A Puzzle For Dave: Answer This is from Sunday's Parade magazine, a newspaper insert. (I wrote it from memory). A mathematics professor always wanted his daughter to do well in school. Through the years he spent lots of time coaching his daughter through difficult math problems and she became quite good at it. Soon, she left for college to study mathematics (of course). One day, during a break, she brought home a problem that even he could not figure out: What three letters come next in this equation? The answer... The puzzle is not mathematical at all. The letters above the line are made using straight lines only and the letters below the line have curves in them. So, it's really a matter of how you perceive the problem. David Dunham writes: "You got the letters right but have the wrong explanation. The letters on top all start with a vowel sound; the letters on the bottom all start with a consonant." I guess there can be more than one answer. Michel Benevento writes: "The most fascinating thing about mathematics is that it's the same all over the world (and probably elsewhere too). This has inspired many philosophical debates (is 1+1=2 an absolute truth or an agreement?). The first thing I noticed when I looked at the puzzle was that it wasn't math (math looks differently). But Cameron's explanation is still universal (making it more suitable for the Internet) while David's is only true in some languages. On the other hand, Cameron's explanation depends on the font used (making it less suitable for the Internet). For me, this makes the entire problem kind of uninteresting. It misses the thrill of 'why didn't I see that?' when you read the answer." I respond: You're looking at the puzzle from the viewpoint of a mathematician. I am looking at he puzzle from the viewpoint of a typographer, someone who studies the shapes, forms and aspects of type. While a mathematician looks at the puzzle analytically, a typographer looks at the puzzle visually. Is the puzzle a trick? Does the fact that the puzzle story contains references to a mathematician cause the reader to see the puzzle as a math puzzle? Is it just a matter of perception? A note: I purposely re-created the puzzle in a graphical (GIF) form because I knew that lots of people have their web browsers set to view with different fonts selected, effectively causing the puzzle to display differently.