PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (987 + 65) SERVED
Welcome to our November 24th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
Happy Cold Turkey Sandwich Day! It’s the day we rightly give thanks for leftovers. But don’t expect any leftover puzzles on this week’s menus – all are fresh from our oven and piping hot.
We are serving up:
⇓One “bad mother of invention” Appetizer
⇓One “there is no puzzle either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” Slice;
⇓⇓⇓⇓Four highly unusual... well okay, rather perhaps somewhat unusual Riffing-Off-Shortz Slices; and
⇓One “wokking on eggshells” (using vegetable oil as a soothing agent) Dessert.
So, quick, stick your gray-matter forks in these mysterious morsels. Make your Black Friday a Red Letter puzzle-solving Day. And, please enjoy the feast.
Appetizer Menu
Eponymous Weaponry Appetizer:
Bad cons and connotations
Think of a kind of weapon named after its inventor. Three consecutive letters in the name of the weapon form a word with bad connotations. Replace it with a different three-letter word with bad connotations to form the last name of a bad guy who used similar albeit perhaps more destructive weapons.
What is this weapon and who is this bad guy?
MENU
Droppin’ A “G” On You Slice:
“Somethin’ is forgotten in the state of Texas”
Name a one-word synonym for “acting obsequiously.”
A guy from Texas, say, who speaks Southern American English might pronounce this synonym by “forgetting” to enunciate its final “g.” A bystander who overhears this Texan’s prounciation might think he is giving a somewhat pejorative name for the place he hangs his hat, the hamlet he calls home.
What is this synonym? What does the bystander mishear it as?
Riffing Off Shortz Slices:
Sad & blue... can’t do the boogaloo
Will Shortz’s November 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
I’m going to give you six words. Besides the fact that each word contains the letter E, what highly unusual property do they share?
ADIEU
AMAZED
BUREAUS
ELATES
HEAD-ON
SIENNAS
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:
ONE:
I’m going to give you six words. Besides the fact that none of the words contains the letters D or T, and only two contain an A, what highly unusual property do they share?
ABASE
E-BOOK
I'VE
UM
A
SUN
TWO:
I’m going to give you eleven words. Besides the fact that no word contains the letter B, J, K, P, Q or Y, what somewhat unusual property do they share?
The words are in alphabetical order. Put them in a different order based on the unusual property they share. Find a twelfth word that also shares the property and would logically fit into the twelfth position.
(There may be more than one word that works. My intended answer begins and ends with consonants and contains nine letters.)
CAVEFISH
EXIST
FIGHTER
INTERZONAL
NEWTONS
SCROFULA
SIENNA
TETHERS
UNSEVERED
VENOM
VENTS
* Extra credit: Identify the cookie and all nine people over the age of 9 in the collage of photos pictured in this puzzle slice (ignore the people in the TV screen). Anyone who identifies the tenth person pictured gets extra-extra-read-all-about-it credit.
THREE:
I’m going to give you seven words. Besides the fact that six of the seven words contain the letter E and all seven contain a consonant in common, what somewhat unusual property do they share?
BALKED
DONNED
DOPE
HANDS
SKATED
STEADY
TOILED
FOUR:
I’m going to give you nine words. Besides the fact that the first letters of the ten words can be rearranged to form the words “CAR HICCUPS,” what somewhat unusual property do they share?
Note: One of the 10 words in the list is purposely misspelled. A duplicate of one of its letters was removed to make it eligible for the purposes of this puzzle.
ABASE
CONTENT
UKE
HERMIT
CONVENT
INDULT
REVEL
SUPLICATE
CONTEST
PRODUCT
Dessert Menu
Compounding The Foodie Problem Dessert:
The incredible inedible eggshell?
Each of the two parts of a compound word for a food is also by itself a word for a food. All three foods usually contain inedible parts.
Place the word for one of these usually inedible parts after the first part of the compound word. Remove the first letter of the result to form a plant associated with vegetable oil production.
What are these three foods and the plant associated with vegetable oil?
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.
PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (987 + 65) SERVED
Welcome to our November 17th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
Patrick J. Berry’s intricate Cryptic Crossword is our featured puzzle this week. Don’t be daunted, though. Patrick (screen name: cranberry) provides a Cryptic Crossword Tutorial at the bottom of his puzzle. Give it a shot; Patrick’s puzzles may be challenging but they are well worth your effort... And they are loads of fun.
This is Patrick’s fourth cryptic crossword to appear on Puzzleria! His previous “crossworded crypti” appeared here, here, and here.
Also on our menus this week are:
One ⇓ “mole, he is burrowing his way-ay to the sunlight” Appetizer
One ⇓ stately, capital Riffing-Off-Shortz Slice; and
One ⇓ Dessert you might want to save for a rainy (or dry) day.
So, quick, stick a fork in these intricacies before the Thanksgiving Day turkey tryptophan kicks in. And, please enjoy as you give thanks.
Appetizer Menu
Half A World Away Appetizer:
Transglobal Groundhog Day
If you dig a hole directly through the center of the Earth you would break through on the other side, literally half a world away.
If you dig such a hole anywhere along much of the border between two particular countries you will pop up in a country that begins with the first three letters of one of the border countries and ends with the final three letters of the other border country.
What three countries are these?
MENU
Cryptic Crossword Slice:
Belly-dancing, bottom-pinching & main squeezing
Instructions:
The number in parentheses at the end of each clue tells
how many letters are in the answer. Multiple numbers in
parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in
multiple-word answers.
For example, (6) indicates a six-letter answer like
“jalopy,” (7, 5) indicates a seven-and-five-letter answer
like “station wagon,” and (5-5) indicates a five-and-five-letter
hyphenated answer like “Rolls-Royce.”
(For insight about how to decipher the numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s tutorial which appears below the puzzle.)
ACROSS
7. Ran wild without a little naptime (7)
8. Cool automobile requiring special fuel (7)
10. A ploy made up to get some airplay! (6)
11. Dances, trying to cut in line (8)
12. Story that’s a delight to recall? (4)
13. Is independent woman, slippery one to keep inside (4-6)
14. Typo rather unusual, right, for one who’s good at spelling? (5, 6)
19. Woman getting into belly-dancing has nowhere to turn (5, 5)
22. Woman who’s part of the United Nations? (4)
23. Main squeeze initially hugged by another jerk (5, 3)
24. Teacher about to drink good whiskey? (6)
25. Go by fashion, as nobility (7)
26. Candidate not yours before primary election? (7)
DOWN
1. Fool gets up, having a problem with sleepwear (7)
2. View of the country taking four seconds? (8)
3. Represent not the whole side? (6)
4. Knight, sort of clean sort (8)
5. Think one’s a mess after last summer? (6)
6. Fight for equal rights getting out of control? (7)
9. Act strange – flippin’ unusual – taking medication for bug (11)
15. Change rule to accommodate fool? (8)
16. Quite shocking for boy standing around allowed to catch cold (8)
17. Surprised to find couple of reptiles in swamp (7)
18. Continued bottom-pinching – awfully rude! (7)
20. Character, a nut, dancing about (6)
21. Herb uses back trouble to hide bad heart (6)
ANSWERS ⇓ BELOW
Cryptic Crossword Tutorial:
(by Patrick J. Berry)
A cryptic crossword is a rather skeletal-looking puzzle – usually 225 boxes set within a 15-by-15 grid. You solve it just like a regular crossword except that the clues are usually made up of two parts:
1. The straightforward clue, and
2. The wordplay that may be essential to get the answer.
For example, in the clue “God – aching back! (4)” the answer is the Greek god of love, “Eros.” Thus “God” is the straightforward clue, and “aching back” is “wordplay” part of the clue: “aching” = “sore,” and “sore” spelled backward is “Eros.”
The wordplay may also include:
anagrams, homophones, “containers” (one word inside another), hidden words within the clue (for example, “hidden words witHIN The clue” contains the word HINT!), initials, charades (“this” plus-or-minus “that”), reversals of spelling (like “sore/Eros”), or, in many instances, a combination of any of these.
And be on the lookout for abbreviations – such as L = left, R = right, B = born, D = dead.
Watch also for clues involving self-referring words and phrases, like “bandleader” = B (the “leader,” or leading letter, of “band”); “sorehead” = S (the “head” of “sore”); “Fourth of July” = Y (the “fourth letter” of “July”); and “grand opening” = G (the “opening letter” of “grand”).
Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:
States of mischief, chiefs of state
Will Shortz’s November 12th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Steve Baggish, reads:
Take the name of a U.S. state capital. Immediately to the right of it write the name of a world capital. If you have the right ones, the name of a U.S. state will be embedded in consecutive letters within that letter string. What three places are these?
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:
ONE:
Take the name of a U.S. state capital. Immediately to the right of it write the name of a Canadian province. If you have the right ones, the last name of a U.S.president will be embedded in consecutive letters within that letter string. What two places and president are these?
TWO:
Take the name of a U.S. state capital. Immediately to the right of it write the name of another U.S. state capital. If you have the right ones, the last name of a U.S. president will be embedded in consecutive letters within that letter string, and the last name of another U.S. president will appear at the end. What two capitals and two presidents are these?
THREE:
Take the name of a U.S. state. Immediately to the right of it write another state’s postal abbreviation in lowercase. If you have the right ones, the last name of U.S. presidents will appear in consecutive letters at the end of that letter string. What two states and presidents are these?
FOUR:
Take the final letter of a U.S. state. Immediately to the right of it write the final two syllables of another U.S. state. If you have the right ones, the last name of a U.S. president will emerge. What two states are these? Who is the president?
FIVE:
Take the name of a U.S. state capital. Immediately to the right of it write the name of another U.S. state capital. Remove a string of consecutive letters within this result and close the gap that results. If you have the right ones, the last name of U.S. presidents will emerge. What two capitals are these? Who are the presidents?
SIX:
Take the name of a U.S. state. Remove its final two letters, and move the new final letter to the beginning. If you have the right state, the last name of a would-have-been U.S. president will emerge... would have been, that is, in an Electoral Collegeless nation. What is this state and who is this would-be president?
SEVEN:
Take the name of planet from our solar system. Immediately to the right of it write the name of a world nation. If you have the right ones, the last name of a U.S. president will be embedded in consecutive letters within that letter string. What planet, nation and president are these?
EIGHT:
Take the names of two months and place them side-by-side wihout a space. Duplicate the initial letter of one of the months and place it at the end, forming a string of consecutive letters. The first six letters of that string will form the name of a U.S. state capital, and so will the final seven letters of the string.
What are these months and these state capitals?
Dessert Menu
Dehydrate Hydrate Dehydrate Hydrate Dessert:
Moisture on the half-shellter
Name something found in the home, in two words, that might add moisture as it works.
Remove its first letter and you'll name something found in the home, in two words, that might remove moisture as it works.
What are these products?
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.
PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (987 + 65) SERVED
Welcome to our November 10th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
Note: Next Friday, November 17th, we will be publishing our fourth excellent Cryptic Crossword Puzzle composed by Puzzleria!’s own Patrick J. Berry (aka “cranberry”).
In this edition of Puzzleria!, we are offering nine Will Shortz film-director Riff-offs, including a John Cagesque poser created by ecoarchitect, and a full-bodied puzzle composed simultaneously but independently by Word Woman and ViolinTeddy. Both riff-offs were posted on Blaine’s blog this past week.
Also on our Puzzleria! menus this week are:
One ⇓ Appetizer moored by cables and anchors;
One glowing ⇓ ember of a Slice we hope to end up crowing about; and
One very weird ⇓ Dessert .
We now “direct” your attention to our silv..., that is, rather... our golden screen. The curtains are about to part, like Cecil B. DeMille’s Red Sea. Please enjoy our dozen-puzzle show.
Appetizer Menu
Weighty Anchors Appetizer:
Pionearing Armageddon?
Name a pair of one-syllable words with ominous overtones – one associated with deadly pursuit using trigger-equipped tools, the other associated with the possible triggering of global catastophe.
Now name a pioneering TV anchorperson at a cable network. Add his last name to the end of both one-syllable words. You will form the last names of two legendary anchorpeople at a pioneering pre-cable-TV network.
Who are these three anchors?
MENU
Deli Slice:
Glowing glowing gone, crowing crowing come
The word “deli” appears in the interior of a word for something that glows.
Replace the “d” with a “t” and “c” and rearrange those five letters to transform the “something that glows” into “a creature that crows.”
What are these glowing and crowing words?
Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices:
Slight, ace arm, anagram!
Will Shortz’s November 5th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Peter Collins, reads:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. The first two letters and last two letters in order spell a word. And the remaining letters, rearranged, spell a synonym of that word. What film director is it?
ONE:
Word Woman’s and ViolinTeddy’s Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices reads:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. You can anagram it into other words. The first two letters and last two letters in order spell a body part. And the remaining letters, rearranged, spell another body part. What film director is it?
TWO:
ecoarchitect’s Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices reads:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. The first two letters and last two letters in order spell a word. What remains represents the synonymous epitome of that word. Or, as eco put it, what remains “is about as [film director’s last name] as you can get.” What film director is it?
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices read:
THREE:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. You can anagram it into other words. The first three letters and last two letters, all five rearranged, spell a noun. And the remaining letters, rearranged, spell an adjective.
The adjective and noun form a caption for the image of a pickable fruit pictured here.
What film director is it?
FOUR:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. The first two letters and last two letters in order spell a word. The sole remaining letter is not an antonym of this word, but the digit it resembles does convey the opposite sense of what the spelled-out 4-letter word denotes. What film director is it?
FIVE:
Think of the last name of a not-so-famous film director. (Indeed this person directed only one film, but it appears on Top 100 lists, Top 500 lists and similar “best-of” and “all-time” movie lists.)
You can anagram the director’s last name into other words. One way to do that is to divide it into two unequal parts of 5 and 3 letters and spell the second part backward.
The two-word phrase formed decribes what most viewers of the film do (or, rather, do not do, while viewing it, even though one critic noted this film noir had “peculiar overtones of humor.” The critic added, however, that it was also “one of the most frightening movies ever made”
What film director is it?
SIX:
Think of the last name of a not-so-famous film director. You can anagram it into other words. The first two letters and last two letters, rearranged, spell a word for a cylindical object. And the remaining letters, in order, might have been seen on some of those objects around the turn of a millennium... might have been, that is, if the Arabic way of counting and numbering had not prevailed over the Roman way centuries earlier.
Hint: The letters that might have been (but were not) seen on some of those cylindrical objects around the turn of a millennium specify the number of “Arabian Nights.”
What film director is it?
SEVEN:
Think of the last name of a not very well known film director. You can anagram it into various pairs of other words. Two of those pairs (four words total) appear in the following sentence:
“The vivid mirage George beheld from a desert oasis seemed like the surreal image he had once seen at an art gallery.”
(The four words are 2, 3, 5 and 6 letters long.)
What film director is it?
EIGHT:
Think of the last name of a somewhat well known film director. You can anagram it into other words, but don’t do that. Just take the first two letters and last two letters in order to spell a synonym of a plural word that appears in song titles by Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper and Love – a synonym that is also a homophone of the director’s last name.
What film director is it?
NINE:
Think of the last name of a famous film director. You can anagram it into other words. The last two letters and first two letters in order spell a unit of measurement. And the remaining letters, rearranged, spell any mountain in a particular range, the tallest of which is 189,372 of these particular “units-of-measurement” above sea level. What film director is it?
Dessert Menu
Song Remains The Same Dessert:
Triple Helix
Can you make any sense of the following three stanzas? If so, explain what they mean.
Twin- B black -kle E any star
H sir won- K three you P
One a- S and-one so V
And-one-for-the diamond Y down-the sky...
A baa twin- D have-you -tle G
Yes I J sir what NO full
Up R master world U dame
Like-a X who-lives the Z...
Baa -kle C sheep lit- F wool
How I yes -der LM bags are
Q for-the -bove-the T for-the high
W little-boy in and lane...
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.
Welcome to our November 24th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
⇓One “wokking on eggshells” (using vegetable oil as a soothing agent) Dessert.
Eponymous Weaponry Appetizer:
Think of a kind of weapon named after its inventor. Three consecutive letters in the name of the weapon form a word with bad connotations. Replace it with a different three-letter word with bad connotations to form the last name of a bad guy who used similar albeit perhaps more destructive weapons.
Name a one-word synonym for “acting obsequiously.” 
EXIST
THREE:
BALKED
FOUR:
Note: One of the 10 words in the list is purposely misspelled. A duplicate of one of its letters was removed to make it eligible for the purposes of this puzzle.
INDULT
Compounding The Foodie Problem Dessert:
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.)
