Land mass, Manhattan, mixed meanings & Mom’s mmmm’s; Hitchhikin’ Wolfgang Van Hailin’? Curlicue, McCoy and castor oil... Inverted-e words & internal rhyme; Libretti with crystal candelabras & mums in Western trousers

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Libretti with crystal candelabras & mums in Western trousers 

Crystals, trousers, Westerns, libretti (or librettos) and East Asia mums. 

Besides being plural, what do those five things have in common?

Appetizer Menu

Skydivergent Appetizer:

Land mass, Manhattan, mixed meanings & Mom’s mmmm’s

Note: Mark Scott (aka “skydiveboy,” his screen name) has generously allowed us to use these four clever puzzles on Puzzleria! 

He originally sent them
to Will Shortz who, for one reason or another, declined to use them on NPR.

Holy Mass?

1. ⛪Take a well known North American land mass everyone knows by a one-word name. 

Switch the positions of two letters within that word and say it out loud and it will sound exactly like a well known holy site in another part of the world. 

What are these two places?

Ten-gallon Manhattan

2. 🤠 A boy from South Texas and a boy from North New York City happened to meet on a crowded Manhattan subway and realized they both had something in common when each asked the other, “What do you do?” 

Their answers, which are homophones, were “I ride the ______.” 

See if you can fill in the blank with each homophone.

Synonyms “antonymized”

3.🕮 Think of two three-letter nouns that are synonyms. 

Now think of a four-letter word that might follow each of them to come up with two very different meanings. 

What are these words?

Hint: One answer will be one word, and the other answer will be two words.

Treats spooner-fed by Mom

4. 🤶🍥Think of a two-word treat mothers like making that is popular with all ages. 

Spoonerize this treat to get something it should not have. 

What is this treat, and what it should not have?

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Delmore SCHWArtz Slice:

Inverted-e words & internal rhyme

Take a fourteen-letter word with two properties: 

1. its syllables rhyme, and 

2. half its letters are the same letter.

(The hyphenated word “pell-mell,” for example, possesses these two properties.) 

The fourteen-letter word is itself a property associated with schwas. 

What word is this?

Riffing Off Shortz And Niederman Slices:

Hitchhikin’ Wolfgang Van Hailin’? 

Will Shortz’s September 5th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Derrick
Niederman, of Charleston, South Carolina, reads:

Name a famous person with 8 letters in the first name and 4 letters in the surname. The last name is a regular uncapitalized word with a single vowel. Change that vowel to make a new word that is humorously defined by the person’s first name. Who is it? 

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz and Niederman Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker with seven letters in the first name and nine letters in the surname. 

Anagram these sixteen letters to write a three-
word caption for the image pictured here.

What is your caption? 

Note: Your caption should be in the past tense.

ENTREE #2

Name a famous person with 8 letters in the first name and 4 letters in the surname.

The first name is the second word in a country, and also the second word in that country’s capital.

Take that famous person’s surname.  

Change one letter to a “B” to spell an Indonesian provincial land surrounded by water. 

Change that “B” to a “M” to spell an African country surrounded by land.

Who is this famous person?

What are the country and its capital?

What are the provincial island and landlocked nation?

ENTREE #3

Name a famous person with 8 letters in the first name and 5 letters in the surname. 

The first name is also the name of  a U.S. state.

Remove one of the letters that appears twice in the surname. 

Spell the result backward to name what the Big Otter, Bullpasture and Brush do in that U.S. state.  

Who is this famous person?

What do the Big Otter, Bullpasture and Brush do in the state?

ENTREE #4

Name a famous somewhat recently deceased British person with 8 letters in the first name and 4 letters in the surname. The surname has a single vowel and can also be a regular uncapitalized noun that is a relative of hornworts (not Hogwarts!) and liverworts.

Change the first vowel in the first name to form an uncapitalized adjective with positive connotations. 

Change the single vowel in the 4-letter noun to an “e” to form a new noun with negative connotations. 

Now change that “e” to an “i” to form a second noun with negative connotations.

Placing each new nown after the adjective, in turn, results in two adjective-noun oxymoronic phrases.

Who is this famous British person? 

What are the two adjective-noun oxymoronic phrases?

ENTREE #5

Name a famous person with 4 letters in the first name and 4 letters in the surname. 

Change the last letter of the first name to a 2-letter abbreviation of a league he could have played in, but did not. Place this altered first name after the surname. 

The result is one of millions of delicate things you can see “floating” about Pasadena at the beginning of the year.

Who is this famous person? What do you call one of these “floaters”? 

ENTREE #6

A. Name a famous past American Formula One automobile racing driver with 4 letters in his first name and 4 letters in his surname. 

Change the short vowel in the surname to a long vowel sound of a different vowel. 

Saying the first name and altered surname (after adding the article “a” between them) now sounds like something dentists or gravediggers might do in the process of their work. 

Who is this racing driver? 

What might dentists or gravediggers do?

B. Name a famous American composer with 6 letters in his first name and 5 letters in his surname. 

The composer occasionally enjoys a four-course dinner at a five-star (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐) restaurant. He is especially thirsty for water because he orders salty fare. His first and last names (after adding the pronoun “his” between them) sound like what the waiter might often do for the composer during the course of the courses. 

Who is this composer? What might the waiter do for the composer during the course of the four courses?

ENTREE #7

Name a British singer/songwriter with 5 letters in the first name and 5 letters in the surname. 

Change the first letter in singer’s surname.

The result is a cylinder one might find on the beach. 

Who is this singer/songwriter? 

What might be found on the beach?

Dessert Menu 

Bobbie Herder Dessert:

Curlicue, McCoy, castor oil...

Whenever Bobbie Herder partakes in her favorite casual hobby she keeps a log of everything she sees. 

For example, one day she wrote down: “freebie,” “flamenco,” “sandpaper,” “curlicue,” “wobbler,” “blackboard,” “Reuben,” “McCoy” and “castor oil.”      

You can thus describe Bobbie with a two-word phrase that, when you spoonerize it by switching its initial letters, sounds like a second two-word phrase that also describes Bobbie. 

What are these two phrases?

What are the nine entries that you would have written (more accurately) into Bobbie’s logbook on that day had you been in her shoes?

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.