The 34.9 Percent Solution; Shuffling off to Kerfuffalo; Pharaoh, fact and fiction; Calaboosegow!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{4 +} 5!  SERVED

Welcome to our September 4^th Labor Day Weekend edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We have devised four “laborinthine” puzzle slices for your holiday enjoyment – two appetizers and two entrées. 

(No dessert this week. You need time off to recover from skydiveboy’s delightfully rich hatful of Tangerine-Argentine compote from last week!)

So, we’ll start you out with a pair of fresh trending-news appetizers:

Appetizer Menu

Omission Trip Appetizer:

Calaboosegow!

A newsmaker made headlines recently for what might be termed a “sin of omission.” The newsmaker contends that such omission in this matter is in fact virtuous, and that to act otherwise would indeed be a “sin of commission.” The newsmaker might further contend that “committing” this “sin” of omission is a result of the newsmaker being _______.

The word that belongs in that blank is the newsmaker’s surname with its first and final letters reversed and the penultimate letter changed to a different vowel.

The newsmaker is being imprisoned by the legal system at present. That punishment may be soon curtailed, however, for – as the newsmaker presumably knows from the Book of Acts 5:19 – there is a possibility of “the righteous” being sprung overnight from the hoosegow by an “agent of righteousness.” The first three letters of the familiar form of the likely name of that angelic agent, spelled backward, form the newsmaker’s Christian name.   

Who is this newsmaker?

Atta Graham Appetizer:

Shuffling off to Kerfuffalo

The following apparent sports story is actually a cleverly disguised current-events news story. Hidden within the text are four strings of consecutive words. Each of these strings can be anagrammed into two words that form the gist of the news story:

Icky Foods, star scatback for the Kerfuffalo Bulls, had bad wheels.

“I’d call my knee ‘in pain,’” Foods lamented before the Bulls’ Super Bowl clash with the Washington Russets, a rematch of Super Bowl XXVI  (before both teams changed their nicknames). “For the past month I’ve been on the DL, my ankle in ice. But now I’m ready to shuffle.”

Drawing inspiration from and buoyed by the Kerfuffalo Cowbelles – who performed their patented Milky Dance Line routine on the sidelines during time-outs – the Bulls took a 14-0 halftime lead, but the Russets peeled back into the game and even went ahead 19-14 with one minute remaining.

With four seconds left, the Bulls had the ball on the Russets’ three yard line, fourth and goal. Quarterback Kim Jelly called Icky’s number on straight dive play behind the Bulls’ behemoth left guard Dan Blocker. The lumbering lineman led Icky into the end zone as the clock registered all zeroes, prompting Icky to celebrate by… well, you know.

Hint: The distribution and lengths of the four strings of consecutive anagrammable words are as follows:

2^nd Paragraph: two 5-word strings

3^rd Paragraph: one 3-word string

4^th Paragraph: one 3-word string

Hint: There is a connection between this appetizer and this week’s Great American Heroine Slice.    

Hope you appreciated our appetizers. Wait just a minute while we bus your tables. Your entrées should be on the way presently… Ah, here they be:

MENU

Sure Looks Like Sherlock Slice:

The 34.9 Percent Solution

Something is somewhat unusual – perhaps even quite unusual – about the following sentence:

Eventually lifelike machines became conceivable, and fastidious albeit also slovenly software inventors created an automaton.

What makes the sentence unusual?

Hint: Finding the solution involves the process of deduction.

Great American Heroine Slice:

Pharaoh, fact and fiction

A great American heroine was born in the mid-Nineteenth Century. She was an explorer, adventurer, educator and writer, and achieved heights achieved by few others of her generation. This woman’s monogram spells a word associated with a certain pharaoh.

Changing the third letter of this heroine’s surname from a “c” to an “a” forms a word associated (mainly literally, but also figuratively) with several of her lifetime achievements.

Now write the surname (with the “c” restored and “a” removed) of this groundbreaker who achieved such lofty goals. Follow that with a word that is an approximate rhyme of her middle name, followed by the fourth, first and second (or third) letters of her first name. Remove any spaces.

 

The result is an adjective – coined a year after the heroine was born – based on a character from an English novel published six years before she was born. (This adjective appears as an uppercase word in both the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Tenth Edition and the OED – the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.)

Who is this heroine? Who is the fictional character? Who is the pharaoh? What is the eponymous adjective?

Hint: There is a connection between this puzzle slice and this week’s Atta Graham Appetizer.

Note: We would like to thank Word Woman – another great American heroine – for introducing us to this past great American heroine.

Along with automotive engineer/inventor Henry Leland from last week’s Jung + Leland = Jungleland puzzle, this heroine deserves to be more limelit.

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.