Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle-ria!
Let us begin this week with a...
Quick Timely Bonus Slice:The ol’ “Hook and Bladder” play
Think of a two-word synonym of “portly political conventioneer.” Rearrange its letters to form a word that was coined within the past week.
Too easy? Give this one a bite:
Quickish Untimely Interjecting Zesty Zingers Executiveward Slice:Taft: Fat
In a 1911 address delivered annually to members of Congress, President William Howard Taft delineated his views on enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. (He would soon thereafter be successful in using the statute to “trust-bust” John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly and would nearly succeed in breaking up J.P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel.)
Among those in the congressional gallery was Senator Moe TerVeaux Te’Raddison Wilson, son of a Baptist minister and hotel chain empire heiress.
As the president decried “the evils of the trusts” that represented big oil, big tobacco, big energy, big moneybags (and perhaps even Big Macs), Senator Moe Wilson began to uncomfortably fidget on his digits, which were ensconced between his plush gallery seat and his own pants seat. But when President Taft began speaking of the hospitality industry’s motel monopoly (see trust-busting at the 2:06 mark) along with its “fat cats who devour all competition in their pathway,” the senator could no longer hold his tongue or his seat.Pointing his forefinger directly at the POTUS he shouted out, not “You lie! You lie!” but rather the following exclamatory and provocative phrase:
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ , __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ !
Hints:
The phrase contains a one-letter interjection and a verb ending with a King Jamesy biblical flourish. (Senator Wilson suspected this biblical allusion would prove to be an effective taunt, for the prez was once quoted as questioning the divinity of Jesus.)The letters of the phrase can be rearranged to spell out the kind of address President Taft was delivering.
Puzzleria! this week welcomes back gourmet French puzzle chef Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme (also known as “skydiveboy”) He has cooked up and is serving the delicious “Where On Earth Slice” on this week’s menu.
The most recent puzzle proffered by Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme was the deliciously wonderful puzzle slice titled “52-Card Poker Pick-up” in the November 28 Puzzleria!
Dive in!
Menu
Easy As Pieces
Of Pancakes Slice:
Trudging toward tragedy
The first thing’s
a charm, wards off evil completely.
Change two vowels
to two others and the charm becomes lunch.
And “emoter” in
front and the brunch is more meaty.
Cockney’s flat in
the midst ought be flattened, expunged.
’Tis a tragedy
spun from a charm, bittersweetly.
Or, a bit less
circuitously…
The third thing in
the “charm” (you) ought move to the front,
And be switched
then to which appears first in the “hunt.”
Seek not pot-boiling
witches, though, bearing the brunt…
’Tis a tragedy not
to be mixed, to be blunt.
What is the charm?
What is the tragedy?
Where On Earth Slice:
Thinking globally, acting syllabally
The final two syllables of the republic of Afghanistan followed by the first syllable of the republic of Bulgaria form the populous Turkish city of Istanbul. (Besides Afghanistan, the republics of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan will also work.)
Name two other world republics in which the last two syllables of one followed by the first syllable of the other form another large city, one with a population of more than half a million.
Note: This puzzle was created by Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme (a.k.a. skydiveboy), with a bit of collaboration provided by LegoLambda.
Big And Small
Of It Slice:
Sizing things
up
Name a word that
means very, very small. Move the first part of the word to the end of the word,
leaving a space, to form two words. The result names something that is very,
very large.
What are these three words?
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
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.
QTBS: You had to be living under a rock (not so bad, depending on the rock) to miss this one. And yes, even if you are not a fan, as even NPR covered it. Even, even how odd?. . .
ReplyDeleteHappy Friday!
Oh, is tragegy a hint or a typo?
DeleteFallible Blogmeister's Log, Friday January 23:
Delete5:00 AM: LegoLambda uploads this week's Puzzleria! Goes to sleep.
10:00 AM: Lego reads Word Woman's comment asking whether "tragegy" (sic) is a hint or typo. Doesn't notice she spells it with two g's and no d.
10:03 AM: Lego scans the blog to see what she's talking about. Notes four instances of "tragedy" in the "Trudging toward tragedy" slice, plus one instance in the blog headline, where it is misspelled "tragegy" (sic). Does not notice the misspelling. Reads it as "tragedy."
10:05 AM: Lego second-guesses his spelling prowess. Thinks that perhaps "tragedy" is spelled with a second "d", as in "tradgedy" (sic). Fears he may need to go into his blog and edits, changing five instances of "tragedy" to "tradgedy" (sic).
10:07 AM: Lego begins composing in his head a response to Word Worman's query, explaining that the five instances of "tragedy" in Puzzleria! this week are neither hints nor typos but were in fact misspellings!
10:11 AM: In order to confirm the spelling of "tradgedy" (sic), Lego looks it up in his Merriam Webster's. Cannot find it. Looks up "tragedy." Finds it. Feels somewhat vindicated and a bit better about his spelling prowess. But then recalls that for a while there he thought "tragedy" was really spelled "tradgedy." Lego third-guesses his spelling prowess.
10:17 AM: Lego re-reads Word Woman's comment/query. Still reads "tragegy" as "tragedy." Wonders if she might be munching on now-legal "medicinal brownies."
11:01 AM: Lego takes a break from his blog. Gets some fresh air.
5:28 PM: Lego returns to blog. Notices that he has misspelled "tragedy" as "tragegy" (sic) in the headline. Begins writing "Fallible Blogmeister's Log, January 23."
6:07 PM: Lego posts this comment.
LegoSicAndTypoedOfBeingSicAndTypoed
How many of a particular letter -- frequently a dilemma.
DeletePaul,
DeleteOr, should that be "dillema"? Or, thography, in other words, puts me in such a pickle sometimes!
LegoDiLemmbda
Rough to have to go through all that, Lego. Trajik, really. ;-)
DeleteI imagine we've all done it though.
Rough to have to go through all that, Lego. Trajik, really. ;-)
DeleteI imagine we've all done it though.
Spate of double postings this morning which led me to look up 'spate:' from late Middle English, a sudden flood in a river, especially one caused by heavy rains or melting snow.
DeleteLarge spike in usage of 'spate' starting in 1950. Why the spate of spate?
Gotta be a puzzle in there somewhere about spate to pates to spate. . .
Too much for me to assimilate right now. I'll have to go over the tapes ... sometime ... or other.
DeleteOh, for peat's sake. . .;-)
DeleteGot the QTBS and the EAPOPS. I have a story about one of the words in the EAPOPS which I can tell you Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteI will work on the WOES and BASOIS later.
I have all but QTBS. I guess I am not up on newly coined words!
ReplyDeleteron,
DeleteTrue. We are minting such “piggybrinks” of new coinages (on the Internet and, especially on blogs such as this!) that we are experiencing word inflation. Too many words; nothing of much value (for example, piggybrinks).
NEWS FLASH!
I just added another bonus slice (QUIZZES) just beneath the QTBS.
I think skydiveboy’s WOES and my BASOIS puzzles are reasonably challenging this week. Congrats on knocking them off. Although now I am worrying that there may be more than one BASOIS answer. There is just such a multitude of synonyms for small and so many two-word things that are big.
LegoCounterfeitCoiner
I have QTBS (I knew it must involve sports) and I "may" have QUIZZES also.
DeleteI got WOES! W/O a hint (at least, I don't see any here)!
ReplyDeleteGive me a few minutes, and I'll try to prove it.
Using the city, the capitals of the republics, and the "center of gravity' calculation method at geomidpoint.com, I got ... wet. That doesn't prove much. I'll keep working on it.
DeleteN tah onn yrt nznytnz gnb -- has a ring to it, don't you think?
DeletePaul,
DeleteWhen it comes to swimming with the Sharkies, I am still am an amateur minnow. Is it version 1.0? 2.1.0? What's the keyword?. etc.....
Oh wait, I always forget about good ol' ROT13!
Okay. Now I see that you have solved it. Impressive.
But even more impressive is your ROT13 encrypted message (which actually would have been sufficiently cryptic if left unencrypted!). I love the way you tie Will's "GOD with a GUN = DU'GONG!", skydiveboy and my "truncated/anamalgam" exchange over on Blaine's, The whole "LEGo lamBAA" dynamic, and the great coincidence that LEG = amalGAM.
Tour de Force!
LegoPolliwogTryingToSwimTheTaoOfPaul
I now have the BASOIS and half the QUIZZES, but still WOES isn't me.
ReplyDeleteThe pronunciation of the first word in the QUIZZES phrase sounds like a word that might have been spoken many times by the play-by-play announcer for the 1950-60-70s-era Baltimore Colts… if that announcer had a lisp, that is.
ReplyDeleteLego…
Or speaking Biblically.
DeleteCurt Menefee: …Thank you, Jay Glazier, for that excellent report regarding the effect that the collective booze-and-beer breath of 50,000 tailgating Packer fans might have on the air pressure inside the football during the game.
DeleteJimmy Johnson: Curt, Jay is right. All those booze molecules in the air, even in an open-air situation such as at Lambeau, make the ambient air so thin that the football seems very overinflated and gets tougher to grip. Isn’t that right, Michael?
Michael Strahan: How the hell would I know, Coach. I was a defensive lineman. Besides, I have no idea what “ambient” means.
Jimmy Johnson: Well, I’ll tell ya, trying to hold onto one of those swollen footballs is like trying to get your hand around an overfed greased pig.
I remember one time we were playing the Minnesota Vikings at the Hubert Horatio Humphrey Metrodome. All the booze breath trapped inside that big baggie made the air inside so thin, and the air pressure in the football so great, that one time our quarterback Troy Aikman threw a pass to Moose Johnston that exploded in the air, just before he was about to snatch it for a go-ahead touchdown.
Daryl “Moose” Johnston: Coach, that’s a crock of…
Jimmy Johnson: Nothing like that ever happened in Texas Stadium in Irving, of course, which looked like a dome but had a hole in the roof so that God could watch our games.
Our fans never drank anything harder than sweet tea and milk, so there were never any alcohol molecules in the air at all. Thus, the pigskin was very easy to grip, like a sponge. I remember one time Troy threw Moose a pass in the end zone. Unfortunately, Moose had lost it in the sun. But it was a long high-arching pass, hanging up in the air for a long time, so by the time the ball game down it had naturally deflated to such an extent that it just landed (Splat!) on the top of Moose's helmet for a go-ahead touchdown. It was like a pizza-maker throwing a doughy crust into the air that lands on the top of his customer’s head…
Daryl “Moose” Johnston: Coach, that’s a crock of…
Jimmy Johnson: I also recall that the low air pressure in Texas stadium seemed to have a similar negative effect on our Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, causing their uniform tops to…
Curt Menefee: Thanks, Jimmy. But it looks like they’re about ready to kick it off at Lambeau in today’s game, brought to you by the NFL on FOX, between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. Let’s now send it over to Joe Buck and Troy Aikman for the play-by-play of all the action, the King James Version…
QTBS:
ReplyDeleteFAT DELEGATE>>>DEFLATE-GATE. (Be sure to watch this, it's a good one!)
QUIZZES:
STATE OF THE UNION>>>TENANTS, O FIE THOU!
WOES:
The Republic of BUKHARA and the Republic of CHILE (or CHINA) yields KHARACHI, population 23.5 million! Not the intended answer?
How about GABON and GUATEMALA which yields MALAGA, Spain, population: 568,507 (over ½ million)?
EAPOPS:
AMULET>>>(HAM) OMELET>>>HAMLET
BASOIS:
SUBATOMIC>>>ATOMIC SUB
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAbout QUIZZES -- Lego said a VERB gets the KJV treatment. THOU art not a verb.
DeleteAbout EAPOPS -- my hint was the "how many of a particular letter" dilemma.
ron,
DeleteYes, Malaga is the intended answer. Congrats!
In the interest of full disclosure, I came up with this puzzle recently while bike riding. It was easy to devise and I emailed it when I returned home to Joe who solved it with the Malaga answer. My answer had been Istanbul, but Joe had discovered what I consider to be a more obscure solution. I submitted it for Will shorts to use on NPR, but as before when I have submitted puzzle suggestions nothing happened there, as I expected. I then let Joe know he was free to use it on this blog. He soon sent me his draft with Istanbul as the answer and Malaga as the intro, but I told him I thought his answer was the better one and he should consider using it instead, so I feel he should get due recognition. I'm glad I didn't run it by you, or who knows what the puzzle would look like! Just kidding on that last comment. Congrats to Paul also!
SDB,
DeleteThis was a good puzzle. I wasn't serious Bukhara answer as Karachi is not spelled with an H. Will should have used your puzzle.
ron,
DeleteThank you. I appreciate your opinion. I have submitted several puzzles I made up to Will that I consider superior to much of what he gives us and I have posted about this on Blaine's several times. I suspect he will not use anything I submit because he is thin skinned and cannot stand my criticisms on Blaine's. Lego's blog, along with his generosity, has allowed me to demonstrate that I can, on occasion, come up with a suitable puzzle and you all can decide for yourselves if you agree. I have more that may appear here as I have decided to not submit them again to Will. I have even gone so far as to set my digital clock right side up again.
I could tell your Bukhara/Karachi answer was not quite serious, but I like it and I too think it needed to see the light of day here. Thanks.
Mark
I will post the “official” answers for the record within an hour or so (kind of redundant because you Puzzlerians! have done great this week) . In the meantime:
Deleteron,
Gotta give you an “A.” I wasn’t sure how difficult the BASOIS would be, but I thought it would be reasonably tough. My intended answer, which you nailed, is a bit unfair because “atomic sub” is short, of course, for “atomic submarine.”
Paul (whose cryptic hint for the WOES was an amazing work of art) is correct about my biblical verb stipulation (although I think we all realize that all words in the dictionary we become verbs eventually… “Even though Gertrude is disrespful of me, I choose to rise above that and not treat her like dirt. In fact I do my best to thou Gertrude.”
But what I enjoy most about ron’s alternative answer to QUIZZES (it’s not my intended answer) is that “Tenants, O Fie Thou!” fills in the blanks perfectly. And it makes sense and seems not contrived.
ron’s alternative answer to WOES (buKHARA + CHIle/CHIna = KHARACHI) is fine also, from my perspective, even with that “phantom H” sneaking into Karachi. (It probably was spelled with an “H’ somewhere, sometime in history.
The Burkharan People’s Soviet Republic (which I’ll wager was shortened to “Burkhara”) no longer exists, of course, but neither do Jimmy Doolittle, Rex Harrison, William Wordsworth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Marc Antony, etc. If we can use dead people in puzzles, why not dead countries?
Thanks to sdb for contributing his fine WOES puzzle, and for providing some background about it. He created it’ all I did was solve and “package” it. Will shoulda used it.
I second both ron’s and skydiveboy’s sentiments posted in their two posts immediately above.
LegoIThouTheePuzzlerians!
Got the fat delegate >>> deflategate. . .Now can we be done with this, please. Oh, the pressure!
DeleteMy phrase for QUIZZES was "Uniteth, O Fat Ones." (Johnny Unitas with a lisp.)
ReplyDeleteLookin' good from this fuzzy perspective.
DeleteI have recently submitted a puzzle to NPR (and got acknowledgement of receipt about a month later). I will publish it here (if Joe is agreeable) if does not get aired in the next couple month.
ReplyDeleteMy promised (threatened?) story on an EAPOPS word. In the early or mid 1980s, when I still lived in Richmond, VA, a local radio station had a contest where you were supposed to come up with a alternate word for "omelet". The word I submitted won, as voted on by the radio audience. I won a $50 gift certificate for a fancy French restaurant (total cost of meal about $100, before tip), so my prize ended up costing me about $70, plus the cost of a sitter. I will wait for a bit to publish my $50 (about $111.50 in current dollars) word to give you all a chance to guess it or better it.
David ,
DeleteIn the radio omelet-renaming contest that you won, the rules probably said you could submit only one answer. But I can stuff our ballot box with a whole laundry list of entries. We want to run a clean campaign contest here, even though we don’t have many (actually, any) rules:
Hamelet
Yumelet
Eggfluff
Notquiche
Ümëlaüt
Egg Fu Fluff
Omegga pie
EggsFuBar
Frogl’eggs
Sunnyside-upbeaten
WhippedWhiteYoakums
Fl’oeufs
Eggbeat Burrito
El Foldova
Om…let’smeditate
Oeuf-Da!
L’eggOmeggy
Well, since I lived in Germany for almost three years, their word for egg came immediately to mind. Ei. Pronounced as EYE. Therefor I hereby designate the new naming of omelet as EYELET.
DeleteWell, I suppose it could also be, Albumen and yolk fried in butter with salt and pepper, plus seasonings along with anything you happen to have around at the time dish.
DeleteCatchy, skydiveboy.
DeleteEyelet could also be "Grommelet."
LegoAlwaysLaceAnOmeletWithAJiggerOfGin
True enough, Lego, but who needs a depressing grommelet staring at him in the morning after a night of heavy drinking when an eyelet could be so much more conducive to bringing him out of his shell?
DeleteMy winning entry was "Eggvelope".
DeleteDavid,
DeleteThat sounds to me like a couple of eggs running away from their parents with expectations of living happily ever after.
David,
Delete"Eggvelope" is brilliant. Well-deserved victory.
Two questions:
One: Do you remember any of the runner-up entries, if any were revealed?
Two: Do you remember what you ordered for your "to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils-meal" at the fancy French restaurant?
Oh, and I will now correct the obvious typographical error in skydiveboy's above comment: He, of course, meant to write that the eloping "fianceggs" run away with eggspectations of happily-ever-after living.
LegoPushingDavid'sEggvelope,ShovingBadEggPunsDownYoutThroat
Lego,
DeleteMare see bow koo for your editing proficiency, moanzure.
Okay, Word Woman, as far as I am concerned, it is now the “Not-so-great, Late Deflate-gate with an expiration date.” May it rest in pancake-shaped peace.
ReplyDeleteDavid, Johnny Uniteth, indeed!
I hope Will accepts your puzzle but, if not, you know it has a home here. Thank you.
Congrats on winning that radio station “omelet” contest. I have some ideas about what you might have won with, but I will put them on the back burner and allow them to simmer a bit for now. But now…
This week’s answers, for the record:
Quick Timely Bonus Slice:
The ol’ “Hook and Bladder” play
Think of a two-word synonym of “portly political conventioneer.” Rearrange its letters to form a word that was coined within the past week.
Answer:
“portly political conventioneer” = FAT DELEGATE >>> “DEFLATEGATE,” which the media dubbed the hubbub about the New England Patiots using underinflated footballs verses the Indianapolis colts in the AFC championship game
Quickish Untimely Interjecting Zesty Zingers Executiveward Slice:
Taft: Fat
What provocative phrase did Senator Moe Wilson shout out at President Taft during a 1911 annual presidential address?
Answer:
“Uniteth, O Fat Ones!”
Hints:
The phrase contains a one-letter interjection (O) and a verb ending with a King Jamesy biblical flourish (UNITETH).
The letters of the phrase can be rearranged to spell out the kind of address President Taft was delivering:
UNITETH, O FAT ONES >>> STATE OF THE UNION
Easy As Pieces Of Pancakes Slice:
Trudging toward tragedy
The first thing’s a charm, wards off evil completely.
Change two vowels to two others and the charm becomes lunch.
And “emoter” in front and the brunch is more meaty.
Cockney’s flat in the midst ought be flattened, expunged.
’Tis a tragedy spun from a charm, bittersweetly.
Or, a bit less circuitously…
The third thing in the “charm” (you) ought move to the front,
And be switched then to which appears first in the “hunt.”
Seek not pot-boiling witches, though, bearing the brunt…
’Tis a tragedy not to be mixed, to be blunt.
What is the charm? What is the tragedy?
AMULET; HAMLET
Cinquain: AMULET >>> OMELET >>> HAM OMELET – (HOME – H) = HAM LET
Quatrain: AMULET >>> UAMLET >>> (H – unt)AMLET = HAMLET
Where On Earth Slice:
Thinking globally, acting syllabally
The final two syllables of the republic of Afghanistan followed by the first syllable of the republic of Bulgaria form the populous Turkish city of Istanbul.
Name two other world republics in which the last two syllables of one followed by the first syllable of the other form another large city, one with a population of more than half a million.
Answer:
guateMALA + Gabon = MALAGA
Big And Small Of It Slice:
Sizing things up
Name a word that means very, very small. Move the first part of the word to the end of the word, leaving a space, to form two words. The result names something that is very, very large.
What are these three words?
Answer:
SUBATOMIC; ATOMIC SUB (submarine)
J
_______
LegotomicSubda