Now we’re cookin’ with GAS! SeVen of Diamonds sticks out from the pack; Title IX; Sweethearts of Phi Mu; Sports? Schmorts! But the answer is...

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED 

Schpuzzle of the Week:
Se♢en of Diamonds sticks out from the pack 

In a standard 52-card deck of playing cards, the seven of diamonds has a special geometric property that makes it unique from any other card in the deck. 


What is this property?

Note: This week’s Schpuzzle Of The Week is another excellent offering created by Mathew Huffman, a valued friend of Puzzleria!

Appetizer Menu

Enos “Country” Slaughter Appetizer:
Sports? Schmorts! But the answer is...


Replace an article embedded within the name of a country with one letter to form a name familiar even to some non-sports-fans. 

What is this country?
What is the familiar name?



“There She Is, Your Ordeal” Appetizer:
Sweethearts of Phi Mu 


Pamela Long was a member of the Phi Mu sorority at the University of North Alabama when she was crowned Miss Alabama in 1974 and competed for the title of Miss America 1975. 
The following text is an excerpt from a pep talk that Pamela, as an alumna, might have given during an orientation of more recent Phi Mu pledges at UNA:  
We at Phi Mu aim to practice love, honor and truth. Ours is a sorority of noble women; we set our rules rigidly so as to guard the purity of our thoughts and deeds. For instance, during a musical performance by the Family Stone featuring Sly at the 1975 Miss America Pageant, a fellow Phi Mu sister, who like me was a contestant, suspected the emcee Mr. Parks of flirting with her, so she promptly hissed at him, “Stop it, Bert!”
In the fictional pep talk excerpt (above) there are four pairs of consecutive words with letters that can be rearranged to form four words that are related to one another. The letters of a stand-alone word in the text can be rearranged to form a fifth word related to the first four words.
Note: The final sentence, involving Sly and the Family Stone and Bert Parks, has no basis in truth; it is pure speculation on Puzzleria!s part. It is, in fact, fake news.

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Homonymical Slice:
Now we’re cookin’ with GAS!

Homonyms are words that sound the same and are spelled the same but have different meanings. 
An example of a pair of 4-letter homonyms is a dog’s bark and a tree’s bark. Another 4-letter example is a river bank and piggy bank.
Name a pair of 7-letter homonyms. 
One of the 7-letter homonyms is an example 
of a G_ _ _ AS_ .
The other homonym is an example of a G_AS_ .

What are these homonyms?
Of what two words (each beginning with a “g”) are these homonyms examples?

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:
Title IX

Will Shortz’s July 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Name a woman’s title. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to get another woman’s title. Both titles are common English-language spellings. What titles are these?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Name a woman’s title. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward. 
Change the second letter to a different vowel to get the identical first name of a great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son – all four who reportedly set a-flutter the hearts of women of all nationalities (titled or otherwise) who watched them perform on stage and screen.
What is the woman’s title? What is the common first name of the four actors? 
ENTREE #2:
Name a woman’s title from around 1960. Drop the “The” from the title along with the first and last letters. Read the result backward to get a plural pronoun followed by a 4-letter word that can be a noun, verb, adverb or adjective... but that is anything but plural.
What title, pronoun, and 4-letter word are these?
ENTREE #3:
Name a woman’s title from the mid-1990s. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward. 
Switch the third and fourth letters of this result to get a the first name of a positive legendary figure.
Switch the fourth and fifth letters of the same result to get a the name of a negative legendary figure. 
What title is this?
Who are these two legendary figures?
ENTREE #4:
Name a title (starring a woman) from the mid-1980s that involved space travel. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to get the first name of another person associated with space travel. 
What title is this? Who is the other person? 
ENTREE #5:
Name a title from classic literature circa 1600. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to form what might be a good name for the female twin of a falsetto-voiced furry monster. 
What title and possible twin’s name are these?  

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.