Friday, March 25, 2016

Mad bunnies, icicle boils and shoulder ooze; Din! Clangor! Wives! Pilgrim’s Evolutionary Progress; Circular turns spherical? It’s a Miracle! “Will be, or not Will be?” Objects in your mirror may appear… under construction; Just what makes “Brooms tick?”...a good clue? “Bro, flog a golf orb!” Gertrude Einstein



PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e5 + pi3 SERVED

Welcome to our March 25th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We invite you this week to join us on a pilgrimage. Not a holy pilgrimage, perhaps, but rather a wholly enjoyable labyrinthine journey led by puzzle maven and master Mark Scott of Seattle, also known by his blogosphere screen name skydiveboy.

Mark’s pilgrimage puzzle, which appears just below our main MENU, is titled “Pilgrim’s Evolutionary Progress.” It involves gorillas.

Other offerings this week include four “Ripping Off Shortz Slices;” a morsel marred by “mad bunnies;” An appetizer featuring links (no, not those tasty little smoky crock-pot sausage links, and not missing links either… that’s Mark’s bailiwick this week); and finally, for dessert, a gulp of “Gertrude Einstein.”
 
But, alas, Mark’s 500-pound “gorilla” in our puzzle room makes all our other challenges in this edition of Puzzleria! seem more like “chimp-change”!

So don you now your Superman’s cape. Get into pilgrimage-shape. Unravel our red-herring-tape. And… go ape:

Morsel Menu
 
Single-sided Spoon-feeding Morsel:
Mad bunnies, icicle boils and shoulder ooze

Spoonerism” is an umbrella term that covers a variety of phonetic transpositions, such as “pack of lies” morphing into “lack of pies.” Or like “bad money” becoming “mad bunny” (which is not a good thing at all around Easter time!).

Let us now label a specific class of spoonerisms as “single-sided spoonerisms.” These spoonerisms are defined as pairs of words in which only one of the words begins with a consonant or consonant blend. For a few examples, single-side-spoonerizing “older shoes” results in “shoulder ooze,” and “bicycle oil” becomes a “icicle boil.”
 
Name what people who are making a circular argument do with the question at hand, in one word. Now name what curious people do with a question, in two words. Single-side-spoonerize the one word with the first of the two words to form something edible, in one word, and a receptacle in which this food is sometimes placed, in one word.
(Note: What’s important here is how these spoonerized words sound, not how they are spelled.)

What are the two things people do with a question? What are the food and its receptacle?    
         
Appetizer Menu

A Tiff In The Tabloids Appetizer:
Din! Clangor! Wives!

Tabloid newspapers such as the New York Post and New York Daily News are infamous for the headlines on their cover pages. The following four headlines may be possible candidates to grace the front pages of the tabloids Friday, March 25 editions:

“Din! Clangor! Wives!”
“Die, Raving Clowns!”
“Caviling Wonders”
“Clown Divas Reign”

Rearrange the letters in any of these four fake headlines to spell out an epithet that epitomizes the verbal back-and-forth donnybrook that might have inspired these headlines.

What is the epithet, who snarled it, and to whom was it snarled?


A Palindrome About Peg Appetizer:
“Bro, flog a golf orb!”

A fortnight ago we ran a puzzle titled “Palindromic Slice: Ice fishtailing.” It challenged Puzzlerians! to recognize the classic palindrome “Able was I ere I saw Elba” hidden within seven compound words.
The puzzle below also involves a palindrome, albeit not a classic one. (That’s the understatement of the year!)

I wrote the multi-limerick verse below many years ago, along with the related 13-word palindrome (indicated by blank spaces that solvers must fill in). Many of the words in the palindrome appear in the limerick, but not all of them. One of the words that does appear in the limerick appears twice in palindrome.

Hint: The palindrome includes a double-negative. Also, an adjective in the verse appears in the palindrome in one of its noun forms.

There once was a golf pro named Peg
Who shunned books but read every dogleg.
In her family she wore
The “jock” tag, less or more…
Hubby Ned had a head like an egg.

Ned read nothing but books night and day,
Never ever a sport did he play.
        But Ned’s gut got all churny
When Peg won a big tourney,
He feigned joy but inside he felt gray.

But green envy supplanted that gray
When Ned spied the sports headlines next day…
        In bold text: “Peg Wins Crown!”
       Now Ned really felt down,
So erased till he rubbed “Peg” away.
 
When just “... Wins Crown!” was all that Peg read
She suspected her vengeful spouse Ned…
        “Ned just might rub my name
Were he burdened with shame.”
Peg consulted her best friend, who said:

“__ __ __   __ __ __ __   __ __ __ __?
__ __ __   __ __ __ __ __ ,   __ __ __!
__ __ __ __ __   __ __ __   __ __ __ __ __ __ __
__ __ __ __ __ __ __   __ __ __   __ __ __’ __
__ __ __ __ __ __.

MENU

Seeking Healing And Miraclulous Enlightenment Slice:
Pilgrim’s Evolutionary Progress

Many different groups go on, or want to go on, pilgrimages.
Some of these are: The Ganges River; Mecca; Golden Temple; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Lourdes, France; Bahai Gardens; Vatican; Machu Picchu; Rumi’s Tomb; Konya, Turkey; Stonehenge and Catedral de Santiago de Compostela.

Gorillas have been thinking of establishing one for themselves. Can you discover where this proposed site is?

Hints: The answer is a homophone. The gorillas’ pilgrimage site is not in Africa, but it is an actual place of great beauty that is visited by millions.


Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle this past week read:
Think of a common nine-letter word that contains five consecutive consonants. Take three consecutive consonants out of the five and replace them with vowels to form another common five-letter word. What is it?

Here are our “rip-off/riff-off” puzzles:

Objects in your mirror may appear… under construction

Think of a somewhat common ten-letter word that contains five consecutive consonants, like “thumbscrew,” for example. Write the word in lowercase letters. Invert the mirror image of the word’s fourth letter. Replace the fifth letter with a thing that begins with that letter. The result is a vehicle one might see at a construction site.
What is the ten-letter word? What is the vehicle?

Just what makes “Brooms tick?”...a good clue?

Think of a reasonably common ten-letter word that contains five consecutive consonants, like “thumbscrew,” for example. If the word were an answer in a New York Times Saturday crossword grid, puzzle editor Will Shortz might use “Broomstick?” as its clue.
What is this word?

“Will be, or not Will be?”

Think of a reasonably common nine-letter word that contains five consecutive consonants. Take three consecutive consonants out of the five and replace them with a three-letter word to form a new nine-letter word that is a synonym for “upsetting, disturbing, disagreeable.”
The six letters that remain if you remove the three-letter replacement word spell out a word meaning “the near future.” The three-letter replacement word (followed by “the”) means the absence of any future.
What are this three-letter word and this six-letter word? What are these two nine-letter words?

Circular turns spherical? It’s a Miracle!

Think of a reasonably common nine-letter word that contains five consecutive consonants. Double one of those consonants and remove the other four to form a six-letter word for a manipulation that can make a circular object appear spherical.
What are these two words?


Dessert Menu

Gardyloo! Dessert:
Gertrude Einstein

Name something you might see on a city sidewalk, in five letters. Name some other things you might see on a city sidewalk, in four letters. Both words are terms with which physics students are required to be familiar. Students of literature, however, are required to be familiar with them also.

What are these two words?

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.

27 comments:

  1. I have the GD of the Dessert Menu and also a 6-letter word that fits all the conditions...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ron,
      My five-letter word, if pluralized, is a six-letter word.

      LegoWhoseFiveLetterWordIsNotChildGooseMouseLouseFocusForumOrDatum

      Delete
    2. My 6-letter word is not pluralized.

      Delete
  2. Happy Easter to all! Lego, I may only need hints for the piggyback puzzles(all but one). The dessert puzzle I may or may not have.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the Easter greetings, patjberry. The dessert puzzle, judging from ron's post above, is likely to have alternative answers. It sounds like you are "dominoing" the piggybacks, judging from your post below... All will eventually fall.

      LegoJudgeAndJuryRigged

      Delete
    2. And fall they did. I just got that last piggyback answer. I can't say for sure with certain puzzles, but I do believe I have solved everything in record time this week! Hooray!

      Delete
    3. And without any hints, come to think of it! This week they were a lot easier, not last week as Lego said!

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I now have all but one of the piggyback answers.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good evening, fellow puzzle fans. I hope all is well with everyone.

    I knew the Morsel almost immediately (joy) and just figured out the Tabloids Appetizer. Haven't read the rest yet (except Dessert.)

    ReplyDelete
  6. My sources thus far have been unable to confirm that a certain high-ranking member of the current administration once visited the pilgrimage site.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My first guess was the Mekong River, which John Kerry may or may not have visited (he apparently did visit the Duong Keo, Bái Háp, Cửa Lớn, and Bồ Đề). Only then did I realize that the more likely to be correct answer is much closer to home and was very recently visited by Secretary Kerry's predecessor, along with many other famous people from the worlds of politics and entertainment.

      Delete
    2. And now, having read ron's answer, I realize I was still not quite right.

      Delete
    3. Wow! Impressive use of diacritical stuff in your 12:04 PM post, Paul.

      LegoWonders"HowDidPaulDoThat?"

      Delete
    4. Plain old copy and paste.

      Delete
    5. By the way, Paul. I deem your "Mekong River" to be a solid alternative answer to skydiveboy's challenge. "Mekong Delta" works also. Or "Mekong Deltoids."

      LegoLambdaMekongDeltaJoeKappaCatherineZeta-Jones

      Delete
  7. I neglected to mention that I had solved the morsel.

    Tsk.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Puzzlemaster Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle from yesterday is interesting, I believe. Here is the way it is presented on the NPR website:

    {“Next week's challenge: The University Press of New England has just published a book by Boston College professor Paul Lewis, called The Citizen Poets of Boston: A Collection of Forgotten Poems, 1789-1820. It has a chapter devoted to puzzles in poetic form. Most of the puzzles are explained — but one puzzle never had a printed answer.
    I'd like to see if the collective brainpower of NPR listeners can be brought to bear to clear up this mystery. It's a two-line verse from the Nov. 12, 1803, issue of the Boston Weekly Magazine:
    I am both man and woman too,
    And go to school as good boys do.
    If you can solve this riddle, let us know. I'll select what I think is the best answer that's submitted. If no one sends what I judge to be the intended answer, then I'll pick what I consider the most ingenious one, whether it's "correct" or not.}

    It is interesting because it gives us insight into what puzzles were like more than two centuries ago. (And, the puzzle is actually at least more than two-and-a-half centuries old, as you can see from this link posted yesterday on Blaine’s blog by Blainesvillian ecoarchitect, who did some really crackerjack research.

    My first attempt to solve the puzzle yielded an answer that involved a fishy homophone. I soon abandoned it as being too far-fetched.

    I then stumbled upon a solution that involves a homograph. That is the one I shall send in to NPR. My ROSS (Ripping Off Shortz Slices) this Friday will be patterned after this solution.

    But then, I learned of an even better solution that a Puzzlerian! (whose puzzle chops I respect) shared with me. I am almost certain that this solution intended by the anonymous 18th-Century creator of the “rebus” puzzle. And, I suspect it is also the solution Will came up with... (that is, “up with which Will came”!).

    * A hint to the solution I shall submit: “in the midst of a rainbow.”

    * A hint to the solution I believe may win you an NPR lapel pin:
    If I were to send this solution in to NPR as my own, I would be nothing but a fraud, conniver, masquerader, deceiver, pretender, knavem, cozener, humbug, crook, dissembler, coney catcher, fourflusher. (In buildings with low water pressure, you too may sometimes have to be a fourflusher!)

    LegoGivesThanksToTyranthesaurusRex

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dessert Menu: GD:
    METER (parking meter) (physics: unit of distance) (literature: rhythmic pattern of a stanza)
    FEET (physics: unit of distance) (literature: unit of poetic meter)
    STRESS (6-letter word often seen in the faces of pedestrians on a sidewalk) (physics: internal distribution of force) (literature: emphasis placed on a syllable or word)

    PES:
    The gorillas would want to make a pilgrimage to SAN SIMEON (to honor the Simian Saint) or to SIMIAN MOUNTAIN.

    ROSS:
    1. DUMbSTRUCK>>>DUMP SAND TRUCK (SAND DUMP TRUCK)
    2. WITCHCRAFT
    3.OFFSPRING>>>END>>>OFFENDING>>>THE END
    4. ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I like your "stress" answer, ron. Lotsa stress on the sidewalks and streets. Another spot-on alternative answer.

      LegoAdds"AndICannotStressThatEnough"

      Delete
  10. Congratulations ron! You solved the gorilla puzzle. I don't think the gorillas are required to walk seven times counter-clockwise around the Hearst Castle though.

    ReplyDelete
  11. EGG, BASKET(beg, ask it)
    SNIVELING COWARD(Ted Cruz said it about Donald Trump)
    "Ned rubs name? Not never, Peg! Never did revenge prevent one man's burden!"
    SAN SIMEON(simian)
    DUMBSTRUCK, DUMP TRUCK
    WITCHCRAFT
    OFFENDING, OFFING, END
    FILMSTRIP, FILLIP
    METERS and FEET

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And OFFSPRING with OFFENDING, OFFING, and END.

      Delete
  12. I have NOT looked above to see other puzzle-solvers' solutions. I got only a few this week, regrettably:

    MAD BUNNY MORSEL: BEG and ASK IT; EGG and BASKET

    TABLOIDS APPETIZER: "SNIVELING COWARD" Snarler: CRUZ Snarlee: TRUMP.

    RIP OFF SLICES:

    1. Objects in Your Mirror: DUMBSTRUCK and DUMPTRUCK [although this solution merely eliminated the 's', instead of having replaced it with a word]

    2. Broomstick Good Clue: WITCHCRAFT

    DESSERT: LIGHT and ???

    ReplyDelete
  13. This week’s official answers for the record, Part 1:
    Morsel Menu

    Single-sided Spoon-feeding Morsel:
    Mad bunnies, icicle boils and shoulder ooze
    Spoonerism” is an umbrella term that covers a variety of phonetic transpositions, such as “pack of lies” morphing into “lack of pies.” Or like “bad money” becoming “mad bunny” (which is not a good thing at all around Easter time!).
    Let us now label a specific class of spoonerisms as “single-sided spoonerisms.” These spoonerisms are defined as pairs of words in which only one of the words begins with a consonant or consonant blend. For a few examples, single-side-spoonerizing “older shoes” results in “shoulder ooze,” and “bicycle oil” becomes a “icicle boil.”
    Name what people who are making a circular argument do with the question at hand, in one word. Now name what curious people do with a question, in two words. Single-side-spoonerize the one word with the first of the two words to form something edible, in one word, and a receptacle in which this food is sometimes placed, in one word.
    (Note: What’s important here is how these spoonerized words sound, not how they are spelled.)
    What are the two things people do with a question? What are the food and its receptacle?

    Answer:
    People making circular arguments BEG the question, and curious people ASK IT.
    The food is an EGG; the receptacle is a BASKET. (Don’t put all of yours in one!)

    Appetizer Menu

    A Tiff In The Tabloids Appetizer:
    Din! Clangor! Wives!
    Tabloid newspapers such as the New York Post and New York Daily News are infamous for the headlines on their cover pages. The following four headlines may be possible candidates to grace the front pages of the tabloids’ Friday, March 25 editions:
    “Din! Clangor! Wives!”
    “Die, Raving Clowns!”
    “Caviling Wonders”
    “Clown Divas Reign”
    Rearrange the letters in any of these four fake headlines to spell out an epithet that epitomizes the verbal back-and-forth donnybrook that might have inspired these headlines.
    What is the epithet, who snarled it, and to whom was it snarled?

    Answer:
    sniveling coward”; Twd Cruz; Donald Trump

    Lego…

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Ted," not "Twd" Cruz!

      LegoMuses"Dubya"...ThatIsSoooo2004!

      Delete
  14. This week’s official answers for the record, Part 2:

    A Palindrome About Peg Appetizer:
    “Bro, flog a golf orb!”
    A fortnight ago we ran a puzzle titled “Palindromic Slice: Ice fishtailing.” It challenged Puzzlerians! to recognize the classic palindrome “Able was I ere I saw Elba” hidden within seven compound words.
    The puzzle below also involves a palindrome, albeit not a classic one. (That’s the understatement of the year!)
    I wrote the multi-limerick verse below many years ago, along with the related 13-word palindrome (indicated by blank spaces that solvers must fill in). Many of the words in the palindrome appear in the limerick, but not all of them. One of the words that does appear in the limerick appears twice in palindrome.
    Hint: The palindrome includes a double-negative. Also, an adjective in the verse appears in the palindrome in one of its noun forms.
    There once was a golf pro named Peg
    Who shunned books but read every dogleg.
    In her family she wore
    The “jock” tag, less or more…
    Hubby Ned had a head like an egg.
    Ned read nothing but books night and day,
    Never ever a sport did he play.
    But Ned’s gut got all churny
    When Peg won a big tourney,
    He feigned joy but inside he felt gray.
    But green envy supplanted that gray
    When Ned spied the sports headlines next day…
    In bold text: “Peg Wins Crown!”
    Now Ned really felt down,
    So erased till he rubbed “Peg” away.
    When just “... Wins Crown!” was all that Peg read
    She suspected her vengeful spouse Ned…
    “Ned just might rub my name
    Were he burdened with shame.”
    Peg consulted her best friend, who said:

    “__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __?
    __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ , __ __ __!
    __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
    __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __’ __
    __ __ __ __ __ __.”

    Answer:
    “Ned rubs name? Not never, Peg. Never did revenge prevent one man’s burden.”

    MENU

    Seeking Healing And Miraclulous Enlightenment Slice:
    Pilgrim’s Evolutionary Progress
    Many different groups go on, or want to go on, pilgrimages.
    Some of these are: The Ganges River; Mecca; Golden Temple; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Lourdes, France; Bahai Gardens; Vatican; Machu Picchu; Rumi’s Tomb; Konya, Turkey; Stonehenge and Catedral de Santiago de Compostela.
    Gorillas have been thinking of establishing one for themselves. Can you discover where this proposed site is?
    Hints: The answer is a homophone. The gorillas’ pilgrimage site is not in Africa, but it is an actual place of great beauty that is visited by millions.

    Answer: San Simeon, CA, home of the Hearst Castle (“Simeon” is a homophone of “simian.”)

    Lego…

    ReplyDelete