Friday, May 29, 2015

The Adventures of Fozzie & Herriot; Seek whence to solve; Numbers Shall Snowbafoneftyfonefty; Primerose path milestones

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 132 SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! ’Tis the tenth of May… That is, ’tis the tenth “prime date” in the month of May, May 29. Sunday will be the eleventh of May. Monday will be June 1st, but Tuesday will be the first (prime date) of June.

As printemps wanes and prime summertime looms, let us prime your intuitive and puzzle-solving pumps with this appetizer:


Pseudopuzzling Sequence Slice
Numbers shall snowbafoneftyfonefty

What comes next in this sequence?
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FFOURE
SNONENE
SEFFOUREEN
EONEGHT
NONENE
TEN
EFONEFTYEFFOUREEN
TWEFONEFTYFONEVEE
(Note: We have written this twelfth element of this PSS in red because it is incorrect. It should instead be written as:
TWEFONEFTYFFOUREE
We apologize.)

Too easy? (Well, apparently not too easy for LegoLambda!) Give this one a go:

Prime And Proper Slice:
Primerose path milestones


What is the next number in the following sequence?
2, 3, 7, 23, 37, 79, 83, __


This week’s menu features two delicious slices, one wordy,” the other numbery.” We are curious to see if anyone can solve the “Next Integer Please Slice: Seek whence to solve.” Its crust is chewy, if not downright tough.
  
MENU
 

Creatures Featured Slice:
The Adventures of Fozzie & Herriot

A fictional character is known more by a nickname than by her/his given first name. The nickname is one of God’s creatures great or small.

The first syllable of the character’s given first name sounds like a synonym of the creature. The last syllable of the title of a novel in which the character appears sounds like another of God’s creatures great or small, in the plural.


The fictional character’s nickname is a synonym for a part of a cartoon character’s name. The other part of the cartoon character’s name is the plural form of a creature of God, not great but  small. 

A part of the cartoon character’s catchphrase sounds something like a part of the name of the fictional character’s creator. 

Who are these characters, creatures and creator? 

Hint: The fictional character’s surname is also a unit of measure.
(Note: See David’s May 29 at 9:06 PM comment below for a “piggyback puzzle” that squeezes out even more glue cementing together the elements of this Creatures Featured Slice. Thank you, David.)

Next Integer Please Slice:
Seek whence to solve

Name the next number in this sequence: 5, 4, 8, 1, 9, 7, 6, 2, __, ...
(Puzzlerian! puzzle solvers who can extend the sequence further are deserving of extra credit.)


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, May 22, 2015

Wayne's world of poker and piety; Wimbledindy 500; Golpher Prairie

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 132 SERVED

Welcome to the 55th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! It is May 22, the dawn of Memorial Day Weekend. Let us remember whom we ought to be remembering…

As well as why we ought to be remembering them. Beginning about a year ago, a trove of “history-as-it-happened” clips has been made available on YouTube, many of them documenting the modern-era war that perhaps best epitomizes all wars.

Episodes of “The March of Time,” a newsreel series produced by London-based Pathé News (British Pathé), were shown in movie theaters during the World War II era. Newsreels were short films encapsulating the world news of the previous week. They were shown before the feature film or between double features.

Just type “British Pathe” into your YouTube search engine. If you wish to pay tribute to members of the “Class of  ’15,” also type in “The Master of the King’s Musick.”




Easy As Pie Pseudopuzzle Slice:

“Caddyshack” has been hailed my many as one of the best comedy/sports movies ever made. However, presented below is a snippet of a scene (obtained exclusively by Puzzleria!) that was wisely outtaken.

There are three anagrams, implanted like Bermuda grass on the tenth fairway, in the text of this outtake’s transcript. Two of them consist of three consecutive words. The third consists of two consecutive words. Each of the three anagrams can be rearranged into into three-word phrases that have been staples of a nearly nightly habit for many, one that has been much in the news during the past few days, May 20-22.


Pseudopuzzle hint: An actor in “Caddyshack” has a solid connection with the “nearly nightly event” and its host.

What are the three anagrams implanted in the script below? What do they become after rearranging their letters? Who is the actor with the solid tie to the event and its host?

Setting:
The third green at the Bushwood Country Club. Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield) and Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight) are putting out.

(That’s “putting out” as in “putt,” not “putting out” as in “put.” The “putting out” as in “put” scene was deleted to avoid getting an MPAA rating of NC-17. This “putting out as in putt” scene on the green was deleted because it was just so dad-blamed lame.)


Judge Smails, lining up his 15-foot putt: 
“I think this one should break about a foot to the left. If I am wrong you both have permission to break my left foot.” (Smails blurts out a self-satisfied chuckle at his “joke.”)
Czervik, peering a decade into the future: 
“Hey, is that Ted Knight talkin’ or Daniel Day-Lewis? ”
Judge Smails: 
“Huh?”
Webb: 
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen dipstick putters before.”
Judge Smails, indignantly: 
“I will have you know, sir, that this putter is manufactured of double annealed stainless steel.”
Czervik: 
“I don’t think Ty was talkin’ about the putting tool, Judge. I think he was talkin’ about the tool who was putting.”

(Assistant greenskeeper Carl Spackler moseys onto the green, water hose in hand and what appears to be a coonskin cap on head.)
Spackler, mumbling: 
“Always distrust a chipmunk. Always distrust a chipmunk. Them is rodents who can’t never be trusted.”
Judge Smails: 
“Hey, what’s the big idea, anyway? I’m trying to putt out here!”
Spackler: 
“Just tryin’ to keep your precious putting surface free from chipmunks, Judge. (then, bowing and doffing his cap in the judges direction) Like this critter that crossed my path this morning.”
Judge Smails: 
“You can’t fool me. As a lad I won a first place in a taxidermy competition at Williston Northhamptom School in Easthampton. That pelt, ’tis not a chipmunk. ‘Tis a gopher!”
Spackler, shoving the hose nozzle into the putting cup and filling it to overflowing: 
“A golpher? Judge, I can understand why you might think I’m a little creepy, but I aint no Ed Gein. Heck, I’m even tight with the Lama. And I dont mean the two-ll llama. I hear hes a beast!”


Granted, that appetizer was tad unappetizing. Why not pop a few Alka-Seltzers as we give you a bit more time to study our main menu items. 

In honor of Memorial Day, there is a super-subtle allusion to remembering in one of the puzzle slices on this week’s menu. NPR Puzzlemaster Will Shortz might have an unfair advantage in solving the other puzzle slice. 



MENU
 
Round And Round And Back And Forth Slice:
Wimbledindindy 500


Name a pair of two-syllable homophones. One whirs. The other, one wears. Both are similar to the Indianapolis 500 in that their definitions involve a sense of going round-and-round, similar to a racecar (Thats a palindrome!) on an oval racetrack.

Take the homophone naming what one wears, reverse the order of its syllables and replace the resulting new fifth letter with a different vowel. The result is a word whose definition involves a sense of going back-and-forth (Like a palindrome does! Or...), like tennis balls do at the Wimbledon championships (or like ping-pong balls are apt to do in the presence of a certain distinguished professor of puzzletry).

What are these three words?




House of Cards Or God Slice:
Wayne’s world of poker and piety

On Saturday evenings, Wayne counts cards while playing five-card draw poker with his three buddies. On Sunday mornings, Wayne counts on his rosary beads in his church pew at St. Mary Queen of Whatever-Suit-Blue-Pips-Would-Be Parish. He feigns piety, but really is in need of an exorcism.


A two-word phrase describes Wayne, about one-fourth of the time, on Saturday evenings. A different two-word phrase describes Wayne, about one-third of the time, on Sunday mornings.

If you perform a “spoonerism” by switching the initial consonant sounds of the two words in the Saturday evening phrase, saying the result aloud produces the two-word Sunday morning phrase And vice versa.

What are these two two-word phrases?


(Hint: The four initial letters of the four words in the two-word phrases are, in alphabetical order, D, D, K and M.) 


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, May 15, 2015

It's a dog-eat-dog business world; Dinner Deal; "I'll have my Katherine Anne Porterhouse well-known, please"

  PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e5 SERVED

Welcome to the 54th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We are today not quite halfway through May. 

Now, today is not exactly Thanksgiving Day or Christmas, but May 15th is a “holiday” of sorts that many people still observe.


So, Happy  __ __ __ __     __ __     __ A Y! 

Four anagrams of that nine-letter greeting are embedded in the verse below. Each anagram comprises one pair of eight different words that appear somewhere in the quatrain (not in the underscored title). In two of the pairs the words are adjacent in the verse:

Leander’s Lament... 
And Prayer For Reunion with Hero, Re-imagined
If someday, pray, may I my foe dismay
(Foul Tempest, pulled me drown ’neath foamy sea),
Swells modify, I’ll rise, swim Heros way,
Rest at her side, then pull her drown with me.

From “Week 53, What Have You?”… here is an as yet untied loose end:
In last week’s Comments Section we introduced a portmanteau word (or blended word) we coined: “Quizzle,” which we defined as “a quick puzzle.”

We proceeded to present to Puzzlerians! the following pop quizzle:
A judge on a popular TV game/quiz show from the distant past had a monogram that spells out something spring cleaners might use. Who is this judge?
Answer: Reason A. Goodwin, judge on “Password.”

Speaking of people with Reasoning skills A.nd Good, winning judgment (Hey, we are better with a Segue than Paul Blart, Mall Cop!), it is high time we again enjoy sampling a bonus slice baked up by our Master Gourmet French Puzzle Chef “Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme,” as he is known here at Puzzleria! The chef is also known as “skydiveboy” on the blogosphere, and as Mark Scott of Seattle in the non-cyber world.

Bonus Picture Show Slice:
“I’ll have my Katherine Anne Porterhouse well-known, please”



Looking at these pictures might remind you of a well-known author of the past. 

Who is it?


Thank you, Mark. That was refreshing and delicious. But now, for some hot puzzle slices. Do not burn the tip of your brain!


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Capitalism Is Competitive Slice:
It’s a dog-eat-dog business world

Name a business establishment where one can buy a variety of items, in two words. Add a common prefix to the beginning of one of the words. The result is two men that participate together, along with others, in a competitive match.

Who are these two men? What is the business establishment?

European Cuisine Slice:
Dinner deal

Name a German dish in two words of three and eight letters. Remove the last letter from each word. The result when spoken aloud is a near homophone of a card game popularized by German immigrants to America.


A four-letter synonym is sometimes substituted for the first word in the German dish. Insert the last letter of this four-letter synonym between the third and fourth letters of the card game, and replace the card game’s penultimate letter with the penultimate letter of the four-letter synonym. Divide this result to spell two colours.
 
What are this German dish, the card game, and colours?


Hints: The dish’s first word and its four-letter synonym begin with the same letter. A plural “s” is the last letter in the dish’s second word.

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.



skydiveboy,
How did I bear the lousy room service in London? 
By grinning.

LegJ

Friday, May 8, 2015

Deduction by the dashboard light; A love-hate creationship; CSI: USA


PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e5 SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!


Well, completing one year of Puzzleria! has certainly been enjoyable for us, its purveyors. We hope it has been enjoyable also for you, its consumers and contributors. From our perspective, we like to think we all enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Kum Bah Humbug! Kum Bah Yah Sure!


Thank you all for following us, for making wonderfully astute, clever and witty comments, and for spreading the word about this puzzle blog.

For the record, we have had 29,815 “hits” (followers who have accessed our blog site) over the past year. That’s about 573 a week. The quantity of our comments is fine; but the quality of our comments is off the chart! We would love to have more different people commenting. Not sure how to do that though.

Our second year of serving up original puzzle slices begins with this week’s edition, our 53rd.


Incidentally, 53rd was the number of the police precinct in a sitcom that included two actors who later appeared together in a more popular and well-known sitcom. What are the sitcoms and who are the actors? Hint: the word “Khrushchev” appears in the earlier sitcom’s theme song. The word “ooky” does not appear in the subsequent sitcom’s theme song.

I was blessed with wonderful parents. They are in heaven now, on the St. Francis Wing, tending to tabby cat Noosie and other dear pets they adopted. Whenever Fathers Day or Mothers Day rolls around I get a tad misty-eyed and wistful, missing my parents.

I tried to create a timely Mothers Day puzzle slice this week but came up dry. I did however pen the following irreverent fable/puzzle. It is not meant to offend, only to entertain.

The Princess and the Peeved Prince
(A Fractured Mothers Day Fable)

The princess of “The Princess and thePea” fame married her prince. The regal newlyweds took up residence in the castle with the king and queen, biding their time until they would ascend to the throne.

Not all was untroubled in this palatial paradise, however.

The princess had borne a grudge against her mother-in-law ever since she tested the princess’s royal worthiness with that lame pea-under-multiple-mattress ploy. The princess harbored bitter memories of suffering a fitfully sleepless night, tossing and turning like a fish that has jumped into a longship.

And so, to exact some measure of vengeance, the princess cast a spell on the queen causing her to feel as if an imaginary pea were permanently lodged in the middle of her mattress, prompting the queen too to toss and turn all night.


Alas, the queen’s spellbound predicament also prompted an annoying nocturnal ritual. Several times every night the queen sought relief by summoning her son into her bedchamber, imploring him to flip her mattress on its other side.

Every morning when the king visited the queen in her bedchamber, she invariably groused about her nocturnal tossing-and-turning. Meanwhile, in the princess’s bedchamber, the prince bellyached about having his sleep interrupted by the queen’s nocturnal summoning.

One morning, after a year of this mysterious insomnia and incessant summoning, the king as was his wont entered the queen’s bedchamber, approached her four-poster canopied bed and pulled back her bed covers. He was greeted, alas, not with their customary good-morning smooch, but with an odd conundrum: No queen. No mattress. Just a box spring!
 
 The king was mystified. The box spring would not be invented until the late 19th Century. Had he somehow stumbled into a time machine and traveled into the future?...

 
No, no, just kidding, that’s not why the king was mystified. The real mystery was the whereabouts of his wife. So he summoned his son to see if he could shed some light.

The king said to his son, “I come in here this morning and your mother is missing, her mattress is missing. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Well, mother could never decide on which was the comfortable mattress side,” the prince explained. “I could stand it no longer so I decided to mattress-hide.”

“Well, I guess that explains what happened the queen’s mattress,” the king said. “But it does not explain what happened to the queen. So, what did happen to the queen?”

The prince shuffled his feet, fidgeted with his digits, cast his gaze downward, and replied, simply, “_________.”

(Fill in the blank, nine letters.)

The first puzzle slice in our menu (see below) this week is the Darkened Digital Segment Slice (DDSS). It involves my friend Yvette, a volunteer vet at a homeless animal shelter, who recently purchased a white 1988 Corvette.

The new-to-Yvette Vette has a dashboard with digital readouts displaying numerals made up of between two and seven segments. (1 consists of two segments; 2, of six; 3, of five, etc.; see illustration)

 The problem is, some of the segments in Yvettes Vette no longer light up, thereby making some numerals difficult to decipher. For example, some segments in the miles-per-hour readout are missing. This could be a real issue on roads where the speed limit is 55 mph and you can’t be sure if you’re cruising along in the low fifties or high sixties.

 
But Yvette, who as a veterinarian has a solid mathematics background, tells me she can tell exactly how fast she is going, no matter the speed.

Now, I realize the sight of these segmented digits may provoke in some Puzzlerians! pangs of dread and unpleasant flashbacks of upside-down digital clocks!

Yes, it is true that there is a digital clock on the dashboard of Yvette’s Vette, but it should remain upside-up unless Yvette somehow manages to overturn her new vehicle. And Corvettes are not that easy to roll over.

So, let us begin year #2, shall we, with these two new puzzle slices:

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Darkened Digital Segments Slice:
Deduction by the dashboard light

The dashboard of Yvette’s 1988 Corvette features seven-segment digital displays that display the digits from 0 to 9 with illuminated segments. Alas, some of the segments no longer function and have gone dark in her miles-per-hour speed readout.


In order for Yvette to infer her exact speed without ambiguity, what is the minimum number of segments that must be functional, and where must they be positioned?
(Note: the two segments that make up the numeral 1 appear on the “east” side of the seven-segment display, not the “west” side)

A love-hate creationship

Name a small object, in one word. In describing the object one might use the perfect number six. Remove the objects middle letter along with the space created by that removal. 

From this string of letters remove a number of consecutive letters that spell out the name of one of Gods creatures. Push together the remaining letters to form the name of another of Gods creatures.

These two creatures have a predatory relationship but sometimes have a symbiotic relationship also.


What is the object and what are the creatures?



Ever The Twain Shall Meet Slice:

CSI: USA

At the intersection of four states – Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico – lies the Four Corners Monument, where one can stand on a spot and exclaim, “I am standing in four states simultaneously!” This “four-corner” distinction is unique in the U.S., but there are numerous spots where one can stand on a spot and be in three states simultaneously, and of course, every time on stands on a border she/he is in two states simultaneously.


Let us assign a number to each state. We shall call it the CSI (Corner Standing Index). It represents the sum of all states one can stand in by traversing the perimeter of a given state. (In calculating a state’s CSI, some states may be counted more than once, including, necessarily, the state for which the CSI is being calculated. For the purposes of this puzzle, let us pretend the the rivers that form the borders between states are miraculously somehow waterless, Red-Sea-parting-style, and that we could therefore stand in them without drowning!)


For example, to figure Arizona’s CSI one might begin at the four corners monument (4 states) and head west and stand on the junction of UT, NV and AZ (3), go south and hit the NV-CA-AZ junction (3), and complete this counterclockwise trek by traversing thr CA-AZ junction (2) and the AZ-NM junction (2). Arizona’s CSI is the sum of those junctions, 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 14. Not bad.

Other examples: North Dakota’s CSI is 10 (2 + 3 + 3 + 2); Idaho’s is 19 (3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3); Texas’s is 13 (2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2); Hawaii’s and Alaska’s CSIs are both 0. (Only junctions of states are considered in computing a state’s CSI, not bordering countries or bodies of water. By the way, I’m not sure how Michigan’s Upper Peninsula affects the CSIs of Michigan and Wisconsin.)


What state has the greatest CSI? What is it? What state has the smallest CSI? What is it?


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.



Here is how the ten digits, from zero through nine, would appear on Yvette's Corvette dashboard if the two segments forming the southeast corner stopped functioning. (See the Darkened Digital Segments Slice, above.) Note that each of the ten readouts remains unique.