Not sure whether we’re coming or going this week here at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! Seems as if we’re at sea, aboard one of those near palindromic Viking Ships. (Structurally, not literally, palindromic. Coming/going only in the “nrets-ot-mets” sense.)
Maybe it’s just because it is Friday the Thirteenth. Superstitious? No, SuperBowlicious! The next time Friday the Thirteenth rolls ’round on the calendar will be Feb. 13, 2015, exactly a dozen days after The Minnesota Vikings, after having set sail for Arizona, will plunder/ransack/pillage the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XLIX, final score LIV to XIII.
On that day I shall still be ensconced in my La-Z-Boy recliner, basking in the purple afterglow, surrounded by horned helmets and Helga braids, munching on moldering cheesehead cheese imported from Lambeauland and stale V-Chips (Victory Chips).
So, don’t be a triskaidekaphobe. Let’s embrace our Baker’s-dozen-ness by indulging in three crusty puzzles. Triskaidekamanics unite!
MENU
Speciality of the House Slice:“Three Times Faster”
Think of a word for a person who tends to live life in the fast lane. Remove a bit of this word to reveal a word often seen in fasting, fad diet recipes (but seldom on fast-food menus). Now take a part of the bit you removed from the original word and restore it to its original place, thereby revealing a synonym for fastness. What are the three words?
Geographical Slice:As you view a map of the fifty United States, identify the state farthest to the east and the state farthest to the west. (These are two different states. For purposes of this puzzle, any state partially situated within the Eastern Hemisphere does not qualify as “farthest east.”) Name the two states, and name another thing they have in common (that is, other than being geographic extremes). Hints: The answer involves cities within the states. Also, these cities have something in common with a Chicago suburb and a Cleveland suburb.
Easy As Pie Slice:“Apes ‘N’ Snakes!”
What do all the words of the following two sentences have in common, besides being six letters long?
“Adders almost access glossy floors.”
“Choosy chimps accept floppy chintz.”
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.)
Flopsy begins, abhors biopsy effort.
ReplyDeleteThat was rabbit-quick, David, and impressive, given that your example follows the same all-six-letter-word, five-word sentence pattern as in the puzzle. Guess we’ll have to rename this slice “Apes ’N’ Snakes ’N’ Hares.”
DeleteEglo…
Geographical slice: Thought Al Kaline might give me a hint! Elizabeth'll know the answer also.
ReplyDeleteEasy as pie slice: Betty's cellos' effort begins access.
DeleteSay that three times fast.
Not that easy to come up with good words!
Word Woman,
DeleteThere’s always room for “cello-y effortz.”
Revised EAPS Title: “Apes ’N’ Snakes ’N’ Hares ’N’ Catgut”…
Lego…On A Plane!!
Most elegant words have been posted, but here are a few more: accent chills chilly bellow accost.
DeleteBetty'z of course;-).
DeleteI didn't google lists...but now that you are saying we are not bellow such tactics. . .
Not wanting to adempt anything from ron's list. ;-)
Working on your biographical/geographical challenges.
I am pleased you knew how to "defuzz" "Betty's name.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA few more less well-known words: adempt, afflux, efflux.
ReplyDeleteron,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your lists and links. The fourth word in your elegant sentence, “bellow,” made mw wonder if Saul Bellow is the literary figure with the longest surname with this property. (Shakespeare doesn’t work!). How about “famous” people generally? Or geographical words?
Saul Bellow, was a Chicago-based (see this week’s Geograpical Slice hints) hotshot novelist. One of his wives was a mathemetician, if my memory serves me well. Mr. Bellow’s name at birth was Solomon Bellows. (Thanks, Saul, for dropping that final “s.”)
Myriad sites emerge when one googles “longest word with (the property in question).” If you already know the answer to this week‘s EAPS, or want to know the answer, here is just one of many helpful sites.
BellowLambda
Costello doesn't work either.
DeleteLovely that Abbott does though.
DeleteEasy as Pie: alphabetical order of letters within the word.
Geographic: Alaska (w) and Maine (e) share the city Bethel.
Alkaline pointed to AK and me to ME.
DeleteElizabeth'll = Bethel, the city the two states share.
Have a good vacation, ron! Hope you are going somewhere fun!
Word Woman,
DeleteI like your Bethel answer to our Geographical Slice Twains Shall Meet. Admittedly, I was totally unaware of it. But, now that I hear it, I like it a lot. Here’s why.
Alaska is actually the U.S. State that is farthest east, according to this site. Thus Alaska and Maine are our two most eastern states. The Bethels in Maine and Alaska were named after Bethel, Israel, an ancient city meaning “House of God” that crops up often in the Book of Genesis. It is fitting that our two easternmost states both boast a city named after this ancient holy place situated in the Middle East, in the heart of the Eastern Hemisphere, the cradle of Judeo-Christianity.
Nice researching and solving, Word Woman.
Lego…
Thanks, Lego, for the tie-ins with the holy place in the ancient middle East. I was surprised that there are at least 24 geographical Bethel features in the U.S. Guess which Bethel has the highest population, Alaska or Maine?
DeleteWhich has more moose? ;-)
Exciting to see Puzzleria! listed on the blogroll at An Englishman Solves American Puzzles. What a great cross-pollinating group of puzzlers we have become.
ReplyDeleteWord Woman,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads-up. Yes, we hive indeed bee-come a cross-pollinating swarm of buzzing puzzlers. True, we at times bumble in our humble attempts at puzzle-solving, sometimes some of us become a tad waspish, even Attila-the-Hunny, but when all is said and stung, we usually beehive ourselves.
Regarding this week’s Easy As Pie Slice: This is a trivial pursuit, I know, but I would be interested to see the graph of the following:
Let x = an integer from 1 to 26
Let A(sub-X) = the number of dictionary words beginning with the Xth letter of the alphabet that possess this week’s EAPS property.
Let W(sub-X) = all dictionary words beginning with the Xth letter of the alphabet.
Let R = A(sub-X)/W(sub-X)
R < 1 (and is likely also less than 0.01, and perhaps 0.001)
For the trivial cases of X > 20, R = 0, according to my Merriam Webster’s.
For X = 20, R > 0, but is infinitesimal. A(sub-20) = 1, with that "one" being the word “tux,” as far as I can tell.
It would seem that as X approaches 26 (actually 20), R approaches zero. I would be curious to know the value of R for X = 1, and I would like to see the graph of R for X = 1, 2,3.…20.
LegoLambDescartes
Some people living in the fast lane may become furious with some who only wish they did.
ReplyDeleteSince we seem to be into math puzzles, how fast is this woman going?
Deletehttp://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/06/15/milestones/
Try to figure it out before looking at the solution.
I liked the puzzle, ron, and especially enjoyed the painting of the women avec le chien to accompany it.
DeleteWord Woman,
ReplyDeleteWho needs a hood ornament when you’ve got a pooch. (Well, on the other hand, I guess we don’t really have a hood either. And where are the seat belts?!)
ron,
I love this puzzle. I didn’t do the logical preliminary elimination that the Futility Closet solution performed (great site, incidentally) which concluded, for example, that the number on the third milestone must be less than 200 miles. Instead, I just dove right in, letting XY be the number on the second milestone, YX be the number on the first milestone, and either X0Y or Y0X be the number on the third milestone.
This led to two possibilities: One is X = 6Y, which, of course, is the equation that leads to the correct answer.
But the other possibility is more interesting: Y = -9X.
This means (depending on which variable you choose as negative) that the value of the number on the first milestone (YX) is either (-9(10) + 1(1)) or (9(10) - 1(1)), or -89 or +89.
Similarly, the value of the number on the second milestone (XY) is either (1(10) - 9(1)) or (-1(10) + 9(1)) or +1 or -1.
Finally, the value of the number on the third milestone (X0Y) is:
(1(100) + 0(10) - 9(1)) = 91, or
(-1(100) + 0(10) + 9(1)) = -91.
Thus, the distance at Milestone 1 can be: -89 or +89.
The distance at Milestone 2 can be: -1 or +1.
The distance at Milestone 3 can be: +91 or -91.
So, the distance at Milestone 1 is -89, at Milestone 2 it is +1, and at Milestone 3 it is +91. That’s the only possibility that allows a constant distance (of 90 miles) between the three milestones, meaning that (in this crazy “PositiveNegativeLand”) Caroline is somehow tooling along at 90 mph!
(Each of these milestone values uses Y as a negative variable, X as positive, for whatever that is worth.)
LegoLaMillstone
Actually, when X is positive and Y is negative, the distance at Milestone 1 is +89, at Milestone 2 it is -1, and at Milestone 3 it is -91. That’s another possibility that allows a constant distance (of 90 miles) between the three milestones, meaning that (in this crazy “PositiveNegativeLand”) Caroline is still somehow tooling along at 90 mph! (but maybe traveling backward?
Delete…Ogel
Nice analysis. Bravo! Yes, Futility Closet is my favorite trivia site. I have actually submitted "trivia" which they have published.
ReplyDeleteThanks, ron, and thanks for sharing the FC link. I’m not surprised they would publish your offerings. A remarkable, bookmarkable site. I agree that “trivia” ought to be in quotes… the content is so much more than that.
DeleteLego…
Puzzleria! patrons,
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to be snarfing down the Easy as Pie Slice this week. But I’m not so sure how you’re all doing in chewing on the Specialty of the House and Geographical slices.
I thought the “Three Times Faster” puzzle would be the most difficult, but I thought it would be solvable because it offers three “points of entry”: 1. The life-in-the-fast-lane liver, 2. The fasting recipe word, and 3. The synonym for fastness. Figure out any one of the three and the other two would tumble like dominoes (the tiles, not the pizzas!).
Confession: I had edited the second sentence to make this puzzle more challenging. The pre-edited sentence read: “Remove a bit of this word to reveal a food often seen in fasting, fad diet recipes (but seldom on fast-food menus).”
I think many of you have solved the Geographical Slice but, if you have not yet solved it and want a hint, think of a word that often rhymes with “June” in hokey love songs and poems.
LegoWhat’sMyPenance,Father?
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ReplyDeletePatrons,
ReplyDeleteLast Thursday I served up this bonus “Easy and Pie” eight-slicer. Nobody bit, as far as I can tell, so I have reheated it and re-served it below. The answer to # 1 is Alabama (There are “forays” {four A’s} in AlAbAmA.) The crust on #6 might be a little tough, but the others should be easily digestible:
1. To which state might one make forays?
2. What state has oddly wide feet?
3. What state has even wider feet?
4. What state, if you poke out its second eye, is the “Show Me the Money State”?
5. Which two states have the best bond ratings?
6. What state may be overrun by Dalmations?
7. What state is visually challenged?
lEgO lAmbdA from Manhattan (nEw yOrk and kAnsAs)
"Some people living in the fast lane may become furious with some who only wish they did."
ReplyDeleteStalkers sometimes infuriate celebrties.
"May" has something in common with "Augusta" and "Juneau".
"Furious" has something in common with "Augusta", "Juneau", "South Euclid", "Schaumburg", "pursuit", "curious", "humour", lots of British words, "laughing aloud", ... there seems to be a surplus of these ... enough to fill a museum, perhaps.
Specialty of the House Slice:
ReplyDeleteSomeone living in the fast lane: SPEEDSTER. Remove “a bit” (I presume “a bit” does not necessarily mean “consecutive letters”) PSTER of this word to yield a word SEED often seen in fasting diets (mustard seed or sesame seed, or rapeseed oil). Now take a part P of the removed bit (PSTER) and place it in its original position to name a synonym of fastness: SPEED. So the three words are: SPEEDSTER, SEED, SPEED. This is probably NOT the intended answer.
Easy as Pie Slice: The letters of all the words are in alphabetical order from left to right.
Geographical Slice: Alaska is the westernmost state & Maine is the easternmost state. I have no idea what their cities have in common.
I shall be on holiday for a week, so I won't be able to comment on next week's puzzles. See you the following week.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeletePaul and ron,
DeleteNice work.
Paul,
Great “Stalk” clue. I was trying to make sense out of celebrity = irate + ?
ron,
Your “speedster/seed/speed” SOTHS solutions is very inventive, and acceptable.
Have a wonderful unpuzzling holiday! And take it sloooow.
My June 15, 8:35 PM, in the hint I gave for the Geographical Slice, the word that rhymes with “June” is “moon,” which is etymologically related to the word “months,” months like June, August and May, for example.
Here are this week’s answers:
Speciality of the House Slice:
“Three Times Faster”
Think of a word meaning a person who tends to live life in the fast lane. Remove a BIT of this word to reveal a word often seen in fasting, fad diet recipes (but seldom on fast-food menus). Now take a part of the bIT you removed from the original word and restore IT to ITs original place, thereby revealing a synonym for fastness. What are the three words?
Answer:
celebrity
celeBrITy – BIT = celery
celery + IT = celerITy (celerity)
Geographical Slice:
(Twains Shall Meet)
As you view a map of the fifty United States, identify the state farthest to the east and the state farthest to the west. (These are two different states. For purposes of this puzzle, any state partially situated within the Eastern Hemisphere does not qualify as “farthest east.”) Name the two states, and name another thing they have in common (that is, other than being geographic extremes). Hints: The answer involves cities within the states. Also, these cities have something in common with a Chicago suburb and a Cleveland suburb.
Answer:
State farthest east: Maine
State farthest west: Alaska
Capital of Maine: Augusta
Capital of Alaska: Juneau
These capitals begin with months of the year: August, June
Maywood is a Chicago suburb; Mayfield Heights is a Cleveland suburb
Easy As Pie Slice:
“Apes ‘N’ Snakes”
What do all the words of the following two sentences have in common, besides being six letters long?
Adders almost access glossy floors.
Choosy chimps accept floppy chintz.
Answer:
The letters in each word are in alphabetical order.
Thanks,
Lego…
In case you haven't checked Futility Closet today, THIS ONE is easy!
ReplyDeleteron,
DeleteEasy for you to solve! I got this one, but it was not exactly a snap for me. My gray matter worked up a lather before solving it, cooling down and showering. (Nothing worse than sweaty brain cells!) Seriously, there is evidence that exercising those cells may well stave off the onset of dementia (espesially in those whose gray matter is lodged under a roof that is becoming increasingly gray).
This reminds me of what Bob Kerfuffle (good guy, wise philosopher and prolific, perceptive poster on Blainesville, Rex Parker Crossword and Puzzleria! Blogs) said recently regarding whether a puzzle being “in your wheelhouse” can make all the difference when it comes to whether you can easily solve it. Logic is not in my wheelhouse, as my girlfriend Mary and faithful readers of my blog comments can readily attest.
Seriously, ron, thanks for linking. I don’t think I’ve ever created a logic puzzle, except maybe a headline I once wrote for my weekly newspaper column (another story for another day). But I vow now to work on creating one.
LegoIllogical