My daughter uses 50–100 words. What is the one word she uses with two clearly different meanings (a noun and an adjective)? The way she pronounces it rhymes with "launch", which solves a notorious problem for poets.
Yesterday I made a number of alterations, some of them rather subtle, to the text and style elements on the Puzzle of the Day page that don't normally change. How many changes could you spot?
Solution
There were 16 deliberate changes. Here they are, followed by the number of people who identified each one:
- The title of the page (as seen in the tab bar) was changed to a bunch of hedgehog emoji (14)
- Background color was pinker than normal (5)
- Font was changed to Comic Sans (which happens to be a bit larger) (10)
- "My name is" disappeared from the "name tag" (13)
- "Puzzle of the Day" became "Problem of the Day" (9)
- Date format was changed from "16" to "16th" (1) (a few people guessed something was up with the date, but only Yana figured out what)
- Name and email fields were swapped (10)
- "Hint" and "joke" were swapped (7)
- The box to input your answer was widened (3)
- Responses were supposedly sent to the FBI (17)
- The plus sign in "Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution" changed to an ampersand (1) (go Ena!!)
- The word "hi" was hidden on the right margin of the page (6)
- "Lunch monitor" changed to "monitor lizard" (10)
- The beehive puzzle got spicier (8)
- Instead of 600 puzzles, I claimed to have written over 9000 (10)
- The archive link was redirected to a Mean Girls meme (11 people who are kinda sus)
A few of you noticed a 17th change which was unintentional. For months, the page said "Congratulations to yesterday's solvers…" But yesterday it said "winners" instead of "solvers". That has actually been the case since February 23, when I announced the winners of the contest to make 2021 from as few 2's as possible. I meant to change the wording back to "solvers" the next day, but I never did!
Here's a side-by-side comparison of yesterday's PotD page and a normal version (note: I haven't tested this in all browsers, so good luck).
The top finders were Yana (15), Ena (13), Charlie (12), Caden (11), Connor (11), and Leo S. (11). In no particular order, honorable mention to Lucia, Lemonade, Maddy, Atticus, Jacob C., Inca, Anna J., Peter M., Mr. Gregg, Graham, and Kate. I hope you all had fun!
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.