New vowel, same old dead end; Can you bank on who’s your caddy? Identical triplets on Tripoli’s shores; Condensed plot summary; Doobie doobie double refer madness; 20,000 major leagues under the C-notes; Snippet in the bud; Name’s the same? No, name’s the “synoname”

P! SLICES: OVER (pe)³ – (e⁴ + p³) SERVED

Welcome to our July 15^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Along with a trio of Ripping Off Shortz puzzles, we feature also this week:

1 Hors d’Oeuvre involving bogus internet chatter;

1 Morsel involving, paradoxically, de-hyphenation;

1 Slice featuring a short story James Thurber ought to have written; and

2 Desserts, – one presenting a triple-linked chain (smoking) of “reeference,” and the other dealing with people on radio talk shows, and TV reality and game shows like “Let’s Make a Deal!”

Enjoy, please, this week’s Ripping, Riffing and Reefering!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Internet Chatter Hors (Inside, Really) d’Oeuvre:

Snippet in the bud

The following snippet of bogus internet “chatter” was obtained by hacking into international email accounts. Were it real, the snippet might well have been monitored and analyzed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS): 

“Marine airmen remain in Iran. Me? I, an emir, re-arm. Marine airmen are mine, man.”

The DHS analysts would have noted that the words of the snippet possess a quality that is somewhat unusual. What is this quality?

Ripping Off Shortz And Martin Eiger Hors d’Oeuvre:

“20,000 major leagues under the C-notes”

Will Shortz’s July 10^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Martin Eiger, reads:

Think of a phrase that denotes a particular major-league sports team in 12 letters. The first 6 letters are the same as the second 6 letters rearranged. What team is it?

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

Think of a particular major-league sports team in 12 letters. The first 5 letters form an approximate rhyme of a word that is somewhat synonymous with the word spelled by the last 6 letters. What team is it?

Morsel Menu

Half-Backwards Associations Morsel:

New vowel, same old dead end

Name a word associated with dead ends and closure. Replace its first vowel with a different vowel, then de-hyphenate the word… oops, that should be dehyphenate the word.

Split the result into two equal parts and spell the second part backward to form a two-word phrase associated with apparent dead ends that might lead to welcome closure pending discovery of further information.

What are this word and phrase?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz And Martin Appetizer:

Name’s the same? No, name’s the “synoname”

Think of the original nicknames of two major-league sports franchises, 6 letters each. (The franchise associated with one of nicknames, changed the nickname to a different one, which it currently uses.) The teams are based in the same metro area and play the same sport, and the original nicknames are synonyms of each other. The second and sixth letters of one nickname are identical to the second and sixth letters of the other nickname. The third, fourth and fifth letters of one nickname are the same as the corresponding letters of the other nickname, but rearranged.

The nicknames’ initial letters have alphanumeric values (see chart) that add to 27. That is, the two letters are equidistant from the ends of the alphabet, or from the midpoint of the alphabet.

(For example, A (1) + Z (26) = 27, B (2) + Y (25) = 27, …M (13) + N (14) = 27.)

What are these two professional teams?

Hint: The beginning sounds of both teams’ current nicknames are the same.

MENU

Iceboxing Lord Kelvinator Slice:

Condensed plot summary

Didn’t James Thurber write a story about a statuesque, wed-newly honeymooning fashion model who tried daubing dry (using her sundress while in a state of undress!) her hubby’s limited-edition Piet Mondrian print which became saturated with condensation after she taped it to the Kelvinator fridge at their fleabag motel?

Exactly one-seventh of the words in the above plot synopsis share a somewhat unusual quality in common.

(As you count the words, note well that hyphenated words, such as “limited-edition,” count as one.)

Hint: Two of the “one-seventh of the words” are slightly different from – and more “elegant” than – the others worthy of being included in the elite “one-seventh” of the total words.

Hint: Thirty letters are involved in the solution of this puzzle.

Riffing Off Shortz And Martin Slice:

Identical triplets on Tripoli’s shores

Think of a particular major-league sports team. Name one player – not one particular player but rather a generic player – on the team, in 13 letters. Remove four letters – all but the first three, middle three and last three letters – from this name. This leaves three identical “triplets” – three 3-letter segments – which, taken together, smack of a historical war movie released during the Vietnam era.

Name the generic team player and the movie.   

Dessert Menu

 

Chain Of Reference Dessert:

Doobie doobie double refer madness

Bruce Springsteen’s song “Thunder Road” contains the lyric, “Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.”

In “RunningDown a Dream” Tom Petty sings, “Me and Del were singing a little ‘Runaway’…”

The Traveling Wilburys (which, coincidentally, included Roy Orbison and Tom Petty as bandmates), in “The End of the Line,” sing, “Maybe somewhere down the road a ways you’ll think of me and wonder where I am these days, maybe somewhere down the road when someone plays ‘Purple Haze.’”

 

Songs such as these – those that refer to other songs and/or artists in their lyrics – are rather uncommon. But even more uncommon is a song with lyrics that refer to a second song that has lyrics that refer to a third song, thereby forming a kind of “triple-song-link chain of reference”?

What are these three songs?

Wed-Newlies Dessert:
Can you bank on who’s your caddy?

 Find a two-word caption for the image presented here – a four-letter word followed by a five-letter word.

Rearrange the letters to a form a name of a person (first and last names) who has very recently been making news headlines.

What is the caption, and who is the news maker?

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.

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