“He ain’t heavy, he’s a brotherload!” Furrowed browsers and U-boat loos; Pammela’s Salem map? LeBronze Names; A sophist’s fable; A container contained in what it contains;

Welcome to our September 30^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving you six fresh puzzles this week:

1. An Hors d’Oeuvre about a fabulous example of sportsbearship;

2. A Morsel about the ins and outs of branding and packaging;

3. An Appetizer about sumo kind of Heavy Boy’s Town;

4. A Slice about cartography... and perhaps capitals;

5. A Slice about browsing the headlines and subheads for the latest news; and

6. A Dessert worthy of a bronze medal.

Please enjoy them all:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Jackal Ursus Bear Hors d’Oeuvre:

A sophist’s fable

Nearly a half-century ago an instance of sportsmanship occurred at the end of an biennial sporting event. The following is a fable of the how the event ended, with significant “hinting” words and phrases appear in bold and blue:

A bear and a jackal once faced off in a game played in a green jungle. It was a close game, with the score nip and tuck as the game drew to a close. The bear finished playing the game before the jackal finished. While waiting for the jackal to finish, the bear lumbered over to a nearby concessions stand to draw a draft beer to give to the jackal. The bear picked up the tab, the jackal picked up the beer and his ball, and the game ended. No one lost. Both won, in a way.

 

The bear’s act of generosity, however, was unpopular with a maned ass who had been rooting against the jackal. But many other fans of the game in the jungle had traditionally rooted against the bear, especially when he was competing against the king of the jungle, whom they deemed the more popular.

Who are the bear, the jackal, the maned ass and the king of the jungle? What is this biennial sporting event?

Hint: The “king of the jungle” appeared in recent headlines.

Hint: The “jackal” accomplished a major victory in the year following the events in this fable. The setting of his victory was the same as the setting of the currently occurring “biennial sporting event.”

Morsel Menu

A Pair Of Pathways To A Solution Morsel:

A container contained in what it contains

Remove all punctuation from a popular brand name consumable product. Remove from it a palindromic fragment of consecutive letters. Move the fourth letter of the remaining fragment to the second position to form the name of a possible producer of the consumable product’s container.

Remove all punctuation from the same brand name consumable product. Again, remove from it a palindromic fragment of consecutive letters. Interchange the second and third letters of the remaining fragment and spell the result backward to form the name of the same possible producer of the consumable product’s container.

What is this product and the possible producer of its container?

Appetizer Menu

Mover Lifter Puller Appetizer:

“He ain’t heavy, he’s a brotherload!”

Name a mechanical apparatus used to move, lift or pull out heavy loads.

Now name what coaches of a certain sport encourage their players to do with more efficiency and effort in order to move, lift or pull down heavy loads.

The apparatus and words of coaching advice you have named are the identical three-word phrase. What is it?   

MENU

Global Positive Self-Image System Slice:

Pammela’s Salem map?

Take a word that you should find on any self-respecting map of the United States. The word contains consecutive letters that spell a verb that you should interpret as a command – a command that you should carry out on the very letters that form the verb. (See the “Specialty Of The Teahouse Slice: Teatime Proustries” puzzle I composed and posted on this early 2015 Puzzleria!)

After obeying the command rearrange the letters you see to form two nouns: 1. A synonym of a shortened form of a name of a female character from Greek literature, or more recent British literature, and 2. a more general term for that synonym.

What is the word on the map? What are the two nouns?

Hint: The word that you should find on “any self-respecting map of the United States” is one of a group of 50, or one of a special group of 50 situated within one of the first group of 50.

Two Heads Are More Opinionated Than One Slice:

Furrowed browsers and U-boat loos

A political “first” received news coverage very recently.

Imagine an article on an editorial page that voices an unfavorable opinion about that first-time political action.

The opinion piece’s main headline consists of three words:

1. A plural 9-letter noun (the subject),

2. An 8-letter verb (the predicate), and

3. A 4-letter noun (the direct object).

Its subhead also consists of three words:

1. A 6-letter verb (another predicate of the 9-letter noun in the main headline),

2. An 11-letter adjective, and

3. A 4-letter direct-object noun.

Note:

The double-deck headline could have appeared above a non-opinionated “straight news” story – on Page 1, for example, instead of the opinion page – were it not for two “loaded,” judgmental words: the plural 9-letter noun in the main headline, and the 11-letter adjective in the subhead...

Oh, and the letters in the main headline can be rearranged to form the subhead.

What are the political “first,” the main headline and the subhead?

Dessert Menu:

Idolatrous Dessert:

LeBronze Names

Remove a consonant from the interior of a word that is the name of a place where several graven bronze images of idols can be seen.

Change the vowel sounds in the first syllable and in the third syllable. The result, when spoken aloud sounds like the brand name of a product associated with bronze.

What are the place name and the brand name?

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.

Angkor Wat? Anchor Who‽; Reduced to tears of laughter; Pigmenteau words; Dumbbell curve; I write the songs that make lovebirds take (s)wing(s); Four-by-four-by-forum; What the blankety-blank‽

Welcome to our September 23^rd edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Our featured puzzle this week is a clever and compact comedic-actor challenge composed by PlannedChaos. It is titled “Out Out And Away Slice: Reduced to tears of laughter,” and appears beneath our main MENU.

PlannedChaos also contributes the first of our six Ripping Off Shortz Slices, one involving a current television show.

Five other scrumptious puzzles round out our menus this week. Please enjoy.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Headlines Or Deadlines Hors d’Oeuvre:

I write the songs that make lovebirds take (s)wing(s)

The two-word title of a song written by a prolific songwriter might have been spoken by a person recently making news headlines. 

Take the third letter and first letter of the songwriter’s first name at birth, in that order, and place them at the front of the song title’s second word. The result might have been one of those recent news headlines.

What is this headline, and who is the songwriter?

Morsel Menu

Abnormal Distribution Morsel:

Dumbbell curve

A Galton board (or Galton box, or quincunx) is a device for demonstrating statistical concepts such as the normal distribution, or “bell curve.”

Write a 17-letter caption for the Galton board pictured here, in the form:

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

__ __ __

__- __ __ __ __

Rearrange the 17 letters to form a three-word phrase in recent news accounts, in the form:

__ __ __ __ __ __ __

__ __

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

What are this caption and phrase?

Appetizer Menu

Grilling Weenies On A Grid Appetizer:

Four-by-four-by-forum

Fill in the grid using the 8 ACROSS-and/or-DOWN clues below, which are in random order.

Three of the eight answers allude to  the present presidential campaign and looming election.

One of the sixteen squares in the grid must be filled in with an Arabic numeral. The other fifteen squares must be filled in with letters, three of which are Roman numerals.

1. Age of many who will ____ for the first time this November

2. Word belonging in the above clue’s blank

3. September 26 television event

4. Wearers of “flowerpot headwear”

5. S. Grant counterpart

6. Word followed by gamma or Max

7. Words preceding “even keel”

8. Mr. Musk

Spoonerized River Anthology Appetizer:

Angkor Wat? Anchor Who?

Spoonerize the name of a prominent news anchor, past or present. That is, interchange the initial sounds (consonants or consonant blends) of the person’s first and last names. The first name transforms into the first name of a prominent fictional character from Nineteenth century American literature. The last name transforms into a non-word.

 

Interchange the initial sounds (consonants or consonant blends) of the fictional character’s first and last names. 

Again, the last name transforms into a non-word. Remove its last letter. Replace it newly penultimate (second-last) letter with the letter preceding it in the alphabet. The result is something the father of the fictional character’s child might employ in his profession.

 

Hint: The surname of an American poet born in the Nineteenth century is an acronym of what would be a great nickname for the fictional character.

Who are the news anchor and fictional character? What might the father of the fictional character’s child employ in his profession? What is the great nickname for the fictional character?

MENU

Out Out And Away Slice:

Reduced to tears of laughter

Use the first and last names of a well-known comedic actor to phonetically complete these two-word phrases that both mean “reduce”: [first name] out and [last name] away.

Who is this actor?

Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slices:

What the blankety-blank!

Will’s Shortz’s National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle from September 18^th reads:

Think of a familiar three-word phrase in the form “____ and ____.” Drop the “and.” Then move the last word to the front to form a single word that means the opposite of the original phrase.

Here’s a hint. The ending word has seven letters. What is it?

Puzzleria!’s Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

Think of a current television show in three words titled “[blank] and [blank]”. Drop the last letter, and inset the result within the word “bar” to name a familiar three-word phrase.

Hint: A title character from the show would fit right in at a bar.

What is the show and what is the phrase?

TWO:

Think of a familiar three-word phrase in the form “____ and ____.” Drop the “and,” replace the last two letters in the second word with an “r”, then move the last word to the front to form a single six-letter word that is an edible product.

Remove the first word, restore the last two letters to the second word, and interchange the second and third letters to spell the vehicle that stereotypically hauls the edible produce.

What are the phrase, product and vehicle?

THREE:

Think of a familiar three-word phrase in the form “____ and ____.” Change one consonant in the first word (a common 2-letter preposition) to a different consonant to form a common 2-letter verb. Drop the “and,” then move the last word to the front, forming the first name of a hobbit.

Hint: These five letters can be rearranged to form two words that precede “Jesse” in the Bible.

What are the phrase, hobbit and biblical words?

FOUR:

Think of a three-word phrase in the form “____ and ____” (plural words of 5 and 7 letters, respectively) that you might see in fishing destination brochures. Drop the “and.” Then move the last word to the front and shift the space between the words to form a 2-word phrase describing how a flowing body of water gives relief to a thirsty angler camping in the north woods.

What are these two phrases?

FIVE:

Think of a familiar three-word phrase for household furnishings in the form “____ and ____” (a word of 5 letters and a plural word of 6 letters). Drop the “and.” Then move the last word to the front, shift the space between the words, and switch the order of the words. The result is a description of a three-legged stool.

What are the phrase and the description of the stool?

SIX: 

Think of a familiar three-word phrase for a comfort food that comes in a can in the form “____ and ____” (a word of 4 letters and a plural word of 5 letters). Drop the “and.” Then move the last word to the front and shift the space between the words. The result is a word for one morsel from the can followed by a utensil with which one might eat these morsels of comfort food.

What are the phrase and the utensil?

Dessert Menu:

Tie-Dyed Dessert:

Pigmenteau words

A “portmanteau word” is one derived from blending two or more distinct words, such as “smoke” and “fog” to form “smog”. Portmanteaus pack stray articles of lexical laundry into one neat compact “suitcase.”

Each of the ten images pictured here bears a caption that is a single “pigmenteau” word.  The images are labeled 1 Through 10. The list immediately below indicates how many letters are in each caption:

1. Nine letters

2. Ten letters

3. Twelve letters

4. Twelve letters

5. Thirteen letters

6. Twelve letters

7. Eleven letters

8. Eleven letters

9. Ten letters

   10. Eight letters

One of the captions, if divided into its two constituent words, supplies a hint to solving one of this week’s Appetizers.

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.

Mr. Ed’s Neighborhood; Basinyms; Lowering-the-bar talk; Child’s play; Cutting off your nose to write your racy paperback; Put it on, pull it out

Hello and Welcome to our September 16^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We’re blogging this week from the department of murky mysteries here at Puzzleria! Plaza…

Yes, this week we turn our dial to NPR (National PuzzleRia-do!) and tune in to Bartok… (oops, wait, that would be NPR classical programming)…

So no, tune in instead to Car Talk, Click and Clack, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Tappet Brothers!...Puzzleria!-style.

Puzzleria!’s “Car Talk Puzzle” is a mint-condition creampuff created and contributed by our friend PlannedChaos. It is titled “Cluck And Schmuck Slice: Lowering-the-bar talk,” and can be “tuned in” on the frequency just under out main MENU... 

“What can be do to get you into this puzzle today?!”

Also “on tappet” this week are an Hors d’Oeuvre, Morsel, Appetizer, Dessert and five Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slices that introduce a newly coined concept called “basinyms” – which are the “last-but-not-least” cousins of “acronyms.”

Here at Puzzleria! we aim to offer our guests a maximum of amplitude and frequency with a minimum of commercial interruptions and static. Please enjoy.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Trios Of Pictures Worth Octets Of Words Hors d’Oeuvre:

Child’s play

Captions for the images shown here combine to suggest the name of one children’s game. 

Here are clues to the captions:

ONE: A hyphenated term describing the spectators pictured (9 letters, 3-6)

TWO: A reflexive descriptive statement (12 letters, 5,2,5)

THREE: An ad slogan, (13 letters, 6,2,5)

Rearranging the letters of each caption should help you determine the name of the game.

Morsel Menu

Recite By Hearty Appetite Morsel:

Put it on, pull it out

Name something you can put things on and place after it something that can pull things out. Remove a “t” from the first object and an “n” from the second object to form a two-syllable food item.

Now name a sentence that most American schoolchildren can probably recite by heart. Isolate from the sentence two one-syllable words that flank a pronoun in the sentence.

Place the latter word in front of the former word. Remove a “t” and an “s” from the latter and an “h” from the former to form the same two-syllable food item named above.

 

School children may eat this food item for lunch or as an after-school snack.

What are the two words in the sentence? What is the food item?

Appetizer Menu

Completing In The Word Series Appetizer:

Mr. Ed’s Neighborhood

What is the seventh word in the following series?

Net, reef, neigh, net, vent, vet, _____

Hint: The seventh word in the series is a five-letter word.

MENU

Cluck And Schmuck Slice:

Lowering-the-bar talk

In the wake of last week’s Bartok/Car Talk puzzle, Puzzleria! has acquired a lost transcript of National Public Radio’s “Car Talk” broadcast of its Puzzler segment! It appears below in its entirety:

(Playing the role of Ray is PlannedChaos, and playing the role of Tom is LegoLambda)

 

RAY: Welcome back to the third half of Puzzleria!... and to the new Puzzler. Are you ready?

TOM: Is it obfuscated and declarified?

RAY: Obfuscated, declarified, de-everything. Here it is:

Suburbia, 1960. Domesticity itself. At a house still under construction, a recently married couple embrace as the wife leaves for the nail salon, and the husband goes back inside to finish packing for a two-week business trip. They’ve never been happier, even within the presence of stray tools, sawdust and occasionally faulty utilities.

Having finished packing, the husband decides to relax by imbibing a bit before taking a waiting taxi to the airport. He pours his drink of choice, a ’42 claret, and inhales the earthy bouquet. But he is barely able to enjoy the tonic before accidentally spilling wine onto his wife’s favorite dress. He hurries to the kitchen sink, but the tap is dry.

 

Choosing the lesser of two evils, he flushes the stain with milk from the fridge, the only other liquid he can find.

Not able to find pen and paper to explain the situation to his wife once she returns, the husband spies a pair of scissors and an appliance box with a brand name printed on the side. Being a clever fellow, he notices that the letters in the brand name are exactly what is needed to spell out his message. He cuts furiously, and as the taxi driver begins laying on the horn he is just able to arrange seven scissored-out rectangles into two words before rushing out the door.

The question is: What is the brand name, and what message did the husband leave?

TOM: And why was he drinking near her clothes? And why did she marry such a klutz? (laughter)

RAY: Some questions are best left unanswered. But if you think you know the answer to my question, drop us a hint in the Comments Section below, where my brother will most likely reward your efforts with snark and derision. We try to keep him away from the computers, but sometimes he somehow manages to log on using his dial-up internet connection.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about your car, keep it to yourself because this is a blog and we can’t take your calls. We couldn’t even if we wanted to… and trust us, we don’t want to.

TOM: Not with that attitude we don’t!

RAY: Thanks to special guest contributor Tom, visiting us from the “great junk heap” up in the sky… think of it as a salvage yard for poor souls. And remember, don’t solve like my brother.

TOM: Don’t solve like my brother.

RAY: We won’t be back next time. Bye-bye.

Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slices:

Basinyms

Will’s Shortz’s National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle from September 11^th reads:

Think of a well-known category with exactly seven things in it. Alphabetize the things from their ending letters, and the last letter alphabetically will be “e.” In other words, no thing in this category ends in a letter after “e” in the alphabet. It’s a category and set of seven things that everyone knows. What is it?

Puzzleria!’s Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slices deal with “basinyms” – words formed from the final letters of groups of words is a set phrase of series of words. For example, the basinym of ReservE OfficeR TraininG CorpS is ERGS. The CentraL IntelligencE AgencY is LEY, The NationaL HockeY LeaguE is LYE, and Passion fruiT, OrangE GuavA is TEA (or NEA if you go with PassioN, OrangE GuavA).

If the order of the words in a basinym is arbitrary the words may have multiple basinyms. For example, BacoN LettucE TomatO (NEO) may also be called by its ONE (tomatO bacoN lettucE) or EON (lettucE tomatO bacoN)   basinyms. (The other basinyms for this popular sandwich are NOE, ENO, and OEN.) 

ONE:

Think of a well-known group of exactly four people. Arrange the last letters of their first names to spell the 4-letter first name of a fifth person – a contemporary of the members of the group that also shares their nationality and profession.

The last name of the fifth person is the last name also of one of the four people in the grouping. The first name of the fifth person is a word peripherally related to the profession of all five.

What are the five first names of these people?

TWO:

A trio of positive qualities has six possible basinyms (see NEO, ONE, EON, etc., above). The three qualities are often grouped together in a particular order. The basinym conforming to this particular word order spells a common interjection.

What are this trio of words and this attention-getting basinym?

THREE:

Think of a well-known group of exactly four people. A basinym of their first names spells the past tense of a verb, a form of which appears 110 times in books they wrote.

Who are these four people and what is the verb?

FOUR:

A basinym of the singular forms of four symbols used in several games spells out something that must be paid.

What are the symbols and the thing needing to be paid?

FIVE:

A basinym for the first names of a sextet of sitcom characters spells the name of a prolific thrash metal band.

What are the sitcom and the band?    

Dessert Menu:

Doff And Don Dessert:

Cutting off your nose to write your racy paperback

Write the full name of a famous movie director/actor in three-words. Doff the letters in the word “noses” and remove a space to spell the pen name of a famous author in two words.

 

Who are these artists?

Hint: The director/actor actually did doff (and don) various noses while making movies.

Hint: Many people assume incorrectly that the director/actor’s middle name is a first name.

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.