Bell Curve ubiquity; Beetlemania!; Adage-io in A ...cronyms

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

Not much nonsense this week. Just lots of puzzles (three) with lots of puzzle parts (too many to count). Kind of like the jigsaw-puzzle-like lake thaw pictured above.

Here are our puzzle slices:

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Easy As Pie Slice:

Bell Curve ubiquity

Think of a synonym for “so-so.” 

Switch the places of two consecutive letters, a vowel and a consonant.

Now change the vowel to a different vowel. 

The result is a word that invariably seems to be a ubiquitous subject of national news and debate. 

What are the words?

Entomological Slice:

Beetlemania

Name an eight-letter word that describes beetles when they are larvae. 

Or a word describing the Beatles before 1960.

Insert an “I” between the second and third letters to produce a word describing the Beatles on at least one of their album covers. 

Or a word describing characters in the “Beetle Bailey” comic strip.

 

Finally, insert an “N” between the third and fourth letters of that new word to produce a word describing the “Beetle Bailey” character Private Zero (except when it comes to numismatics). 

Or -- according to Mohammed Saddiq, creator of the Volkswagen Beetle called the “Bio-Bug” which is powered by human-waste-based methane gas -- a word describing people who assume this Bio-Bug Beetle’s ride will tend to be smelly.  

Speciality Of The House Slice:

Adage-io in A… Cronyms

Consider the following “ersatz adage” that I made up:

“Pollyannas Have A Nostalgia Tall, And Short Memory.”

My adage doesn’t make much sense and the syntax is strained, but I present it as an example of the four challenges in this puzzle. In my example, the initial letters of the adage’s words, in order, spell out the word “PHANTASM.”

The words in uppercase below represent acronyms of real adages. The fourth challenge is a monogram representing the acronym of an ailment. What are the three adages and the ailment?

1. ART LAB

(Here are some links to art labs. 

Art labs have cropped up in Santa Monica, Fort Collins, San Diego, Minneapolis, New York City and other cities. 

Hint: the adage was coined in the 20^th century and is related to economics.)

2. HIATT

(...as in singer-songwriter John Hiatt.

Here’s a sampling of John Hiatt’s songs.

Heads-up: The adage sometimes does not include the word represented by the A. And, two consecutive letters in HIATT represent words that are usually hyphenated.)

3. THAW

(This adage has special meaning to me lately.)

4. RLS

(This is not a word, of course, but the monogram of Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The letters also stand for a neurological movement disorder which is especially bothersome to those trying to fall asleep or travel in an automobile.)

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 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.