USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow? Drivers and divers in the car pool; Chimps go bananas, gnus go gaga; A tweet about a twit; Art Ferns? Lawyer-up like the dickens;

SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED  

Welcome to our July 28th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

Among our seven puzzle offerings this week is a creative challenge, similar to the ones Will Shortz periodically purveys on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday program.

This Puzzleria! “mini creative challenge” was sparked by a recent correspondence between LegoLambda and frequent Puzzleria! contributor Mark Scott of Seattle (aka by his screen name “skydiveboy”). You will find the instructions and rules of our challenge under the Appetizer menu. It is titled “USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow?” 
Thanks to Mark for that creative spark.

Note: The closest P! has come previously to offering a creative challenge was this puzzle involving “Acrofinitions” (a concept that might just be original to this blog). 

Also on this week’s menus are:

2. One dickens of an Appetizer,

3. One eco-friendly Slice,

4. One Reincemeat pie Dessert,

5. One car and driver and pool and diver Dessert, and 

6&7. Two Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz “only-two-consonants” caption puzzles.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your creative engines.... An’, Engeoy!

Appetizer Menu

Crime And Punishment Appetizer:

Lawyer-up like the dickens

Name a well known attorney who no longer practices law. The attorney’s last name is a noun which is also the name of a  criminal court that makes an appearance in a Charles Dickens novel. 
The remaining letters of the name by which the attorney is known spell out a verb for what criminals often try to do before ultimately being brought to justice.

Who is this attorney?

One-Week Creative Challenge Appetizer:

USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow?

In recent correspondence with master puzzle creator and Puzzleria! contributor Mark Scott of Seattle (also known as skydiveboy, his screen name) Mark mentioned to me that one of his pet peeves about the “United States of America” is that we have never really named it. The United States (U.S.) is not a name – it is more like a description. 

We call ourselves not “United Staters” but “Americans.” But, Mark added, all people in the entire Western Hemisphere – comprising North America, South America and Central America –call themselves “Americans”... which they are!

There are actually three “united states of America,” Mark continued. But the other two – Mexico and Brazil – had the creative vision and decency to actually name themselves.

That “skydiveboy/legolambda” conversation inspired the creation of a creative opportunity for Puzzlerians! 

And, that leads us to this “Mini-Creative Challenge”:

Provide a “real” name for the country we call the “United States.” Be clever, be whimsical, be “punny,” be outrageous and/or be historically correct. In any case, be creative. 

Generate as many answers as you wish. My best effort thus far is “Usurpia.”

Unlike Will Shortz’s two-week creative challenge, you will have only one week, not two, to come up with answers to this Puzzleria! creative challenge.

So, start pondering!

MENU 

Eco-Friendly Informal Artistic Slice:
Art Ferns?

Name a millennium-old art form in which the works of art are usually green. Interchange its third and fourth letters, then interchange its fifth and sixth letters to form the name of a nation. 

Note: The nation is also known by a longer and more formal name.

What are this art form and country?

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

Chimps go bananas, gnus go gaga

Will Shortz’s July 23th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads: 

What common three-word expression – 14 letters in all – has only N and G as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels? 

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

What uncommon seven-word expression – 27 letters in all – has only M and T as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels?

The expression might serve as a lengthy caption that I might have written for the image pictured here. Focus on the man at the left in the Los Angeles Dodgers uniform who seems to be peckish for leather. I played with him when I was a Dodger (sorry, that is fake news!). My caption (written in the past tense) would be in the form:

(preposition, 2 letters) (noun, 8) (verb, 3) (article, 1) (noun, 4) (preposition, 2) “(noun, 7)”

__ ________ ___ _ ____ __ “_______”
Hint: The initial letters of the first six words in the caption are: m, t, a, a, m and a. The seventh word is a made-up word that is a homophone of a word that appears in an image elsewhere in this week’s blog. 

TWO:

What uncommon twelve-word expression – 66 letters in all – has only N and S as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels?

The expression might serve as a lengthy editorial caption – not for the image pictured here but for a photo that might have been taken soon afterward. The image pictured is a photograph that might have been taken by one of the photographers in a phalanx of Shia and non-Shia Syrian journalists toiling side-by-side in a photo-journalists’ pool. The photo taken soon afterward would have had to have been taken by one of the non-Shia journalists, not a Shia journalist. The caption (written in the present tense) would be in the form: 

(adjective, 6 letters), (adjective, 7) (proper noun used as an adjective, 4) (plural noun, 9) (verb, 6) (plural proper noun, 6), (plural hyphenated proper noun, 9) –  (verb, 3) (adjective, 2) (plural noun, 6), (preposition, 2) (plural proper noun, 6)

______ _______ ____ _________ ______ ______, ___-______ – ___ __ ______, __ ______

Hint: The initial letters of the twelve words in the caption are: i, a, I, a, a, S, n, u, n, n, o, and S. The sixth and twelfth words are the same. The ninth word is the same as the eleventh word spelled backward.

Dessert Menu

Reincemeat Pie Dessert:

A tweet about a twit

On August 28, 2017, by-then-former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus will make a Tweet that will include these three word-snippets:

“...a nut’s comic anarchy...”

“...a month’s inaccuracy...”

“...Tony, an anarchic scum...”

Rearrange the letters in any one of the three snippets to reveal the first and last names of the person to whom Priebus refers.

Who is this person?

Gator Tail Dessert:

Drivers and divers in the car pool

Name something drivers might do, in two words, while being tailgated or cut off by other drivers, or while idling. 
Interchanging these words and pronouncing the result sounds like the name of a place popular with divers.

What might drivers do? Where might divers go?

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.

Belles lettres jackets; Be afraud, be very afraud! Tales of skewed cities; 12-ounces of cure is worth a pounding head of prevention

P! SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED

  

Welcome to our July 21st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

We offer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Riffing/Ripping-Off-Shortz puzzles this week, all inspired by the fine NPR puzzle submitted to Will Shortz by Dave from Eugene, Onegin... I mean, Dave from Eugene Oregon! 

Also on this week’s menus are:

6. A fraudulent Appetizer.

7. A Spahnie Slice, and

8. A dusty Dessert with literary pretensions.

So, stay sane. Pray for rain if you are drought-stricken. 

But, as always, please enjoy our puzzles.

Appetizer Menu

Sullying A Profession Of Nobility Appetizer:

Be afraud, be very afraud!

Name an archaic word for a person who engages in fraud – in particular, a person who is a fraudulent practicioner of a certain noble profession. The word contains only two letters that are the same. 

Replace those identical letters with two different identical letters to form a word for a substance such a fraudulent professional might have occasion to use (or perhaps misuse) in his or her practice. What are these words?

Hint: a shortened portion of the archaic word survives still in modern English dictionaries.

MENU 

Bucs And Braves And Ballad Of Bubby Bibber  Slice:

12-ounces of cure is worth a pounding head of prevention

Friday, July 20, 1951, Braves Field in Boston: 

Bubby Bibber, a big backer of the Boston Braves along with his poker-playing chums are four of the 5,767 spectators in attendance to watch their brave and beloved Beantowners compete versus the National League’s perennial doormat, the plucky but pathetic Pittsburgh Pirates.

The game lasts a bit longer than two-and-a-half hours, during which Bubby and his buddies keep the concessions vendors hopping as they wash down dime foot-long Nathan’s frankfurters with a folding-money’s-worth of nickel Haffenreffer Lagers and Pickwick Ales.
The Braves win the game 11-6. Future Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn (“Spahn and Sain, and pray for rain”) is the winning pitcher, and drives in two runs himself. Bubby and his buddies celebrate by playing poker at Bubby’s place – dealing, bidding, holding, calling, picking up the pots and scarfing down even more cans of Pickwick’s and foot-long franks till they call it a night at midnight.

Bubby awakes the following morning with a pounding-hammer-headache and hangover. 

Now, most people in such a condition subscribe to “the CAAASSH cure,” an acronym for “Coffee, Aspirin And Alka-Seltzer Stop Hangovers.” But not Bubby. His remedy involves other ingestibles. So, he wobbles over to his Kelvinator fridge and picks out a pair of Pickwick’s left over from the previous evening’s pokering and, because he feels a bit peckish, also grabs a Nathan’s frankfurter.

The cure to which Bubby subscribes contains six words of 4, 2, 3, 3, 9 and 10 letters. The  six-letter acronym for his remedy, while not spelling out CAAASSH, does however spell out something Bubby and his buddies bought with “caaassh” the previous evening. 

What is Bubby Bibber’s remedy?

Epilogue: Bubby’s remedy/cure actually works! As a result, he and his buddies are four of the 3,263 spectators attending Saturday’s follow-up game versus the Pirates. The Braves win by the same score, 11-6. Vern Bickford is the winning pitcher. Pirate Vern Law, who was the losing pitcher in Friday’s game, is also the losing pitcher in Saturday’s game. 
Talk about your deja-vern! There oughta be a Law!

Hint: A form of the 9-letter word in Bubby’s cure is a lyric in a civil rights protest song.  The 10-letter word is a noun associated with pummeled boxers and patients who are being wheeled on gurneys into recovery rooms.

Ripping Off Shortz And Dave From Eugene Oregon Slices:

Tales of skewed cities

Will Shortz’s July 16th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Dave of Eugene, Oregon, reads: 

Name a U.S. city and its state – 12 letters altogether. Change two letters in the state’s name. The result will be the two-word title of a classic novel. What is it?

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz And Dave From Eugene Oregon Slices read:

ONE:

Name a U.S. city and its state – 13 letters altogether. Change the first letter of the city’s name and move it between the city’s fouth and fifth letters. The result will be the two-word title of a classic American novel. What is it?

Hint: The city’s population is roughly 20,000.

Hint: 

The name of the U.S. city would be an excellent choice as a name for a possible merger between two particular adjacent midwestern cities. 

TWO:

Name two U.S. states followed by a city belonging to each state. Interchange the cities, removing two letters from the end of one of them. The result will be the first and last name of an American author, and a state followed by a food item that is very popular in that state. Change the first letter of the food item to get another city in the state where the food item is popular.

Hint: The states are on same side of the Mississippi River.

What are these states and cities?

THREE:

Name a city in a U.S. coastal state. Name another nearby coastal state. Insert the other state’s postal abbreviation (in lowercase letters) consecutively somewhere inside the city’s name. Divide the result into two words that might describe a herd of creatures found in the vicinity of a coastal state on the other side of the country. 

What are this city and two coastal states? What is the state on the opposite coast and the two-word description of the creatures?

FOUR:

Name a city in a western state whose capital and four-letter abbreviation are names of towns in a midwestern state. Write down the western city and midwestern state – 10 letters altogether. Change two letters in the state’s name. The result (if you add the word “The” at the beginning) will be the three-word title of a classic novel. What is it?

Hint: The western city is famous as the headquarters of a nationally known company brand. 

FIVE:

Name a U.S. city in a western state and the first word (after the word “The”) in the nickname of a southern state. The result is a type of cheese. 

What are the cheese, city and nickname?

Dessert Menu:

No Musty Dusty Pages Dessert:

Belles lettres jackets 

The title of a fictional work contains two words. The second word can be formed by rearranging the first three letters of the author’s full name as it appears on the dust jacket.

Remove from the first word of the title all letters that are the same as any of the remaining four letters of the author’s name, leaving six letters and an apostrophe. Remove the apostrophe. Those six remaining letters, taken in order, spell out the middle name of a poet whose first, middle and last names appear together on dust jackets of poetic volumes.

The last names of the author and poet begin with the same letter.

What is this fictional work and who is its author? Who is the poet?

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.

A letter’s dropped off by a carrier, the mailbag has just become airier; The Billy Crudups and Lesley-Anne Downs of the entertainment industry; Pages in the annals of opioidiatry (Opie oy DYE a tree); Still life in the city; Kinsasha, Juba, Walla Walla...

P! SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED

  

Welcome to our July 14th Bastille Day edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

July, 14, 2017 is of course also written as 7/14/17, which is palindromic. That is, its digits read the same forward and back: 71417. We are in the midst of a 10-date skein of such palindromosity which commenced this past Monday, 7/10/17, and will conclude next Wednesday, 7/19/17.

Our featured puzzle this week again comes to us courtesy of Patrick J. Berry (screen name: “cranberry”), who has been on a  “puzzle roll” of late, having contributed the excellent “Wolfgang Puck (Wolf gang = Pack)” poser to last Friday’s Puzzleria! 

Patrick’s latest contribution is another clever Appetizer about the “ups and downs” in the entertainment industry.

Merci beaucoup to you, Patrick, for your encore puzzling coup. 

Also on this week’s menus are:

🔻A trio of  FACTUAL and ACTUAL yet FALSE Ripping-Off-Shortz And Eiger Slices,  

🔻A fourth Slice  that takes you on a worldwide tour,

🔻A Dessert lacking a caption for an image captured on canvas,

🔻And a second helping of Dessert about questionable opioid usage by a page with a whole Camelotta knighthood aspirations.

So, please enjoy... without using mood-altering substances, of course. 

Appetizer Menu

Meeting Entertainment Royalty In Elevators Appetizer:

The Billy Crudups and Lesley-Anne Downs of the entertainment industry

Think of two words, each which means “to go up and down.” Add a letter to the end of one of the words to name a famous entertainer. 

Who is this entertainer?

Hint: The entertainer’s first name at birth is shared by an Oscar best actress nominee’s first name at birth. (Both were in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on that Oscar night, in different roles.) Their birth first name is also shared by the birth first name of a very powerful person who made philanthropic appearances with the  entertainer.

MENU 

Global Itinerary Slice:

Kinsasha, Juba, Walla Walla...

Consider the cities on the following list:

Paris, France; 

Cleveland, Ohio;

Moscow, Russia;

Memphis, Tennessee;

Birmingham, England;

Toronto, Canada;

Tulsa, Oklahoma;

Juba, South Sudan;

Walla Walla, Washington;

Asuncion, Paraguay;

Kinsasha, Republic of the Congo;

Montreal, Canada;

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;

Duisburg, Germany;

Name one adjective that describes every city on the list. Add a capital letter to the beginning of this adjective to name a country.

Name one noun that every city on the list can claim to be (perhaps surprisingly or ironically, given the adjective you just found). 

Add a letter to the beginning of this noun to name another noun. Bandy is a popular example of that other noun in the country formed from the adjective. Nest ball is another popular example.

What are the adjective and country? What are the two nouns?

Ripping Off Shortz And Eiger Slices:

A letter’s dropped off by a carrier, the mailbag has just become airier

Will Shortz’s July 9th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Martin Eiger of Montville, New Jersey, reads: 

Take a certain 7-letter word. Remove the first letter and you get a 6-letter synonym of that word. And the letter you removed is an abbreviation of the opposite of both words. What words are these?

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

ONE:

Take a certain 9-letter word. Remove the first letter and you get an 8-letter word that is the first of 5 words in a phrase that is synonymous with the 9-letter word. The letters in the second, third, fourth and fifth words in the phrase can be rearranged to form the phrase “the hot housewife.” And the letter you removed from the 9-letter word is the initial letter in the surname of a person who has decent odds of becoming the 9-letter word.

What words are these?

TWO:

Take a certain 7-letter word. Remove the first letter and you get a 6-letter synonym of that word... a synonym, that is, if you are  passenger on the Titanic on its maiden voyage, April 13, 1912. 

And the letter you removed – if you capitalize it and rotate it 90 degrees counterclockwise (Could we but turn back time!) – is an abbreviation of the opposite of the 7-letter word (and the 6-letter word... if you are on the Titanic, April 13, 1912).

What words are these?

Hint: And the letter you removed, if you do not rotate it, is the initial letter of the country from which the Titanic commenced her voyage. 

THREE:

Take a 2-syllable 9-letter hyphenated word consisting of a certain 7-letter word and the word “-up” after the hyphen. Replace the first letter of the 7-letter word with a D and replace the word’s short vowel sound with a different short vowel sound. Pronouncing this result aloud sounds like a 6-letter word which, when followed by the  word “-up” forms an 8-letter hyphenated synonym of the 9-letter hyphenated word. 

And the first letter you replaced is an abbreviation of the opposite of both hyphenated words. 

What words are these?

Hint: The 9-letter hyphenated word and the word that is the opposite of both hyphenated words begin with the same three letters in the same order.

Dessert Menu

Served To You On A Tray, ron, Dessert:

Still life in the city

Write a terse 2-word 10-letter caption for the image pictured here. Write the two words sans a space between them. If you’ve got the right two words the result will be the name of a town which is in the process of becoming a city.

Hint: This municipality is the hometown of:

1. An  enshrined athlete with a wonderful nickname that befits this menu.

2. A “pioneer” teacher who has an asteroid named after her, as well as craters on Venus and the moon.

3. A current member of Congress who has this past week been very much in the news.

What is the name of this soon-to-be city? Who are our three home-towners?

Fun With Gus-The-Knight-Wannabe Desenex Dessert:

Pages in the annals of opioidiatry (Opie oy DYE a tree)

A knight-to-be named Gus claimed he had to take a daily opioid for his foot fungus, but the wise king saw through the page’s “ped med thing.” 

The final eight words (printed in blue text) in the sentence above share a very unusual property. What is it?

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.