Joseph Young's Puzzleria!: October 2014

Friday, October 31, 2014

British backtracking; Civil descriptive disorder; Vive la Franco-Roman difference

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

During this “pale-as-a-ghost” time of year, palindromes somehow seem to be floating through the ether... or, rather, through the rarefied air up there.

Reversals, transpositions, flip-flops, backtrackings, jaw-of-an-ass-backward spellings, craw-of-a-bass-ackward word orders and back-words abound, along with many happy returns… (Oh wait, “happy returns” happen during birthdays, the day after Christmas, and on April 15 – although on tax day the returns are not always so happy.)

For an example of this palindromomania, this current week’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle involves a palindrome of sorts:

Name a well-known TV actress of the past. Put an R between her first and last names. Then read the result backward. The result will be an order Dr. Frankenstein might give to Igor. Who is the actress, and what is the order?

(Look here or here for the answer.)

For another example, this week’s always excellent PEOTS (Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun) blog discusses “antimetaboles,” a kin and kind of first cousin to palindromes in which it is words rather than letters that are transposed.

For an even-closer-to-home example, the first puzzle [Retail Easy As Pie Slice (REAPS) “British Backtracking”] in this week’s Puzzleria! Menu (see below) involves a palindromic backward spelling.

[And no, “British Backtracking” does not refer to the two-score-and-five-year-old “Paul (McCartney) is dead” hoax fueled in part by the notion that when “Revolution 9” on “The Beatles” (White Album) is played backward the words “Turn me on, dead man” can be heard.]

Finally, we composed a palindrome for this week’s Puzzleria! blog. It is somewhat lengthy and labored, and requires some explanation (as mediocre palindromes do, and the best palindromes do not).

On the plus side of the ledger, our palindrome does give a timely nod toward Halloween by including the word “Spooks.”

Incidentally, a few examples of excellent classic palindromes are:

“Madam, I’m Adam.”

“A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.”

And, a palindrome that we believe is the best ever created:

“Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.”

But our palindromic composition (below) is not at all excellent, and therefore requires the following explanation:

One Halloween, a group of spooks (as spies are sometimes called) infiltrate Mt. Olympus and befriend Nike, goddess of victory. They gain her confidence by feigning esteem for Olympian ruler Zeus. The spooky spies further ingratiate themselves to the gods by posing as civil engineers and hatching a plan to extend the Suez Canal northwestward across the Mediterranean Sea, cutting through Crete, the Grecian mainland, and all the way up to Mt. Olympus! Alas, during a canal-planning conference with Nike, Zeus and other Olympians, the spies drop their guard and don’t bother donning their civil engineering disguises. Their cover is blown, the jig is up and the palindrome is, thank gods, finished...

So, here is our palindrome:

“Spooks among Nike esteem Zeus, replan a canal per Suez, meet seeking no mask… Oops!”

(The scuttlebutt is that Texas Governor Rick Perry was one of the spooks.)

But now, here are this week’s slices:

Menu

Retail Easy As Pie Slice:

British Backtracking

Take the name of a North American retailing chain. Spell it backward and divide it into two words to reveal something one might observe on a busy street in Great Britain.

What is this retail chain? What are the two words?

Municipal Slice:

Civil descriptive disorder

Subtract the last letter from the name of a U.S. city and add two different letters at the beginning, forming a word that describes the city. What are the city and its descriptor?

Hint: Add the added letters to end of the subtracted letter to name, briefly, a place where Owls roost in Georgia.

Literary Slice:

Vive la Franco-Roman difference

Two writers who lived roughly a century apart share an identical full name – first, middle and last – except for three consecutive letters in one of those three names.

In one of the names the three letters spell out a French word whose English equivalent is a homophone of a Roman numeral. In the other name the three letters form two consecutive Roman numerals whose sum exceeds the homophonic Roman numeral by one. Who are these writers?

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.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Title search; States of the onion; Making Sense...itivity

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

The illustration above depicts a popular processed food manufactured in Minnesota. It pertains to the second slice on this week’s menu, the Grocery Slice, “States of the Onion.” But it is not the answer to that puzzling slice.

Nor was it the answer to the question asked of Miss South Carolina in the 2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant.

Or was it?

Indeed, it is my belief that everything mouthed by Miss South Carolina Teen USA “onion-rings” true if only one realizes that she must be dyslexic and meant to say not maps, but Spam!

I reckon she actually wanted to observe, “Some people out there in our nation don’t have Spam.”

What? A day without Spam! That’s like a power plant without amps, like a pot or pan without Pam’s non-stick-to-it-tive-ness, like A&W Root Beer without the ampersand, & like some U.S. American people out there in our nation without maps!

“Whence Spam?” one might well ask (well, probably only if one is some kind of creepy word-nerd and is aware of what “whence” means).

Well, fellow word-nerds, the product itself comes from the Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods Corporation. The word “Spam,” however, seems to be even more of a mystery than the so-called “mystery meat” that it stands for.

Wikipedia says: Hormel claims that the meaning of the name “is known by only a small circle of former Hormel Foods executives.” But popular beliefs are that the name is an abbreviation of “spiced ham” or “shoulders of pork and ham.”

Or perhaps, rather, “spurious ham?”

Cleaning off the spindle:

In an October 21, 11:08 p.m. comment, we posted the following bonus slice:

In the news this week is the banning of a popular song by some radio stations. One of (last) week’s Puzzleria! slices has a roundabout connection to that ban. What is it?

Here is the news story, which says popular singer Lorde claims that her hit song “Royals” was inspired in part by a photograph of Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett signing autographs. The word “Royals” emblazoned on his uniform caught her eye and goosed her muse.

Our “Halve It Your Way Slice” mentioned GEORGE Blanda & BRETT Favre.

More clairvoyance & serendipity courtesy of Puzzleria!

Now, here are this week’s amped-up, deep-pan-Pam-sprayed, topologically mappy and mysteriously Spammy slices:

Menu

Easy As Pie Slice:

Title Search

Find a title, in two words, that contains just one vowel and three different consonants. The total number of letters in the title equals a factorial number minus the sum of the three factorial numbers preceding it. That is, the number of letters in the title equals N, where N = n! – [(n-1)! + (n-2)! + (n-3)!].

Grocery Slice:

States of the Onion

Delete some letters from the beginning of a U.S. state. Add a vowel and hyphen between the second and third letters of what remains to create the name of a food-processing corporation which just so happens to be formed by combining the beginnings of two other U.S. states. What are the three states and the corporation?

Sense Of Touchy Slice:

Making sense…itivity

Take two synonyms of four and six letters. Connect them with a hyphen and replace the last letter of one of the words with two different letters to form a synonym for “touchy” or “overly sensitive.”

What are the words?

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.)

Friday, October 17, 2014

1QB + 1QB = 1HB; A self-referential state; "Won't get 'field' again?"

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

This week’s we slice into:

The “Pineapple Upside-down Clock”

(…and other appetizing puzzles)

Puzzle bloggers and puzzle blog commenters, including yours truly (and “mine falsely”) have occasionally twitted (not Tweeted, mind you, twitted) puzzle master Dr. Will Shortz for purveying “cream puff” puzzles (that is, puzzles too easily solved) during his puzzle segment on National Public Radio’s (NPR’s) Morning Edition Sunday.

(Puzzle bloggers, especially yours, truthfully, are also eminently twittable for cramberry-jamming their paragraphs with parenthetical annotations, and then disingenuously apologizing about it in an immediately subsequent parenthetical paragraph.)

I submit that Dr. Shortz has been unduly twitted.

Our renowned enigmatologist, after all, must strive to appeal to a national audience of puzzle solvers with a broad range of puzzle-solving aptitudes. Sure, many NPR puzzles Will broadcasts are easily solved (eliciting more than 1,000 correct answer submissions during some weeks!) but Will also mixes in a fair number of more challenging posers.

Take for example our favorite NPR puzzle from this past calendar year, the following gem from February 2:

“Where in most homes will you see the words SHE and HIS, and what word will you see right after HIS?

This puzzle, which came to be known at Blainesville

and at AESAP as the “upside-down digital clock puzzle,” featured a really nifty time/space misdirection, and proved to be a tough solve. Will received very few correct entries.

Reaction among puzzle bloggers was mixed, with some praising the puzzle as clever, even ingenious, but others deeming the puzzle’s “trick” or “twist” unfair.

The answer to the puzzle as well as commentary about it are available here and here and here.

A few months later, Will broadcast another stickler, one that began by providing a “helpful example,” “the film Wild Wild West,” that was actually a red herring, or misdirection:

“The film Wild Wild West had three W’s as its initials. What prominent film of last year had two W’s as its initials?”

Blog answers and commentaries pertaining to this puzzle are available here and here. Again, the reaction was mixed.

(A Blainesville blog commenter screen-named “Al” was one of the handful of people who solved the “SHE/HIS” puzzle, and was one of the handful who also solved the “two W’s film” puzzle. Quite a feat, IMHO. Al doesn’t just think outside the “puzzle box.” No, in a boxcar filled with “puzzle boxes,” he thinks outside the boxcar!)

Two months later, Will posted another poser – somewhat easier, yet still tricky:

“Name part of a TV that contains the letter C. Replace the C with the name of a book of the Old Testament, keeping all the letters in order. The result will name a sailing vessel of old. What is it?” Here is what the blogs gave as a verdict.

Like the others, this puzzle involves a “twist,” an element that requires solvers to perceive a trickily skewed reality, to navigate a house of mirrors as if it were their own home.

Frequent Puzzleria! commentor David posted a “piggyback puzzle” on October 10, 4:23 PM in last week’s Puzzleria! comments section. It reminded me of the above NPR puzzles, so I suggested he submit it to NPR.

We at Puzzleria! strive to create and post such puzzles – puzzles with a trick, a twist, a misdirection, a different way of perceiving letters, words, numbers or expressions.

The closest we’ve come, our best puzzle so far IMO, was this one, posted in May, the first month of Puzzleria’s existence:

Specialty of the House Slice:
“Trivial Scribble”
What three-word phrase is a bad thing if you’re playing Trivial Pursuit, not a bad thing if you’re playing Scrabble, and a thing that might seem to be a logical impossibility if you’re playing Pictionary?

It had decent wordplay and was the puzzle we felt best about as we created it.

But in too many of our Puzzleria! puzzles, the solver is merely moving letters and syllables around like furniture across the living room floor. It is mere heavy lifting, requiring an exercise of brawn over brain – a workout, sure, but not so much fun.

This week’s puzzles, for example, might be a bit too much like that. And, many of our puzzles have been too easy:

What two-word phrase is a good thing for dessert, a good thing in the used car lot, but a bad thing on a puzzle blog?

So, don’t be a twit. And don’t twit. Just pit your puzzle-solving skills and match wits while we at Puzzleria! knit our brows, grit our teeth and commit to hitting it out of the ballpark… a grand slam four-base-hit every at-bat, that is.

This week’s trio of pitched puzzles:

Menu

Halve It Your Way Slice:

1QB + 1QB = 1HB

Name a word you might hear on a football broadcast. Remove the first letter to form a word describing Brett Favre as a Viking or George Blanda as a Raider. Replace the letter you removed with one having “half its value” and halve the result to form two words that are somewhat antonymous.

Hint: The two near antonyms can each be classified as a word that sometimes modifies “fruit.”

Easy As Pie Slice:

A self-referential state

Divide the name of a U.S. state into two parts. Add a letter to the end of the first part and replace the last letter of the second part with a different letter to form two words that describe the state. What are the two words and the state?

Studious Slice:

“Won’t get ‘field’ again?”

Think of a field of study. Insert into this word an acronym that might be a topic of discussion in that field, creating a new word that is also a field of study. What are these words?
(Hint: The longer-worded field of study is considered by some people to be not so “academic.”)

Friday, October 10, 2014

"If a word falls in the forest..."; Motley Cruise; Gamey kids' stuff

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

This week, we squeeze out a dollop of Dazzledent (as in dazzlingly sparkling minty fresh teeth) onto our Puzzazzle!

We have detected a mini-trend lately in Will Shortz’s Weekend Edition Sunday puzzles on National Public Radio, and it has to do with teeth. No, Will’s puzzles are not as difficult as the proverbial “pulling of teeth.” Indeed, they are often as easy as pulling a balloon on a string, or a pop-top on a beer can.

But an inordinate number of NPR Weekend Edition puzzles in recent months have dealt with dentistry and dental hygiene.

To wit:

May 25’s answer was “set of teeth.”

Part of June 22’s answer was “Colgate.”

Part of June 29’s answer was “bad breath.”

And now, Will’s Oct. 5 puzzle this past week read:

“Take the first four letters of a brand of toothpaste plus the last five letters of an over-the-counter medicine, and together, in order, the result will name a popular beverage. What is it?”

(Incidentally, unless you are unidontic like Oliver J. Dragon of “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” fame, shouldn’t “toothpaste” be called “teethpaste”? And, while we’re on the subject, isn’t “teethpaste” a much more sensible name for “denture cream” than “denture cream”?)

On Blaine’s and An Englishman Solves American Puzzles blogs this past week, the consensus of the posted comments concerning Dr. Shortz’s October 5 puzzle was that it was way too easy to sink one’s teeth into.

And so, to keep matters hopping and popping, some commenters created and posed what we at Puzzleria! have dubbed “piggyback” puzzles, so-called because they are similar to, formed from and “supported by” the original “masterpuzzle.” Piggyback puzzles do not stand alone but rather “ride on other puzzles’ shoulders.”

David, a brilliant puzzle solver and creator, and a regular commenter on multiple blogs, including Puzzleria!, posted the following ingenious challenge on Blaine's blog:

“Take a type of beverage spelled backwards and add a brand of toothpaste to the end. Change one letter to get another beverage brand that is related to this week’s (NPR) puzzler answer.”

I was stumped, so asked David for a subtle hint, which he provided. He answered my posted plea simply with, “Whiner.” (This alluded somewhat homophonically to “the type of beverage spelled backward.”)

David’s challenge is an excellent “toothpaste puzzle,” one Will might have also created independently of David. Publishing it here on this blog helps to “drain the pool” of at least one potential toothpaste puzzle that Will might be “sitting on” and about to broadcast over NPR in coming months.

My mission, immediately below, is to drain that pool even further by publishing a slew of “What Brand Of Toothpaste…?” (W-BOT) puzzles, that Will might well have already thought of, but henceforth cannot use because Puzzleria! got there first! Ha!

(I’m apparently still miffed and reeling from that whole Cellophane/Cell phone unpleasantness last week!) Once these toothpastey puzzles are squeezed out of their tube, you just cannot cram them back in. And similar toothpaste squeezed from other people’s tubes just seems stale and dazzleless in comparison.

So, here are my W-BOT puzzles. (Perhaps you can add to them by creating some of your own. To solve mine, use this handy web site from Wikipedia for reference.):

What Brand Of Toothpaste (W-BOT), when you transpose two interior consecutive letters, is the first name of a former wife of a rock icon?

W-BOT might Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt and Russell Means have used? (The answer is not ANAM!)

W-BOT, if you delete an R, is the first name of a Rhythm & Blues/Gospel singer, or the first name of a famous comedian’s wife?

W-BOT, if you insert within it the last two letters of another BOT, is the stomping grounds of a girl in a 1960s Grammy-winning bossa nova song?

W-BOT (referred to in the preceding W-BOT) has three letters at its beginning that can be rearranged to form a type of tooth cleansing substance that is an alternative to tooth “paste”?

W-BOT’s original name was “Infra Dull” but sold much better after changing its name?

W-BOT did Norma Desmond tell Cecil B. De Mille she was ready for?

W-BOT is also the name of an American business owner/manager who is closely associated with Occidental Petroleum but also known as an art collector, philanthropist, and for having close ties to the Soviet Union?

W-BOT should change its name to Da Vinci, who is responsible for brushstroking merely the most famous smile in art history, and not. like that other guy, just cranking out a mess of etchings of drab windmills and oils of sour-pussed Dutchmen?

W-BOT is also a BOM (Brand Of Margarine)?

W-BOT will give your teeth a red, green and amber glow?

And finally,

W-BOT is absolutely the worst brand name ever concocted in the history of commercial products?

But, enough of thisW-BOTTING, for now at least. Here is this week’s trio of puzzle slices:

Menu

Easy As Pie Slice:

“If a word falls in the forest…”

Take a word meaning “a lack of voluntary muscular movement and coordination.” It is related to a facial tic, but is usually more widespread in the body.

Lopping off the first and last letters results in something jet airplanes do. Lopping another letter from the end results in something governments do. Lopping another letter from the beginning results in an implement one might use to perform the lopping of woods rather than words.

What are these increasingly (decreasingly?) truncated words?

All Come To A Similar End Slice:

Motley Cruise

Three words end with the same five letters in the same order.

One is a mammal. Another appears in a Christmas carol that is often sung in Latin.

The third is an uncomplimentary word for a person, a noun. Its definition usually includes either a word sounding like a woodland creature or a word sounding like an amphibious creature, or both.

The remaining letters (from the beginnings of the three words) can be gathered together and rearranged to form the phrase “motley cruise.”

What are the three words?

Extra Credit: What are the woodland and amphibious creatures?

Specialty Of The House Slice:

Gamey Kids’ Stuff

Name a children’s game. Write its syllables in reverse (not its letters, just its syllables) and divide the result into two words to form a phrase that one might use to characterize a carpenter’s technique of fastening boards by driving nails at an angle. What are the game and the two words?

Friday, October 31, 2014

British backtracking; Civil descriptive disorder; Vive la Franco-Roman difference

Friday, October 24, 2014

Title search; States of the onion; Making Sense...itivity

Friday, October 17, 2014

1QB + 1QB = 1HB; A self-referential state; "Won't get 'field' again?"

Friday, October 10, 2014

"If a word falls in the forest..."; Motley Cruise; Gamey kids' stuff

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