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.