You Say You Want a Resolution; Stepping onto the diatonic scale; Out of Africa: It's Good News!; Tiger, Paw and King James; Titletoyin’ USA; Sweet sixteenth; Dame LaBlog’s dang-nab dad-gum jogging slog;

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

Welcome to our January 1^st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We are wringing out the old year of 2015 with wistfulness as we are simultaneously ringing in the new year of 2016 with quizfulness – seven new puzzles. But do not be intimidated; the two morsels are relatively easy.

Speaking of misty-eyed wistfulness, one of our go-to blogs, An Englisman Solves AmericanPuzzles (AESAP) will post no longer after its Sunday, January 3^rd posting. AESAP is/was a great forum for discussing the Will Shortz Sunday puzzle, and for estimating how many NPR listeners might solve it in the weekly Pick-A-Range feature. 

Magdalen and Ross Beresford, AESAP’s proprietors, are a brilliant and classy couple, who have always been very supportive of Puzzleria! (They linked to it on AESAP’s “Blogroll,” for instance.) Why not log onto Ross and Magdalen’s farewell posting on Sunday and give them some thanks and props? I know I will.

In keeping with the holiday, this week’s appetizer and second dessert both deal with New Year’s resolutions. But that is just a sampling of what is to come in 2016. We resolve to deal you a 52-week deck packed with Puzzlerian! delights – some that seem to club you over the head with complexity; news-event-themed puzzles, in spades; heartfelt efforts that may sometimes fail; and perhaps even a few diamonds that sparkle!  

It is a resolution we aim not to break as you make your way through 2016, breaking down our puzzles and making your own solutions. Have a happy new year of resolving… and solving.

Morsel Menu

 

Sell More! Morsel:

Titletoyin’ USA

Name the one-word title of a romantic comedy movie released about 30 years ago. Add to the beginning of the title the first letter of the surname of one of the costars. The result is a toy seen under several Christmas trees this past week.

What are the movie and the toy?

Celebration Morsel:

Tiger, Paw and King James

LeBron “King” James, Sandy “Southpaw” Koufax and Tiger Woods share more than one thing in common. 

For example, they are/were all celebrated professional athletes who dominated their respective sports. They are also all considered “minorities” in American culture.

But what else do they share?

Appetizer Menu

Our Lady Of Perpetual Perplexity & Inscrutability Appetizer:

You Say You Want a Resolution

Dame LaBlog, also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Perplexity & Inscrutability, has spent every Friday this past year frequenting Puzzleria!, her neighborhood puzzle parlor.

Indeed, “Notre Dame’s” weekly Year-of-2015 ritual has been to order every morsel, appetizer, puzzle slice and dessert on the Puzzleria! menu – and then ruminating, savoring, and solving them all.

And also, alas, packing on all those pounds.

Thus, the Grande Dame has resolved to adopt a healthier, more slimming diet in 2016 by dining out regularly at oriental restaurants, and ordering salads mainly. So devoted is Dame LaBlog to her New Year’s Resolution that she began applying it to her daily routine in the waning days of 2015:

December 28: At Feng Sushi she told the waiter, “I’ll try Namasu, daikon and carrot salad.”

December 29: At Foo Moon Inn Dame LaBlog said, “Please, bring Thai Chinese Cabbage Salad.”

December 30: At Jinju Jip she ordered a Korean lettuce salad, saying, “Give me Sangchoo Geotjeori.”

December 31: At Soyokaze, out on the town ringing in the New Year with her old friend Dom Gabella, Dame LaBlog ordered, “Crunch Mandarin Orange Salad for me and Spinach Ohitashi Salad for Dom, with sake for Pete’s sake!” (Pete, whoever he is, didn’t get any sake.) The couple sampled one another’s entrées.

January 1: For brunch at Bamboo Rainbow, Dame LaBlog opts for an oriental dish featuring a veritable garden variety of delights: red choi, bok choi, pakchoi, tatsoi, mizuna, perilla, komatsuna, shishito, shinrimei, okra, kohlrabi, daikon radish, sinqua, lemongrass, moqua, napa cabbage, and opo.

She says to her waiter as she orders: “Bring

__ __

__ __ __ __

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

__ __ __.”

The letters in those 16 blanks are formed by writing down and spelling out the four numerals of the present year: 2016 becomes “TWO THOUSAND SIXTEEN”…

Oops, wait! That’s 18 letters, and we only have room for 16. So let’s try this instead: Write down the five numerals of the present year as an ancient Roman citizen (stepping out of his Delorean, of course) would write them. But first, rotate two of the numerals counterclockwise 90 degrees (or counterclockwise 270 degrees), resulting in characters the Greek friend of the ancient Roman would readily recognize. Now SPELL OUT these five numerals/characters, thereby forming the 16 letters that belong in the blanks. You will need to do some rearranging.

What words does Dame LaBlog utter as she orders her New Year’s Day brunch?

MENU

Third Millennium Slice:

Sweet sixteenth

Consider the following sequence of 15 integers:

3, 4, 1, 4, 2, 3, 3, 4, 3, 4, 1, 3, 3, 3, 3,…

What is the sixteenth integer in the sequence? Explain.

Hint: There are scores of integers preceding the initial integer in this sequence, but those scores would not pertain to the title of this puzzle. The integer immediately preceding the “opening 3, 4, 1, 4,...” in the sequence is a prime number that does not appear among the 15 integers in the sequence shown.

International News Slice:

Stepping onto the diatonic scale

Name a person who is assuming the leadership of a world research organization in 2016. The last two letters of the person’s first name spell a syllable on the diatonic scale, and the last two letters of the person’s surname spell the syllable following it on the diatonic scale.

The first two letters of the first name spell still another diatonic-scale syllable. The third, fourth and fifth letters of the first name spell a shorthand general term for a work of non-fiction (which is sometimes book-length and other-times just a sketch).

The fifth, sixth and seventh letters of this surname spell the surname of a late major league baseball Hall of Famer whose image appears at Cooperstown wearing a [singular form of a team nickname] uniform. That is only natural because he spent his entire more-than-two-decade major league career with that one team. 

Remove from the research organization person’s surname the fifth and eighth, and either the sixth or seventh, letters. What remains is the singular form of the baseball team nickname for whom the Hall-of-Famer played. 

Hint: The international research organization the person now heads is an acronym whose letters are the final four appearing in a common five-word written salutation.

Who is this person?

Dessert Menu

Evangelium Dessert:

Out of Africa: It’s Good News!

“Africa region enabled, eludes woe” is the gist of a “good news” story that was published worldwide this past week. Rearrange the 28 letters in the five words of that gistful phrase to form a more specific headline that might have appeared with the story. This headline would appear in the following form:

__ __ __ __ __ __

__ __

__ __ __

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

__ __ __ __ __ - __ __ __ __

What is this headline?

Hint: Four consecutive letters appearing in “Africa region enabled, eludes woe” form a past-tense form of a verb pertaining to why, over the past few years, the news was so bad in this region.

Memories Of Jogging One’s Exertion Dessert:

Dame LaBlog’s dang-nab dad-gum jogging slog

Dame LaBlog – who appears in this week’s appetizer puzzle attempting to become more fit in 2016 by adopting a more healthful diet – has two sons, Ed and Mojo. In the waning days of 2015, as Dame LaBlog was getting a “head start” on her new diet, her sons suggested she supplement the diet by taking a daily leisurely run through her local park.

Dame LaBlog stuck with that particular exercise regimen for exactly four days. On the fifth day, New Year’s Day, during the daily weigh-in conducted by her sons, the Dame proclaimed. “No more dang-nab jogging for me! This dad-gum birdfood diet is a slog tough enough.”

Dame LaBlog stepped off the scale, re-shod her feet in pink pumps and hurried off to brunch at the Bamboo Rainbow restaurant. In the aftermath, Mojo and Ed studied their mother’s three-day weigh-in chart, noting her weight had diminished by a whopping 8 pounds during the three days of her two-pronged jogging/dieting regimen. Said Ed to Mojo in a voice dripping with wist and resignation (and perhaps just an iota of pride), “The jog aided Mom.”

Rearrange the 14 letters in Ed’s comment and put them into the first fourteen blanks of the phrase below. The final four spaces (which are colored blue) must be filled in with the numerals of this new year (after the numerals have been appropriately manipulated so that they can pass muster as letters).

The phrase, which has to do with siblings (not Mojo and Ed) who plied the same profession, is:

__ __ __ ,

__ __ __  

& V I N C E:

__ __ __

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

What is this phrase?

Numerical hint: A total of 573

Name-dropping hint: Marilyn Monroe

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.