"I'd crawl a mile for a Camel"; "Dad dropped his Camera!"; Pre-playing the Trump card?; Property listings; Uncle Rebus

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 5²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! A blog like this week’s occurs only once in a blue moon. Yes, a blue moon is upon us. Gaze heavenward this evening, July 31. Drink in the second full moon in the “moonth” of July.

(Next week’s first August 2015 Puzzleria! will be uploaded in the wake of what promises to be quite entertaining debates with Republican candidates, August 6 in Cleveland. Viewing the debates may help you decide whether you are a Trumpublican or Trumpocrat.)

We have a full “Moonu” (that’s Moonu, not Moon Unit) of puzzle slices. Four of ‘em. (The only blue ones, we think, are those we’ve strewn with bleu cheese crumbles that melt in our ovens, then in your mouth, not in your hand. M&M&M&M&M!)

But first, have a taste of this bonus appetizer… with an answer that happens to be a particular type of appetizer. Solving the puzzle may require a measure of Concentration:

Appetizing Bonus Slice:

Uncle Rebus

What appetizer does this rebus (pictured at the left) sound like?

Hint: The appetizer is often associated with one particular national restaurant chain.

We are serving up this week a pair of “names in the news” bonus puzzle slices. Think of them as wavy gravy for you to pore (sic) over... your brain-wavy gray matter:

One: another clever “present and past” political bonus puzzle baked up by our esteemed Master Gourmet French Puzzle Chef “Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme,” also known as “skydiveboy” in the blogosphere, and also known as Mark Scott of Seattle, Washington… and

Two: another picture puzzle, somewhat reminiscent of last week’s “Photo finish/Finnish photo” puzzle. Here they are:

Names In The News And History Bonus Slice:

Pre-playing the Trump card?

Donald Trump was not the first “Old Yellow-hair” to have aspirations for the White House. 

The first one did not succeed, but it cannot be said his efforts were pointless.

Can you name him?

Thank you, Mark, for that historical morsel. Your puzzle is true Trumpery yet is truly not trumpery, if you get my drift.

Speaking of excellent puzzlery, at the end of last week’s Puzzleria! comments section, Puzzlerian! ron posted a link to an excellent puzzle in the wonderful Futility Closet web site. The puzzle he cited was the July 29 entry, “Knife Act.” 

I am still pondering the puzzle. Puzzlerian! Word Woman commented, suggesting a splendid “thinking-outside-the-cake-mix-box” solution, but ron indicated that FC’s intended solution was different from hers.  

Names In The News Bonus Slice:

I’d crawl a mile for a Camel

Each of these three pictures illustrates a singular noun. Put all 17 letters of those nouns into a mixed-up pyle and rearrange them to spell out two names recently in the news. Both names would appear within the same news article or report.

What are these names?

Red Herringbone Hint: Reptile is to Crawl as Camel is to ____.

Redder Herringbone Hint:
Reptile is to Crawl as Lucky Strike is to _____.

Goldest/Reddest Herringbone Hint: Reptile is to Crawl as Old Gold is to _____.

(Feel free to employ Paul’s “hovering mouse technique” {see Paul’s July 28 at 12:43 PM post in last week’s comments}, but only as a last resort, please. Actually, I tried using Paul’s mouseterious hovering tactic on the these three illustrations but gleaned no useful information. But, in any event, only the non-edible pink-and-red photo should pose any real problem to you perceptive Puzzlerians!)

Red herringbones. White houses. Blue Moody moons. Two more puzzle slices:

MOONU

 

Specialty Of The House Slice:

Property listings

All words in the following list share a somewhat unusual property:

Shrewd, huge, beaut, timeliness, jamb, maniac, pear, boats, least,…

The antepenultimate, penultimate and ultimate words in the list share a quite unusual property… (Okay, okay! The last three words in the list share a quite unusual property.)

What are these somewhat unusual and quite unusual properties? Can you name other words that possess either of these properties?

 

Hint: Neither the words “thing” nor “spring” share either the somewhat unusual or quite unusual properties.

Birthday Boy Or Girl Slice:

“Dad dropped his camera!”

Name two words associated with “drops”. Replace each with a homophone. Place these next to each other, without a space, in alphabetical order. Reverse the first two letters of one of the homophones.

The word that is formed is what Mom might become during her child’s birthday party after “Happy Birthday” is sung, the wish is made, the candles are blown out… and Dad sheepishly admits that his smart phone malfunctioned (or his camera jammed).

 (Note: There is a variant spelling of the word the Mom might become.) 

What is this word, and what are the two words associated with “drops”?

Every Friday at Joseph Young’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 enjoy our weekly puzzle party, please tell your friends about Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Thank you.

Serene Magdalene scene; Two peactures not in a pod; Old news, current stagnation

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 7²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

No dilly-dallying this week… Except I did hear a so-bad-it-is-not-so-bad joke that I feel obliged, no blessed, to share:

Leon the chameleon was having difficulty changing his skin color so he went to his doctor for help. After running some tests the doctor called Leon in to his office and revealed his diagnosis.

“Leon,” you have what we in the medical profession call [a three-word ailment beginning with the letters D, R and D].”

We shall reveal the malady below, just above this week’s MENU.  

In the meantime, chomp  on this fresh-outta-our-ovens puzzle slice:

Extra! Extra! Hot Off Presses Slice:

Old news, current stagnation

The headlines on the three newspaper pages shown here all contain three words represented by blanks (or uppercase X’s) that you must fill in/replace with letters.

The two Puzzleria News headlines are from the 18^th Century. The City Examiner headline is from an edition in the 20^th Century.

The headlines read:

_ _ _ _  _ _ _ e ( _ _ _ ) “shuttles” off mortal coil; Crisis looms

Inventor _ _ _ _  _ _ _ e ( _ _ _ ) creates textile frame; Heads spin

Singer XXXX XXX XXXX with laryngitis; Concert cancelled

When you fill in or replace the blanks or X’s with the correct letters and read aloud the trio of words in each of the headlines you will be pronouncing what sounds like the name of a person recently in the news.

Who is this recently newsworthy person?

Answer to riddle above:

Doctor: “Leon,” you have what we in the medical profession call ‘de reptile dysfunction.’ ”

We pray, as you bask under the summer solarity, that your skin tone changes only slightly. No beet-red or Boehner-orange-colored chameleons allowed!

We wish you good karma, Chameleon, and no dysfunction in solving the slices on this week’s menu. (The Comparative Panorama Slice was inspired by skydiveboy’s “Roy or Bison?” picture puzzle. Thanks. Mark. The “Our Second Lady Of Fadima Slice: Serene Magdalene scene” is a kindred mysteriospirit to July 3^rd’s “Red Swingline Slice: Fad food for tads.”)

MENU

Comparative Panorama Slice:

Two peactures not in a pod

The two images presented here are different in a number of respects. Their shapes differ. Their subject matters differ: One documents a sporting event, the other is a landscape. One inspires excitement, the other tranquility.

 

 But there is one particular way in which these pictures differ having to do with how a person might describe each of them using two-word phrases such as, “One is a ___ ___; the other is a ___ ___.”

So, how do these pictures differ?

Our Second Lady Of Fadima Slice:

Serene Magdalene scene

Name a fad popular in the 20th Century. Replace its last letter with 1.) something a skirt has that is also a synonym of skirt, 2.) a personal pronoun and 3.) a short form of a U.S. president’s first name. Remove all spaces.

The result is a general term that encompasses a handful of terms for products that end in the suffix “-ene.” What are the fad and the general term?

Hint: The second part of the fad and the prefix of the general term are synonymous. 

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.

Carnival of carnivores; Ninth rock from the Sun; Significant other... than historically

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 7²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Plutozzleria! … we mean Puzzleria! We have Pluto on the brain. The New Horizons Spacecraft is crafting and transmitting some beautiful photos of this ice dwarf/plutoid/dwarf planet and its environs.

Pluto will always be the ninth planet in my mind. I consider it a “frawd” to call it a dwarf planet! When I learned the Solar System as a child, Pluto was the Disneyesque exclamation point punctuating the celestial skein: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune…

I am in favor, however, of the word “plutoid,” which honors Pluto. I am also in favor of naming or renaming seven of the so-called 200-or-so dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt: Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy and Sneezy. And I am in favor of coining the term “plutonic friendship,” referring to having a friend who is no longer in one’s social orbit, one who has been downgraded in status.

Those of you, however, who seek genuine scientific perspective and insight on the New Horizons mission and Pluto photos (or “Phlutos,” as Ruth cleverly called them over on Blaine’s blog) are well advised to access Word Woman’s wonderful Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun (PEOTS) blog.

Speaking of Pluto, I am reprinting the first part of a column I wrote 26 years ago, in the summer of 1989. In it, I mention Pluto, three years before its status as a planet fell into question. And, as usual, I was Nostrildamus-like (thanks, Paul!) in my prescience. (And, of course, I am Trumplike in my modesty.)

Back in 1989, I was writing for the Portage Daily Register and

Baraboo News-Republic. Baraboo is in Sauk County, Wisconsin, a farmer-in-the-Dells region somewhat north of Madison. I wrote the column on the 20^th anniversary of the first Woodstock Festival, held in 1969. But I pretended that was writing it in 2009, on the 20^th anniversary of some mythical festival I made up called “Woodsauk.”

Ah, the Summer of ’89. I remember it as if it were only yesterseason. George Bush was our president – not yet having resigned in the wake of the sordid Lee-Atwatergate scandal. George’s successor, Day Quayle, had not yet become Hollywood’s biggest-ever box office draw, thereby paving the way westward from our nation’s capital for an endless caravan of politicians drawn to dazzling marquee lights like matinee-idol moths, kind of like Reagan in reverse.

We had not yet broken the light barrier. Earth’s moon had not yet been colonized, nor had Mars or Uranus. We still considered Pluto to be a planet. (We realize today, of course, that Pluto is actually a diminutive snarkblarp that had strayed from its galaxy. Back in 1989 we hadn’t the foggiest idea what a snarkblarp was. The word didn’t even appear in dictionaries.

Haiti, Uruguay and Liechtenstein had not yet become the big-three world superpowers. The weapon that rendered atomic weapons penultimate – the Mobius Quark bomb – was still seven years from its initial testing phase. Steroids were not yet banned from the Olympic Games. Football players had not yet dreamed of injecting themselves with bovine growth hormones, a practice that effectively replaced weight-training as a means of body-building near the century’s turn.

Yes, we have all gone through some changes during the past two decades – decades that have slipped through our fingers like greased rosary beads. But for those of us who came of age in the Summer of ’89 its memory will remain etched upon our hearts, like a tattoo of a pitchfork (ouch!)

‘Twas a time of peas and love, of wild oats and condominiums, of amaranth and soybeans, of sweet corn knee-high-by-4th-of-July and alfalfa romeos. This magical, mystical Summer of ’89 culminated one mid-August weekend when a half-million designer-jeaned, Rebokked, peacenikking, picnicking flour children and MARPIES (Middle-Aged Rural Professionals) descended on a Loganville-area farm owned by Max Yasgur for a weekend of music, fun, sun, rain, mud and communion with nature.

In the early 1970s Yasgur had moved to Wisconsin from his upstate New York dairy farm after acres of his prime grazing land had become mysteriously overgrown with weedy vegetation that caused his cows to become paranoid – suspicious of the pigs.

Thus, the transplanted Yasgur became a host to history. For it was August of 1989, the Summer of Woodsauk. An estival festival was Woodsauk, ushering in the Age ofAgrarius… when the macaroon was in the seventh barn and junipers aligned with Mason jars, or something like that…  

Okay, enough of Woodsauk. Here is a quick pop pseudo-puzzle:

Frawdulent Skylarking Slice:

Ninth rock from the sun

Find one-word answers for each of these three definitions: 1. “to clear,” 2. “to plot,” and, 3. “frolicked,” “trifled,” or (one of our favorite words) “skylarked.” The three verbs you come up with will not necessarily be in the same order as the three definitions. When you say the three verbs together in the correct order they will form a word you might have heard recently in the news.

A Good Question from a Puzzlerian!:

On Tuesday, Bastille Day, at 10:11 PM PDT, patjberry wrote on Blaine’s blog: 

Just checked the Puzzleria! answers. Those hints helped this time. I got most of the duo puzzle (though I am unfamiliar with DAM being an antonym of SAVE in hockey), and once I figured out RE/MAX, I got everything in that puzzle but Pearl Buck. As for the puzzle about the late novelists and the smiles puzzle, they went over my head, much like the balloon in the RE/MAX logo. Took me until some time before or after midnight to find out. Lego, I thought the answers were to be revealed at 3 PM EDT. Why did it take so long this time?

In patjberry’s comment (which I am pleased that he shared on Blaine’s blog because I want all Blainesvillians to be aware that Puzzleria! exists) patjberry makes some excellent points.

For the first duo in our Two-Part Harmony Slice, we wrote: Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms you might hear voiced in a hockey arena or revival tent.

That was worded poorly. Our intention was to imply that hockey fans might say, “Nice Save!” or “Damn! The Blackhawks scored again.” We should have written:

Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms. You might hear them voiced in a revival tent. Or they might be voiced in a hockey arena, but not as antonyms.

Another excellent point patjberry made was his question about when we reveal our Puzzleria! answers. We have been delaying our “This week’s answers, for the record” a bit lately in hopes that Puzzlerians! would have ample opportunity to reveal their solutions first. But his is a point well taken.

We shall try to be prompter and to save you the bother of our being so damn imprecise with this week’s menu of plutonic puzzlery:

MENU

Summer Of ‘49 Slice:

Significant other… than historically

The year 1649 was historically significant. King Charles I of Great Britain was found guilty of treason and beheaded, and Oliver Cromwell abolished the monarchy, causing England to become a commonwealth for the next eleven years.

But 1649 also has a non-historical significance that is shared by only six other years between 100 and 10000.

What else is significant about 1649 and which is the next year that shares it?

Extra credit: What will be significant about the year 5125?

Salad Daze Slice:

Carnival of Carnivores

Name a two-word entrée that vegetarians would probably not order at restaurants. Replace the first two letters of the first word with two new letters. Replace the last letter of the entrée’s second word with a duplicate of one of the letters in the first word.

The result is a pair of synonyms.

Hint: The title of a work of fiction includes an adjectival form of the synonym formed from the first word in the entrée. The word it modifies appears in the text of this puzzle.

Hint: Take the synonym that was formed from the entrée’s first word. Double its third letter, reverse its antepenultimate and penultimate letters, and divide the result into two words that might be spoken as a command under the big top, with the response likely being a roar... albeit not from the crowd.  

Hint: A third synonym of the two synonymous words appears in one of these hints.

What are the entrée, the three synonyms, the work of fiction and the command?

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.

Isle of Smiles?; A quartet of duos; David Nelson... and the Holding Company; All the novels fit to print

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 7²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s July 10 edition of Puzzleria!

Today, 7/10, or “seven-ten,” represents supposedly the toughest spare to “pick up” in the sport of bowling – also known as the “seven/ten split.”

We hope this week’s puzzle slices are not so tough. But we also hope they are tougher than those one-pin spares that most keglers convert almost as easily as prison chaplains covert death-rowers on their eve of execution.

Along with the advent of automated scorekeeping machines in the 1970s came the demise keeping frame-by-frame bowling scores manually. Today, keglers who keep score with pad and pencil have become rarer than the bowling of a 300-game.

(Warning: Oxymoron Ahead!) Also increasingly rare are spectators who keep score (with a personal scorecard) during baseball games – marking down what each batter did during each at-bat, whom the batter may have plated and how the runs were scored.

I, for example, haven’t kept score since my Little League/Babe Ruth League days, when our coach asked anyone on the bench who knew how to keep score to volunteer do so. But I was reminded of my old score-carding days a few evenings ago while listening on the radio to the Minnesota Twins host the Baltlimore Orioles at Target Field in Minneapolis.

With Kyle Gibson on the mound for the home nine, a very unusual play unfolded in front of my ears that I would have recorded on my scorecard as “K 1-3.” 

Can any baseball aficionados out there provide a possible play-by-play description of what might have happened to produce K 1-3?

Aficionados of Will Shortz’s appearances on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday should have been pleased this past week because the puzzle master’s July 5 offering was both fresh and timely. 

In response, the following Puzzleria! “Piggyback” Puzzle (PPP) is moldy and spacey:

The words in the following sentences and sentence fragments have something somewhat unusual in common. What is it?

Silver... Wait! Edit that, thanks to Paul. It should be: Livers’ nights. Bordellos swing. Smitten ones dab lube (no sores!), stain sheet. “No saint era!” God opines.

Last week’s NPR puzzle is old news, you say? Okay. Here are a pair of pseudo-slices hot off the Puzzleria! Presses!:

News Cycle Slice:

All the novels fit to print

A person making news this past week has a first name that is the surname of a late late European novelist. The newsmaker’s surname is the first name of a late American novelist. The European novelist’s first name is identical to the American novelist’s first name, except for one letter.

Who are these two writers and the newsmaker?

Hints: Two titles – one a novel, one a poem ­– penned by the novelists crop up in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” A novel by the American novelist shares the title of an oft-quoted poem by an Irish poet.

Two-Part Harmony Slice

Spooning out a quartet of duos

Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms you might hear voiced at a hockey arena or tent revival. (No, not M*A*S*H, that would be a revival tent. This is more a matter of Elmer Gantry than Hawkeye Pierce.)

The first name of a member of a second musical duo means to “put something on.” The other member’s first name sounds like a word that means to “put something in.” (No spoonerizing is necessary for this duo, but the lyrics of a song they recorded does include the word “forks.” 

Spoonerize the surnames of a third musical duo. Pronouncing the last five letters of one of the spoonerized names sounds like a two-syllable word. Each of the syllables of the other spoonerized name, when spoken aloud, is somewhat synonymous with that two-syllable word. Or, more precisely, the two-syllable word is a “subset” of the homophonic words formed from all syllables in the other spoonerized name.

Spoonerize the first names of a fourth musical duo, forming the first names of a late singer-songwriter and his surviving wife, also a singer and songwriter. (Hint: The initial handful of letters of this married couple’s surname forms another surname, one belonging to a person who has lately been in the news.)

Okay. Enough already with all these spoons and forks. We are about to serve up some delicious puzzle slices. Just use your fingers. We won’t mind. (We like digits as much as we like letters!)

MENU

Corporate Rock Slice:

David Nelson… and the Holding Company

(Note: This puzzle involves the names of a major U.S.-based company and two well-known American rock bands. All three names contain punctuation.)

Name a major U.S.-based company in two syllables. Divide it into two parts: a rock group, and a term for an instrument played by a member of the group. This instrumentalist’s name shares 7 of 9 letters with the name of a late American novelist, 6 of which are in the same positions in both names.

The names of the rock group and instrument total four syllables. (The letters not in common can be arranged to form a four-letter word used in this puzzle... and also in two other of this week’s four puzzle slices.)

The letters in the instrument are the first letters of the first name of the lead singer of another American rock group. The stage name of the person who plays that instrument in this group is one name for the punctuation mark in the U.S. company.

Hint: the company’s logo has a pretty direct connection to a Puzzleria! answer from our June 26 edition.

What is this company, its logo, the two rock groups, and the instrument. Who are the lead singer, two instrumentalists and the novelist who shares 7 letters with one of them?

A Frown Turned Upside-Down Slice:

Isle of Smiles?

Take a word for something that presumably promotes healthy smiles. Remove the letter that would appear last if the word’s letters were put into alphabetical order. 

Replace the last letter of this result with one that would occur four places before it in a “close-looped,” “circular,” or “seamless” alphabet (see illustration). W, for example, occurs six places before C. Z is two places before B.

The result is the name of a place that boasts a nickname peripherally related to smiling.

What are this healthy-smile promoter and the place name?

 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.