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¿Cuál es el pelapatatas que prefiere el jefe?

¿Cuál es el pelapatatas que prefiere el jefe?
Which one is the potato peeler that the boss prefers?
From Lesson 544:Plural compound nouns (los cascanueces)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about ¿Cuál es el pelapatatas que prefiere el jefe?

Why is it el pelapatatas and not el pelapatata if we are only talking about one potato peeler?
This is a verb-noun compound word, made from the third-person verb pela (peels) and the plural noun patatas (potatoes) — it is literally a "peels-potatoes". In Spanish, the noun part of these compounds is almost always plural, even when the compound word itself refers to a single object. That is why we use the singular article el with the plural-looking pelapatatas.
Since pelapatatas already ends in an "s", how would I say "the potato peelers" in plural?
The word pelapatatas does not change its spelling in the plural. You simply change the article to match the number of items: los pelapatatas. This is what we mean by "number invariance" — the noun itself stays exactly the same whether you have one peeler or ten.
Why do we use ¿Cuál es...? here instead of ¿Qué es...? to say "Which one is...?"
When you use the verb ser (to be) to identify a specific item out of a group (like pointing out a certain peeler in a kitchen), you must use cuál. If you were to ask ¿Qué es un pelapatatas?, you would be asking for the dictionary definition of the object ("What is a potato peeler?").
Why is the subject el jefe at the very end of the sentence instead of right after que?
In Spanish relative clauses (the part of the sentence starting with que), it is extremely common and natural to invert the word order and put the subject after the verb. While que el jefe prefiere is grammatically correct, que prefiere el jefe flows much better and sounds more natural to a native speaker.

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