Today's Puzzle
Monday, April 19
As you might suspect, different languages have different versions of Scrabble tailored to their alphabet and vocabulary. For example, the Icelandic game comes with Ð, Þ, and Æ tiles, while the Spanish set includes CH, LL, RR, and Ñ. Along with unique letters, each set also has a different distribution of tiles and point values; C will get you 10 points in Finnish, where it occurs only in borrowed words.
What letter makes up 20 of the 102 tiles in the official Malagasy-language Scrabble set? (Note: Malagasy is the westernmost language in the Austronesian family, with 25 million speakers in Madagascar.)
Yesterday's Puzzle
Here's the puzzle that was up during Spring Break. No one solved it, which is understandable—this puzzle takes a lot more commitment than the usual fare! I'm going to leave it up without a solution in case anyone still wants to take a crack at it.
Ten years ago, a friend of mine happened on a coded letter while doing some historical research. This letter was written in 1631 by Martha Winthrop to her husband John Winthrop the Younger (a Puritan and political leader of the Connecticut colony); the two of them communicated in a private cipher. Can you decode the letter?
Hint
This is just like solving a regular cryptogram… except that 17th century spelling is a little different from 21st century spelling.
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 2020 to March 2021.