick, slippery surfaces:
    glade, glen, glib, glob, glide, gloss, glue?, glissando, globglogabgalab (thanks, Peter)

    Yes, I put gloss in both categories! Maybe it's the missing link. Finally, Ena points out that glad and glee are both happy words, and Leo found a bunch of gl- chemicals that can all be traced to the Greek for "sweet".

Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Aditi, Anna J., Connor, Ena, Leo S., Maddy, Peter M., and Shelly. 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.