The incredible shrinking pirate; Rotten Wally Dahl’s Isle of Pearl; Banking Cinderella’s pumpkin off the glass slipper backboard; Carpe De(fense) ’em; Picking paradoxical digits; Human creatures’ features

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED  
Welcome to our April 6th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

On our menus this week are:
ONE  Buccaneering Appetizer;
ONE  Let’s-Get-Physical Appetizer;
ONE  Dozen-Clue-Challenge Slice;
ONE   Carppy Dessert;
ONE   Last-Second-Shot Dessert; and
THREE oddly even Riff Offs.

Think Good, It’s Friday. Pick and choose from our menus, then chew on the mystery.    

Appetizer Menu:

Piecemeal Plank-walking Appetizer:
The incredible shrinking pirate

1. A pirate beheaded becomes quite irate.
2. He’ll soon vanish if head-chopped once more, at this rate.
3. A befooting befits this bilge rat’s peg-legged fate,
4. Re-behead? Walking plankton, at best more shark bait.
5. A beheading at last yields “naught left to truncate”
6. Save some galley-stowed tea… steep-sea jettisoned freight.

Identify the six relevant words in the sestet above: two in the first line, one in the second, one in the third, one in the fourth, none in the fifth and one in the sixth.

Double Features Appetizer:
Human creatures’ features

Name physical features most people have, in two words. 
Insert the first word, minus its last letter, somewhere within the second word to name physical features all people have, in one word. What are these two physical features?

MENU

Solvation Slice: 
Rotten Wally Dahl’s Isle of Pearl

Solve the twelve clues below. What do all the answers have in common?
1. Stuff oneself
2. Mother of Pearl
3. _____ Dahl
4. Wally’s dinner companion
5. ____, Iowa
6. It’s morning in Marseilles
7. Kevin _____, (who has a World Series championship ring, and who hit a home run in his last professional at-bat with the same team he began his career with, 24 years earlier)
8. Peaked
9. Stereotypical dog name
10. Real name of a guy with a Rotten stage name
11. Isle where Alfred and Algernon hung out
12. Chip ’n’ Dale’s croonin’ cousin?


Riffing Off Shortz And Iverson Slices:
Picking paradoxical digits

Will Shortz’s April 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Eric Iverson, reads:
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than four and 2 more than 10.
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz and Iverson Slices read:
ONE:
Pick a number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than three, 2 more than four and 3 more than two.
Hint: This number is also 1 more than seven... Really! 
TWO: 
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than five, 2 more than six, and 3 more than zero. 
Pick an odd number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than seven, 2 more than nine, and 3 more than eight.
Pick an odd number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than eight and 1 less than seven.
What are this one even and two odd numbers? 
THREE:
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than three, 2 more than six and 3 more than 5.

Dessert Menu

Poppyseed Dessert:
Carpe De(fense) ’em

The 2018 sixty-eight-team NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Men’s Basketball Tournament concluded on April 2. 
Some fans carped about the selection committee not choosing their team to make the field of 68. 
Others carped that their team received an unfavorably low seed.
Still others carped about poor officiating which, they claimed, led to their team early exit from the tourney. 
But most carped that the bracket they filled in predicting the games’ outcomes was “blown” (riddled with wrong predictions) after only the first round of the tourney. (Filling out NCAA brackets has become an annual rite of spring and a national pastime.)
Such NCAA carpers, however, were not the only fans who filled out tournament brackets. 
Across the nation fans filled out state high school regional and sectional brackets, collegiate conference and national tournament brackets – all choosing the teams they thought would prevail as champions and the paths they might take to get there.
Name a ten-letter synonym of “carpers.” Its letters, in the same order, also describe fans who fill out a certain 32-team bracket.
What are these letters?

4 and 20 Mean Birds Baked In A Pie Dessert:
Banking Cinderella’s pumpkin off the glass slipper backboard

Name an informal 2-word basketball term for a field goal scored just before time runs out, and a 2-word phrase for pieces of equipment reviewed by officials to confirm that the field goal counted.
Delete an “l” and a space from from the phrase to form the avian nickname of a team that greatly exceeded expectations in 2017’s National Collegiate Athletic Association “March Madness” basketball tournament (similar to the Loyola of Chicago Ramblers in the 2018 NCAA tournament). This 2017 “Cinderella” team, alas, in 2018 was invited to the neither the NCAA nor the National Invitational Tournament, the refuge of collegiate hoops “also-rans.” 
Place a “d” at the end of the first word in the term for field goal to form a 2-word term that sounds like what the “mean bird” in the team nickname might be called if it fought another notorious “mean bird.” This 2-word term also sounds like the term for the field goal.
What is the term for a field goal? What are the pieces of equipment?
What is the team nickname?

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.