PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e4 + pi4 SERVED
Welcome to our
December 25th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
We are striving
in this waning week of 2015 to keep X in Xmas. Most of our puzzles this week
have some neXus to that holiday/holyday. (That is not to say, however, that this blog will be completely Christmasless this week.)
This week’s “Cracking
The Books Morsel” (below) involves an inspirational narrative from the past
that epitomizes “Peace on earth to women and men of good will.” The first of our
two appetizers, “Five Dubyas Appetizer,” can be described as involving a somewhat
similar inspirational, encouraging, “peace-on-earth” narrative, but from the very recent past – indeed within this
past week.
BULLETIN: This present
Puzzleria! narrative is now interrupted by…
Breaking news:
A valued contributor to Puzzleria!, Enya_and_Weird_Al_fan, will be playing
the on-air puzzle with Will Shortz on December 27’s Weekend Edition Sunday on
National Public Radio.
EaWAf is a
brilliant and creative Puzzlerian!, and a good guy. Check out, for example, these intricate
and mammoth numerical magic squares he posted a year ago in Puzzleria!’s Comments Section. We are pulling for him on Sunday.
Beneath our
Puzzleria! Xmas tree lie six enigmatic puzzles wrapped in riddles and surrounded
by mysteries.In addition to the aforementioned morsel and appetizer, we are offering an even more appetizing second appetizer: The Great Reframation Appetizer: Who framed Roger Reference? Its name tag indicates that it is a gift from our valued Puzzleria! contributor, skydiveboy, also known as Mark Scott from Seattle.
Thank you, Mark.
Two puzzle
slices and a dessert are also tied with a bow beneath our tree. Happy
Unwrapping!
Morsel
Menu
Cracking The
Books Morsel:
Beware of
Greeks bearing alms
At this time of
year, many people observe a tradition – as a family, with friends, or
individually – of cracking open a book and rereading a beloved and
inspirational narrative from one of two or three of four “authorized and approved” biographies
of a famous person’s life.
Most people opt
to read one of the two more “accessible” versions of the narrative. A few
instead read the more poetic and metaphysical account that appears in a third
biography. (The fourth biographer doesn’t really address this particular period
of the person’s life.)
The following
phrase describes the four biographers:
“Men who jot
Greek, push alms talk”
Rearrange the 26
letters in that description to produce five words that would appear in a more
conventional and explicit description of the four biographers. Two of the five are
seven-letter words and three are four-letter words.
What are these
five words?
Appetizer
Menu
Five Dubyas Appetizer:
Calling Alex
Trebek…
A recent international
news story, like most news stories, includes a Who, What, Where and When.
(Generally in journalism, the “What” of the story often ends up in its headline.)
Rearrange the
letters in the five clues printed in red below to find the Who’s (two of
them) and the What, Where and When that pertain to this recent story. (Explanations of
the clues are printed in parentheses, in green, in the form of a question, a la
Jeopardy!)
Where (3
words):
__ __ __
__ __ __ __ __
__
__ __ __
“They Ban
Nukes!” (What can be said of the four continents that lie largely below the
Equator?)
What (2 words):
__ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __
__
“Fiddler’s
Routine” (What does one call the paces that valued Puzzlerian! ViolinTeddy likely puts herself though
before a performance?)
Who # 1 (2 words):
__ __ __ __ __
__ __ &
__ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __
“Criminals thus
miss” (What is the result of the “What” of this puzzle’s news story – that is,
the story’s gist?)
Who # 2 (2 words):
__ __ __ __ __
__
__ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __
“Alms
Limitations” (What do both “Who # 1’s” not believe in?)
When (3 words, one ordinal numeral):
__ __ __ __ __
__ ,
__ __ __ __ __
__ __ __
__ __ __
___ _ _
“Treys be odd,
Hmm… Ace-Ten… 21!” (What might be overheard at a Blackjack table?)
What are these
Who’s, What, Where and When?
The Great
Reframation Appetizer:
Who framed
Roger Reference?
Think of a compound word that is a general frame of reference. Now insert a B and then
insert an R to make another compound word that is a specific frame of
reference.
Can you
discover these two common compound words?
MENU
Little Melodrumma
Boys
Spell the final
three letters of a word backward to form a common first name. Spell the first
five letters of the same word forward to form another common first name.
The sixth and
fifth letters of the same word are associated with a well-known late 20th
Century man of letters who wrote a 1950s poem pertinent to the word. The two
common first names belong to two reasonably well-known living actors – one who
was in the cast of a 2008 melodrama pertinent to the word, and the other who
was in the cast of a 2010 melodrama pertinent to the word.
The surnames of
the actors – which are spelled identically – are spelled differently from the surname of
the man of letters. All three of the surnames, however, are pronounced identically.
The third,
fourth, first and second letters in the word, in that order, spell the surname
of a person who was a prototypical “Little Drummer Boy” in the 1920s.
What is this
word? Who are the actors, the man of letters and the “Little Drummer Boy”?
Those Brits
are anaemic spellers!
Name a
Christmas song title, in two words. Ignore the first word, for now anyway.
Interchange the first and last letters of the second word. All but the last two
letters of this result spell out the first name of a character created by a 19th
Century British novelist. All but the first four letters of the result spell
out the first name of a character created by a 20th Century British
illustrator.
The beginning
part of the surname of the person who composed the song (and recorded it to great
success) is a homophone of the song title’s first word. Perhaps influenced by
the spelling of the composer’s surname, people sometimes misspell the first
word of the song title by replacing its final consonant with a different
consonant followed by a vowel. (This assertion can be tested, of course, by
asking random people to spell the song title.)
Rearrange the
letters in this misspelling to form two words, both of which you might well see
at the North Pole around Christmastime.
What is this
Christmas song? What are the two North Pole sights?
Dessert
Menu
Animated In
Loo Of Humdrum Dessert:
No
(rest)room at the inn…so go to Buck’s tavern!
Buck
Birlmeister retires as a lineman for the county of Yellow Medicine in
Minnesota. He and his wife Penny sell their suburban home, gather up their life
savings, pull up stakes and – instead of fleeing to Florida or Arizona – invest
in a rustic, combination-tavern-lodge in the great north woods of the
neighboring state of Wisconsin. Penny is in charge of the tavern, Buck the
lodge.
Buck’s first
order of business is to remove the two humdrum plaques from the doors of the
men’s and women’s restrooms. The plaques read “Gents” and “Ladies”. Too
commonplace, Buck thinks.
Buck commissions a local woodcrafter to fashion eight rustic
wooden plaques – two for each of the four seasons – to hang from the restroom
doors on a rotating basis, changing with the seasons.
An avid hunter and outdoorsman, Buck instructs
the woodcrafter to inscribe RAMS and EWES on the spring plaques, STALLIONS and
MARES on summer’s plaques, BUCKS and DOES on autumn’s plaques, and, on winter’s plaques…
Buck’s
wintertime men’s and women’s restroom words are, respectively, 8 and 7 letters
long. Remove a total of 7 letters from the ends of the two words, leaving two
fragments totaling 8 letters. Push the fragments together (men’s fragment first), leaving no space,
and add a U.S. state postal abbreviation to the end. The result is something
with which Penny might decorate the lodge as winter dawns.
Hint: The last
four letters of each of Buck’s wintertime men’s and women’s restroom words can
be rearranged to form the word “rest,” as in “restroom.”
What do Buck’s
winter plaques read? What is Penny’s possible decoration?
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.
