Mixed Baggish; The pit and the Phnom Penh Dublin; Raiders of the “lost” parked; Big Apple Panhandle;

P! SLICES: OVER (76 + 543) SERVED

  

Welcome to our May 19^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving up eleven puzzles this week, including eight Rip/Riff-offs of Will Shortz’s “Cheerios in the morning/soiree in the evening” NPR puzzle created by Steve Baggish.

 

Also on our menus are:

A world capital Hors d’Oeuvre that is really “the pits,”

An Appetizer that is a bit shady, and

A Dessert that takes place right here in Ben Bailey’s taxi.

Note: I am scheduled to play the on-air puzzle with Puzzlemaster Will Shortz and Lourdes “Lulu” Garcia-Navarro this May 21 on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday program.

I pray that I will be able to relax and enjoy Will’s on-air puzzles as I tax my brain to achieve “decipheration.”


In the meantime, please relax and enjoy our puzzles as you taxi toward your destination. 

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Lug Nuts? Dire Wolf Bones? Butterflies? Hors d’Oeuvre:

The pit and the Phnom Penh Dublin

 

An English translation of a world capital rhymes with a two-syllable plural word for what you might find in a pit.

What is the capital and what might you find in the pit?

Hint: The capital is a city, not “capital” in the monetary sense. The capital, therefore, is not yen, euro,  franc or kroner, for example.

Appetizer Menu

Remade In The Shade Appetizer:

Raiders of the “lost” parked

Name an 8-letter 2-word slang term for a shady location where hot cars are often parked. 

Remove one letter to form a 7-letter 2-word slang term for the location that is the base for public employees who are often in hot pursuit of those hot cars, and who sometimes raid and shut down such shady locations.

What are these two slang terms?

MENU 

Ripping Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:

Mixed Baggish

Will Shortz’s May 14^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Steve Baggish, reads:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Drop the first two letters and read the remaining letters backward. You’ll get a word associated with the evening. What is the brand, and what’s the word?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ONE:

Take the brand name of a product (not a breakfast cereal) that’s usually consumed in the morning. Replace the first four letters with a prefix meaning “anew” or “again” and read the resulting letters backward. You’ll get a word associated with geometry. What is the brand, and what’s the word?

TWO:

Take the brand name of a product that’s sometimes consumed in the morning (after an evening of binge beer drinking) as a “hair-of-the-dog” hangover cure. Replace the first letter with a letter possessing a much higher Scrabble value and read the resulting letters backward. You’ll get a name associated with puzzles and with a sport that is a competition in the Olympic games.

What is the brand, and what’s the name associated with puzzles?

THREE:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Interchange the first and fourth letters. You’ll get a word for athletes whose performance may be enhanced by consuming the product, according to a 2015 Auburn University study.

What is the brand, and who are these athletes?

FOUR:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning – and presumably consumed during the past year-or-so by Penguins, Cavs, Cubs, Pats, Tar Heels….

Replace the third letter with an “s” and drop the first two letters. Rearrange the six letters of this result to get a word associated with the afternoon.

What is the brand, and what’s the word?

FIVE:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Drop the last four letters and read the remaining letters backward.

You’ll get:

Willie Horton’s main position on defense, for short;

The city he and Al Kaline most often played in, for short;

What Willie and Al did 2,333 times, for short;

Al’s main position on defense, for short.

What is the brand? What are the short forms of Horton’s position, the city, what Willie and Al did 2,333 times, and Al’s position?

SIX:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning, usually by kids. Spell it out, replacing the Roman numeral in the name with its spelled-out number to form a six-letter string.

Spell the brand name backward, replacing the Roman numeral in the result with its spelled-out number to form an eight-letter string.

Rearrange the 14 letters in the two letter-strings to form the three words to complete the following paragraph:

“For about 320 days out of the year, Elsie, a lapsed Catholic, skips Mass, blows off confession, and performs no corporal works of mercy whatsoever. However, every year, sometime after Groundhog Day, Elsie becomes a model Catholic – volunteering at the soup kitchen, teaching Sunday school and basically “camping out” in church. Elsie is a virtual and unvirtuous heathen most of the year, but at least she is ________ __ ____.”

  

SEVEN:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Place a duplicate of its last letter at the beginning of the name and read the resulting letters backward, adding a hyphen between the first and second letters. You’ll get a word for what many people do annually, usually sometime around Groundhog Day, give or take a month or two.

What is the brand, and what’s the word?

EIGHT:

Rearrange the letters in the first two words of the four-word brand name of a breakfast cereal to form three words, of 5, 4 and 3 letters. Replace the 3-letter plural word with a synonym and place it on the end of the 5-letter word to form an 8-letter compound word not found in dictionaries but occasionally found on record album charts…

A rock group was formed in Liverpool almost two decades after that “other group” was formed in Liverpool. The name of the second group consists of the 4-letter word, the words “and the” and the 8-letter compound word, thus forming the name of the group: “____ and the ________.”  

What is the cereal brand, and what’s the name of the rock group?

Dessert Menu

Brother, Can You Spare A Quarter Dessert

Big Apple Panhandle

Logan and Masa hail a taxi in New York City’s South Village. Their destination is 23^rd St. and 9^th Ave., the Chelsea Bistro and Bar, so they can treat themselves to chef Phillippe Rousell’s fabulous mussel and clam soup.

After giving their cabbie the address, however, a fanfare of music blasts forth and the taxi’s ceiling cascades with colorful lights. They are passengers in Ben Bailey’s “Cash Cab,” the rolling game show that takes place right there in his taxi!

Masa and Logan do well during their trek Chelsea-ward, answering most of Bailey’s quiz questions correctly and racking up a whole cabload of cash.

As the passengers depart the cab, joyously brandishing their wad of eight Benjamins for the benefit of the Cash Cab cameras, a nearby panhandler approaches them and asks if they can spare a quarter. Logan and Masa comply, handing the man two bits from their winnings.

One day later, Lego and Smitten, his kitten, also hail a taxi in South Village, also seeking a lift to the Chelsea Bistro and Bar. 
(Smitten loves chef Phillippe Rousell’s fabulous mussel and clam soup more than she loves Meow Mix or Fancy Feast! Lego will likely just order something from the bar.)

After the usual flourish of music and cascades of colorful lights greet the astounded new occupants, Bailey begins retracing his taxi’s tire-tracks northwestward toward the Chelsea Bistro.

Smitten and Lego do not fare as well as Masa and Logan, but they do at least manage to make it all the way to the Chelsea Bistro without getting kicked out of Bailey’s taxi.

The passengers depart the cab somewhat sheepishly (and cattily) brandishing their wad of four sawbucks and four fins for the benefit of the Cash Cab cameras. Not surprisingly, the same panhandler approaches them and asks if they can spare a quarter. Lego and Smitten also comply, handing the man two bits.

The weight of two bits Logan and Masa handed the panhandler is roughly one-third the weight of the two bits Lego and Smitten now hand (or paw?) the panhandler.

Exactly how much total cash did the panhandler receive from Logan, Masa, Lego and Smitten?

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.