Buds & bauds; Autograph abridged; Middleton's tons o' middle names

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 2⁷ SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria, the “Marchruary” edition. 

No “colorful image-matching-and-captioning” puzzle slices this week, we promise. But we have cooked up a pretty plenty appetizing trio of puzzle slices for you as we bid farewell to February (“I’m bid 25 day bidder now 26 now 26 done 27 now 27, now 27 day bidder done, 28 days there, thank you, now 29, now 29, now 29 now 29 day bidder... Sold right there for 28 days! Must not be a leap year, dad gum it!”)

As usual, enjoy nibbling and noshing on these slices but please do not divulge your answers for about four days, at three o’clock Post Meridian Eastern Daylight Time on Tuesday, March the Third.

As you may be aware, “Tuesday March the Third” became the name of Tuesday Weld after she wed Frederick March III... What’s that? Mr. March was not a III? He was not even a Junior? And there is no record of his ever tying the knot with Ms. Weld? Okay, then, we guess we might be wrong about Mr. March being a “the Third,” and about Tuesday being a March. But we are certain of one thing: that we wish it were true.

We also wish you well during your march through this week’s menu:

Menu

Easy As Pie Slice:

Buds & bauds

Give a curtailed name for a ubiquitous modern mobile electronic device. Spell it backward and split it in two to form a synonym for “bud buddy.”

What are this device and synonym?

Easy As Poetry Slice:

Autograph abridged

Take the letters a certain poet/author might have used to sign an autograph if at a book signing and in a hurry, or if the signing session was experiencing particularly long lines of fawning fans. 

Remove any spaces and relocate the second letter to form a type of poem this poet might have penned.

Who is the poet? What is the type of poem?

Name Chain Slice:

Middleton’s tons o’ middle names

Tommy Hicks is a former light heavyweight boxer and native of Lockport, New York. We are not sure what his middle name is. (We can’t find it online, anyway). Perhaps he has more than one middle name, like “Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland” has.

If that is the case, the boxer Tommy Hicks’s full name might be something like, say, Tommy John Salley Struthers Martin Lawrence Taylor Hicks. If this were the case, each consecutive pair of names would form the first-name/surname of a reasonably famous person. (One criterion for “reasonably famous” might be “she/he has a Wikipedia page.”) The first-name/surname double-links in this “Tommy … Hicks” chain are a pitcher, a power forward, an actress and actor, a comedian, a linebacker and a singer:

Tommy John

John Salley

Sally Struthers

Strother Martin

Martin Lawrence

Lawrence Taylor

Taylor Hicks

(Notice that our “make-’em-up-as-we-go-along rules” for this puzzle do allow for homophones and/or for the addition or subtraction of an “s” at the end of a name. For example, Salley = Sally and Struthers = Strother are permitted, as would be William = Williams, Peter = Peters, etc.  Also, the names of fictional characters are allowed,)

So, “Tommy John Salley Struthers Martin Lawrence Taylor Hicks” has six middle names and seven first name/surname pairs within a “name-chain” of eight links (6-7-8).

In the real world, the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, has one middle name, Elizabeth, and a name-chain of three links. In the “Puzzlereal!” world, however, she has a dozen middle names and a name chain of fourteen links (12-13-14)! Among the somewhat obscure first-name/surname double-links in her name-chain are: a young actor, a two-time Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packer receiver, a rock group front man, a Renaissance playwright/poet, a tool inventor, and a model.

Other challenges:

Jonathan Swift; (7 middle names; 8 first name/surname pairs; 9-links) (7-8-9); Among the somewhat obscure names: a college basketball coach, a novelist, a theologian, and a New Deal projects director  

Molly Bundy (11-12-13); Obscure: an English actor/movie producer, a National Public Radio regular, a Twentieth Century English playwright
(This chain begins with four actresses, then two actors.) 

Peter Pickett (10-11-12); Obscure: an ambassador, a Packer kicker, a drummer whose last name rhymes with the group he drummed for, a midwestern governor, a deadpan comedian

Billy Dole (4-5-6); Obscure: an actor on a classic sit-com, a country singer

Name the links in the five name-chains above.

Extra-credit challenge: Create a chain with its ends linked.

Our best effort to create such an endless chain includes the name of a pioneer in civil rights and sports who died just yesterday, February 26. Our chain has six links and six first-name/surname pairs:
Earl Lloyd
Lloyd Thomas
Thomas Edison (’nuff said)
Edison James
James George
George Earl ...

Every Friday at Joe’s Puzzleria! 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 like our “mystic puzzleria” please tell your friends about us. Thank you.