A “Quizzical Quintet” Appetizer; “ROTting” a rotten criminal; Games people & musicians play; “Rhyme and Punishment” Lowbrow flicks and highbrow lit; “On-line service...15 Love”

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Games people & musicians play

Name a word for things musicians play. 

Five interior letters spell how some musicians play. 

The remaining letters can be rearranged to spell one of the games people play. 

What do musicians play? How do some musicians play? What is one of the games people play?

Hint: Take the first five letters and the last letter of the things musicians play. Add a “g”. Rearrange these seven letters to spell a plural word for parts of what “some musicians play” that are also parts of the equipment used in the “game people play.”

Appetizer Menu

A “Quizzical Quintet” Appetizer:

Kitchen kaboodle, Home & dental plates; “Word-Rebusiness,” Singularity Singularly, A soldier actually  

Note: the six puzzles in this week’s Appetizer were submitted by a gifted Puzzleria! Contributor.

Kitchen kaboodle 

1. 🥣🍴Name a feature, in eight letters, of a common kitchen appliance. Switch the first and fifth letters. The result, reading backwards, sounds like a choice of kitchen utensils. 

What is the kitchen appliance feature?

Singularity Singularly

2. 💵

Take a word in nine letters associated with singularity. Remove a number divisible by nine. 

The result is a word associated with something singularly hard to locate. What are these two words?

A soldier actually

3. 🪖Puzzleria!ns may recall that Suriname and U.S. Marine are anagrams of one another. 

What country name can become an actual soldier?

“Word-Rebusiness”

4. 🎖Speaking of Marines, consider the following “Word-Rebus”: 

“Marine Builder Marks The Spot That Is Fifty
Plus”

What music style does this “Word-Rebus” describe?

Home & dental plates

5. 🎥⚾🦷Take the spelling of a letter, which spelling can also be that of a body of water. 

Take the adjective which describes a group of title characters in a highly acclaimed motion picture. The eight letters total can be combined and arranged to spell the well-known middle and last name of a minor league baseball player and dentist who became famous in another endeavor. 

Who is that person?

MENU

Spy-Spoof Hors d’Oeuvre:

Lowbrow flicks, highbrow lit

Take a five-letter word for the setting of some of the scenes in a series of four rather lowbrow, spoof-of-the-spy-genre 1960s movies that starred a member of a group of entertainers who were “addicted to nonconformity, staying up late, drinking, laughing, and not caring what anyone thought or said about them.” 

Also take the first and last names of the character portrayed by that member.

Rearrange the combined letters of those three words to spell the titles of two works of highbrow classic literature.

What are the setting and the name of the character?

What are the two titles?

Scandalous Slice:

“ROTting” a rotten criminal

A predatory man who has been committing a series of violent crimes against women across the southern United States for the past 30-plus years is now in prison for the remainder of his life. He is no common criminal; he is an uncommonly cruel one.

His middle name is a word for a college or high school administrator in charge of counseling and disciplining students.

His surname is a word for the frame or body of a ship or boat exclusive of masts, yards, sails, and rigging.

His first name has six letters. Change the fourth letter to the letter to the left of it in the alphabet.

ROT15 the result (that is, move each letter 15 places later in the circular alphabet... A becomes P, B becomes Q, etc.)

The result is a noun that describes the man – a noun that, in his case, is preceded by an adjective that is an anagram of a nation lately much in the news.

What is this criminal’s name?

What are the adjective and noun that describe him?

Riffing Off Shortz And DeViller Slices:

“On-line service...15 Love”

Will Shortz’s April 12th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday challenge, created by Bruce DeViller of Brookfield, Illinois, reads:

Think of a popular online service. Change the
first letter to a Y and rearrange the result to get what this service provides. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And DeViller Slices read:

ENTREE #1

An overweight person goes on a diet and begins doing daily calesthenics, peppily, nimbly and friskily, and thus becomes a ______ _______.

Every pitch a “headhunting beanball” pitcher flings is a _____ ________.

The name of an adult education school in Tucson, Arizona, begins with the adjectival form of a geometry pioneer named ______ and ends with _______, a synonym of celebration and festivity.

Now take the name of a puzzle-maker. Change the first letter to a Y and rearrange that result thrice to spell each of the pairs of words in the three sentences above. 

Who is the puzzle-maker and what are the six missing words?

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the brainchildren of our friend Nodd, whose

“Nodd ready for prime time” appears regularly on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #2

Think of a popular online networking site.
Remove the last two letters and rearrange the result to get the name of another popular online service by a different provider. 

What are these two services?

ENTREE #3

Take the name of a popular online service, including its three-letter domain extension but without the “dot.”  Change an M to an N, and
remove one C.  Rearrange the result to get a word that describes what occurs when you place an order with the provider of the service. What are the online service and the word?

ENTREE #4

Think of a popular online company having to do with the stock market. Rearrange the letters to get a word for what users of this service want to obtain from it, plus a two-letter
entertainment company abbreviation.  (The entertainment company’s stock is publicly traded on the stock market.) 

What are the online company and the entertainment company abbreviation?

ENTREE #5

Think of a popular online site focused on news and contemporary culture.  Rearrange to get an adjective this site would definitely not want to have applied to the news it reports.  

ENTREE #6

Think of a popular online site focused on emerging technologies.  

Rearrange to get an adjective often used to
describe those who become obsessed with these technologies.

ENTREE #7

Think of a popular online site focused on science and technology.  Rearrange its letters
to get an online communication service, plus a slang term for understanding or approval.  What are the site, the service, and the term? 

ENTREE #8

Think of a popular online service. 

Change the first letter to a B and rearrange the result to get something that is read during a church service and the word for reading desk in early churches from which it is read. 

What is this online service?

What is read and what is the word for the reading desk? 

ENTREE #9

Think of a popular online service. Change the first letter to an S and rearrange the result to get a world religion. If you instead change the
first letter to an C and rearrange the result you can spell a word for “something you can stake.” 

What is this online service?

What are the religion and “something you can stake?”

ENTREE #10

Think of a popular online service. Change the first letter to a Q and rearrange the result to get a word familiar to enologists and florists.

A synonym of this word sounds like a two-syllable word that, if you interchange its initial
consonant sounds, sounds like two words for what a horse sometimes does.

What is this online service?

What is the word familiar to enologists and florists, and the synonym of that word?

ENTREE #11

Think of a popular online service. 

Change the first letter to a P and rearrange the result to get a caption for the image on the left, in seven and eight letters. 

If you instead change the first letter to a U and
rearrange you will get the three missing words
in the following caption for the image on the right, in three, six and six letters:

“___ ______ in Blue ______ in Bora Bora, Tahiti”

What is this online service?

What are the two captions?

Note: Entree #12 is the brainchild of our friend Plantsmith whose "Garden of Puzzley Delights" is featured regularly on P!

ENTREE  #12

Think of  a device associated with online services. Replace its first syllable, which rhymes with “low,” with a syllable that sounds like an antonym of “low” to get a poetic form.

What is this device?

What is the poetic form?

Dessert Menu

Spoonable Dessert:

“Rhyme and Punishment”

Take the first and third words of a kind of punishment. 

Spoonerizing them yields two results – a word, and a string of letters that sounds like a word.

The first result is a word for where you won’t go if you are attached to the word that sounds like the second “string-of-letters-result.”

What is this punishment?

Where won’t you go if you are attached to the homophone of the second result?

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! we publish a new menu of fresh word puzzles, number puzzles, logic puzzles, puzzles of all varieties and flavors. We cater to cravers of scrumptious puzzles!

Our master chef, Grecian gourmet puzzle-creator Lego Lambda, blends and bakes up mysterious (and sometimes questionable) toppings and spices (such as alphabet soup, Mobius bacon strips, diced snake eyes, cubed radishes, “hominym” grits, anagraham crackers, rhyme thyme and sage sprinklings.)

Please post your comments below. Feel free also to post clever and subtle hints that do not give the puzzle answers away. Please wait until after 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesdays to post your answers and explain your hints about the puzzles. We serve up at least one fresh puzzle every Friday.

We invite you to make it a habit to “Meet at Joe’s!” If you enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

A birthday gift from Patrick to us; Beating plowshares into (s)words; Prune a plant, plant a “p”; “The dozenth doesn’t come to light”; “Cap ‘n’ Ken”; “Does Tim really know what time it is?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Cap ‘n’ Ken”

Name automobile parts, in two syllables. 

If you replace the first letter with a duplicate of the fourth letter and add a space you will name things worn by Ken Hubbs and, had he not retired in 1897, perhaps by Cap Anson. 

What are these automobile parts and these things worn by Ken and perhaps by Cap?

Appetizer Menu

Celebrating a 54th Birthday & a 34th Appetizer:

A birthday gift from Patrick to us 

Most folks just get gifts on their birthday. Patrick J. Berry, just as he did four years ago on his 50th birthday, is again giving us a wonderful gift – his 34th Cryptic Crossword
puzzle to appear on Puzzleria!

If you have missed any of Patrick’s previous 33 cryptic crosswords on Puzzleria!, here are their links:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13  

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

For those of you who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled the following list of basic cryptic crossword puzzle
instructions:

Regarding the Across and Down clues and their format:

The number, or numbers, that appear in parentheses at the end of each clue indicate how many letters are in the answer.

Multiple numbers in parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in multiple-word answers. For example, (6) simply indicates a six-letter word like “puzzle,” (5,8) indicates a five-letter and eight-letter answer like “Happy Birthday,” and (5-6) indicates a five-letter and six-letter hyphenated answer like “fifty-fourth.”

For further insight about how to decipher these numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s “Cryptic Crossword Tutorial” in this link to his November 17, 2017 cryptic crossword.

That Tutorial appears below the grid that contains the answers in that edition of Puzzleria!

So, sit back, relax and enjoy this birthday gift from Patrick. You will  seldom come across such a downright enjoyable gift from a birthday boy! 

ACROSS

7. Ship coming through hit it, an iceberg!(7)

8. Fool to get high, of course(7)

10. More ideal leader in our country, one replacing sorehead?(6)

11. Talk about beans, perhaps, used as preservatives?(8)

12. One most likely to succeed, having song on the radio(4)

13. Regular guy to have a drink, be missing coffee(7,3)

14. Obvious the underworld is filled with hitmen, starts to get old(4,3,4)

19. Different spot, away from the skating rink, for game(4,6)

22. Title held by earl or duke(4)

23. Get away to have modern-day adventure(8)

24. Some looking in? That’s most unnecessary!(6)

25. Criminal on fire, receiving final condemnation in Hell(7)

26. Distinguished “weird one” in family(7)

DOWN

1. Is it sex-crazed time for all the hippies?(7)

2. Karpov’s a strange chess player(8)

3. Old man admits, “Ain’t bad place to find
candy!”(6)

4. Service providing food for party(so hard to cook!)(8)

5. Life cut short in explicit film(6)

6. Eastwood running for President?(7)

9. Old porno agent brought up, claims “stock
rising” with topless woman in film(11)

15. Top roadie fearin’ worst with initial sound checks(8)

16. Chap gets all excited over a new movie(2,2,4)

17. “Bonanza” character expecting to get spinoff at first?(3,4)

18. Current radio station embracing nostalgia,
primarily(7)

20. Harry, on time for afternoon service...(3,3)

21. ...was dropping off son, then left(6)

MENU

Twenty-five-or-six-to-four Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Does Tim really know what time it is?”

“What time is it Tim?” you ask. Tim replies with one of three four-word phrases. These phrases begin with the same article, noun and preposition. The phrases end, however, with three different whole numbers.

Alas, each of these three phrases is ambiguous. The person asking what time it is might interpret each of Tim’s three replies as being anywhere from 165 minutes to 525 minutes different from one another. Each of the three replies can be interpreted in two ways.

Can you explain why this would be?

Sequential Slice:

“The dozenth doesn’t come to light”

What is the twelfth number in the following sequence?

2 2 5 5 5 7 7 7 9 10 13 ? 

Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Entrees:

“Beating plowshares into (s)words”

Will Shortz’s April 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts, reads:

Think of a nine-letter word naming a kind of tool that is mentioned in the Bible. Remove the second and sixth letters and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two new words that are included in a well known biblical passage and are related to the area in which the tool is used. What are the three words?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a pair of plural words, in four and five letters – one associated with birds, the other with bees – and a singular three-letter word for a third creature that flies. Rearrange these twelve letters to spell the first name and surname of a puzzle-maker. 

What are the three words?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

Note: Entree #2 is the brainchild of our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is a regular feature on Puzzleria! The words for the U.S. capital city and for the popular exercise activity both appear in the King James Version of the Bible.

ENTREE #2

Name a tool associated with the Bible. Divide it into two words so that the last letter of the first word doubles as the first letter of the second
word. One of the words is a U.S. capital city and the other word is a popular exercise activity. 

What are these two words and the tool? 

Note: Entrees #3 through #8 were created by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is featured regularly on Puzzleria! Biblical references in Nodd’s puzzles are to the King James Version.

ENTREE #3

Think of two words naming tools that are mentioned in a well-known passage of the Bible, eight letters total.  The letters can be rearranged to spell two new words that
describe what a person might use one of the tools for when moving rapidly through the setting described in the biblical passage. What are the tools and what are the two new words?  (Hint: The two new words also could describe a popular 1,300-horsepower vehicle.)

ENTREE #4

Think of a four-word phrase describing an event featured prominently in the Bible.
Remove the fourth letter of the first word of the phrase and rearrange the remaining letters of that word to spell a new word that describes some people’s reaction to present-day versions of this biblical event.  What are the four-word phrase and the new word?

ENTREE #5

Think of a nine-letter two-word phrase naming an implement that is mentioned in a prominent passage in the Bible. Rearrange the letters to spell two new words that might be exclaimed by a person after successfully using minoxidil.  What are the implement and the two-word exclamation?

ENTREE #6

Think of a ten-letter two-word phrase naming a principle commonly associated with the Bible. Remove an abbreviation for a clothing size.  Rearrange the remaining letters to spell two new words that describe something an aspiring actress might be reluctant to accept.

Now take the last word in the passage of the Bible describing this principle, eight letters.  This word describes persons whose advice is often sought in biblical stories.  Remove an informal tech company name.  Rearrange the remaining letters to spell a word describing a kind of advertisement.

Finally, take a state postal abbreviation and reverse the two letters.  Then add these two letters to the beginning of the word for the advertisement, to spell a word that often describes one who claims to be one of the persons whose advice is often sought.  What are the biblical principle, the thing the actress might not accept, the persons whose advice is often sought, and the word that often describes one who claims to be one of those persons? 

ENTREE #7

Take an eight-letter word for a kind of promise that is mentioned numerous times in the Bible.  Remove the sixth letter and rearrange the remaining letters to spell a location where the
eight-letter word would be discussed in detail.  Remove the last two letters of the word for the location and rearrange to spell a group of persons who would undoubtedly reject any such discussion.  What are the words for the promise, the location, and the group?

ENTREE #8

Think of a seven-letter word naming retaliatory measures taken by God in the Bible. Remove the first two letters to spell a word describing an example of one of these measures.  What are these two words?  

Hint: the ten-letter term used in the Bible to describe that example can be rearranged to spell two words describing what dog owners are often required to get. 

ENTREE #9

Think of a nine-letter word naming a kind of tool that is mentioned in the Bible. Rearrange the letters to spell a pair of winged creatures.
What are these creatures and this tool?

Note: The words for both winged creatures appear in the Lexham Expanded Bible. The plural form of the tool also appears in that biblical version.

Dessert Menu

Mammalian Dessert:

Prune a plant, plant a “p”

Prune three consecutive letters from a plant, then plant a “p” in their place. 

Move the third letter of the result into the second position, then move the sixth letter into the fourth position. The result spells a mammal. What are this plant and mammal?

Hint: The three consecutive letters you replaced with the “p” spell, in reverse, a piece of equipment used in a game.

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! we publish a new menu of fresh word puzzles, number puzzles, logic puzzles, puzzles of all varieties and flavors. We cater to cravers of scrumptious puzzles!

Our master chef, Grecian gourmet puzzle-creator Lego Lambda, blends and bakes up mysterious (and sometimes questionable) toppings and spices (such as alphabet soup, Mobius bacon strips, diced snake eyes, cubed radishes, “hominym” grits, anagraham crackers, rhyme thyme and sage sprinklings.)

Please post your comments below. Feel free also to post clever and subtle hints that do not give the puzzle answers away. Please wait until after 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesdays to post your answers and explain your hints about the puzzles. We serve up at least one fresh puzzle every Friday.

We invite you to make it a habit to “Meet at Joe’s!” If you enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.