Friday, March 27, 2015

Paging Rev. Spooner...; A Tale of Two Cinemas


PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 122 SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!, the fourth and final edition of March. Three weeks ago we roared in like a lion... We now exit March sheepishly, like a lambda.

And so, we must bid adieu to the third month, named after the fourth stone from the sun. Without further ado, here is this weeks menu of puzzle slices:

Menu


Fishy Slice:
Paging Rev. Spooner

Name something someone with a fishing rod might catch, in seven letters. Move the middle letter to the front, leaving a space, to describe something someone with a hot rod might do prior to fishtailing.
 


What may be caught and what might someone do prior to fishtailing?




Box Office Slice:
A Tale of Two Cinemas

A critically acclaimed mid-1990s movie did just slightly better than breaking even at the box office, with receipts amounting to about 113 percent of its production budget. About two decades earlier, another critically acclaimed movie’s box office returns amounted to more than 5,200 percent of its budget.
 
That last name of one of the stars of the earlier movie appears in the title of the latter movie. If you change one letter of the “real star” of the earlier movie, that word also appears in the latter movie’s title.

What are these movies?

Hint: In a bit of R-rated dialogue, a star of the latter movie utters the title of the earlier movie. (The use of the title was incidental. It did not refer or allude to the earlier movie.) The word “crowbar” is also involved in this dialogue.

The odds, however, that someone on the earlier movie would have uttered the title of the latter movie are beyond astronomical… indeed they border on the infinite!


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 friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.


Friday, March 20, 2015

Name that con-tune-ent; Double parking; ...Twelve bits just to see 'em

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 122 SERVED


Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Today is Friday the 20th of March. We are still basking in the afterglow of yesterday’s March 19th Feast of St. Joseph Day celebration.


Joseph was the foster father or father (depending on whom you believe) of Jesus of Nazareth. He is mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, not so much in John, but not at all in the Gospel of Mark.

Okay, so St. Mark the Evangelist missed the mark (as well as the joseph!). But that is no reason to for us to dismiss all the Marks. For by doing so we would be missing many Marks of distinction: Twain, Rothko, Knopfler, Antony, Fidrych, Spitz, Newhouse, and…

…this guy from Seattle, Washington, also known:
as “skydiveboy” in Blainesville and the blogosphere;
as guest Gourmet French puzzle chef “Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme” at Puzzleria!;
and, in real life (or life as real as it gets), as Mark Scott.

Here is Mark’s… er, our French puzzle chef’s latest creation:

Moi Aussie Bonus Slice:

Australians are very clever and humorous about how they use language and have many descriptive slang words for everyday things. This being said, it turns out Aussies have been rather slack in coming up with a more aptly eponymous word to describe their own country/continent.


Therefore I think we should see if we can help our Down Under friends and try to come up with a suitable and eponymous name for Australia. This may sound like a daunting task, but don’t despair because there is a most perfect name already. The best part is that it is hiding right here in our own country, the United States of America. All you have to do to find it is rearrange the letters of one of our largest cities and it should jump out at you.

Are you feeling up to the task? Well then, hop to it mates.

Gday, Mate. G’degree of difficulty, Mark.

Another treat: Just as St. Josephs Day was winding down, at the end of last weeks Puzzleria! comments, always-interesting blogger ron posted this nifty logic puzzle:


Starting in Delaware, you must tour the 48 contiguous United States (by land vehicle), visiting each state exactly once. Where will you finish?

ron linked to the answer in his comment.

And, one more bonus slice:

Bonus Belated Feast Day Slice:
Even the crawlers shall soar


A word for the etymological meaning of Joseph is five letters long. That word has a homograph that names a living creature of interest to herpetologists. Take a three-letter cousin of the creature. Add to the end of it the first three letters of a country associated with a saint more popular (mysteriously) than Joseph. The result is a word meaning “to ascend or soar.”


What are these three words?

Need more puzzlery? Who in the name of Joseph knows if those of (serial triple rhyme!) you who fancy yourselves as puzzle mavens can solve the slices in this week’s menu, which appears down under:

MENU

Double parking

Print the make of automobile in uppercase letters. Double its third letter. Remove the final letter and a portion of the new fourth letter to form an adjective the automobile’s producers would not want to have associated with their product.

Extra credit: A European automobile maker might actually want to have this adjective associated with a particular model in its line. What is this European make and model? 


Specialty Of The House Slice:
...Twelve bits just to see ‘em

Think of a noun often associated with souvenirs, postcards or old photographs. Remove either the second and third, or the third and fourth, or the fourth and fifth letters. The letters that remain, when read aloud, sound like certain objects you might observe at a museum.

What are the original noun and the museum objects?




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 friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

Friday, March 13, 2015

The Pi Songbook; A fitting first... Can you dig it? Scrambled Egguations; Speak, Mnemosyne; Seven-letter heaven;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 122 SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Today is Friday the 13th. Tomorrow is Pi Day the 14th. The next day is “Ides-day” the 15th.

Indeed it is a week chock-full of celebrations, with St. Paddys Day on March 17 and, best of all, the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19!

A year ago Pi Day fell on Friday, March 14th. Friday only sometimes falls on the 13th but Pi Day always falls only on the 14th, and always only in March. (And “Ides-day” always falls on the 15th of March… and May, July and October, and on the 13th of other months.)


Pi Day is celebrated each March 14 because that date is written as 3/14 in numerical notation (third month/fourteenth day), and the number pi is often rounded off to 3.14. But Pi Day in this present year of 2015 is extra special because its date in month/day/year notation is written 3/14/15, and the first five digits of pi are 3.1415.

Such month/day/year numerical notion of dates sometimes includes all four digits of a year. So, because the first twelve digits of pi are 3.14159265358, an even more special Pi Day occurred in the centennial year of Christopher Columbus’ voyage, March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m. or p.m. (3/14/1592, 6:53:58). The Pi-planets must have all aligned on that Pi Day!

The irrational number pi, symbolized by the Greek letter pi, is paradoxically defined as the ratio (!) of any circle’s circumference to its diameter. Its value is 3.14159265358979…
 
Those digits to the right of the decimal point continue on forever in random fashion. Such numbers are called irrational because they cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. Rational numbers such as ½ (0.5), 1/3 (0.333…), 1/11 (0.090909…) and 2 (2/1 or 2.0) can all be expressed as an integer divided by a non-zero integer. Most numbers with which we are familiar are rational.
 



But not pi. A reasonably close approximation of the irrational number pi, however, is the rational number 22/7, or three-and-one-seventh which, expressed as a decimal, is 3.142857142857…


Poison Pi
Because pi is the ratio of circumference to diameter, in any given circle either the diameter must be irrational or the circumference must be irrational. Both diameter and circumference cannot be rational. This is because multiplying (or dividing) a rational number by an irrational number “poisons” the rational number, making it irrational also. (Such poisoning also occurs with addition or subtraction.) 

It is as if irrational numbers are all contagious with some kind of boundless transcendental flu bug transmitted via mathematical contact. The formula for a Circumference, given a Diameter, is [C = (pi) (D)] and the formula for a Diameter, given a Circumference, is [D = C/pi]. Contagion ensues!   

But now, for something you are not going to catch… especially if he is running ahead of you in a marathon. Blogger David, who has contributed greatly to Puzzleria! (including his posting of creative puzzles), tipped us off (on the AESAP blog) to the added special once-in-a-century significance of this year’s Pi Day that occurs but once every century.



David, who is also an avid distance runner, is participating tomorrow in a 3.14-mile running event which begins in the morning at 9:26:53 (53 seconds after 9:26 a.m.). The next five digits in pi after 3.1415... are ...92653. 

Hope you can go the distance this week with this menu of “puzzle pi” slices. Take as much time as you like. But try not to repeat yourself.

But first, a poem about Pi:


Three-Point-One-Four-And-Twenty-Blackboards Pi

Zero blackbirds are baked in my pie,
Only blackboards from class, math and sci:
       Constants, signs, an ellipse
       Decimal points, superscripts
Shall Pi lovers’ taste buds satisfy.

Reads my recipe: “Add one sweet P
To an mc2 Equivalency,
       Fold around one hot current (sIc)
       With a whisk or a stir-in stick…
Bake, let cool, and then serve P-I-E!”

Serve up one 2.7 ounce segment
Then a slice with a sweet P-green pigment…
       What remains in the pan
       Is not pumpkin, pecan     
But of i magination a figment.

Bonus Appetizer Slice:
Literary Link

There is a literary connection between two of the five puzzle slices on this week’s menu. What are the slices and their link?

MENU

Easy As Pi Slice:
Scrambled egguations

Make sense of the following three equations:



(A mixed-up mighty tree) + (3.14...) = (A giraffe’s cousin)
(Musical paces) - (3.14...) = (A discombobulated Ed Kranepool)
(Scrambled big burgers) + (3.14...) = (Garlicky shrimp)


Title Search Slice:
The Pi Songbook

Consider the short palindromic title of the Vladimir Nabokov novel “Ada,” one word in the The Bird and the Bee song title “You’re a Cad” and one word in the Slade song title “Cum on Feel the Noize.”

What do all three have to do with pi?


Crib Note Slice:
Speak, Mnemosyne

Recalling the following self-referential mnemonic device might help a student navigate or regurgitate the first several (actually, thirty-two) digits of pi on a misguided geometry exam:

 “Via a crib, a pupil remembers pi. Pupils count all words’ quantity regarding letters. Sentences put in the mnemonic give pupils pi digits, they who are examined. Why? To discern geometric skill!”

But it does not exactly trip off the tongue. You can do better. Do you want to take the time to do so and share it with the rest of us?

And now, a musical interlude, brought to you courtesy of blogger ecoarchitect, who commented about it at Blainesville. 

Century Slice:
A fitting first…Can you dig it?

At some point late within the first 50 digits of pi something very fitting occurs, something that will occur often later on in the endless skein of digits, perhaps even an infinite number of times.

What is it? Where exactly does it occur? Where does it occur next?

Piebald’s Ill Slice:
Seven-letter heaven

Each of the six paragraphs below has at two words that share something in common related to this week’s pi theme. Name what it is and, if possible, give another word sharing the same property for each paragraph.

1. Each March 14 Picasso and Pizzaro throw Pi Day picnics at Pimlico Park. They serve a pitcher of pilsner, pierogi with picante sauce, pickled pig-feet and pimento-stuffed pickles. But this year, after overstuffing his piehole, Piebald Pinhead, one of the piggier, more pitiful guests, reached for his pillbox…

2. With spinach dip spilled still on his lapel, Pinhead -- After spicily muttering his opinion about Pi Day in the form of a “ratio epithet” -- drooled spittle as he apishly sought gastronomic relief. Piebald was a picnicker in seek of a cure. Pi Day was a picnic in seek of an epicure. ‘Twas a sad episode…

3. In his typical dopiest Pinhead fashion, Piebald stirred copious amounts of expired aspirin tablets into a bowl of tapioca pudding…

4. After gulping his pills as if they were potpies, Piebald started napping. After waking, despite his earlier overindulgence, he craved a second helping of party food so began supping on snacks, happily dipping chips into dampish room-temp dip, nipping them with his cuspids like a vampire, then dumping Piebald cowpies looward with flushed face. He could not have been happier…
 
 5. …Unless, of course, he were fishing in a boat equipped with plushy seat cushions. “Whoopie!” shouted still-peckish Piebald as he spotted a fishin’ hole a-jumpin’ with crappie and tilapia…
6. Which, before Piebald could reel them in, were snatched up and scarfed down by  platypi enircling the teeming-with-rhizopi pond buzzard-like.



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 friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! Thank you.


Friday, March 6, 2015

Six clocks redux deluxe dévujà; Soup opera?; Perfect pitch?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 122 SERVED 

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Time is Marching onward (see the “Chron-illogical Slice” below).


This particular puzzle slice and its illustrations may induce in you a sensation of déjà vu, as we ran a puzzle similar to it last November. (Actually, we prefer using the term “dévujà” because it sounds more French to us and is more fun to say.)

Speaking of “fun” and having something “to say,” we cannot plug enough some of the other excellent blogs that we bookmake and make our favorites. There are three in particular that we visit and post comments on regularly:

Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun (PEOTS): Scientific, terrific, magnific, courtesy of the prolific Word Woman. The world of science and the world of words clashing delightfully.

Blainesville: A very popular forum for puzzle-lovers, especially devotees of Will Shortz’s Weekend Edition Sunday puzzles on National Public radio. (Check out commenter ron’s insightful comments in Blaine’s Comments Section this past week about “Ten things that will disappear in our lifetime,” and commenter jan’s addition of an eleventh thing to the list.)

An Englishman Solves American Puzzles (AESAP): Ross and Magdalen Beresford’s savvy take on puzzles, especially Will Shortz’s weekly offering. AESAP followers are invited to predict roughly how many correct puzzle entries NPR will receive each week. (We’ve never even come close!) And Magdalen posts gorgeous photos tied to various themes.


We hope you Puzzlerians! will come more than close to solving this week’s menu of puzzle slices: 


MENU

Chronillogical Slice:
Six Clocks Redux Deluxe Dévujà
Write down the following six times: 1:00, 1:05, 4:08, 4:14, 7:09 and 7:18. These times on a clock are especially timely for most Europeans and North Americans during this season of the year. Explain why.

Hint: Although this month of March begins with an M and this current MMillennium begins with two Ms, the solution to this puzzle does not involve any M (or Auntie Em!) whatsoever.

The six clock-face illustrations are merely a guide for visualizing the times listed. Consider only the gold hour hand and the green minute hand. Ignore the thin blue second hand.







Libretti Spaghetti Slice:
Soup Opera?

Name a canned convenience food, in three words. Replace the fourth letter in the first word with two different letters. Keep the second word as it is. Replace the third and fourth letters in the third word with one different letter.





The result is the title of a groundbreaking 20th Century American opera, in three words. What are this food and opera?


Sing Song Slice:
Perfect Pitch?

Name a popular singer from the present. Remove six letters from the singer’s name that anagram into a role a baseball pitcher sometime plays to his team’s detriment. 

Take the remaining letters, in the order they are in, and add a space to spell out a popular song from the past, in three words. 

Who is this singer, what is this song, and what detrimental role does the baseball flinger sometimes play?


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 friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! Thank you.