Track and field of dreams; Scrunched Kernosabes of corn; Put some stone on those bones! Scherzo modulation; “Things you rob? Poach? Eat? Open? Read?” Cereal assessin’ 'n' censorin’; Sitcom heart replacement

 Welcome to the “Life of P!” (Thanks, ViolinTeddy, for conjuring that nifty slogan.) 

And welcome also to our September 9^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! (known also as P!, for short)

This week we feature another fine puzzle from the high-flying and mystifying mind of PlannedChaos. 

It appears under our main MENU and is titled “Radio Freequency Europe Slice: Scherzo modulation.” 

Thank you, PC.

A smorgasbord of eight additional mini-puzzles Ripping Off Shortz are served up on a slice titled “Scrunched Kernosabes of corn” and on a bonus slice titled “Put some stone on those bones!” 
That’s nine servings for the price of two!

Choose also from our menus’ synapse-smacking Hors d’oeuvres, Morsels, Appetizers and Desserts.

So, come explore the Life of P!, where our goal is never to repeat any digits… or puzzles!

Please enjoy.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Enigmatic Cinematic Hors d’Oeuvre:

Track and field of dreams

Dreams are often compared with cinema. Some people experience their “dreamy nocturnal movies” as slow-motion or even 3-D sequences, for instance. Others may dream in blah black-and-white or in living “Technicolor.”

Name a technique sometimes employed by cinematographers, in nine letters. In their wildest dreams, track and field coaches might experience “nocturnal movies” that would seem to employ this technique.  

A homophone of that technique – a two-word phrase containing eight letters – names what track and field coaches sometimes do during practices.

What is the cinematic technique? What do coaches do during practices?

Morsel Menu

Fall Season Roundup (Or Rounddown) Morsel:

Sitcom heart replacement

Note: In the following “alphanumeric puzzle,” each letter of the alphabet is assigned a number from 1 to 26 thusly:

A=1, B=2, C=3,... Z=26 (see chart below).

Take the last name of a female character on a popular television situation comedy. Take the alphanumeric sum of three consecutive letters at the heart of her surname, divide by 3, and round up or down to the nearer whole number. In other words, find the rounded-off average of the three numbers.

Replace the three letters with the letter that has the alphanumeric value of that average.

The result is the name of the sitcom.

Who is this female character? What is the sitcom?

(Just an observation: I was taught to “round up” (or “round down” or “round off”) to the nearest whole number. I never questioned it, but now I realize that we round not to the nearest but to the nearer whole number…

Rounding to the nearest whole number, of course, might apply were we to adopt some type of multi-dimensional number system in which the counting of numbers is not linear but hyper-spatial within a context of higher orders of infinity.)

Appetizer Menu

Easy As Pecan Pie Appetizer:

“Things you rob? Poach? Eat? Open? Read?”

Safes. Ribs. Windows. Knuckles. Whips. Mysteries. Smiles. Books. Eggs. Codes. …

These ten nouns are all “Things you _____.” To complete this puzzle you must first find the verb that belongs in the blank.

Name an eleventh possible “thing you_____,” according to a common idiom. In this idiom the “thing,” also a noun, is preceded by and modified by an adjective.

Remove the first letter from the adjective along with the space between the two words. Spell this series of letters backward. The result, after capitalizing the initial letter, is the model of a popular vehicle.

What verb belongs in the blank? What is the model name?

Hint: They likely sell scores of these vehicles in the host city of a particular NFL team.

MENU

Radio Freequency Europe Slice:

Scherzo modulation

Think of the last name of a European composer. Shift the first letter one place forward in the alphabet and read the result aloud to name a popular radio program.

Who is the composer and what is the program?

Squishin’ And Rippin’ Off Shortz, Thereby Undraping Statues Slice:

Put some stone on those bones!

Name a bone of the human skeleton in eight letters. Drop the last letter, and squish together two pairs of adjacent letters, to name a well-known European sculpture in five letters.

What is the bone? What is the name of the sculpture?

Ripping Off Shortz And Baird Slices:

Scrunched Kernosabes of corn

Will’s Shortz’s National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle broadcast September 4^th was created by Norm Baird. It reads:

If you squish the small letters “r” and “n” too closely together, they look like an “m.” Think of a common five-letter word with the consecutive letters “r” and “n” that becomes its own opposite if you change them to an “m.”

Puzzleria!’s first Ripping Off Shortz And Baird Slice reads:

If you scrunch (not squish!) the small letters “v” and “v” too closely together, they look like a “w.” Think of an often misspelled seven-letter word that means “shrewder” or “more canny.” If you change this misspelling’s two consecutive “v’s” to one “w” it becomes a word in the title of a 19^th century classic American novel.

What are the misspelled word and the novel word?

Puzzleria!’s second (two-part) Ripping Off Shortz And Baird Slice reads:

If you scrunch the small letters “l” and “n” too closely together, they look like an “h”…

A: Think of a four-letter Maine town with the consecutive letters “l” and “n” that becomes an interjection of triumph or derision if you change them to an “h.”

What are this town and interjection?

Hint: The town was once named New Milford.

B: Think of a six-letter surname of a man of Hungarian letters (literary, not alphabetical) with the consecutive letters “l” and “n” (alphabetical, not literary) that becomes a biblical word meaning dowry if you change them to an “h.”

What is this surname?
What is this word?

Hint: The biblical word, according to Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon (KJV) means “a price paid for a wife to her parents.”

Puzzleria!’s third (five-part) Ripping Off Shortz And Baird Slice reads:

If you scrunch the small letters “c” and “l” too closely together, they look like a “d”…

A: Think of a common five-letter word with the consecutive letters “c” and “l” for the sound a certain critter makes. If you change them to a “d” the result is a different critter from the same taxonomic class.

B: Think of a common six-letter word with the consecutive letters “c” and “l” for a woman’s strapless handbag. Change them to a “d” to form a word describing a woman’s night out on the town with a friend during which she will occasionally need to open her “six-letter word.”

C: Think of a common eight-letter word with the consecutive letters “c” and “l” for a gigantic grooming device God apparently uses, judging from periodic appearances of a night-sky satellite in its old and new phases. Change the “c” and “l” to a “d” to name two other sights seen in the night sky.

D: Think of a common nine-letter word with the consecutive letters “c” and “l” for a word associated with a certain fruit. Change the “c” and “l” to a “d” to name the job of a longshoreman.

E: Think of a not-so-common seven-letter word with the consecutive letters “c” and “l” for a dubious digit possessed by certain hoofed animals. Change the “c” and “l” to a “d” to spell out a two-syllable homophone for what “the ladies” sing – to the accompaniment of hoof beats – at the Camptown Racetrack.

What are these five pairs of words?

    

Dessert Menu:

Hit The Road Dessert:

Cereal assessin’ ‘n’ censorin’

The image shown here suggests a quite recent news story.

What is the story, and what is the brand name of the cereal shown in the image?

Hint: Wood I hear a “gadgetree” if one fell in the orchard?

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.