Eggheads and Hat Boys… Chill out! Whole-grain low-carb breadbasket; “A beautiful bunch o’ ripe banana”; Princess Leia on the runway? Congress, rooted in crime? Calculinarius

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} pi³ SERVED

Welcome to our March 4^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Let us all march forth like lions a-roar and devour slices of puzzle galore.

You are in for a real treat this week, and a first for Puzzleria! – a cryptic crossword. It is a delightfully challenging puzzle created by our friend patjberry, who has great expertise and experience in both solving and concocting these wonderful verbal conundrums. Thank you, Patrick, for sharing this masterpiece of puzzletry with us.

We also offer this week a morsel, two appetizers, a dessert and a ROSS (Ripping Off Shortz Slice). Patrick’s cryptic crossword puzzle appears under the main MENU. We placed the ACROSS clues above the grid and the DOWN clues below the grid so as to minimize scrolling up and down. Those of you with printers can perhaps “print screen” to obtain a hard copy of the puzzle.

Three links with instructions for deciphering cryptic crossword clues have been placed above the ACROSS clues.

Also above the ACROSS clues, as well as just below this week’s final puzzle (“Vacation Destination Dessert”), we have printed instructions, prepared by patjberry himself, that provide some nice examples of cluing.

Enjoy the encryption. Delight in the decryption!

Morsel Menu

 

Welcoming Word Whereabouts Morsel:

Princess Leia on the runway?

1. Supermodel’s surname

2. What the supermodel may model, an auto part, or a movement during the snap count

3. A setting in an early “Star Wars” movie (two words)

4. Fresca alternative

5. Welcoming word

6. Pentagonal plate

Solve the six clues above. Where can all six answers be found?  

Appetizer Menu

Idiot Box Appetizer:

Congress, rooted in crime?

Name a crime drama television series from the past. Remove the final letter from each of the two words in the title, along with any punctuation. At the beginning of the truncated second word place a duplicate of the middle letter of the truncated first word.

Place quotation marks around the truncated first word. The result is the name of a member of Congress.

Who is this member of Congress? What is the television series?

Hint: The final letters of the two words in the television series title are the same letter. 

Abs Ad Appetizer:

Whole-grain low-carb breadbasket

Each illustration shown here is an AD FOR TUMMY PRUNER. Rearrange the 16 letters in those four words to form three words that appeared in a recent national news story, two of them surnames plus one common noun.

What are these three words?

 

MENU

Cryptic Crossword Slice:

Eggheads and Hat Boys… Chill out!

Aids to deciphering cryptic crossword clues:

The Games Guide
Beginner’s Guide by theguardian
How to Solve...

patjberry’s cryptic clue mini-tutorial (Part 1):

The number in parentheses at the end of each clue tells how

many letters are in the answer. Multiple numbers in parentheses

indicate how letters are distributed in a multiple-word answers.

For example, (9) indicates a nine-letter answer like

“ampersand,” (4,5) indicates a four-and-five-letter answer like

“iron oxide,” and (4-5) indicates a four-and-five-letter hyphenated

answer like “four-wheel.”

ACROSS

1. Beginning to worry about something initially thrown in trash, lost? (5,5)

6. Smell to suffice in operating room? (4)

9. Music from movie grabbing primary audience with statement… (10)

10. …not that it has to be part of ancient history (4)

12. Singer to drive around – vision going bad, ultimately (6,6)

15. Sinister, nothing less without love (7)

16. Ex-chairman about having fit with Independent paper folding (7)

17. “I Surrender Dear” half hard to understand? (7)

19. Said to make one smile, getting popular for Eastern language (7)

20. Singer left a bar drunk, surrounded by music (7,5)

23. Having climbed a small tree (4)

24. Way target is blown up, according to military planner (10)

25. Nobleman not one to go outside Britain (4)

26. OK Go (10)

DOWN

1. Said “Just go!” (4)

2. Every time a child has the answer (4)

3. Conversation getting a little ribald – in the excitement, child has to listen in (5-2-5)

4. Criminals holding girl in 10? (7)

5. Artwork to exist in past coming up? (7)

7. The dry dead sort in need of water (10)

8. Others came down and checked (10)

11. Singer just started on time – chill out! (4,8)

13. Certain to take responsibility with final answer in part of game show (5,5)

14. Very dark pervert’s foremost desire having returned – to pinch girl’s bottom (5-5)

18. Agent showing lot, perhaps, in back? (7)

19. University egghead to answer: “It’s an art form” (7)

21. Call some number in Germany? (4)

22. Hat boy lost? Let it be (4)

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

This week’s NPR Sunday puzzle from Will Shortz reads:

What two 8-letter terms in math are anagrams of each other? One word is from geometry, the other is from calculus. What words are they?

Our “rip-off/riff-off/“piggyback” puzzle reads:

Calculinarius

Mathematics is all about food. You’ve got your pi; your “A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream; your ice cream cone; your golden sections (of an orange); and your Sandwich Theorem. A 10-letter term in math anagrams to three foods you would see: on a breakfast menu, on a delicatessen menu, and on a menu in a Spanish Galician restaurant.

What is this math term? What are the three foods?

Hint: Those who do many online searches are apt to misspell this math term.

Dessert Menu

Vacation Destination Dessert:

“A beautiful bunch o’ ripe banana”

“A cove, huts, bananas...” might be part of an advertisement promoting a vacation destination. Rearrange the 16 letters in those four words to form three words that appeared in an international entertainment news story this past week. All three words are proper nouns. One or two of them name a vacation destination... like the one advertised as having “a cove, huts, bananas.”

What are these three words?

patjberry’s cryptic clue mini-tutorial (Part 2):

The structure of a common cryptic crossword clue (which is based on the “Ximenean Principles”), contains:

1. A precise definition

2. Wordplay

3. Nothing else

The definition can appear at the beginning or end of the clue. Everything else in the clue is wordplay to help the solver find the answer.

There are a few exceptions:

Double-definition clues: For example, the clue “dog food” yields “chow” because “chow” is both a breed of dog and a slang term for food.

“Pure Cryptic clues”: For example, the answer to the clue “He went in his sleep” might be “bedwetter.”

The term “&lit” describes rare occurrences when the literal definition and the wordplay are one and the same: For example, the answer to the clue “Could be quite a mess around year’s end” would be “Times Square.” Why? First, rearranging the letters in QUITE A MESS and wrapping them around an R (the “end” of year) yields TIMES SQUARE. Second, Times Square is literally “quite a mess” at the end of the year.

Also, an answer may be hidden in the clue spelled backward. Be alert to words like “back,” “turn” or “reverse” in the clue.

Note: Sometimes the answer may be “hiding in plain sight” within the clue. For example, the clue “Composer into Bach and Elgar” yields “Handel” (bacH AND ELgar) as an answer. Words such as “some,” “inside,” or “a little,” may suggest the answer is hidden within the clue.

“About” is an all-purpose “wild card” word that can mean almost anything: an anagram clue; one word wrapped “about” another; reversing the word’s spelling; representing the short word “re,” or C which stands for the Latin term Circa (about).

Some popular anagram clue words are “crazy,” “mixed,” “dancing,” “drunk,” “off,” “out,” “police,” “pervert,” “doctor,” “organization” and “reorganization.”    

“Wordplay” includes anagrams, double-definitions, charades or

rebuses, homophones (sound-alikes), containers, reversals,

initials or final letters… or any combination of these.

Homographs like “live” – which when pronounced with a long-I means “as it is happening,” and with a short-I means “to exist, or be” – can also be used in a clue. For another example, the answer to the clue “Refuse to put up with it” is TRASH CAN.

Also, be on the lookout for abbreviations! “ST” may appear in the answer if words like “street” or, more likely, “way” are in the clue. “RD” is suggested by “road.” “Indiana” or “inch” might indicate “IN,” but “home” or “at home” may also indicate “IN.” Other short words like “go” may indicate travel, but also may mean to “go” to the bathroom (in which case the word “pee” may be included in the answer).

The creator of the cryptic crossword is called the “setter” or “compiler.” So, if you see “setter/compiler” or “setter’s/compiler’s” in a clue, translate the second person into the first person, and think “I” or “my.”

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.