All roads lead to roaming America; What made HER FIT? CANOLA OIL! Sniffing, then snuffing out skunk stink; The Capital Hillbillies

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (876 + 54) SERVED

Welcome to our September 8th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We’re taking a “road trip” back into the past this week with our featured puzzle, a wanderlustrous “Roadside Sign Appetizer” provided to us compliments of our friend Mark Scott of Seattle (also known by his screen name, “skydiveboy”). 

Mark’s puzzle, titled “All roads lead to roaming America,” celebrates destinations dotting road signs all along American roadsides. But beware, there are clever twists and unexpected turns on this particular “puzzle road.” 

Speaking of clever and unexpected, our Ripping Off Shortz Slices this week honor another friend of Puzzleria! For the second time in the span of a fortnight-and-a-half, we are ripping off an NPR puzzle created by Patrick J. Berry (screen name: “cranberry”). It is an anagramatic puzzle that puzzlemaster Will Shortz chose as his featured challenge  on his September 3rd NPR broadcast. 


You can read Patrick’s puzzle under our main MENU (“Ripping Off Shortz And Berry Slices”) along with four rip-off puzzles created by LegoLambda that, alas, pale in comparison to Patrick’s Will-worthy effort.

Also on our menus this week are:

A Slice about a pooch’s encounter with a skunk, and

A Dessert that might necessitate a Congressional inquiry.

So hop into your 1948 Hudson Commodore Convertable Brogham, upshift into overdrive, and enjoy our puzzles as they power-glide by.

Appetizer Menu

Roadside Sign Appetizer:

All roads lead to roaming America 

What was the most common geographical name found on highway signs prior to the Interstate freeway system?

MENU 

Is That A Black And White Cat Slice:

Sniffing, then snuffing out skunk stink

“Every time Emily Arundell’s fox terrier Bob has an unfortunate encounter with a skunk, she _____ up his wire hair thoroughly until ___ ____ is eradicated.”

Rearrange the letters in an author’s pen name to form an informal term for daytime TV dramas. Give a shortened form, in five letters, of the more common name for such daytime dramas. 
Divide the author’s real first name into two words – a one-syllable word and a two-syllable word. Insert those three words, in that order, into the three blanks to complete the sentence above.

What words belong in the three blanks? What are the author’s real name and pen name? What are the two terms for daytime TV dramas? 

Ripping Off Shortz And Berry Slices:

What made HER FIT? CANOLA OIL!  

Will Shortz’s September 3rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle created by Patrick Berry reads: 

This challenge comes from listener Patrick Berry of Jasper, Ala., who had the clever AMERICAN DAD + C = CANDID CAMERA anagram a few weeks ago. This challenge is another anagram. 
Rearrange the 15 letters of COOL HIT FARE IN L.A. to name a famous song that’s appropriate to the given phrase.

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

Rearrange the 13 letters of  “L.A. TOWN: SMOG... DUD!” to name a somewhat familiar song by a musical group whose base of operations is appropriate to the given phrase.

TWO:

This second puzzle is inherently easier than the other three puzzles in this series of rip-off puzzle slices. Rearrange the 16 letters of INHERENTLY EASIER to name a famous song that likely has received many “hits” and “listens” since this past Sunday.
Extra credit:
Name another song title (but one not-quite-so-famous) by the same group that recorded the famous song mentioned above. The letters in the two words of this song title can be rearranged to form a caption for the image of the tattoo pictured here.
What is the title of this not-quite-so-famous song? 

THREE:

A band recorded a few of what might be called “brackish tunes” – songs with lyrics conjuring images the likes of:

“sea of green,”

“resting our head on the sea bed,”

“we lived beneath the waves,” and

“...to be under the sea.”

Rearrange the 13 letters of BRACKISH TUNES to name the title of a familiar song by this band that opens not beneath the sea but above the clouds. 

FOUR:

Change the only Y in a top hit song title to an S. The title’s seventh though eleventh letters, in order, are the first five letters in a shorter top hit song title by a different recording artist. Remove these five letters and complete the shorter title by removing the fourth, sixth, twelfth, nineteenth and twentieth letters from the original title and then placing them, in order, after the first five letters you removed. 

The 12 letters that remain from the longer title can be rearranged to spell “top hit” and “box set.” Indeed, each “top hit” can be found in a “box set” compilation of songs by each of these two recording artists. 

What are these two top hit song titles and who are the artists that recorded them?       

Dessert Menu

Swamp Gas Dessert:

The Capital Hillbillies

1. What U.S. senator (whose middle name is a soup brand) might remind you of Homer Simpson?

2. What U.S. senator (whose campaign signs included a macron above the “a” in his surname) might his constituents want to vote out of office?

3. What U.S. representative (who was the “Victor” in an election to succeed his father in Congress) might have a hunting dog named “Nipper” who hears and heeds “his master’s voice” to “fetch” a brand-name yo-yo that broke loose and is rolling across the hunting lodge floor?

4. What U.S. senator (whose middle name is the first name of a chipmunk and surname of a past bowtied senator from Illinois) would you think might make a lot of raucous noise in caucuses and on the Senate floor?

5. What U.S. representative and political science professor emeritus (who admits to living in Mount Vernon... just as George Washington would admit!) might also be well versed in geometrical science? (This representative knows, for instance, what a circle's circumference divided by pi equals.)

6. What U.S. senator (whose middle name is the surname of a past prexy or a pitcher named “Mudcat”) might remind you of someone not “moovin’ in the groove” but rather “stuck in the ditch”?

7. What U.S. senator (who is a third cousin of an SNL alum, and is from a state neighboring a state with an SNL alum as U.S. senator) might you mistakenly think has been charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol?

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.