Today's Puzzle
Friday, February 26
What four-letter English word comes from the Latin for nine and originally referred to 3 p.m.? (Etymology, man, I don't know.)
Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution
Regular readers of Puzzle of the Day have already learned that when I want to type ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, I just Google "shrug", then copy and paste from the results—with the side effect of seeing
this guy each time.
Recently I used a similar tactic to get the Unicode characters for a certain math operation. Instead, I ended up with a lot of results like the image at left. Which operation was I searching for?
Solution
I was searching for floor symbols. Instead of this, I got icons for floorplans (as in interior design and architecture). Oops!
Congratulations to yesterday's winners Maddy, Leo S., Jason, and the Greggs. Honorable mention to Kate for coming up with "ceiling" (right idea from the wrong side, as it were). It is so peaceful sleeping on the ceiling. 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.