“It was a dark and stormy start…” How to flog a golf ball; Gidget’s in love… with her kitchen gadget; Literonymity; Where the H? In the middle of nowhere! Shooting in the dark with intent to contrive;

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

Welcome to our December 9^th edition Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Our marquee puzzle this week is a “cryptic word pyramid” with a golfer’s twist that ought to keep solvers “coming and going…” and coming back for more. 

It is the creation of PlannedChaos, who gave us a taste of this type of puzzle in this past week’s Puzzleria! Comments Section. Each clued answer builds on the previous clue’s answer, adding one letter for each level as you meander down the face of the pyramid. Thanks, PC.

Also on our menus:

A Trumped-up fake-news Hors d’Oeuvre;

A Morsel about Gidget’s gadget;

An Appetizer for utopian nerds that may make them chortle;

A Ripping Off Shortz Slice that is a “fanfare for the middle man”; and

A Trumped-down relatively-legit-news Dessert.

So, peer amid our menu items. Order all you care to eat. And, enjoy.

 Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Ersatz Copy Hors d’Oeuvre:

“It was a dark and stormy start…”

(Warning: Fake future news ahead!)

In the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency, his pick to run the Central Intelligence Agency, Kansas Republican Representative Mike Pompeo, is easily confirmed. Not long after he assumes his duties, however, a pair of old pals pay Pompeo a visit. They have traveled to Washington to “cash in” some old campaign contribution “chips.”

The visitors are oil and gas billionaire tycoons Charles and David Koch, who have been major bankrollers of Pompeo’s congressional campaigns. Koch Industries is headquartered in Wichita, the “gazebo” in Pompeo’s congressional district backyard.

 

Chuck and Dave “suggest” to Mike that he use the CIA’s vast cyber resources to hack into the corporate computer system of Royal Dutch Shell, a major competitive rival of Koch Industries. 

Mike agrees, and gets right on it. On February 1^st he orders his CIA cyber-operatives to inappropriately appropriate top-secret strategies from Shell’s servers and pass the information along to the Kochs.

 

A week later, however, the whole caper unravels after Pompeo’s nemesis Edward Snowden, now an “insider” in Russia, Wiki-leaks documentation of the CIA hacking which has been hacked by (who else?) the Russian government!

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (together again 43 years after their publication of “All the President’s Men”) break the story. Fair and Balanced FOX News takes credit for breaking the story. Koch Industries’ stocks plummet. Mike is hauled before and is cross-examined by a House Select Committee on CIA abuse of power. He denies everything. Chuck and Dave, however, cut a plea deal with the Justice Department and rat Mike out. President Trump reluctantly asks for Mike’s resignation, then immediately pardons him. Mike skulks off into political oblivion.

 

“Woodstein” rushes to crank out a book documenting the events of this early February, 2017. They title it:

“__ __ __

__ __ __ __

__ __ __ __

__ __

__ __ __ __ __ __.”

What is this title?

Hint: See the italicized title of this puzzle.

Morsel Menu

Sandra Dee Morsel:

Gidget’s in love… with her kitchen gadget

Gidget just loves her kitchen gadget, which is two words long and contains a total of 11 letters. The first letter of the gadget is a vowel and final letter is a consonant. The nine letters in between consist of just three different letters.

What is your gadget, Gidget?

Appetizer Menu

A Board, Bath And Beyond Appetizer:

Literonymity

Name the brands of two household products – one found normally in the kitchen, the other found normally in the bathroom.

Replace the two vowels in the kitchen brand with two different vowels. Remove the hyphen, and what follows the hyphen, from the bathroom brand. Remove one of the two adjacent identical letters from the result.

 

Place the altered bathroom brand after the altered kitchen brand, without a space. The result is what we shall call a “literonym” – a word that exists because it, or a form of it, appears in a work of literature.

What are these two brand names and the literonym?

Note: some examples of literonyms are: robot, gargantuan, mentor, nerd, yahoo, utopia, pandemonium, malapropism and chortle.

MENU 

Pharaohward And Back Slice:

How to flog a golf ball

This puzzle is a cryptic word pyramid that gets you coming and going. Solve it by creating a five-tier word pyramid from the clues provided below, which when finished will look something like this:

    

    XX

   XXX

  XXXX

 XXXXX

XXXXXX

Clues:

1. The home state of “The King” of golf, according to the U.S. Postal Service; 

or, Reuters' rival prints a retraction (2)

2. Good for a duffer; 

or, the sound on the other side of Poe's door (3)

3. What you get when you comb a bunker?; 

or, what they call a bunker on the back nine (4)

4. A type of Green positioned low in the field of competition; 

or, going round a hazard planted by the Roman goddess of love? (with -LF) (5)

5. Even after reviewing the scorecard, this puzzle knows it's odd (6)

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

Where the H…? In the middle of nowhere!

Will Shortz’s December 4^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle read:

This challenge may sound impossible, but there’s a good answer. Think of a common two-word phrase, in seven letters, that has two R’s in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What phrase is it?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

1. Think of a two-word phrase, in five letters, for what film critics do to a god-awful movie. The phrase has an I in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What phrase is it?

 

2. Think of a two-word term, in nine letters, for Crete, Japan, Hawaii, Barbados, Bermuda, Ireland or Cuba. The term has an I in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What term is it?

3. Think of a two-word exclamation, in eight letters, cried out by losers in poker game after the winning four-of-a-kind hand is revealed. The exclamation has a space in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What exclamation is it?

4. Think of a two-word term, in nine letters, for a part of a musical instrument that either admits or prevents passage of air to certain pipes. The term has an S in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What term is it?

5. Think of a four-word phrase, in thirteen letters, that explains why Duran Duran went into the recording studio in 1982. The phrase has a period in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What phrase is it?

(There are at least three possibilities for the final word in phrase. The second letter of my preferred final word is a U.)

 

6. Think of a two-word term, in nine letters, for a kitchen chore that might be jotted down on a “Honey-do” list. The term has an O in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What term is it?

7. Think of a verb, in twelve letters, that means “to bring (a foreign country) under the influence of U.S. trade, popular culture and attitudes.” The verb has a colon in the middle. And “in the middle” means exactly in the middle. What verb is it?

Note: The verb also usually has a hyphen in it, but the hyphen (in a quite uncolon-like manner!) is not exactly in the middle.

Dessert Menu

Prez-Elect Selects Appointees Dessert:

Shooting in the dark with intent to contrive

President-elect Donald Trump’s intent to contrive an “America that is great again” hinges in great part on whom he – along with his transition team (Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, et al.) – selects to head cabinet posts and other federal agencies led by administrators who are normally given cabinet ranks.

Rearrange the letters in the phrase “Trump’s intent to contrive” to form the first and last names of one of the president-elect’s appointments, along with what the appointee will be in charge of, in one word. (Thus, the first and last names plus the one-word focus of the appointed position comprise 22 letters.) 

Who is this appointee?

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.