We at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! are this week solemnly memorializing July’s last hot and humid gasps. How? By hanging around up at the lake, of course!
Scrumptious puzzle slices are browning and bubbling in our ovens and will soon be ready to serve to you. (Maybe on the beach?) Think sultry. Think steaming. Think sweltering. Think mouth-watering. Think Good, It’s Friday!
In the meantime, let us extend to you our warmest of welcomes, along with the following icy glass of aqua pura with a twist of lemon or lime: It’s the cool puzzle posed by puzzle master Dr. Will Shortz on National Public Radio’s (NPR) July 20 Weekend Edition Sunday broadcast. It reads:
“Name something in five letters that’s nice to have a lot of in the summer. Change the last letter to the following letter of the alphabet. Rearrange the result, and you’ll name something else that you probably have a lot of in the summer, but that you probably don't want. What is it? (HINT: the second thing is a form of the first thing.)”The consensus over at the Blainesville and AESAP puzzle blogs was that this was a relatively easy puzzle. So we made it a tad tougher by adding this Puzzlerian! extension which was posted in our July 18 blog’s comments section:
To the end of the “second something,” add two letters: a replica of a letter from the second something, and the letter that got changed in the original “something,” thereby forming a new seven-letter something it is nice to have lots of in the winter.
To this new “something” add a letter that is near the middle of the alphabet and rearrange the result to form two new words: a five-letter something you probably have lots of in the winter, but don’t want, and a three-letter something most people never want… no matter what season of the year it is.
Name these three new “somethings” HINT: The “something else” is not a form of the “new something.” The last something is a form of insanity, according to some.
(Our Puzzleria! solvers made short work of this puzzle extension, and correctly named the “three new somethings,” also in last week’s comments section.)
Now we offer another extension that whips us out of winter and snaps us back into summer:
Take the eight letters of the final “two somethings,” remove a letter and rearrange what’s left to form a verb that is a synonym of the second word you found in the original NPR puzzle. What is this seven-letter verb?Okay, if you could Handel that summer-to-winter-to-summer circumnavigation of the sun, we know you can Handel this trio of puzzling slices:
Menu
Easy As Pie Slice:
“I’m (Ernie) Broglio”
Take a two-word synonym for melee or
imbroglio, one that might appear in a news story or police report.
Combining
the two words and removing the first letter results in a word describing a type
of gesture that might touch off such a melee. What are the two-word synonym and
the gesture?
Con-number-umm Slice:
Sum equations!
Explain the following two equations:
SIX + TWELVE = 64 + (a word often
associated with a non-prime factor of 64)
FIVE + SIX + SEVEN + TWELVE = 73 + (something
you do when you survey these four numbers to be summed, or something you do either
at a high school class reunion or at a grade school class)
Specialty Of The House Slice:
Loaves and fishes... and synonyms
Take a pair of synonyms, five and six letters long, and
put them in alphabetical order. Replace the first vowel in the first synonym with
two different vowels.
Delete the second half of the second synonym. The new words formed are synonyms of each other also. What are these two sets of synonyms? (Hints: All four words are nouns. The synonyms begin with a T and a W.)
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 Tuesdays to post your answers and explain your hints about the puzzles. We plan to 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 puzzle-loving and challenge-welcoming friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! Thank you.
In SOTHS, I have the answer by replacing the first TWO vowels in the first synonym by 2 different vowels to yield: TEEPEE/WIGWAM and TOUPEE/WIG, but I haven't solved it by replacing just the first vowel by 2 different vowels... unless you consider double e as ONE vowel. I am assuming this is NOT the intended answer.
ReplyDeleteron,
DeleteCongrats. You solved the SOTHS, which I thought was a pretty difficult challenge even with the “nouns” and “P and W” hints I added (at the eleventh hour). Without the P and W hint, I thought the puzzle would have been at worst unfair and at best a really, really tough solve.
I rely on the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition as my reference (It was a gift from a wonderful co-worker and School Sister of Notre Dame who was cleaning out her office before moving on to “bigger and better.” MWCD says “teepee” is a variant of “tepee.” (In retrospect, it might have been prudent of me to have added a note about that variant, which is likely in pretty common usage. To wit, if I were asked to spell the word “tepee” in a spelling bee, I would have spelled it T-E-E-P-E-E.)
Secondary definition of teepee: “to empty one’s bladder before hitting one’s 2-wood.”
LegoHellToupee
It seems I have blown it again. My deepest regrets Lego. "Tepee" is a 5-letter word, so it didn't qualify. "Teepee" is a 6-letter word, but if you replace the first vowel with 2 other vowels, making a 7-letter word, so I thought, you would have "touepee" which doesn't work. Sorry, I had no idea I had hit on the solution.
DeleteI do have the solutions to the "winter back to summer" challenge and therefore WW's alteration. I also have the EAP soltution, but not the con-number-umm solution.
ron,
DeleteYou did not blow it at all. I blew it by saying the synonyms were both six letters long (another eleventh hour, edit, BTW, to make the puzzle more solvable). Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I was (as you were) spelling the puzzle’s precursor to “toupee” with four-E variant spelling instead of three-E spelling (see my “spelling bee” comment, above).
Indeed, I deem it admirable that you solved this SOTHS despite of my bogus wording of it!
So, no regrets are necessary on your part. But, my deepest regrets. And, thanks to you, I have edited the blog to make the puzzle fair and accurate.
I thought the con-number-umm slice was a tad easier than this week’s SOTHS. Sleep on it (no hint) and I bet you’ll solve it.
LegoMeaCulpa
Thanks. Your reformulation of the challenge is excellent and fits the solution perfectly. I couldn't believe I had hit on the correct answer as it didn't seem to fit the conditions. I had intended to offer it only as an oddity.
DeleteIn your summer/winter puzzle, if you turn the second letter upside-down, it makes a word for a kind of industrial plant.
ReplyDeleteWord Woman,
DeleteI like it. (It reminds me a little of the upside-down digital clock.)
And, a homophone of your word’s first syllable relates to a movie in which Al Pacino got an Oscar, and to the two possible answers to the second word of this past week’s NPR puzzle: “Rearrange the result, and you’ll name something else that you probably have a lot of in the summer, but that you probably don't want.” (One starts with S, the other with W.)
LegoFishFry
I'm heading for the fallout shelter.
ReplyDeleteThanks to you, I now know those lyrics.
DeletePaul,
DeleteCharlie Manson and Dennis Wilson had a falling-out. Bad vibrations. “Helter-Skelter?” Gimme instead these three pretty decent pop tunes with the word ”shelter” in the title.
LegoLeeside
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePuzzlerians!
ReplyDelete(If you have already solved the Con-number-umm Slice, “Sum Equations!” ignore this comment, and just post your answer tomorrow. )
But,if you are frustrated, here is a hint for the Con-number-umm Slice: It is actually more of a Con-numeral-umm Slice.
LegiLegiLici
Summer/winter puzzle: Swelter becomes Smelter.
ReplyDeleteGlad to have finally learned the words to "American Pie" also. "Helter skelter in a summer swelter... The birds flew off with a fallout shelter." Hmmmmm, how?
Word Woman,
DeleteHow did the birds fly off with a fallout shelter? They knew their physics! The birds, AKA the Byrds (McGuinn, Crosby, Hillman, Clark, Clarke, Parsons, White, et al.), simply smelted down the fallout shelter into coconut-sized chunks, then grabbed them by the husks and flew off with them. Eight miles high, I presume.
LegAin’tGoin’Nowhere
And falling fast. . .
DeleteGreat and wonderful leap to Monty Python, btw. Always a favorite clip.
Winter back to Summer: sleet + war – a = swelter. WW's industrial plant: smelter.
ReplyDeleteEAPS: mob scene, remove the m to yield: obscene (gesture).
I don't have the con-number-umm slice.
THIS WEEK’S ANSWERS:
ReplyDeleteDr. Will Shortz’s July 20 National Public Radio’s July Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle read:
“Name something in five letters that’s nice to have a lot of in the summer. Change the last letter to the following letter of the alphabet. Rearrange the result, and you’ll name something else that you probably have a lot of in the summer, but that you probably don't want. What is it? (HINT: the second thing is a form of the first thing.)”
Answers: WATER, SWEAT
To the end of the “second something” (SWEAT) add two letters: a replica of a letter from the second something, and the letter that got changed in the original “something,” thereby forming a new seven-letter something it is nice to have lots of in the winter.
Answer: SWEATER
To this new “something” add a letter that is near the middle of the alphabet (Answer: L) and rearrange the result to form two new words: a five-letter something you probably have lots of in the winter, but don’t want, and a three-letter something most people never want… no matter what season of the year it is. Name these three new “somethings” HINT: The “something else” is not a form of the “new something.” The last something is a form of insanity, according to some.
Answers: SLEET, WAR
Now we offer another extension that whips us out of winter and snaps us back into summer: Take the eight letters of the final “two somethings,” remove a letter (Answer: A) and rearrange what’s left to form a verb that is a synonym of the second word you found in the original NPR puzzle. What is this seven-letter verb?
Answer: SWELTER
Easy As Pie Slice:
“I’m (Ernie) Broglio”
Take a two-word synonym for melee or imbroglio, one that might appear in a news story or police report. Combining the two words and removing the first letter results in a word describing a type of gesture that might touch off such a melee. What are the two-word synonym and the gesture?
Answers: MOB SCENE, OBSCENE
Con-number-umm Slice:
Sum equations!
Explain the following two equations:
SIX + TWELVE = 64 + (a word often associated with a non-prime factor of 64)
FIVE + SIX + SEVEN + TWELVE = 73 + (something you do when you survey these four numbers to be summed, or something you do either at a high school class reunion or at a grade school class)
Answers:
First equation: The IX from “SIX” and the LV from “TWELVE” are Roman Numerals that add to 64, (9+55). The remaining letters (S, T, W, E, E) can be rearranged to form “SWEET,” which is associated with 16 (a non-prime factor of 64) in the expression “sweet sixteen.”
Second equation: The IV from “FIVE,” the IX from “SIX,” the V from “SEVEN” and the LV from “TWELVE” are Roman Numerals that add to 73, (4+9+5+55). The remaining letters (F, E, S, S, E, E, N, T, W, E, E) can be rearranged to form “SEE FEW TEENS.”
Specialty Of The House Slice:
Loaves and fishes... and synonyms
Take a pair of synonyms, five and six letters long, and put them in alphabetical order. Replace the first vowel in the first synonym with two different vowels.
Delete the second half of the second synonym. The new words formed are synonyms of each other also. What are these two sets of synonyms? (Hints: All four words are nouns. The synonyms begin with a T and a W.)
Answers:
TEPEE, WIGWAM
TOUPEE, WIG
WigoLambda
Even with your hint, Joe, the Roman Numeral Puzzle was a complete mystery. . .
DeleteSorry I didn't have time to play this week.
ReplyDeleteThe SOTHS reminded me of an old joke:
I man went to a psychiatrist and said, "Doc, I've been having these weird dreams. Sometimes I dream I'm a teepee and sometimes I dream I'm a wigwam. What does it mean?"
The psychiatrist said "It means that you're too tense."
Or, why did the Indian put a tepee on his head?
DeleteTo keep his wig warm, of course.
Or, did you hear about the Indian who drank 1,000 cups of tea. The next day, they found him drowned in his tepee.
DeleteI have written a limerick about identical twins that dovetails well with the cleverly corny and groan-inducing tenor of the previous trio of comments by David, Word Woman and David. But we Puzzlerians! can tolerate only so much of this type of “pun”ishment at a time, so I will wait until Friday’s new blog before posting it.
DeleteLegoLambdaFromNantucket
Lego, I think we need it now.
DeleteWord Woman,
DeleteOh, okay:
Ron was bald, Rod had hair in a wad.
With a “piece,” Ron again looked like Rod.
Then Ron pawned his toupee
For Rod’s head-shave to pay…
Now they’re more like two peas in a pod.
ha ha ha ha
Delete