Today's Puzzle
Tuesday, June 1
It's the next-to-last puzzle of the school year!
I left home for college at 18, like some graduating Proofniks are preparing to do shortly. My household subscribed to the attentions of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, who each made 18 visits during my tenure there (canonically, at least—I cannot testify regarding the first couple of years, and I have always had certain questions about authenticity, but I suppose PotD is not the place to work out my private struggles of faith).
Who made 20 visits?
Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution
My neighbor made this sculpture and displayed it in front of their house!
I've blurred out a word in the title, "2880 _______". What is the missing word?
Hint
When I saw this sculpture for the first time, I stopped and counted how many elbow pipes were used in its construction, and I was quite pleased to confirm that the title was accurate.
Solution
The title is 2880 Degrees—fitting*, as the sculpture is made of 32 right-angled elbow pipes.
*I hope you caught the pun.
Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Nico, Charlie, and the Greggs. 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 May 2021.