“Be there a fee, or be it a freebie?” Moo-cow and boy reunion; Clownish Greece paintings; Foursquare character wittiness; Calling Mr. … no, Dr. Spock! Idiomatic transmission manual; Revised Versa

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

Welcome to our August 5^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We have baked up seven piping fresh and toothsome puzzle treats for you to nosh on early in this augustatory month.

Think of our puzzles as multiple vitamins for your mind. If you take one a day they ought to last you about a week.

So, please savor them. And, as always, enjoy.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Idiomatic Subsidy Hors d’Oeuvre:

Be there a fee, or be it a freebie?

Name something you pay someone. It is a noun often framed within an idiomatic expression. 

Add three letters to the noun to form an adjective that describes something you don’t have to pay anyone for.

What are this noun and adjective?

Morsel Menu

Filling In The Blank­_ _s Morsel:

Calling Mr. …oops, no, Dr. Spock

“Parents learn quickly that before their toddlers get all ______ in, it is advisable to get them all ________ out!”

The word filling the second blank in that bit of sage advice is formed by inserting one pair of consecutive letters somewhere within the word filling the first blank.

What are these two words?

Extra credit: What are the two letters that belong in the blanks in the title: “Filling In The Blank­_ _s Morsel?”

Appetizer Menu

Swearing On A Stack Of Flapjacks Appetizer:

Revised Versa

 

Give a two-word revision (or, more specifically, a recapitulation) of the King James Version of the biblical verse John 1:14. Your recap ought to include a 6-letter synonym for “Word” and a 5-letter past-tense verb.

Now re-revise your recap by rearranging its 11 letters to form a 3-word topic that has been lately in the national U.S. news, in 5, 2 and 4 letters, in that order. The 2-letter word is an abbreviation.

The 5-letter verb in your recap is somewhat related to the news topic.

What is your recap? What is the news topic?

Linkin’ Logos Appetizer:

Moo-cow and boy reunion

This puzzle involves a “word chain” in which every consecutively linked pair of words forms either:

A new word (for example, “leg” + “end” = “legend”);

A hyphenated word (“leg” + “pulling” = “leg-pulling”);

A compound word (“dog” + “leg” = “dogleg”); or

Two words that go well together (“crab” + “leg” = “crab leg”).

For example, a 3-word chain beginning with “cow” and ending with “boy” (forming “cowboy”) might be linked by the middle word “bell” (“cowbell + bellboy”).

Create an 11-word chain beginning with “cow” and ending with “boy” (again, forming “cowboy”) that can be linked by 9 middle words. 

(Note: One of the 9 word-links is a dialectical British variant spelling of a common noun. It appeared recently in a Puzzleria! puzzle answer.)

The 9 words begin, in order, with a P, M, G, D, C, I, C, W and P. What are these 9 word-links?

Can you find any other “cowboy” chains, of any length?

MENU

Ere The Cock Crows Trice Slice:

Idiomatic transmission manual

Think of a six-word idiomatic expression that epitomizes “wasting time and effort on insignificant details while ignoring a larger looming catastrophe.”

Hint: Sin, Death, Cockatrice

Applying the first word of the six-word expression to the letters in the remaining five words will generate the entirety of the hint given above (which contains words and concepts present within the first five verses of Isaiah, Chapter 59, King James Version). But only one word in the hint is truly associated with the six-word idiomatic expression.

What is this six-word idiomatic expression?

 

Sub-hint 1: Three consecutive letters in one of the above hint’s words forms a word also associated with the idiomatic expression, particularly its final word.

Sub-hint 2: No word in the six-word idiomatic expression is repeated. (The expression usually includes two instances of the same common article, but we have eliminated the first of the two, deeming it unnecessary.)

Ripping Off Shortz And Pegg Slice:

Foursquare character wittiness

Will’s Shortz’s August 1^st Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle, submitted by Ed Pegg, Jr., reads:

Take the four 4-letter words LIMB, AREA, CORK, and KNEE. Write them one under another, and the four columns will spell four new words LACK, IRON, MERE and BAKE.

This is called a double word square. I’d like you to find a double word square with 6-letter words. Specifically, your square must include the words PONIES, ACCEPT, SEARED and CAVIAR. These four words must be among the 12 common, uncapitalized 6-letter words in the square. Can you do it?

 

Puzzleria!’s Ripping Off Shortz And Pegg Slice reads:

Take four 4-character words. Write them one under another, and the four columns will spell four new words, for a total of eight 4-character words. This is called a double word square. I’d like you to find such a double word square with eight 4-character words in the square. These words are reasonably common and not necessarily uncapitalized. You can do it!

 

Here are hints for the eight words, in random order:

Word in a syllogism; Columnist whose name is an anagram of a stack of typing paper; Word after tax or before school; Did not recall; Overhaul factory equipment; Word in a Paton title; Mass of tissue; Word that might well precede “cowbell”  

 

Can you find another double word square with eight 4-character words in the square, using the eight hints below? 

(Yes! Again, of course you can do it!)

Foolish; Belonging to a Gilbert & Sullivan title princess; Lennox, Carey, Estefan, Dion, Twain or Franklin, notably in 1998; Dogs; Make like Lindbergh; Apple that first became a consumer “pick” in 1998; Setting on a shower head; Mississippi, Missouri and Colorado, for example

Dessert Menu

Painter’s Dozen Dessert:

Clownish Greece paintings

Write a short caption for each of the images pictured here, numbered 1 Through 13.

Be guided by the following list, which tells the number of letters in each caption and the number of letters in each word:

1. two words – (9 letters in the first word, 12 letters in the second word)

2. one word – (7 letters)

3. one word – (8 letters)

4. one word – (9 letters)

5. one word – (11 letters)

6. one word – (8 letters)

7. one word – (10 letters)

8. two words – (4 letters, 4 letters)

9. one word – (6 letters)

10. one word – (4 letters)

11. two words – (5 letters, 3 letters)

12. two words – (4 letters, 9 letters)

13. one word – (4 letters)

Hint: The caption for # 1 is “tauomatic transmission.”

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.