Marzipawn fit for a king; The sound and the furioso; Poodle skirts and Woods supporters; Jesus was a Capricorn... what's your sign?; Stormin' namin' nounin' Norman; Science is golden... ray shows

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!, our October 23 edition. 

Thanksgiving is still 34 days away (November 26), but we would like to take this time to thank all of you who have commented on and contributed to – and otherwise followed – our puzzle blog during the past 18 months. Without your contributions, interest and support, Puzzleria! is nothing – ZeroZipZilchleria!

One of our puzzles this week is prompted by a comment by charter Puzzlerian! David two weeks ago suggesting that I (okay, daring me to) make a puzzle out of the meerkat/monkey/llama zoo news story.

The puzzle I created was last week’s “Critters In The News Appetizer: IsosZOOles love triangle,” which involved men named “Boris,” including chess master Boris Spassky. This prompted a comment from skydiveboy, who knows his chess, about the legitimacy of a photo I ran of a guy I thought was Spassky.

Our exchange of comments reminded me of my own early infatuation with chess, and of the only chess puzzle I ever created, as a young’un. So, this past week I rummaged through my memory’s cobwebs, dredged up and dusted off my puzzle and recreated and packaged it as this week’s Dessert Menu puzzle: “Not The Whitest Piece On The Chessboard Dessert: Marzipawn fit for a king.”

I am probably not the first person to think up this particular chess puzzle, but I like to think I might be. Of course, I could Duck Duck Go or Google it to see but, because I want to continue basking in my ignorantly blissful afterglow, I shall not. 

After all, I did not perform a computer-search on it when I created it. Of course, that was back when the most sophisticated electronic appliance I owned was a Realtone 6-transistor radio – booty from my birthday. (My Realtone had no search engine function… but it did have a good pop song search function.)

Six transistors had my radio. Six puzzles has this Puzzleria!: 

One morsel, three weekly news-cycle appetizers, a specialty of the house slice… and marzipawn for dessert!

Morsel Menu

Emmy Morsel:

Stormin’ namin’ nounin’ Norman

Take a proper noun seen in today’s headlines. Take also the professional name (first and last) of a late Emmy-winning actor. Remove the final letter from the proper noun and insert it between the second and third letters of the final three letters of the actor’s name. Remove those four letters from the end of an actor’s name.

The letters remaining in the proper noun and in what’s left of the the actor’s name, when spoken aloud, sound the same. The four letters removed spell out a word very familiar to people, both late and living, surnamed Norman, Schwarzkopf, Battle, Sutherland, Price, and Farrell.

Hint: The first names associated with those surnames are not Greg, Norman, Kenny, Donald, David, and James T.

What is this proper noun and who is this actor?

Appetizer Menu

Safer Public In The News Appetizer:

Poodle skirts and Woods supporters

The following clues all have two-word answers that total 14 letters:

1. Those who fashion poodle skirts and bell-bottom jeans

2. Nickname of a Puritan named Williams?

3. What an extreme horror film make-up artist does to faces

4. Mightier motivation

5. Roy

6. Men, according to some

7. What an elementary school pupil perhaps does on an arithmetic test

8. Woods supporters

A public safety news story this past week might put a damper on Black Friday sales of certain items at stores like Toys R Us and Walmart. The story includes:

An 8-letter verb, and

A 6-letter plural noun.

The 14 letters in those two words can be rearranged to form the two words in each of the eight answers above.

What are the verb and noun in the story? What are the eight answers above?

Every Picture Tells A Story Appetizer:

Science is golden... ray shows

A science story from this past week included a nine-letter proper noun and eight-letter common noun.

The blanks in the phrase below represent a four-word, 17-letter description of the illustration pictured below in this puzzle. The letters in this description can be rearranged to form the letters in the science story words.

__

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

__ __ __ __ __

__ __

Hint:

The common noun in the science story can be divided to form a two-word description of insulin or Lasix.

The first three letters of the proper noun in the science story name an Irish band formed a bit more than a decade ago.

The next three letters name a Minnesotan band formed a bit more than two decades ago.

The final four letters of the proper noun in the science story name a Pennsylvanian band formed a bit more than three decades ago.

What are the two words in the science story and the four-word description of the illustration?

Signs And Wonders Appetizer:

Jesus was a Capricorn... what’s your sign?

An international news story this past week may have included the following phrase:

__ __ __ __ __ __’__  

__ __ __ __ __ __ 

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

All three words above are proper nouns. The first is possessive; the others are a man’s name.

 The letters in those words can be rearranged to form three different words:

1. A nine-letter noun for what the person was during August, September and almost two-thirds of October.

2. A five-letter word for a Roman god associated with a certain month; the man would likely prefer not to be associated with this this god because it smacks of duplicity due to being depicted often with an unusual anatomical distinction.

3. A six-letter word for how the man’s future wife might have responded when he first asked her, “What’s your sign?” (Had she asked him the same question, the man would have answered the same as his younger brother who is still alive.)

What is the three-word news story phrase? What are the three words they morph into?

MENU

Specialty Of The House Slice:

The sound and the furioso

Name a word for the sound a certain musical instrument makes. Remove one letter to produce an attribute a player of the instrument ought to have.

What are the sound and the attribute?

Dessert Menu

Not The Whitest Piece On The Chessboard Dessert:

Marzipawn fit for a king

What is the shortest chess game possible? That is, what is the minimum number of moves needed for a checkmate to occur? What are these moves?

In my answer, Black checkmates White. (White always makes the opening move, of course.) Thus, my answer must be an even number of moves.

Also, my answer requires that White make a move (or moves) that are not in White’s best interest. In other words, White plays into Black’s hands.

(Here is a link to a helpful chessboard tool that allows you to move chess pieces around, and even to play matches... just don’t play with matches!)

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.