Today's puzzles involve three topics related to data interpretation and language. The first puzzle asks for a scenario in which a new school syllabus improves every student's grade while the median grade falls from C to D when pupils are ordered by performance. The second puzzle presents poll results from two market research firms, each with 125 respondents, showing differing support levels for a government policy among men and women; one poll reports 84 percent of men and 80 percent of women supporting the policy, while the other reports 22 percent of men and 20 percent of women supporting it. The third activity, called Anguish Languish, is a word game in which an English sentence is rendered as a string of similar‑sounding English words, with the example sentence translating to a familiar story about a boy named Peter. Participants may submit a sentence for a chance to win a copy of the book You Don't Know What You're Missing by Kit Yates, which is available through the Guardian Bookshop for £22.50. The puzzle column has been published on alternate Mondays since 2015, and readers may suggest puzzles by email. Solutions to the first two puzzles will be posted at 5 p.m. UK time.
Breakthroughs from labs, observatories, and clinical trials worth your attention.
UC Berkeley scientist Dr Julie Elie won the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for decoding the 11 core calls of the zebra finch and demonstrating two-way interspecies communication.
UC Berkeley scientist Dr Julie Elie won the 2026 Coller-Dolittle prize for decoding the 11 core calls of the zebra finch and demonstrating two-way interspecies communication. The prize, launched in 2024 by the Jeremy Coller Foundation with Tel Aviv University, provides annual funding toward a $10 million grand prize aimed at enabling clear two-way human-animal communication. Elie’s decade-long study identified the meanings of finch calls, showed that individual signatures allow recognition, and used machine learning to analyse thousands of recordings. In experiments, finches learned to tap a button after hearing calls that led to seed rewards and later selected calls indicating a desired outcome, indicating they understood the meaning of the calls. Other shortlisted teams examined identity cues in African striped mice, sequencing in bonobos, and vocalizations in chimpanzees. Prof Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University called the work a key moment in the field. Prof Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics said the research demonstrated rigorous experimental design. Jeremy Coller said he expects AI acceleration to make full two-way communication achievable by 2030.