Mary and Polly were lovers... music lovers; Clothes capuchin monkey biz; Two’s company, three’s a party! Text is two-stepped; Prime cuts; Kosher dilly-deli

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{4 +} pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to our January 22^nd edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are pleased and honored to welcome back patjberry as a guest puzzle contributor this week. His excellent original puzzle appears directly beneath our main MENU heading. It is titled “Sing Sing Song Song Slice: Mary and Polly were lovers…music lovers.”

Thank you, patjberry! (Hints are available from Patrick if you run into a solving roadblock.)

Also on this week’s menu are a second helping of “LegoLarceny” (Ripping Off Shortz Slice); a hop, skip and a jig of a rug-cutting morsel; two prime-time appetizers; and we top it all off with some capuchin monkey business for dessert. Enjoy!

Morsel Menu

 

Prest-O Epode Morsel:

Text is two-stepped

A word that means to have not two left feet but two right hands

Is what you’ll need to solve this puzzle’s curious demands.

First, take its first four letters, place the last before the first

To form no hand, instead a foot, a base for words well-versed…

Three-score-less-four such feet two-step across this text-tiled floor.

Remove the new fourth letter, then the word’s “caboose” restore.

Insert two spaces near the front to form three words at most

That sound like they could be a prestidigitator’s boast.

What is the “two-right-handed” word you began with? What is the “sleight-of-handed” boast you ended with? What “feet” did you use to two-step your way from beginning to end?

Hint: The final word in the boast has an alternative spelling.

Appetizer Menu

Not Ready For Prime Time Appetizer:

Kosher dilly-deli

“New largest prime number is found,” read some headlines this past week. What word does not belong in that sentence? In other words, what word is the “odd man out,” so to speak?

All six words in the sentence do, however, share a property that involves each word’s final letter. It is not an uncommon property, but tends to become less common the longer the word is. For example, words in this puzzle such as “sentence,” “property,” “become” and “uncommon” do not have the property, while “less,” “not,” “that” and “and” do. “Headlines” and “involves” have the property but “headline” and “involve” do not. 


If we wrote “New biggest prime number is discovered,” all words would share the property except for “biggest.” (And, to be honest, although “largest” is kosher it does rely on an alternative spelling to be so.)

What is the “odd word out” in our headline? What property do all six words share?

Prime Time Appetizer:

Prime cuts

This number puzzle is inspired by discovery of the new largest prime number. Consider the following sequence of numbers:

11, 23, 29, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 67, 71, 73, 79,…

What are the next two numbers in the sequence?

MENU

Sing Sing Song Song Slice:

Mary and Polly were lovers…music lovers

Mary’s favorite song, which was recorded in the mid-1980s by a female singer with a one-word name, has a two-word title.

Polly’s favorite song, which was recorded in the late-1970s by a male singer with a more conventional two-word name, has a one-word title.

“Polly” is the ideal name for a follower and fan of her song’s singer, who is associated with a certain feathered creature that always reminds Polly of the singer. The second letter of the creature’s six letters is an “A”.

The names of Mary and the singer of her favorite song are connected “spiritually” by a six-letter word that always reminds Polly of the singer. The word begins with a “V”, which is also the first letter in the one-word title of a hit song the singer would record years later.

Add an “A” and “V” to the title of Mary’s favorite song’s title and rearrange the letters to form Polly’s favorite song’s title.

What are Mary’s and Polly’s favorite songs and their singers? What are the words that remind the women of the singers?

Hint: The female singer has been associated with a person much in the news lately.

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Two’s company, three’s a party!

Will Shortz’s Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle on NPR this week reads:

Think of a category in three letters in which the last two letters are the first two letters of something in the category. And the thing in the category has seven letters. Both names are common uncapitalized words. What are they?

An example of such a pair (but not with a three-letter category) is “vegetable: lettuce.”

Our rip-off puzzle gives you categories (actually some of them are more like simple clues) along with the number of letters in the answers, in {brackets}. In our version of Will Shortz’s puzzle, the last three letters of the category are the first three letters of something in the category. (For example, “Periodical” could yield “California Cattleman Magazine.”

In the final category/clue (# 26), the last four letters of the category are the first four letters of something in the category.  

1.   Television show: {5, 5} or {3, 1, 3, 4, 6}

2.   First name of an author: {7}

3.   Body part: {6}

4.   Home building supply: {7}

5.   “No-Name Equine” trio name: {7}

6.   Japanese menu item: {7}

7.   Bad habit: {6, 4, 5}

8.   Congenital oral utensil: {6, 5}

9.   Example of Greek prosody: {7 (with “The”)}

10. “Spacey British” politician: {3, 6}

11. Lady MacBeth’s shout: {3, 6, 4…}

12. Mode of travel: {10}

13. Wintertime wear: {8}

14. Molecular operation: {10}

15. The “Mortmere Master of English”: {11,9}

16. Entertainment that originated in Europe: {5}

17.Welcome guest who encounters unwelcome “guests” (cockroaches or other pests) at an apartment in New York: {5, 3}

18. Purchase at a spice store: {7}

19. Liverpool group lead singer {5}

20. Non-fiction writer: {6}

21. Sorority or fraternity people: {7}

22. Football star {4,9}

23. Basketball star {3,7}

24. Baseball star {4, 9} or {5, 9}

25a. Scoring play involving a hoop in basketball (first part of a hyphenated word): {5}

25b. Scoring play in basketball involving a hoop (second part of a hyphenated word): {3}

26. Term used in forecasting weather

Dessert Menu

Newsy Doozy Dessert:

Clothes capuchin monkey biz

Take the last names of two people who appeared in the same news story this past week. Rearrange these letters three times to form three different captions for the three images pictured here that do not involve clothed capuchin critters.

One caption has two words, each with the same odd number of letters. Another caption also has two words with even numbers of letters that differ by 2. A third caption has three words, two with the same odd number of letters and the third with an even number.

Who are these news makers? What are the three captions?

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.