“Just trim a bit off the sides, please” Homeland obscurity; Lobbing rocks across the pond sterling; Prefixing a chipped truth; Shampoostrophe! John and Yo’OK Oh-no? All roads lead to Bedlam; Mel, Jon, Don, and Moses’ spy guy; Rhymes, Synonym… Hyphen!

P! SLICES: OVER e⁶ + pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to our June 24^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We feature this week a global geographical challenge created by our friend ron. 

It is titled “Anagramanational Slice: Homeland obscurity.”

You can find it beneath this week’s main MENU. 

Thank you, ron.

Also being served up on this week’s menus are:

Five “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” puzzles (involving rock “lobsters,” yeas and nays, domestic blades, roads to Bedlam, and a name game);

One Hors d’Oeuvre for you to rub into your scalp;

One Morsel that may require truth serum to solve; and

One Dessert YYYY solvers.

Yea, slice up the lobsters with cutlery blades, go a bit bonkers, sip some shampooin’ bubbly, chase it down with a snifter of truthiness serum, remain wise… and, as always, enjoy:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Headlining Internationally Hors d’Oeuvre:

Shampoostrophe!

Take a word that has lately been in international news headlines, and has been getting people worked up into quite a lather. If you say the word aloud it sounds like what might be, or might have been, a slogan or advertising catchphrase for a longtime shampoo brand.

The slogan would read:

_ _ _ _ _’_   _ _!

This phrase could be interpreted in two ways:

1. As an imperative proposition with the apostrophized word acting as a verb, and the two letter word a pronominal direct object. (For example, “Frank kept dropping hints, hoping his friends might ‘T.G.I.Friday’s him’ on his birthday.”)

2. Or, more plausibly, as a declarative statement with the apostrophized word acting as both subject and predicate, with a pronoun “pinch-hitting” for the direct object. (This interpretation of the slogan is syntactically similar to a 1968 campaign slogan.)

What is this slogan/catchphrase? What is the word making headlines?

Hint: The word making headlines in a portmanteau word.

Ripping Off Shortz And Isaak Hors d’Oeuvre:

Lobbing rocks across the pond sterling

Will Shortz’s June 19^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mark Isaak of Sunnyvale, California, reads:

Think of a word that means “unfinished.” Add one letter at the start and one letter at the end, and you’ll get a new word that means the opposite of the first. What words are these?

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz And Isaak Hors d’Oeuvre” reads:

Think of a unit of measurement used in the United States (and also in Britain, but with a different measurement value). Add one letter at the start and one letter at the end, and you’ll get a unit of measurement used in Britain but not in the U.S.

Convert the first unit of measurement (as used in the U.S.) into a number of smaller units of measurement. Convert the second (exclusively British) unit of measurement into a number of those same smaller units. The difference between those two numbers is a 5-digit number whose four rightmost digits form a significant year in American and British history.

What are these three units of measurement? What is the year?

Morsel Menu

True Or False Quiz Morsel:

Prefixing a chipped truth

Take a word that means to give a false impression of, or to show or prove something to be false. Now take a three-letter Latin-rooted prefix that denotes truth. 

Place this prefix at the end of the word (yes, the end) to form a word for one who accepts something as true.

What are these two words?

Riffing Off Shortz Morsel:

John and Yo’OK Oh-no?

Think of a word that is an expression of negation in English, and a word that is an expression of affirmation in a language other than English. Add one letter at the start and one letter at the end of the non-English word, and subtract one letter from the start and one letter from the end of the English word, and you’ll get the first names of a well-known couple. What names are these?

Appetizer Menu

Ripping Off Shortz Appetizer:

“Just trim a bit off the sides, please”

Think of two household items with blades, one used outdoors and the other usually used indoors. Remove one letter from the start and one letter from the end of the outdoor item, and remove one letter from the start and two letters from the end of the indoor item. You’ll get two new words that mean the opposite of each other.

What words are these? What items are these?

MENU

Anagramanational Slice:

Homeland obscurity

Each word you will be given (below) is an anagram of a country, but with one letter changed. For example, given the word “least,” if you change the “t” to a “w” it anagrams to WALES.

It is up to you, you “international men and women of mystery-solving” to “unEarth” the following “obscured homelands.”

1. empty

2. tiara

3. tribal

4. warden

5. amenity

6. elegant

7. glacier

8. senator

9. nails

10. cancer

Note: This puzzle was originally intended as an “on-air NPR challenge,” one in which contestants have no access to reference materials. Try solving these ten anagrams without using online help.

Riffing Off Shortz Slice:

All roads lead to Bedlam

Think of two words that are synonyms of “road.” From each word remove one letter from the start and one letter from the end, and you’ll get two new words that belong in the following informal phrase that means to be stark raving bonkers:

“to be ___ of one’s ____”

What are the synonyms of “road,” and the words that go in the blanks?

Dessert Menu

Puzzle YYYY Solvers Dessert:

Rhymes, Synonym… Hyphen!

Two synonymous slang words can be connected by a hyphen to form a third slang word that is a synonym of both. The hyphenated word rhymes with the full name – first and last names – of a movie director.

Who is this director, and what is the hyphenated word?

 

Ripping Off Shortz Dessert:

Mel, Jon, Don, and Moses’ spy guy

The names of the following four people share a particular property: a “politician” named Donald; an actor named Jon; a onetime stage name of an entertainer named “Mel” (not Shirley); and one of Moses’ 12 spies.

What are these four names and what property do they share?

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.

Peak-a-Boom! The honeydew of victory, the bee-sting of defeat; Measure for measure, chit for chat; Wolves shooting off their traps; Parable of the prodigal pupil; Winnie the pooh-pooher; Little emerald men from the crimson planet? Vinyl B-siding and LP gas

P! SLICES: OVER e⁶ + pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to our June 17^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

We feature this week a wonderfully wordplayful United States of America geographical challenge created by Mark Scott of Seattle, also known on the internet as skydiveboy. 

It is titled “Broketop Mountain Slice: Peak-a-Boom!”

You can find it beneath this week’s main MENU. 
Thank you, Mark.

Also on this week’s menus are:

3 “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” puzzles involving 1.) chit-chat, 2.) misspelling, and 3.) a caterpillar named Trumper,

1 Morsel involving people of color,

1 Morsel that proves you can “go home again,”

1 Appetizer involving duck-calling and wolf-whistling, and

1 Dessert involving groovy vinyl.

We’ll serve them all up for you on a platinum platter. Sit back and enjoy our high-fidelity food for thought:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Ripping Off Shortz And Chaikin Hors d’Oeuvre:

Measure for measure, chit for chat

 

Will Shortz’s June 12^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Andrew Chaikin of San Francisco, reads:

Take the word “baci” (Italian for “kisses”). You can rearrange the letters to “I C A B” – which sounds like a sentence, “I see a bee.”

Now think of a unit of measurement. Rearrange its letters and read them out loud to form a sentence complimenting someone on their appearance.

What is the word, and what is the sentence?

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre” reads:

Place two units of measurement next to each other, in their plural forms (plural forms, according to Merriam Webster and Wikipedia), forming a string of seven letters. Interchange the second and third letters.

Read these seven letters aloud to form a four-word sentence that a defeated and bitter game show contestant might say to the game show emcee as the credits roll over the post-game chit-chat. The sentence is not one complimenting the emcee on his dapper appearance, however, but rather one denouncing the host’s character. And – adding insult to injury – the loser even slightly mispronounces the emcee’s name.

What are the two units of measurement and the four-word sentence? Who is the game show’s emcee?

Hint: This puzzle has something in common with one of last week’s Puzzleria! puzzles.

Morsel Menu

People Radiating Iris’ Spectra Morsel:

Little emerald men from the crimson planet?

Take a word that can mean a person of a certain color, but only figuratively. Interchange the final two letters, one of which is a vowel. Replace that vowel with a different vowel to form a word that can mean a person of a certain color, but only figuratively.

 

What are these two words?

Hint: One of the words is less than a century old.

Back To School Morsel:

Parable of the prodigal pupil

Name a word associated with a high school or collegiate homecoming. Take its last two letters and replace the second letter with them. 

Replace the third letter of this result with the letter following it in the alphabet to form another word associated with a high school or collegiate homecoming.

What are these two words?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:

The honeydew of victory, the bee-sting of defeat

Little Lego, a contestant in the final round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, is given a word to spell.

“May I have the definition?” he asks.

“It is an article of clothing…” pronouncer Jacques Bailly replies.

“Air there any alternative pronunciations?” Lego continues.

“Are there any?” Mr. Bailly repeats, noting that this contestant seems to have a bit of an issue pronouncing his R’s. “No, Lego, that is the only pronunciation I have.”

Lego takes a deep breath and begins spelling out the letters confidently without any pausing or halting. After pronouncing the final letter, a consonant, his heart sinks as he hears the dreaded “ding!” indicating he made an orthographic error. As Mr. Bailly spells the word aloud correctly, Lego realizes he substituted a wrong vowel for the correct one.

Curiously, however, as Little Lego was misspelling the word aloud, many members of the audience had mistakenly thought he was pronouncing not a series of individual letters but rather a polysyllabic word, an adjective that is defined as “of or relating to…”

The final word in that definition is the plural form of a noun that is spelled the same as the spelled-out version of a letter of the alphabet that had not been a part of Lego’s misspelling.

What is the article of clothing (correctly spelled!)? What is the adjective that audience members thought they heard Lego pronounce? What is the noun to which that adjective pertains?

 Duck Duck Go Blind Appetizer

Wolves shooting off their traps

“That ___ is ________.”

The two words that belong in those blanks begin with letters two places apart in the alphabet.

The first is a three-letter noun with multiple meanings; the second is an eight-letter word ending in “…ing.”

The statement above might be mouthed by duck-whistle-and-shotgun-packing hunters of pheasants, ducks or other small game – if you are using the most common definition of the noun, and using the second word as a participle functioning as a part of the continuous form of the verb.

 

During their day jobs as stereotypical construction workers, those same hunters might be moved to mouth the same four-word statement – if you are using the second word as a participle functioning as an adjective, and using a less-common meaning of the noun that is very demeaning and quite politically incorrect. The hunters’ statement in this instance would be oxymoronic (and moronic!) and their tone would be sarcastic and/or ironic…

And the construction workers might well accompany their words with a shrill sarcastic wolf whistle.

What is this statement?

MENU

Mark’s Broketop Mountain Slice:

Peak-a-Boom!

What is the word some Native American Indians might use to refer to the Appalachian Mountains that have been destroyed by mountaintop mining?

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Winnie the pooh-pooher

Winnie the Grand “Pooh-bahr” – who seems to be always paying compliments to Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga and Roo – tends to pay his disrespects to non-Milne cartoon characters: to rabbits like Thumper, for example, but especially to caterpillars like Trumper.

Think of a word for something sleazy, squalid, unsavory or disgusting. Rearrange its four letters and read them aloud to form a three-word sentence that Winnie might say to Trumper, not complimenting his appearance but denouncing him for being sleazy, squalid, unsavory or disgusting.

What is the word, and what is the sentence?

Dessert Menu

Long Playing Dessert:

Vinyl B-siding and LP gas

Take a two-word term sometimes used for a usually lesser-known song on a long-playing vinyl record album. The term is often reserved for a song that is the equivalent of the “B-side” of a 78-rpm or 45-rpm record – a song that usually only the most fanatical of the album singer’s fans would cherish, or perhaps even recognize. Such songs, rarely if ever played on the radio, are usually “buried” in a position later on in the LP album’s running time.

An artist who rock‘n’rolled along within that “tidal wave” of late-1960’s-1970’s singer-songwriters wrote a song that opened Side 2 of his/her second studio album. The title of the song is a six-word statement that completely contradicts the informal, rambling definition – given above – of the two-word term.

The song did not become a hit single for the artist who wrote it, but was subsequently a hit single for other singers who covered it.

What is the two-word term? What is the song title? 

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.

“Just when it was getting interes…” “Should wrath be mute, and death dumb?” Every other mother’s son; Grass-clipping assassins; Treading the borders; The plot thinkens; Hookah-ed on the hooch; “The Vest, Shug, Cholly Mac, and Big Game Bob”

P! SLICES: OVER e⁶ + pi⁴ SERVED

  

Welcome to our June 10^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

We feature this week two “sophomore” puzzle contributors who are anything but “sophomoric.” Both are publishing their second puzzles this week.

About a month ago , in the May 13^th Puzzleria!, Chuck from St. Louis introduced many of us to the “theremin” with his “Handel Bars Slice.”

In the 2014 Thanksgiving edition of Puzzleria!, we featured a puzzle titled “Kleinucopia” from David, a “math maven” and distance runner from Seattle.

Chuck’s newest offering is titled “Pardon The Interruption Slice: “Just when it was getting interes…” 

David mixes together “geographical states” with “all the world’s a stage,” to create a “Ripping-Off-Shortz Slice” titled “Treading the borders.”

 

Thank you, Chuck, and thank you, David. Both puzzles appear beneath this week’s main MENU.

Our menus also offer a half-dozen additional hors d’oeuvres, morsels, appetizers and desserts. As were last week’s offerings, all eight puzzles are guaranteed to be 100% anagram-free! 

And, 100% orangutan-free!

Enjoy eating all eight!:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Double-Worded Hors d’Oeuvre:

The plot thinkens

Name a global campaign, begun in the mid-1980’s, dedicated to dissemination of creative thinking and ideas, in two words.

A movie released after 2010, but which begins with a scene that is set in the mid-1980’s, has a plot device that can be expressed with the same two words.

What are these two words?

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre

Grass-clipping assassins

Name a famous actor – five-letter first name, six-letter last name. Take five consecutive letters from the last name to name something that might be packed by a man taking a trip to Chicago’s Lincoln Park who has a contract to do some mowing.

Now take four consecutive letters from the first name to name something that was once packed by four men who took a trip to Chicago’s Lincoln Park who had a contract to do some mowing down.  

 

What did these four men who were under contract pack? What might the other man who was under contract pack? What is the name of the actor?

Morsel Menu

Friday The Tenth-plus-third Morsel:

Every other mother’s son

Jason Voorhees, the violently murderous character in the “Friday the 13^th” movie series, doesn’t talk much. Actually he doesn’t talk at all, at least not on screen. But Puzzleria! has unearthed a rare audio tape of Jason speaking briefly to his just-about-as-murderous mother, Pamela (or, rather perhaps her ghost), whose death Jason has been avenging since “Friday the 13^th” first flickered onto the silver screen.

 

A transcription of our unearthed tape reads:

“I am your son, your Jason, one son of a butcher, so vengeful, as strong as Sampson on steroids, Ma.”

A total of exactly ten words – every other word in the sentence – all share a very unusual property. What is it?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:

“Should wrath be mute, and death dumb?”

Name a famous actor – seven-letter first name, four-letter last name. Insert two consecutive letters from the first name between the third and fourth letters of the last name to form the name of a character from a well-known Shakespearean play who has no lines to speak.

The actor wrote a handbook on Shakespearean acting, and has acted in at least two productions of the play in which the character with no lines appears.

Who is the actor? What is the name of the character?

Hint: The “line-less” Shakespearean character and a character in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” share four letters in common, in the same order. The Henry V character gets to speak two more lines than the line-less character, but the line-less character has two more letters than the Henry V character.

O’s And X’s Appetizer

The Vest, Shug, Cholly Mac, and Big Game Bob

Name a television show that debuted in the 1960’s. Its final three letters can be rearranged to form a synonym for “wearisome” or “uninteresting”... so let’s remove those three letters.

Interchange the second and third letters of what remains to name the nickname by which a legendary football coach was affectionately known.

(Note: After you interchange the second and third letters you may have to remove some spaces and/or perform some capitalization.)

 

What is the television show? Who is the football coach?

Hint: Actually, you will not just “name the nickname by which a legendary football coach was affectionately known,” but will “exclaim” it.

MENU

Pardon The Interruption Slice:

“Just when it was getting interes…”

“When their reading is interrupted, people _____ while ________ the _____.”

Take the first two letters of the first missing word and add the first three letters of the second missing word – in order, no rearranging necessary – to find the third missing word and create a natural-sounding sentence.

David’s Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Treading the borders

Will Shortz’s June 5^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Name a famous actor – seven-letter first name, four-letter last name. Take four consecutive letters from the first name and three consecutive letters from the last name. These seven letters, in order from left to right, will name something that’s often packed nowadays when taking a trip. What is it?

David’s “Ripping Off Shortz Slice reads:

Name a famous (?) actor – four-letter first name, seven-letter last name. Take three consecutive letters from the first name and four consecutive letters from the last name. Change one of those seven letters to the prior letter in the alphabet. These seven letters, in order from left to right, will name a United States state. What is it?

Hint: In order, the three unused letters from the last name, then the unused letter from the first name, will form a first name.

Dessert Menu

Easy As Pie-ce Of Cake Dessert

Hookah-ed on the hooch

If you’ve been paying attention to Puzzleria! during the past fortnight or so, this puzzle ought to be as easy as pie-ce of cake.

A recording artist who was known to have been once hooked on the “hookah” confessed recently that he had also been briefly hooked on the “hooch,” but he used a two-word term as a synonym for “hooch.”

Shift the space in the two-word synonym one space to the right. The result is a slang term for a substance used in the hookah, followed by the title of an album the artist recorded when he was hooked simultaneously on both the hookah and hooch.

 

Who is the artist? What are the two-word synonym for hooch, the substance used in a hookah, and the album title? 

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.