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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Friday, March 26
The MIT International Students Office publishes a website with lots of useful information for newcomers to the US—things people born here take for granted that are far from obvious to the rest of the world. Topics include tipping in restaurants, American holiday customs, small talk—and, perhaps surprisingly, the value of a dime. Why does that last topic warrant discussion?

   


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

Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

What's the maximum number of different punctuation marks you can put in a row while conforming to normal rules of style? Spaces don't count, and all the punctuation must be used for a grammatical purpose, i.e., this kind of thing is cheating:
The symbols above the numbers on a QWERTY keyboard are !@#$%^&*().

Solution Here's a partial selection of responses…
Score Response Submitted by Commentary
6 Did you hear what he said (“I can’t stand it when people pronounce ‘morning’ as ‘mornin'’!”)? Dr. Shapiro Makes a dubious distinction between single quote and apostrophe. I was hoping some of you would do better, and you delivered.
6 I heard him (although did he really say “the boys’!”?). Jason I had to ask Jason in what context this could possibly be uttered, but he had a reasonable response.
9 (I asked “Did someone yell ‘help […]!’?”.) Peter V. Peter modestly claimed the ellipsis as only 1 symbol (I guess he had no choice, since I said all the symbols had to be different!). The quotation style is impeccable, if incongruous; the period, however, would not be sanctioned by most American style guides.
9 (“‘…?!’”) Ena As in: Ena's silent mimicry of Dr. Shapiro's bewildered expression (“‘…?!’”) spoke volumes.
10 Le Lenn Lender began to tell me a story: “And after that I was like, ‘Why on earth would you do this (I was pretty upset by this point [the data physician had given me a bogus number {50.%*}])!?’”
* The period is included to indicate that this number has two significant figures, which is essential for scientists		 Peter M. Oho, nested parentheticals! And footnotes! Tbh the weirdest thing to me about this sentence is the name Le Lenn Lender.
5 no idea but I would guess 3, as in for instance “&,—” Kate Kate, check your score.

Thanks to everybody who played yesterday! (I'll skip the usual list since that would require some sticky adjudication of which answers are "valid"…)

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.