A Special and Puzzling Veterans Day

Yesterday we honored one small part of our military, the Marines. Today, Veterans Day, we salute all of the men and women who have served in the U.S. armed forces, regardless of which branch they chose. I hope that you had or will have a chance to see or take part in one of the celebrations that are going on all over the country. M and J and I watched C-SPAN's coverage of the ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, and it was very moving.

Not only is this Veterans Day, but it's an extra-special one. There can't be another one like it for a hundred years. That's because today's date--11/11/11--is a numeric palindrome. It reads the same from right to left as it does from left to right. In fact, if you use a sans serif font (one without all those little pointy things at the ends of the letters), this one even reads the same upside-down. Observe:

Upside-up: l l / l l / l l

Upside-down: l l / l l / l l

(Okay, so I fudged a bit by also using a lower-case letter L for a 1. Just pretend this is M's old manual typewriter.)

When you have a chance, you should find out (if you don't already know) why the number 11 is so important to Veterans Day--and an earlier version called Armistice Day. Then for fun of a whole different kind, check out why the number is also important for lots of numeric palindromes, not just today's date.

(Here's an example: 111,111 x 111,111 = 12,345,654,321.)

Final item: M likes to start his day by trying to work the Celebrity Cipher. This is a substitution-code puzzle by Luis Campos that appears in our local newspaper. Since today's cipher was a great one for Veterans Day, we thought we'd share it with you. See if you can figure it out:

"KFLY SBKLHS GLTT UZWBLS KFZ TBSX HN KFX NUZZ HSTO YH THSJ BY LK LY KFZ FHWZ HN KFZ IUBEZ."

- ZTWZU XBELY