Fuel and feather powered flight; Advice from a literary editor; Shuffling the Kardashians; ...Prisoners here of our own device;

P! SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED

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

We this week feature a cryptically clever puzzle created by our friend PlannedChaos. His puzzle is a “Contemporary And Cryptic Hors d’Oeuvre” titled “...Prisoners here of our own device.”

Thanks PlannedChaos for devising this enthralling puzzle and allowing us to share it with Puzzlerians!

Also on this week’s menus are:

A quartet of trash-TV-inspired Ripping-Off-Shortz And Matic Slices,

A high-flying, fine-feathered and all-fueled-up-but-perhaps-on-the-way-down Appetizer, and

A Dessert with literary pretensions.

Please enjoy our seven puzzles!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Contemporary And Cryptic Hors d’Oeuvre:

...Prisoners here of our own device

Name a two-word phrase that you may hear several times per day in the modern world. Stop staring so much at its rear end to name a contemporary band in two words.

Forming the band strained relationships and they lost four members. These outcasts can both brick the device involved in the two-word phrase and name a place where the device is not welcome.

What is the two-word phrase? What is the name of the band? What “brick” might the device become? Where is the device not welcome?

Appetizer Menu

Meet The Flockers Appetizer:

Fuel and feather powered flight

An aircraft encounters a predicament, one which can be summarized in a single noun. Without changing their order, move the last three letters of this noun to its beginning.

The new word formed, in its singular form, is a general descriptive term encompassing two different families (or flocks) of feathered critters: the [descriptive term] [first flock name] and the [descriptive term] [second flock name].

The name for a critter in the first flock is also a verb for one thing a passenger in an aircraft experiencing the predicament might do. The name for a critter in the second flock is also a verb for one thing a bystander on the ground who is witnessing the predicament might do.

What might the passenger do? What might the bystander do? What predicament might the aircraft encounter, and what is the general descriptive term for both families of feathered critters?

Hint: The general term for both flocks sounds like it might be related to donkeys.  

MENU

Ripping Off Shortz And Matic Slices:

Shuffling the Kardashians

Will Shortz’s June 25th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Kruno Matic of Croatia, reads:

Take the name KIM KARDASHIAN. Rearrange the letters to get the last name of a famous actress along with the name of a famous one-named singer. Who are these people?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz and Matic Slices read:

ONE:

Female singers and actresses and models like Kim Kardashian use ________ products such as moisturizers and depilatories to keep their arms, legs and complexions creamy smooth, wrinkle-free and devoid of any stray _____, especially on their “chinny-chin-chins.” Rearrange the 13 letters in those two blanks to get the real last name (at birth) of a Best Actress Oscar-winning actress along with the name of a famous one-named singer. Who is this actress and who is this singer?

TWO:

Take the last name of  a red-tressed “Graceful” actress who tends to ____ heads when she appears in public. Rearrange the letters of her last name along with the four letters that belong in the blank to form the real last name of an actor along with the name of a famous one-named singer. Who is this actor and who is this singer?

THREE:

Misspell the name of the actress Claire Danes as Clair Danes (as Lego usually does every time he has the occasion to spell “Clair Danes”). Rearrange those 10 letters to get the last name of an obscure actress (whose sister is a more famous actress) along with the name of a well known one-named singer. Who are these people?

FOUR:

“Prurience! Pelvis! Skinheads!”

Those words smack of “Sex, prejudice and rock ‘n’ roll.” Rearrange the letters in PRURIENCE, PELVIS and SKINHEADS to get the names of five famous one-named singers. (Yes, we realize the solution to one of the five singers is a “piece of cake”... indeed, a piece of peanut butter banana cake served up in the Jungle Room as a dessert to top off an entree of fried peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches!)

Who are these five mononymous singers?

Dessert Menu

Duodectet Dessert: (thanks,VT!)

Advice from a literary editor

Write, Coleridge, of Xanadu.

Herm, make the great whale white not blue.

Mark Twain, give Huck a chaw to chew.

Help Swann, Proust, find his temps perdu.

Hank James, pray tell what Maisie knew.

Will Shakespeare, kill off Montague.

Vlad, make Lolita twenty-two.

Give Mersault some grief, Camus.

Dante, Satan needs his due.

Christie, Marple has no clue!

Walpole, ply thy Gothic, do.

Homer, pull Odysseus through.

The dodecet* above chronicles advice suggested to authors who were in the process of composing their masterpieces. Some heeded the advice, others did not.

Rearrange all letters in one, and in only one, of the twelve lines to form two words and a prefix. The two words are synonyms for a creature with a roundish body and a tail. The prefix indicates a different creature. It is a prefix, however, that many people mistakenly believe pertains to the roundish, tailed creature.

What are these synonyms and prefix?

* Our twelve-line verse consists of a septet and quintet – the septet
with eight syllables per line and the quintet with seven syllables per line. Because there is no English word for a verse of twelve lines, we shall call ours a “dodecet.” We invite our guests at Puzzleria! to suggest other words that could mean “a twelve-line verse.”

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.