Friday, April 29, 2016

The answer is not (W)Al Green; Spoonin' with the buffoons; Singing drugstore cowboys (and cowgals?); Warblers, not Woofers; Eddie Cantor lives! A desperate cry for hell;


PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e6 + pi2 SERVED

Welcome to our April 29th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! This edition marks the end of our second year of original nutty and knotty puzzletry. Next Friday we shall begin our third year of Puzzleria!

We’re serving up six piping-fresh puzzles this week, including three of the “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” variety – an Hors d’Oeuvre, Appetizer and Slice. 

Also on our menus this week are a “novel” Morsel, a “doggonerel” Slice, and a mix ‘n’ match Dessert.

So, Think Good, It’s Friday TGIF). And, as always, enjoy:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:
The answer is not (W)Al Green

Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle this past week reads:

Name a famous singer – first and last names. The last four letters of the first name spelled backward plus the first four letters of the last name spelled forward – read together, in order – name a section of products in a drugstore. What is it?

Here is our Puzzlerian! Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:


Name a famous singer – first and last names. Take all but the second letter of the first name and spell the result backward. Place this in front of the first four letters of the last name spelled forward. Read the result in order to name a section of products in a drugstore.



What is this section? Who is the singer?



Morsel Menu

Minkskin Morsel:
Eddie Cantor lives!

Background and plot outline for a novel:
1941, Minsk, Belorussia: The German Army occupies the city. The Nazis round up thousands of Jewish refugees, executing the majority and imprisoning the rest in a ghetto erected on the outskirts of Minsk.

Within the ghetto, a Jewish resistance movement arises with help from the Communist underground. As the Holocaust and World War II wear on, the resistance succeeds in enabling approximately 10,000 Jews to escape from the ghetto to surrounding forests.

Embedded deep within the underground resistance network is a sub-network of yeshivas in which rabbis and seminarians resurrect the ancient tradition and spirit of “cabala” (which in Hebrew means “reception” in the sense of “hospitality” ). These underground cabals surreptitiously host Jewish refugees, providing them asylum until a safe pathway to freedom becomes possible.

The working title of the novel is “Cabals Via Yeshivas.”

Rearrange the 17 letters in that title to form the names of two Singers – one fictional, the other real. Both Singers, but especially the real one, have an ethnic connection to the subject of the novel and to the two longer words in its title.

Who are these two Singers?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:
Warblers, not Woofers  

Click this link (and look under Next Week’s”) to read Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle from this past week. Now solve the riff-off puzzle below:

Name a section of products in a drugstore, a three-syllable plural word. Bisect the word. Add a letter to the beginning of the first half to name a well-known musical.

Take a synonym of “warble,” delete one of its double-letters and replace its vowel with a different vowel. Place this result after the second half of the plural three-syllable drugstore word to form a synonym of “musician.”

What is this drugstore product section? What are the musical and the synonyms of warble and musician?
 
MENU

Sons Of Unspayed Doggerel Slice:
A desperate cry for hell

Hell fires are stoked by fossil fuel that filth enriches.
The lecher, thief and liar are sons of sinful itches.
If heretics in hell have fun though, I’m a shoo-in…
So donate to my cause, effect my hellish ruin.

Each line in the quatrain above contains a number of words that contain a total of exactly 17 letters. Those letters can be rearranged to form a 17-letter four-word phrase that has been quoted in recent news stories.

What is the phrase?

Hint: In three of the quatrain’s lines, the “number of words” is three. In a fourth line, the “number of words” is four.

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:
Singing drugstore cowboys (and cowgals?)

Click this link (and look under Next Week’s”) to read Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle from this past week. Now solve the rip-off puzzle below:

Name a famous female singer from the past – first and last names. Add a letter somewhere in the last name to form the last name of a male singer. Delete a letter from the first name, leaving a last name shared by a pair of hall of fame singers.
 
Name one of the male singer’s band mates (another male) from a hall of fame band. The last four letters of this band mate’s first name, spelled backward, form a noun that applies to the female singer at the beginning of the puzzle. 

The first, fourth and final letters of the male band mate’s last name are the same as the first, fourth and final letters of another male singer with the same first name. Both singers once played in bands with “avian” names. The first four letters in the second male singer’s last name are the first name of a female hall of fame singer from the past. The four-letter noun that applied to the other past female singer has sometimes also been applied to this singer (albeit in a somewhat looser sense).
 
Who are, in order: The past singer, the male singer, the two hall of fame singers with the same last name, the male singer’s band mate, the male singer who shares that band mate’s first name, and the second past singer?

What is the noun that has been applied to both past singers? What are the two bands with “avian” names?

Dessert Menu

Campagne For Dessert:
Spoonin with the buffoons


Each of the ten images pictured below is labeled with a number from 1 to 10 in its upper-left-hand corner. 

Write a two-word caption for each image, then arrange the ten images into five appropriate pairs: 
(For convenience, you can use the 1-to-10 labeling in your answer.)



































































































































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 <b>Wednesdays</b> 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.

40 comments:

  1. Congrats on 2 years of puzzling fun, lego!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lego, I thought you wrote me back about my most recent puzzle being included in this week's edition. What happened?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow! Twice as many candles on the cake this time. Are you up to it, Lego?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All I know, sdb, is that we are about to embark on the "terrible twos!"

      ChiLegoChiLegoThatToddlin'Town...

      Delete
  4. I already have the Jewish singer puzzle, the warble puzzle, and the hall-of-fame singer puzzle. Will need hints for the first drugstore puzzle, the hell puzzle, and the photo puzzle, as well as an explanation as to why my latest puzzle idea was NOT included as I was originally led to believe. Are you saving mine for next week, Lego?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I apologize, pjb. Your latest puzzle, which I shall run next week, is beautiful and brilliant (as usual), but labyrinthine and loquacious (also as usual). I want to do it justice regarding its "packaging," etc. Also, my "real life" intruded this week, forcing me to usher my "cyber-life" onto a back seat on the back burner (Ouch!).

      I believe you have already solved the "trickiest" of my challenges this week. I also believe you should give the other three a little more effort ere I dole out hints you really do not need. 'Tis still early on in the game.

      LegoDeemspjb'sPendingPuzzleToBeAnotherMasterpiece

      Delete
    2. I hope everything is alright at your abode (above), Lego....

      Am not having a good puzzle week, personally. I've been able to solve ONLY the Morsel (just now), and earlier today, the Appetizer, and figuring out the 17 letters from the Hell puzzle. BUT, no matter how I've tried, I can't turn them into a four-word news phrase, even though I've picked out a word here and there that seems like it OUGHT to lead to something...it never does.

      Delete
    3. Thanks for your concern, VT, concerning my bode-ill-or-bode-well adobe abode.

      The first word of the four-word quotation is a proper noun pertinent to the quatrain's general topic. The news story broke on Thursday.

      LegoLinkingPoliticallyIncorrectly

      Delete
    4. I appreciate the hint, Lego, but sadly, I have still come up dry. I double-checked to make SURE that the string of 17 letters I have is correct from all four lines (given my last week's 'goof' re 'balmy'...geez), so unless there are TWO sets of letters that can be made from the given three and four words per line, I am stumped.

      Delete
    5. VT,

      The four-word quotation (7, 2, 3, 5 letters) putatively characterizes one of the people pictured in this week's Dessert. The quotation was uttered by an erstwhile Speaker.

      LegoLucyInTheSheolWithDiabolism

      Delete
    6. Okay, Lego, that gave it to me...I had been nowhere close in my news -hunting efforts, and had certainly MISSED that entire story last week. Happily, though, my 17 letters were all correct. Thanks again!

      Delete
  5. It was hell, but I got the anagram in that one.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got one of the Singers, but couldn't figure how to turn the remaining letters into another one, so I fashioned what seemed to be the most plausible arrangement, plugged it into a search engine, and voilà.
    That's a weight off my mind, I can tell you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I got the appetizer.
    God forbid I should sow dissent by offering a bad hint.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Discord. Should've said discord. Oh well, Joshua's a capable young man.

      Delete
    2. Discord is how I start my chainsaw.

      Delete
    3. And the reason your neighbors file a petition to get an injunction to prohibit your usage of said chainsaw.

      Delete
    4. Some people stop their free falls with ripcords. Others start their Cobras with Rip Chords.

      LegoWhoFreeFallsThroughLifeCladInRippedCords

      Delete
    5. Are calling my neighbors injuns?

      Delete
    6. At the risk of having a PC court slap an injunction on me, the term "Injun" might actually be kosher, according to this site, which hypothesizes:
      "Injun, is not a racial or ethnic slur as people want it to be. It was a convention of the word indigenious which describes a group of people that inhabit a geographical area.
      Are you Injun? Meaning: Are you native?"

      LegoHonestInjun...Joe

      Delete
    7. I think we should postpone (as opposed to prepone) this discussion until next month. In June.

      Delete
  8. I still don't have the first or last puzzle. Now may I have a few hints, Lego?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. pjb,

      Hints:

      ROSHO:

      The famous singer was before your time – died less than a month after JFK died. But his/her birthplace is an “earthplace” that is near and dear to you. (How’s that for a personalized hint!)
      The “section of products in a drugstore” is essential for OR personnel. A biblical figure with the initials P.P. could have used this line of products also.


      CFD:
      “Spoonin’” is a clue.
      None of the five prexy candidates are paired with each other. The easiest pair to decipher, probably, IMO, involves the Donald. The toughest pair to decipher, probably, IMO, involves the candidate who is polling the lowest.
      Speaking of Poles, a Polish singer and a country singer make appearances in the images.

      LegoAsks”WhyDidTheElephantGoToTheDentist?”

      Delete
    2. Wow, I'd been unable to get anywhere on the Hors D'Oeuvre puzzle myself, either, but your hint above just served it up to me....i.e. while searching lists. Good thing, too, because I had never heard of that particular singer at all....although I HAD already found another singer with the same first name, and had noted to myself that doing the 'backwards thing' (whilst removing the second letter) of the first name sounded suspiciously propitious! However, that other singer's last name didn't cooperate, so I'd given up. [I doubled checked your special hint to pjb, as well, to make sure.] Thanks!!!

      Delete
    3. Shor 'nuff, ViolinTeddy, no problemo!

      LegoWikipediaSaysYourSingerOnceDatedACareyNotNamedMariah

      Delete
  9. I'm tickled pink to report that I just took a concerted stab at the second Menu slice (Singing Cowboys, etc), and making use of the Avian band name hint, thence the 'noun' comment, and so on, worked my way backwards to finally nabbing all the singers' names, etc. Cool. I had truly thought this puzzle was going to escape me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pretty impressive, VT, for an artist such as you who are imbued with the classics, rather than with the "MamaCassics."

      LegoLikeALarryBirdSingingInTheSycamoreTree

      Delete
    2. Verily, I blush, LegoBird! Actually, this time, I knew all the folks involved, which is a pleasant change!

      Unlike pjb, I am still completely stuck on the Dessert. I'm pretty sure I have the correct two-word title for #s 2 and 5, but all the others, well?? And forget it, re the pairings. Not a clue.

      Delete
  10. Got the first one! Thanks, Lego! And now I've just figured out the last puzzle! Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Dessert Hints:

    Of the twenty total words that make up the ten two-word captions five words are candidates’ surnames.
    # 1 Describe what you see.
    # 2 Describe the trio of critters you see.
    # 3 .First a name a candid date, then name a critter
    # 4 describes the woman committing the crime.
    # 5 is a photo of four siblings, one of them a “Polish Prince.”
    # 6 describes the action with a subject and present-tense predicate.
    # 7 Simply switch to surnames.
    # 8 The toys pictured around the perimeter are fancy and hifalutin. Include them not in your caption.
    # 9 Name the vehicle
    # 10 Describe what you see.

    LegoThenPairThemAllUpWithAOneGoodTurnOops!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is hilarious. (I so appreciate the above hints....there would have been NO WAY otherwise.) Lo and behold, the light suddenly dawned.....and actually, I had had the WRONG two words for #'s 2 and 5....I'd written down 'Goose Step" and "Valli Girls" (thinking that the #7 guy was Frankie Valli).....and thus I figured you were going for little joke phrases, or something. But when I started redoing my two-word phrases with the hints above, it all became clear what you were really after!

      However, I absolutely has not known who the guy is with Bernie in #7....but now knowing what his last name had to begin with, I FINALLY found him (yet another person I'd never heard of.) All in all, once again, most clever stuff, Lego!

      Delete
  12. I'm already done, y'all! See ya Wednesday! BTW VT, if you have #s 2 and 5, then you should also have 1 and 7. Think about it!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I sort of remembered the hat, but I didn't see the movie, so, when I discovered that Woody's character was Alvy, it was a weight off my mind. Get it? I may have read Gimpel the Fool around about the same era.

    Although one might troll an ancient yuletide carol, that's not the same as warbling it, so a hint of that nature could only have been meant to stir up trouble.

    I searched and found the singer who died in December of '63.

    ReplyDelete
  14. HORS D'OEUVRE: DINAH WASHINGTON; HAND WASH

    MORSEL: CABALS VIA YESHIVAS -> ISAAC BASHEVIS (Singer) & ALVY "Max Singer" in Annie Hall

    APPETIZER: (Warbler, not Woofers): VITAMINS; EVITA; TRILL; MINSTREL

    MENU (Sons of Unspayed Doggerel Slice):
    1. ENRICHES FUEL FILTH = C E E E F F H H I I L L N R S T U
    2. LECHER SINFUL THIEF = C E E E F F H H I I L L N R S T U
    3. IF HERETICS HELL FUN = C E E E F F H H I I L L N R S T U
    4. EFFECT HELLISH RUIN = C E E E F F H H I I L L N R S T U Quote: LUCIFER IN THE FLESH

    MENU (Singing Drugstore Cowboys and Cowgals): Female Singer: BEVERLY SILLS; Male Singer: STEPHEN SILLS; Two Hall of Fame Singers: EVERLY BROTHERS; Sills's Bandmate: DAVID CROSBY; Same First Name: DAVID CASSIDY; Second past female Singer: CASS ELLIOTT; Noun: DIVA; Bands: THE BYRDS & THE PARTIDGE FAMILY

    DESSERT: 1. CLINTON VAN 2. SILLY GANDERS 3. TRUMP DUCK 4. BOOZE CROOK 5. VINTON CLAN 6. KASICH BITES 7. GILLEY SANDERS 8. BASIC KITES 9. DUMP TRUCK 10. CRUZ BOOK Pairings: 3 and 9 (switching first letters); 1 and 5; 4 and 10; 6 and 8; 2 and 7.

    ReplyDelete
  15. DINAH WASHINGTON, HAND WASH
    ISAAC BASHEVIS, VALY(I have to be honest, I found a Valy who is a singer from Afghanistan. ALVY never occurred to me.)
    VITAMINS, EVITA, MINSTREL, TRILL
    "LUCIFER IN THE FLESH", what John Boehner called Ted Cruz
    BEVERLY SILLS, STEPHEN STILLS, PHIL AND DON EVERLY, DAVID CROSBY, DAVID CASSIDY, MAMA CASS ELLIOTT, DIVA, THE BYRDS, THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY
    1. CLINTON VAN 5. VINTON CLAN
    2. SILLY GANDERS 7. GILLEY SANDERS
    3. TRUMP DUCK 9. DUMP TRUCK
    4. BOOZE CROOK 10. CRUZ BOOK
    6. KASICH BITES 8. BASIC KITES
    Just come back from a medical checkup, and my A1Cs are up a little. Otherwise I'm fine!

    ReplyDelete
  16. This week’s official answers for the record, Part 1:

    Hors d’Oeuvre Menu
    Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:
    The answer is not (W)Al Green
    Name a famous singer – first and last names. Take all but the second letter of the first name and spell the result backward. Place this in front of the first four letters of the last name spelled forward. Read the result in order to name a section of products in a drugstore.
    What is this section? Who is the singer?

    Answer: handwash (or “hand-wash” or hand wash”);
    Dinah Washington

    Morsel Menu
    Minkskin Morsel:
    Eddie Cantor lives!
    Background and plot outline for a novel:
    1941, Minsk, Belorussia: The German Army occupies the city. The Nazis round up thousands of Jewish refugees, executing the majority and imprisoning the rest in a ghetto erected on the outskirts of Minsk.
    Within the ghetto, a Jewish resistance movement arises with help from the Communist underground. As the Holocaust and World War II wear on, the resistance succeeds in enabling approximately 10,000 Jews to escape from the ghetto to surrounding forests.
    Embedded deep within the underground resistance network is a sub-network of yeshivas in which rabbis and seminarians resurrect the ancient tradition and spirit of “cabala” (which in Hebrew means “reception” in the sense of “hospitality” ). These underground cabals surreptitiously host Jewish refugees, providing them asylum until a safe pathway to freedom becomes possible.
    The working title of the novel is “Cabals Via Yeshivas.”
    Rearrange the 17 letters in that title to form the names of two Singers – one fictional, the other real. Both Singers, but especially the real one, have an ethnic connection to the subject of the novel and to the two longer words in its title.
    Who are these two Singers?

    Answer:
    Real Singer: Isaac Bashevis Singer
    Fictional Singer: Alvy Singer
    YESHIVAS + VIA + CABALS = ISAAC + BASHEVIS + ALVY

    Appetizer Menu
    Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:
    Warblers, not Woofers
    Name a section of products in a drugstore, a three-syllable plural word. Bisect the word. Add a letter to the beginning of the first half to name a well-known musical.
    Take a synonym of “warble,” delete one of its double-letters and replace its vowel with a different vowel. Place this result after the second half of the plural three-syllable drugstore word to form a synonym of “musician.”
    What is this drugstore product section? What are the musical and the synonyms of warble and musician?

    Answer: Vitamins;
    “Evita”; Trill; Minstrel

    Lego…

    ReplyDelete
  17. This week’s official answers for the record, Part 2:

    MENU

    Sons Of Unspayed Doggerel Slice:
    A desperate cry for hell
    Hell fires are stoked by fossil fuel that filth enriches.
    The lecher, thief and liar are sons of sinful itches.
    If heretics in hell have fun though, I’m a shoo-in…
    So donate to my cause, effect my hellish ruin.
    Each line in the quatrain above contains a number of words that contain a total of exactly 17 letters. Those letters can be rearranged to form a 17-letter four-word phrase that has been quoted in recent news stories.
    What is the phrase?
    Hint: In three of the quatrain’s lines, the “number of words” is three. In a fourth line, the “number of words” is four.

    Answer:
    “Lucifer in the flesh”
    See the words in bold (above) for the 17 letters in each line of the quatrain that can be rearranged to form >“Lucifer in the flesh.”

    Lego…

    ReplyDelete
  18. This week’s official answers for the record, Part 3:

    Ripping Off Shortz Slice:
    Singing drugstore cowboys (and cowgals?)
    Name a famous female singer from the past – first and last names. Add a letter somewhere in the last name to form the last name of a male singer. Delete a letter from the first name, leaving a last name shared by a pair of hall of fame singers.
    Name one of the male singer’s band mates (another male) from a hall of fame band. The last four letters of this band mate’s first name, spelled backward, form a noun that applies to the female singer at the beginning of the puzzle.
    The first, fourth and final letters of the male band mate’s last name are the same as the first, fourth and final letters of another male singer with the same first name. Both singers once played in bands with “avian” names. The first four letters in the second male singer’s last name are the first name of a female hall of fame singer from the past. The four-letter noun that applied to the other past female singer has sometimes also been applied to this singer (albeit in a somewhat looser sense).
    Who are, in order: The past singer, the male singer, the two hall of fame singers with the same last name, the male singer’s band mate, the male singer who shares that band mate’s first name, and the second past singer?
    What is the noun that has been applied to both past singers? What are the two bands with “avian” names?

    Answer:
    Beverly Sills; Steven Stills; Don and Phil Everly, the Everly Brothers; David Crosby, of Crosby, Stills, Nash (& Young)”; David Cassidy; (Mama) Cass Elliot
    Beverly Sills and Mama Cass have been called “divas.”
    David Crosby was in The Byrds. David Cassidy was in The Partridge Family.

    Dessert Menu

    Campagne For Dessert:
    Spoonin’ with the buffoons
    Each of the ten images pictured below is labeled with a number from 1 to 10 in its upper-left-hand corner.
    Write a two-word caption for each image, then arrange the ten images into five appropriate pairs:
    (For convenience, you can use the 1-to-10 labeling in your answer.)

    Answer:
    #1 Clinton Van; #5 Vinton Clan
    #2 Silly Ganders; #7 Gilley Sanders
    #3 Trump Duck; #9 Dump Truck
    #4 Booze Crook; #10 Cruz Book
    #6 Kasich Bites; #8 Basic Kites

    Lego…

    ReplyDelete