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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Monday, May 24
Shakuntala Devi was known for her feats of mental calculation. See the video for an example!

While Devi's abilities were exceptional, many of her tricks (which she revealed in her book Figuring) were based as much on mathematical insight as raw brainpower. You too, if you knew what she knew, could determine (an integer) with almost no effort.

Well? Can you?

As a hint, the first few 5th powers are provided in a table at right.
(no calculators lol)

   


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

Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

This puzzle has two halves.
Part 1: Identify as many of these items/people as you can. The desired answers all have something in common.


Part 2: An eighth note (♪) is also known as a quaver. What is the related word for a sixty-fourth note ()? (18 letters)

Solution Top row: Hemisphere, Demi Lovato, semifinals
Bottom row: Hemi engine, demitasse, semi truck

The hemi-, demi-, and semi- prefixes all mean 'half'. Accordingly, a sixty-fourth note—which is half of half of half an eighth note—is also known as a hemidemisemiquaver.

Congratulations to yesterday's partial solvers Peter M., Inca, Graham, and Kate, and special recognition to Jacob C., Jessica, and Mr. Gregg for using Part 1 to infer the answer to Part 2. 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 2020 to March 2021.