Schpuzzle Of The Week:
An ounce-of-prevention’s-worth
Name a cure, in multiple words. The first letters of all but the last word spell a new word.
Place this new word next to the last word to name something that is often cured.
What is this cure?
What is often cured?
Appetizer Menu
“Conumberdrum” Set Slice:
Some fractions sum to a whole
This puzzle involves the sum of two fractions, an equals sign, and a single digit answer. The fractions contain a single digit above and a single digit below, and are not necessarily in simplified form. In this way there are a total of five digits to fill in.
The game is to fill these five spaces with any of the digits one through nine, not repeating any digits, so that the equation is true.
Following these rules, answer the following questions.
🥁1. What number(s) cannot appear in a denominator?
🥁2. What number(s) cannot appear as an answer?
🥁3. In how many equations are both fractions in simplified form?
🥁4. Find a group of five numbers that generate two distinct equations (the commutativity of addition notwithstanding). What are these equations? How many of these exist? Can you find a group of five numbers that generates three or more equations?
🥁5. Ignoring the commutativity of addition, how many distinct equations exist? Can you find all of them?
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Oxymoronic Slice:
Sharp as an ax... or as an ox?
Take two consecutive letters of an alphabet. Spell one of them out and name a homophone of the other.
A letter appears twice in these two words. Remove one of them.
Rearrange the combined letters of the result to form an oxymoronic phrase that consists of an adjective and noun. What is this phrase?
Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Slices:
“Put up your Duke, Pilgrim!”
Will Shortz’s September 20th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg VanMechelen of Berkeley, California, reads:
Take the name of a famous actor — 4 letters in the first name, 5 letters in the last. Spoonerize it. That is, interchange the initial consonant sounds of the first and last names. The result will be two new familiar first names — one male, one female — that start with the same letter ... but that letter is pronounced differently in the two names. Who’s the actor?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz and VanMechelen Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Name a puzzle-maker whose name contains three uppercase letters. Delete the third uppercase letter and the letters following it.
The first uppercase letter in the name is one of three in a monogram currently in the news.
Replace this uppercase letter with one of the other two monogram letters. Interchange the initial consonant sounds of these two strings of letters that begin with the two capital letters. The result is an abbreviation for a healthful food and a word for another healthful food.
Who is this puzzle-maker?
What are the healthful foods?
ENTREE #2:
Take the name of a famous American citizen — 4 letters in the first name, 5 letters in the last. Spoonerize it. That is, interchange the initial consonant sounds of the first and last names. The result will sound like two terms with which anglers are familiar — a part of a fish, and what an angler does to a hook before landing a fish. Who’s the American citizen?
ENTREE #3:
(Note: Greg VanMechelen and I came up with the following riff-off independently of one other.)
Take the name of a past singer/entertainer — one syllable each in the first and last names.
Spoonerize it.
The result will be the title of a movie that starred the answer to this week’s NPR puzzle created by Greg VanMechelen (see the Riffing Off Shortz and VanMechelen introduction, above).
Who’s the singer/entertainer?
What’s the movie title?
ENTREE #4:
Take the name of a member of a famous entertainment trio — 5 letters in the first name, 4 letters in the last. Spoonerize it.
The result will sound like a two-word transportation service found at Madeline Island, Wisconsin, and all across Europe at various islands, seas and ports.
Who’s the entertainment-trio member?
What’s the transportation service?
ENTREE #5:
Take the name of a historical person associated with what its inventors called “fire medicine” — 3 letters in the first name, 6 letters in the last. Spoonerize it. The result will sound like two words — 3-letter interjection of admonishment and a 5-letter verb.
A bystander might exclaim the interjection upon witnessing an impolite fan who “stares rudely or obsessively” (the 5-letter verb) at a celebrity, for example.
Who’s the historical person?
What are the interjection and verb?
ENTREE #6:
Take the name of a pretty well known fictional character — 7 letters in the first name, 5 letters in the last. Shift the initial consonant sound of the last name to the beginning of the first name, which starts with a vowel.
The result sounds like two consecutive exclamations groaned by a weight-watcher standing in front of her mirror with a measuring tape around her waist reading 33 instead of the 32 it read a few days earlier.
The first exclamation is a 3-letter word related to adiposity. The second exclamation consists of three words: a pronoun, verb and noun of 1, 4 and 4 letters. The verb is a synonym of “swear” and the noun is the difference between 33 and 32 (“one ____”).
Who is the fictional character?
What are the two exclamations?
ENTREE #7:
Take the name of a pretty well known fictional character — 3 letters in the first name, 5 letters in the last. Interchange the initial consonant sounds of the first and last names.
The result will be two 4-letter words:
1. the first half of the name of a Tony Award winning musical with a song titled “The Song That Goes Like This” and...
2. the second half of the name of a Tony Award winning play with a song titled “Those Fat Monkeys.”
Who is the fictional character?
What are the two Tony-winning stage productions?
ENTREE #8:
Take the name of a pretty well known fictional character — 5 letters in the first name, 5 letters in the last. Interchange the initial consonant sounds of the first and last names.
The result will be two words:
1. The title subject of one of William Blake’s “Songs of Experience” and...2. Any person who may bear that title subject as a name.
Who is the fictional character?
What are the Blake title subject and the person who may have it as a name?
Dessert Menu
Skyhook Dessert:
Proverb becomes a pro player
Rearrange the letters of a familiar six-word proverb to form a five-word phrase consisting of:
§ a city,
§ a two-word description of a high-scoring professional athlete who played there, and
§ the first name of this athlete.
What are this phrase and this proverb?
Hint #1: The two-word description is also a colloquial term for something seen in the sky.
Hint #2: The athlete, who has the last name of a U.S. president, scored more that 12,000 points during his professional career.
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.
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