H E L L O
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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Tuesday, November 10
You know how Cliffs Notes take complex works of literature and boil them down to simple summaries? Well, here's the opposite of that:

A pompous personage of reduplicative cognomen is insufficiently tenacious of a mural perch. Notwithstanding the intervention of a royal entourage—equids included!—ooclasm proves irremediable.

This is a highfalutin synopsis of what familiar children's rhyme?

   


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Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

This is the table of contents for what Wikipedia page?

Solution Burrito!

Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Inca, Maddy, Charlie, Jacob C., Yana, Dr. Yetman, and Zachary S. 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 to June 2020.