□e a□uent o□cial □y-□shed in cuto□s.If you ever see a sentence like the above in your browser, it might be because your computer is not displaying ligatures correctly. What should this sentence say? (1000 bonus points if you send me an illustration of the scene.)
Hint
Feeling □ummoxed, even ba□ed? □is puzzle is too di□cult? I hope you'll □nd my hint e□ective.
I've asterisked two letters whose inclusion is debatable.
Hint
It has to do with the names of the letters.
Solution
Jason says the puzzle was inspired by the question "Does 'W' begin with D?" These were the letters whose names don't start with a sound made by that letter. (You can probably see why Q and U are debatable. In particular, U starts with a consonant "Y" sound, but there are lots of words like unit in which the U makes the full "yoo" sound, just like its name.) (We'll say nothing of the British dialects in which H is pronounced "haitch".)
Congratulations to yesterday's solvers, Atticus and the Greggs. Thanks to everybody who made a guess!
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.