TV Guise: Comedies of Error! Stoneware bowls and rolling balls; Great Scott! A “Skydiversion!” Telecommunication & Mini-critters; Percuss, paradiddle, pick, pluck, plink (or otherwise play)

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!p SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Stoneware bowls and rolling balls

Name something you may see at a ceramics shop, in two words. 

Spoonerize these words to name something you may see if the numbers on your ticket match those on the rolling balls. 

What two things may you see?

Appetizer Menu

Misguided Appetizer:

TV Guise: Comedies of Error!

TV GUISE

Through an unfortunate miscommunication in outsourcing, the titles of a series of television programs accidentally had one (and only one) letter changed. 

Due to imperfect artificial intelligence, the guide automatically generated descriptions of the shows that are just not quite right.  

Below are thirteen generated descriptions, sometimes with an (artificial) acclamation.  

Can you name the mistaken and the original titles of these shows? All shows are well known, either having run for at least five years or having a lasting impact on popular culture.  

Note that while only one letter is changed,
occasionally punctuation, capitalization and spacing between letters are changed to create new words.

Here is an example in which all that changes is just one letter:

A wise and mild-mannered patriarch strings his family along.  

“A prelude to Family Ties?”  

Answer: Father Knots Best (Father Knows Best).

Comedies:

 The conservative patriarch of a working class family finds conflict when a stuffy alien moves in.  

“That ain’t meat in your head!”

An oddball group of city detectives attempt to make a cloying dinosaur go extinct.  

“You’ll sing NY isn’t the only thing to love!”

 A daughter in a newly formed large family displays her lesbianism by taking on her brothers.

The crew and five passengers on a 3 hour bus tour are stranded in Bakersfield.

Blue collar worker tries to have a winning streak with a flashy new scheme each week. 

“It’s a real crack up when you get to the bottom of things, so don’t be left behind!”

Lothario American leader in a German POW camp combats the SS and the STD’s.

“I feel something! Could put you in the Klink.”

A Cuban-American entertainer washes his wife.  

“It’s a real ball!”

A boy in the 1950’s decides to have gender reassignment surgery.  

“Don't use a cleaver to chop that wood!”

With three different stories and adventures, each week presents tales of amour on Noah’s Ark.  

“They’re really cruising!”  [Three answers]

Presents the work of the most popular economists offering an alternative to capitalism.  Case studies include Richard Wolff, Rosa Luxembourg, Vladimir Lenin, and Friedrich Engels.  

“An out of this world concept!”

As told by their father, the grifting adventures of of Don Jr, Eric, and Ivanka.  

“There’s more than one hoax!”

Comedy ensues when Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are forced to live together.  

“Two versus verses!”

A musical family is sometimes on the fly after an experiment in teleportation has an unfortunate mishap.  

“What a combo band! They’ll make you happy...”

Sheepish Editor’s note from LegoLambda:

The parenthetical note, “(Alice didn’t go through the looking glass, more like a telescope)” (that appeared as a part of TV Guise description #6) was actually a hint to one of the other twelve TV Guise comedy descriptions. 

It was my mistake.

But, can you figure out which of the twelve other comedies that parenthetical note is a hint for?

My apologies to Ecoarchitect and to all Puzzlerian!s for my blunder.

MENU

Verbal Vibrato At A Venue Slice:

Percuss, paradiddle, pick, pluck, plink (or otherwise play)

Name a verb for what some performers at a famous music venue do to their instruments. 

Rearrange the letters of this verb to spell a German word you might know.

Rearrange the letters of the first word in the name of the venue to spell a German word associated with the first German word. 

What are this verb, venue and two associated German words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Scott Slices:

Great Scott! A “Skydiversion!”

Will Shortz’s March 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mark Scott, of Seattle, Washington, reads:

Think of a country with a one-word name. You can rearrange its letters to identify a member of one of our country’s armed forces. Who is that, and what’s the country?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Scott Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first name of an actor surnamed Williams and the surname of a singer named Kitty. 

Rearrange these ten combined letters to spell one of our country’s famous thoroughfares. 

Now take a two-word term for an “aggregation of buyers and sellers of shares,” in five and six letters, that is associated with that thoroughfare. Change the second word in that term to a four-letter synonym if itself. Rearrange these nine combined letters to spell the first name and surname of a puzzle-maker. 

Who is this puzzlemaker?

What is the country?

ENTREE #2

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can add an “i” and rearrange the resulting nine letters to name a petty officer on a merchant ship having charge of hull
maintenance and related work.

What is the county? 

Who is the officer?

Bonus Hint: An abbreviated version of the officer is an anagram of “bonus.”

ENTREE #3

Take a word for American infantrymen especially during World War I which were also advertising mascots for a Minneapolis-based company that was one of the world’s largest producers of grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought by General Mills in 2001. 

This company might ___ many a ___ from local pork-producing farmers who might also “bust” ___ with a plow to cultivate grain the company may also purchase. The letters in those blanks (three letters in each blank) can be rearranged to spell the word for the infantrymen/mascots.

What is this word?

What are the three words in the blanks?

What is the Minneapolis-based company?

ENTREE #4

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its eight letters to identify a member of one of our country’s armed forces. 

If instead you remove one letter from the country’s name you will spell a common surname – that is, a common-noun surname as opposed to a proper-noun surname.

What’s the country?

Who’s the member of the armed forces?

What is the common-noun surname?

ENTREE #5

Think of a country with a one-word name. You can rearrange its letters to spell two nouns that apply to men:

1. a 3-letter synonym of  “rake,” and

2. a 4-letter synonym of  “snake.”

What’s the country?

What are the two synonyms?

ENTREE #6

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its final three letters to spell a body part.

You can spell its first four letters backward to get an automobile part.

Take a five-letter synonym of  “delicacy, kickshaw, tidbit
and treat.” Place it in front of the body part (without a space), followed by the auto part.

The result is a brand name of the auto part.

What’s this country?

What are the body part and auto part?

What is the five-letter synonym and auto-part brand name?

Hint: The five-letter synonym, if repeated, is the title of a song associated with Frankie Lymon. 

ENTREE #7

Think of the new name of a recently renamed African country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its letters to spell a kind of 4-letter alcoholic beverage and a 4-word Italian city that is home to a 2-word sweet sparkling white variety of this beverage. 

What’s the country?

What are the beverage and the city that is home to a variety of the beverage?

Hint: The eight letters in the second word of the variety of the beverage can be rearranged to form the two words that describe either this song or that song.

ENTREE #8

Think of a celestial body that orbits the sun, the name of an Earth orbiter since 1962, and the name of a card game played with 32 cards. 

Rearrange the combined letters to name a puzzle-maker and the city where this puzzle-maker lives.  

Who is it? 

Dessert Menu 

No Phone No Lights No Motor Car Dessert:

Telecommunication & Mini-critters

Name a man associated with telecommunications whose first name is a small creature and surname sounds like a similar small creature. 

Who is this man?

Hint: The man is also associated with “Gilligan's Island.”

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.