 <p>I don't see any syntax error in the query you posted. What you have is really close.</p> <p>Your query isn't comparing the contents of the columns; it's comparing string literals, because of the single quotes, those are strings, not column references. </p> <p>The <code>LIKE</code> comparison is equivalent to an equality comparison, since the there aren't any wildcard characters in the string on the right side. The <code>'%'</code> character is a wildcard that will match any number of characters. </p> <p>To return rows where either of the columns <code>first</code> or <code>last</code> contain the string "SAM", you could do something like this:</p> <pre><code>SELECT e.id FROM employees e WHERE e.first LIKE '%SAM%' OR e.last LIKE '%SAM%' </code></pre> <p>That query would match any of these example rows:</p> <pre><code>id first last -- --------- ------- 2 Flotsam 3 Samson 5 Sesame 7 Yosemite Sam </code></pre>