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Dr. Shapiro's Puzzle of the Day

Today's Puzzle

Thursday, November 12
The internet is a strange place.

Case in point: One day in June 2019, I was browsing a roundup of news stories from the East Bay Express (my local indie paper). Following a link to thetodaypress.com, I read a story about a humpback whale seen in the bay, but the story was full of weird passages like this:

“It’s not wanting good,” Invoice Keener, an affiliate researcher with the Marine Mammal Middle of Sausalito, stated Monday afternoon. “It’s not bettering. That’s for certain.”
[...]
The humpback was first noticed round Might 27 within the waters off what’s referred to as the Seaplane Lagoon, a spot the place U.S. Navy amphibious plane as soon as taxied out and in of the water. It’s at present a web site for a future ferry terminal.
Here's the whole story.

So, my question for you today is... what the heck is going on here???

Hint These movie listings from the same website might be a bit more revealing (check out the titles). Yes, the whole site is like this. Why, I don't know.

   


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Yesterday's Puzzle + Solution

Linguists take all aspects of language seriously, even the silly aspects. In 2003, Andrew Nevins and Bert Vaux undertook a study of the implicit rules involved in a phenomenon called shm-reduplication. What is shm-reduplication? Please answer in the form of an example.

Solution "Dr. Shapiro? Doctor, shmoctor. Can he set a broken bone?"

Wikipedia has more on shm-reduplication.

Congratulations to yesterday's solvers Jacob C., Yana, Dr. Yetman, and Graham. 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.