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puzzles

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The subway system has these puzzles that they put up to attract attention to their "What's On?" series of guides to the city. They can be pretty challenging. One of them, for instance, asked that you count the number of triangles that could be found in a symmetrical shape. People would scrawl in their guesses. I counted 50 in that one, which exceeded one clown's authoritative "Exactly 45!"...

Anyway, I found this one, today, and was puzzling over the "shopshopshop" one. First I wondered, is it "shopping spree"? Then I began to ponder the subscripted "u". And I went off on a long mental tangent about whether it was supposed to be an inverted logarithmic notation, or some kind of factorial thing that I just wasn't getting. Then I realized that no, they weren't going to ask the public in this particular society to involve itself with math...

Then it hit me. It was "shop 'til you drop". Yes, much more fitting.