Mice with spoons!; "Baby needs new shoes!"; Namesake forsaken; Buffalo hide... 'n' so, go seek; Dubbing a movee;

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

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Happy Cold Turkey Sandwich Day!

Okay, now that we have Hot Turkey Day behind us, I guess we can look ahead a bit…

‘Tis the month before Christmas when all through this blog

A few creatures are stirring,... but no birddog, bullfrog, pollywog, groundhog, hedgehog…

However, among the few creatures who are stirring here on Puzzleria! this week is a shy buffalo. This buffalo appears – or more accurately, disappears – in this week’s Buffalo hide…‘n’ so, go seek, which is available on our main MENU. It is another excellent slice of puzzledom served up by skydiveboy, aka Mark Scott of Seattle. Think of it as our early Christmas present to you.

Also, a murine creature stirs briefly, making a cameo appearance in our Mice with spoons! dessert. Think of it as our early Christmas stocking-stuffer to you. (Believe you me, there is no better stocking-stuffer for Smitten, my kitten, than a stocking stuffed with mice!)

Rounding out this week’s menu offerings are a morsel, an appetizer and a generous slice of knighthood. We hope you will enjoy them as much as Smitten is enjoying the stuffing in her stocking.*

(* No rodents were harmed in the making of this blog.)

Morsel Menu

 

Scientainment Morsel:

Namesake forsaken

A landmark anniversary this past week marked a scientific milestone associated with a person now deceased. A person still living shared this scientist’s first and last names at birth but, as a young man, changed the surname of his namesake for professional reasons. He plies the entertainment trade.

Remove the first and final letters of this entertainer’s chosen surname, forming the name of a game piece. (Ignore his first name as you do this.) A homonym of that game-piece name is associated with the words “beak” and “black.”

 

The game piece is also known by another name. Rearrange the letters in that other name to form the plural form of a word that, one might argue, applies to both men.

Who are this scientist and entertainer? What are the two names of the game piece? What is the word that applies to both men?

Extra-credit question: In what decade did the scientist spend his teen years? (Hint: Rearrange the letters in his last name.)

Extra-extra-credit question: Why is the name of this Madison, Wisconsin bus company, “BeelineTransit,” such a smart one?

Appetizer Menu

Ale-atory Appetizer:

“Baby needs new shoes!”

A vocal throng is quaffing ale and watching a big-screen TV at Lego’s Sports Barangrill. A high-definition yellow FLAG is tossed onto the turf. Fifty percent of the patrons RANT. The other half cheers. All have money riding on the outcome. Those who win may blow it on booze. Those who lose may not be able to buy their children new shoes… or, worse yet, their KIDS may go UNFED.

A news reporter lurks hunchingly down in a dimly-lit corner booth, sipping a ginger ale, taking it all in, and taking notes. He has been observing not the big screen but the big-screen observers. The next morning his hard-hitting, no-punches-barred-at-the-bar story appears in his newspaper bearing the headline:

KIDS UNFED; FLAGRANT!

Rearrange the letters in this ersatz headline to spell out a pair of compound words that appeared together in actual stories seen this past week in business sections of newspapers and financial pages of websites.

What are these two compound words?

MENU

Countries In Chaos Slice:

Buffalo hide…‘n’ so, go seek

How is your eyesight?

Rearrange the letters in the name of the country I am thinking of and if you look closely you might see a buffalo.

What is the name of this country?

Back In Time Slice:

Dubbing a movee

Red Elk, a warrior of the Armouchiquois Tribe, is not doing so well in a hand-to-hand and hatchet-to-hatchet bout of mortal combat with Green Newt, a warrior of the Souriquois Tribe. But just as Green Newt, hatchet-hilt in hand, is about to deliver a fatal blow by burying his hatchet into Red Elk’s pate, Red Elk’s fate suddenly takes a turn for the better.

A seagull circling above descends on the fracas and in one fell swoop scoops Red Elk from the “jaws of deceased.” Clutching the nape of the warrior’s neck vice-like in its beak, the gull, with wings splayed like oleander stems, glides eastward over sea, overseas, back, back over seas of time, indeed over centuries, nearly six of them.

Eventually they reach land, a land shrouded with mists and mystery. The gull, like Noah’s dove delivering an olive leaf, opens its beak, releasing Red Elk onto what the warrior perceives to be a tepee made of stone floating high above land, an aerie kissing the cloudy mists.

The gull soars off. Red Elk crawls through an opening in the tepee and nods off, slumbering there for a day,... not in a tepee but rather in the tallest spire of Camelot Castle.

 

Red Elk awakens surrounded by warriors clad not in buffalo skins but in clinking, glinting silvery livery. The warriors arm him with a sword (to accompany the “battleaxe” he brought with him) and with armor like theirs.

After months of intensive instruction in dueling, jousting, chivalry, heraldry, knight errancy and knight inerrancy, Red Elk is summoned to the castle and told to approach the chief warrior, who wears not a feathered headdress but a golden crown. This chief, called a king, instructs Red Elk to kneel before him whereupon the king uses the flat of his sword to tap first the right then the left shoulders of Red Elk, uttering as he does so:

“Warrior Red Elk, you have come to us from another place, from another time. During your time here with us you have made strides also to move into the fields of dueling, jousting, chivalry, heraldry, knight errancy and knight inerrancy. You have made these moves as befitting a true knight, and have thus proven yourself worthy of knighthood. 

I therefore now dub thee Sir ______.” (It is a six-letter name.)

What did the king dub Red Elk? Explain why he dubbed him that.

Hint: The king himself time-traveled to and fro the 20th Century. Otherwise he would not have had the knowledge to dub Red Elk the name he did for the reason that he did. (The name was a familiar one in medieval times.)

Dessert Menu

Clement Loess Dessert:

Mice with spoons!

This past week a dozen-or-so Americans received special recognition. Six of the recipients appear in the verse below, but are not quite so recognizable. Each is “hiding” at the end of a line in one of the couplets.

“Find” each of the six recipients by rearranging the letters of two or three words at the end of one of the lines of one of the couplets to form each’s first and last name. In two of the couplets no recipient is hiding.

Who are these half-dozen recipients?

‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the Claus home

(Which the elves had transformed to a hammer & saw zone)

Was a flurry of toy-making, Christmass hysteria!

Every cranny and nook was a Noel gifts area.

Stacks of letters to Santa, all processed precisely,

Would yield toys soon for both girls and boys who mail wisely…

Toys once carried by sleigh drawn by one old gray mare,

But now – thanks to winged reindeer – sent, ergo, by air,

Deer who now in their paddock wait calmly not crankily

To make rounds, chewing pine, gazing at a fir blankly.

All ten reindeer, save one, get quite chilly, we think...
There's one newbie, quite furry, named Hazel, part mink.

In his study, where wafted the scent of roast pheasant,

Santa Claus put the wraps on his small elves’ big present.

Molly Claus in the hallway festooned fragrant holly…

One more reason for Santa to cherish his Molly.

Cooking up Christmas Joy at the North Pole’s a blur,

Everyone lends a hand, even mice tend to stir!

 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.

Highway 61 (and 169) Billboards revisited; "I'm so naïve-no-more”; "Hey! This isn't pumpkin pie!"; foXYZAftig siZABle psaLMNOtes; Chatter at the platter;

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

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

‘Tis the Friday before the Thursday of Giving Thanks. I want to sincerely thank all followers of this blog for your continued support, clever contributions and puzzling interest.

A quick piece of doggerel, inspired by the moon:
Although the world in which we live is far from a utopia,
To take this Earth for granite is to suffer from myopia.
We sow on soil rich, not rock, and reap a cornucopia,
With rays to warm us, to refresh us though the sky a sieve is,
With nightlight too to  guide us: crescent, full, new, blue or gibbous...
We thank you God this autumn day for blessings that you give us.

We enjoyed Will Shortz’s Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle on NPR this past weekend. It read:

 

Think of a word that contains three consecutive letters of the alphabet together – like CANOPY, which contains NOP. Change these three letters to one new letter to make a synonym of the first word. What words are these?

Yes indeedy, so much did we enjoy it that we composed a pair of puzzle morsels that “piggyback” on Will’s consecutive-letter theme.

(Puzzeria! friend and regular puzzle contributor Mark Scott of Seattle, also known as skydiveboy, posted on Blaine’s blog Thursday two sets of words that were “close” to being an acceptable solution to Will Shortz’s NPR puzzle, but not close enough. One of those word pairs is the answer to first of my two piggyback puzzles, Morsel 1.) 

The alphabet we use in our morsels is “Puzzleria!’s Closed-Loop Circular Seamless Alphabet.” This allows for consecutive-letter skeins that start with X, Y or Z, say, and end with A, B or C, for example.

And so, we thankfully and thinkfully serve up this week’s menus of morsels, appetizers, slices and desserts.

Morsel Menu

Shortz Inspired Morsels:

foXYZAftig siZABle psaLMNOtes

Morsel 1:

Think of a noun that contains three consecutive letters of the alphabet together – like CANOPY, which contains NOP. Change these three letters to one new letter to form a second noun (which can also function as a verb). This second noun may well bring about the first noun, and indicate that the person performing the second noun cares for the recipient of the action.

What words are these?

Hint: A word in this puzzle (in one of the paragraphs immediately above) and the second noun share five consecutive letters in common.

Morsel 2:

Think of a noun, an occupation in the arts, that contains four consecutive letters of the alphabet together – like PSALMNOTES (which contains LMNO) if it were indeed a real word, perhaps meaning something like “comments scribbled in the margins of a Psalter.” Change the four letters of your noun to one new letter to form an adjective describing a quality it would behoove the person in this occupation NOT to possess.

What words are these?

Hint: the adjective is uncommon, and is chiefly British dialect, and probably archaic. A word in this puzzle (in one of the paragraphs immediately above) and the adjective share five consecutive letters in common. An unprefixed form of the word appears in the OED.

Hint: The “occupation in the arts” noun is very closely related to a phrase in the “Kiddies’ Table Dessert” puzzle at the bottom of this week’s blog.   

Appetizer Menu

Kirby And Bobby Appetizer:

Highway 61 (and 169) Billboards Revisited

The lead singer and front man of a Beatles-era pop-rock group was born in the same Minnesota city where a Rimbaud-loving folk-rock singer spent most of his formative years.

Within the span of only one year, the pop-rock group scored four top-ten hit songs in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The first three were top-five hits with titles that each included a different synonym for “female” as a noun. The title of the fourth hit will be helpful to you in solving the “Lyrical Slice” in the MENU immediately below.

 

What is the name of this group? What are the titles of their three top-five hits?

Hint: The Rimbaud-loving folk singer wrote and recorded nine songs with one of those three synonyms for female in their titles. One of those songs was a top-ten Billboard hit released about one year after the pop-rock group’s string of hits.

MENU

Lyrical Slice:

“I’m so naïve-no-more”

A title of a past popular song in the entertainment news this past week contains 11 letters. Rearrange those letters to form four words that – if you insert the words “I’m so” after the first two – might have been a suitable subtitle for the song, given the liberated and naïve-no-more attitude conveyed by the singer in the song’s lyrics, in particular in its refrain.

What is this song title? What might have been a suitable subtitle for the song?

Hint: The surname of a man in the news story echoes a part of what is likely the intended answer to Will Shortz’s NPR puzzle this past week. (See Puzzleria!’s introduction, above.)

Hint: The two words that follow “I’m so” are the title of the fourth top-ten hit song by the pop-rock group in the “Kirby And Bobby Appetizer” puzzle, under the “Appetizer Menu,” above.

Buffet Zone Slice:

Chatter at the platter

Name a kind of serving platter for cold food – in two words of six and four letters – that might be seen on a Thanksgiving Day buffet table. Both words end with the same three letters.

Copy the second and third letters of the first word consecutively somewhere into the second word to form a shorthand slang word for what people who mingle around and sample food from the platter might exclaim. The first four letters of that slang word form a shorthand word for where some of the food might have been purchased.

The platter is also often called by a name in which a different four-letter word is substituted for the second word. Saying the plural of this altered two-word name aloud sounds like an alliterative two-word phrase meaning “enjoyed sunbathing.”

What are these two two-word names for platters? What might the food samplers exclaim, and where might the food have been purchased?

Confusing (and probably regional-slang) hint:

A young’un from the Thanksgiving “kiddies’ table” might sample a chunk of pickled herring from the platter and exclaim:

“This tastes __ __ __ __!”

The first three letters of that missing four-letter adjective are the same three letters shared by the two words in the first platter mentioned earlier in the puzzle. It is an adjective with which I am familiar but it has been nigh impossible for me to track it down on the Internet. I think the four-letter adjective may be Minnesota and Wisconsin slang dialect. 

Adding a consonant to the beginning of that four-letter unusual adjective, however, forms an adjective it is more likely a kiddie might exclaim after plucking up and gulping down the chunk of pickled herring.

(If the kiddie’s name were Peter, we might say, “Peter plucked a toothpick-pierced piece of pickled piscari, like pike, perch or pickerel.”)

Dessert Menu

Kiddies’ Table Dessert:

“Hey! This isn’t pumpkin pie!”

A two-syllable brand-name pastry dessert that likely does not grace many Thanksgiving Day tables (except perhaps the “kiddies’ table”) celebrated a landmark anniversary a year ago. The pastry dessert is associated with a common kitchen appliance.

Take the singular form of the pastry and interchange the initial letters of (that is, “spoonerize”) the brand name’s syllables to form a two-word synonym for a bikini bra or for a leading man’s or leading lady’s role.

Spell the two words of this synonym backward to form two slang synonyms – one for the mouth, where the pastry is ingested, and the other for the belly, where the pastry is digested.

A term for the style of geometric images pictured above was coined the same year the brand-name pastry hit the shelves. Removing the initial letters of the two words in the singular form of the brand name yields the general collective term for such images.

A brand-name competitor of the pastry also hit the shelves in that same year. The first syllable of that competitor’s name is what people at the adults’ Thanksgiving Day table might do with wineglasses, and what little people at the kiddies’ table might do with plastic cups of sparkling juice.

 

What are the pastry dessert and its competitor, the “spoonerized” two-word synonym, and the collective term for the images?

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.

It isn't rocket science... or is it?; "The Iceman Gulpeth, Mopeth"; Infer no fire where there is no smoke?; Hays-ey DisContent?

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

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

‘Tis Friday the Thirteenth day of November. Lotsa luck with the following four puzzles. (Lotsa question marks in this week’s puzzle titles!)

This week we serve up a soupy morsel, a smoky appetizer, a hazy slice and, to top it all off, a slice of science for dessert.

Morsel Menu

Soupy Morsel:

“The Iceman Gulpeth, Mopeth”

The five words in the following sentence in red share something in common. 

“Astute iceman gulps soup, mopes.”

Once you discover what they share in common, you will realize one word does not belong with the other four.

Which word does not belong, and why?    

Appetizer Menu

Creatures In The News Appetizer:

Infer no fire where there is no smoke?

The Big Island of Hawaii is chock-full of attractions. A beach-goer, for example, may witness awesome creatures (a plural word with five letters that can be rearranged to form a prefix meaning “flesh”). The eleven letters of a two-word term for one of these creatures can be rearranged to form 7-letter synonym of “militaristic” and a four-letter synonym of “inferno.”

An inland Big Island attraction (a seven-letter proper noun), which might be described as an “internal inferno,” is a very loose homophone of the two-word term for the awesome creature. (In other words, it only kind of sounds the same.) You can sea (sic) such creatures in other states besides Hawaii, most notably in Florida, Texas and California (although, soon not so much in California, according to a business/entertainment news story from earlier this week.)

What are the five-letter and two-word terms for the creature? What is the name of the inland “internal inferno”?

MENU

Specialty Of The Theater Slice:

Hays-ey DisContent?

Name a possible job title of an employee of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), in two words. Rearrange the letters in this title to form certain motion picture content, in one plural word, with which one performing the job may be mildly concerned.

What are this job title and the motion picture content?

Hint: The job title would probably have been more plausible in the early days of the MPAA, when the (William) Hays Code was in effect. Today, the content alluded to in this puzzle would more likely impact whether to classify a motion picture as a G, PG or PG-13.

Dessert Menu

Piece Of Cake Dessert:

It isn’t rocket science…or is it?

Name a language spoken by millions. The first letter, middle two letters and last letter, taken in order, spell out the first name of a reasonably well-known scientist. The remaining letters, taken in order, spell out a plural word that is the scientist’s area of expertise and study.

Hint: The letters in the scientist’s surname can be rearranged to form a two-word caption for the image shown here.

Hint: Some experiments performed by the scientist involved a language also spoken by millions. The language is related to and associated with three letters, each of which appears at least twice in the image shown here.

Who is the scientist and what is his/her area of expertise?

*********************************************************************************

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.