Feeling the burn… the rubber burn! Add one by multiplying reflexively; Wanted: A President of Vice; ViolinTeddy, Voila! Ta-daaa! Ramifying “rock it” tree; Disemvowelment; Four ripsnorters; Passage-egressive behavior; Chanson de Chiding;

P! SLICES: OVER e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹ SERVED

Welcome to our third year of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We have served up 427 puzzles in the course the past two years. That’s a tad more than e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹, if we’ve done our math correctly.

Someone who always does his wordplay correctly is Patrick Berry (screen name: patjberry), who again offers us one of his magnum opera this week – a “rock opus,” so to speak. 

Patrick’s tour de force appears immediately under our main MENU, and is titled: “Slice Of The Seventies: Ramifying “rock it” tree.”

Also on this week’s menus – youse men, women, girl and boy puzzlers – we are serving up:

6 “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” piggyback puzzles;

1 Hors d’Oeuvre revealing Trump’s running mate;

1 Morsel requiring vowel movement… actually, vowel elimination;

1 Morsel that requires math; and

1 Dessert in honor of our virtuoso puzzle performer, ViolinTeddy.

So, please join us as we embark upon Year Three… As for youse, don’t bark up any wrong trees as you paw your way up to solving our puzzles. But, as always, enjoy:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Hot Info Hors d’Oeuvre:

Wanted: A President of Vice

Breaking News: I have insider information about whom Donald Trump will choose as his vice-presidential running mate. I have gained access to his short list of vice-presidential candidates. It is a list that contains but five names – la creme de la creme!

 

I have “mocked-up” a trio of newspaper headlines that may well appear after Mr. Trump reveals his choice. But all three of these headlines could be replaced with one single headline consisting of three words of 4, 2 and 5 letters, in that order.

Those 11 letters in that headline could be rearranged to form a word that has been way too ubiquitous in news stories during the past few days.

What is this 11-letter headline? What is the excessively ubiquitous word?

Hint: The ubiquitous word describes the headline. 

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

Passage-egressive behavior

(Note: I previewed the following puzzle as a “sneak peek” on Blaine’s blog this past Sunday (Sun May 01, 08:26:00 AM PDT). It is a “rip-off” of Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle broadcast on May 1 this past week. David, who posts astute comments on puzzle blogs, solved my rip-off puzzle.)

Will’s puzzle read:

Think of a word that means “entrance.” Interchange the second and fourth letters, and you’ll get a new word that means “exit.” What words are these?

Here is our Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

Think of a word (not found in dictionaries, but familiar to many people worldwide) that provides a means of “entrance.” Interchange the second and fourth letters, and you’ll get a new word that means “egress.”

What words are these?

Morsel Menu

Diss A Vowel Morsel:

Disemvowelment

Remove all the vowels from a six-syllable noun. Remove only one of its consonants, the one that also appears earlier in the word.

The result suggests a group of people, some of whom have in recent months been legally deemed to have no eligibility to access certain places.

What is this six-syllable word? What is the group of people.

Irrational Morsel:

Add one by multiplying reflexively

Find a number whose square is equal to itself plus one, and whose inverse is equal to itself minus one.

Or, to put it perhaps a tad more elegantly: 

Find a number whose value is one more than its inverse, and one less than its square.

Hint: The number is an irrational number.

Appetizer Menu

Song Of Rudeness Appetizer:

Chanson de Chiding

Name the title of a song, in two words, that you may well have heard played more than once during the past fortnight. Add a consonant sound to the end of the second word to form what sounds like a new word (a verb) when you say it aloud. 

Both the first word in the song title and this new word are related to a general sense of chiding, contempt, criticism and derision.

What are these two words? What is the song title?

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:

Feeling the burn… the rubber burn!  

(Note: I did not post the following puzzle on Blaine’s blog this past Sunday, but I did hint at it: (Sun May 01, 04:22:00 PM PDT). It is a “riff-off” of Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle broadcast on May 1 this past week. I did not post it on Blaine’s blog because its text includes a word – “getaway” – that is a part of the solution to Will’s puzzle. Printing “getaway” would have been a “giveaway.” I also hinted that this particular puzzle illustrates “the sole advantage that I, as a written word blogger, have over Dr. Shortz, as an NPR broadcaster.”)

My puzzle reads:

Think of a word that means “entrance.” Interchange the second and fourth letters and add a space, and you’ll get a new two-word expression that describes what the driver of a bank robbery getaway car might do to his engine so as to facilitate a hasty “exit” from the scene of the crime.

What three words are these?

 

MENU

Slice Of The Seventies:

Ramifying “rock it” tree

Name a rock legend, first and last names. The first name is a palindrome (that is, it reads the same forward and backward). The last name has a pattern of “consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant.”

This rocker had a hit album in the mid-1970s with a two-word title that contains a V. Remove the V and rearrange the rest to get a one-word title of a classic song from a memorable 1960s rock group with a prolific songwriting duo that, surprisingly, did NOT write this particular classic song.

The rocker’s mid-1970s album also included a hit song with a one-word title, although most people write it as two words. (It is usually written as two words, for example, when it refers to the stereotypical name of a place in “Smalltown, USA.”) The letters in this title can be rearranged to spell a synonym for the plural word “ends.”

Now add to the rocker’s one-word title the V that you had removed from his/her two-word album title. Rearrange this result to get the name of a well-known actor, writer and comedy legend who is also musically inclined. He had a hit novelty record in the late-1970s, yet, surprisingly, his instrument of choice is NOT featured in the song.

In its third season, a long-running variety show featured this comedy legend as a guest host and a rock legend as a musical guest. The first big hit of a very popular rock group of the 1970s was co-written by this rock legend and a recently deceased member of the group who, with a second member of the group, became a prolific songwriting duo, some might say one of the best since the aforementioned duo from the 1960s band. The 1970s band’s name sounds a little like that of the 1960s band, differing only by a couple of letters.

The three words in the title of the 1970s band’s first big hit would be used in two other of their hits: the first two words began a five-word hit title; and the third word was the middle word in another three-word title. The cowriters of the band’s first big hit possess surnames which, when spoken aloud, sound like synonyms for the word “cook.”

Take the third word in the title of the band’s first big hit, replace a vowel with a different vowel and rearrange these letters to form the final word (it is plural) in the titles of two hits – one by the rock legend who co-wrote the big hit, the other by the band who had the hit.

The three title words of the band’s first big hit appear in the chorus of a 1970s song by a group with a “nonsensical-sounding” one-word name. This song’s title contains two words. If you change the first word’s first letter to the letter preceding it in the alphabet and then place that new letter at the end of the second word, you get the one-word title (which, again, seems as if it ought to be two words) of a rock song by a different 1970s group. Both songs, incidentally, were hits in the same year, 1975.

A few years later, the rock legend (who was mentioned at the very beginning of this puzzle) had a hit song with a two-word title that featured backup vocals from the deceased musician. The two words in the title, if spoonerized, sound like two synonyms of the word “pretender,” which appears in the title of an album by the second rock legend mentioned in this puzzle. This second legend also had an album title song containing three words in which are hidden a four-letter word that 1) describes the deceased musician, and 2) is the second word in a two-word title of a hit song by that deceased musician’s band, a song on which he sang lead vocals.

Who are these rock legends and rock bands, and what are the titles of the songs to which this puzzle alludes? Who is the comedy legend, what is his instrument of choice, and what is the title of his novelty record?

What are the two synonyms of “cook” and the two synonyms of “pretender”?

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

Four ripsnorters

ONE: Think of a word that means “tear.” Replace one of its letters with a different one, and you’ll get a new word that means “sew up.” What words are these?

TWO: Think of a word that means “tear.” Replace its vowel with a different vowel and rearrange the letters, and you’ll get a new word that means “sew up.” What words are these?

THREE: Think of a word that means “tear” (or at least is closely associated with “tear”). Replace its first and third letters (which are adjacent to each other in the alphabet) to two other letters (which are also adjacent to each other in the alphabet), and you’ll get a new word that means “sew up.” What words are these?

 

FOUR: Think of an antonym of “tear,” the second syllable of which rhymes with “tear.” Remove that second syllable. Rearrange the letters in another word for “billiards sticks” and place the result in front of the first syllable, and you’ll get a new word that means “sew up.” What words are these?

Dessert Menu

Basking In Baked Alaska Dessert:

ViolinTeddy, Voila! Ta-daaa!

“Just before performing a solo virtuoso Brahms scherzo for violin, ViolinTeddy (five-letter present-tense verb; one-letter article; three-letter noun) in hand.

After her performance, ViolinTeddy (five-letter present-tense verb; one-letter article; three-letter noun) as she is given a hand, virtually basking in the warmth of the well-deserved standing ovation.”

The two red italicized three-word parenthetical phrases above look exactly the same when you read them in this written context, but sound slightly different when you hear them spoken aloud. (ViolinTeddy’s violinitry, on the other hand, always sounds, when performed aloud, consistently mellifluous!)

What is this three-word, nine-letter phrase?

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 Wednesdays 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.