Hallowe’en mixed “boo-quet” bag; “Smart, punchy hipster jive!” “Don’t forget the a la mode!” “...Even educated fleas do it...” “Bona ‘fidiom’ ”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Bona ‘fidiom’ ”

Anagram a four-word idiom to form a three-word description of a book that suggests that the idiom is true. 

What are the idiom and description?

Hint: One word in the idiom appears, intact and  unchanged, in the description.

Appetizer Menu

Frightfully Delightful Puzzley Appetizer:

Mixed  Halloween “boo-quet” bag 

A “wacky” word for “wacky tobacky?”

1. 🚒Indigenous people, especially in the Ohio valley, once smoked a tobacco substitute consisting of dried leaves from a plant – a plant that has an interesting name. 

The plant contains 12 letters, but only four different letters: 

* 4 of the same vowel, 

* 4 of the same consonant, 

* 3 of the same consonant, and

* 1 other consonant.

If you speak the word aloud, its sounds as if you are repeating yourself, or are perhaps speaking from an echo chamber. Compared to this “common” name for the plant, its scientific name is not nearly as interesting...

The scientific name is, however, an anagram of three artistic/creative professions:

* AUTHOR

* SCULPTOR, and

* VAISYAS (people from a Hindi caste characterized by cleverness, creativity, and selfish motivations – a merchant, for example)

What is this plant?

What is its scientific name?

Hint #1: The last 58.3% of the plant is the name of a Midwest stadium.

Hint #2: Removing the peniltimate letter of this mystery plant turns it into a palindrome.

“Take me to the river”

2. 🌎Name a major North American river that ends with a U.S. state postal code. Replace its last letter with another U.S. state’s postal code to get a pretty flower. The river forms much of the border between two U.S. states. 

What is this river?

What is the pretty flower?

What are the four words and the tributary? (See “Extra Credit,” below.)

Extra Credit:

Anagram the combined letters of the river and its main tributary to form four words:

* one of two things every river has,

* what those two things consist of,

* a Greek letter heard on a dairy farm, and

* a “bullet” in the hand.

Texting is bad for your health...and your plant’s health!

3. ♯♭Take a two-letter abbreviation often used in texting and place it at the beginning of a famous singer’s stage name to get an unhealthy plant. 

Who is the singer?

What is this abbreviation?

“Currency in the stream”

4.🏅Name an athlete who was in the 2011 headlines, first and last names. 

Remove a four-letter unit of currency from the middle of this full name. The result contains two instances of one letter. 

Move both of these letters six places later in the alphabet (so, A becomes G, B becomes H, etc.). 

The result is the name of a streaming service.

Who is this athlete?

What is the streaming service?

Hint #1: The athlete also made some news this past summer by advocating for U.S. women’s soccer team salaries. 

Hint #2: The athlete shares a surname with a TV character who had a sidekick named Illya, and also shares the surname with a movie character whose sidekick’s name sounds like he is masticating the mystery plant in the “wacky tobacky” Appetizer Puzzle #1 above:  

MENU

Jive Talkin’ Slice:

“Smart, punchy hipster jive!”

Hipsters speak in “smart, punchy jive.” 

That three-word phrase in quotation marks contains 15 different letters – all you will need
to spell all eight members of a particular group. 

What group is this?

Note: Most of the 15 letters are used more than once in spelling the eight members of the group.

Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:

“Don’t forget the a la mode!”

Will Shortz’s October 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Reiss, reads:

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. Remove five letters. What remains, in order, is a three-word phrase you might see on a restaurant menu. What phrases are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take a synonym of “blunder” or “sin of omission.” Remove three letters. What remains, in order, is the first name of a puzzle-maker.

Take an adjective describing someone who commits a “sin of omission” while “asleep at the switch.” Remove one letter. What remains, in order, is the last name of that same puzzle-maker.

Who is this puzzle-maker? 

What are this synonym and adjective?

Hint: Take a seven-letter synonym of a word that appears more than once in this puzzle. Remove three letters that can be arranged to spell a negative conjunction which, when spelled backward, is man’s first name. What remains, in order, is the first name of the puzzle-maker that is the answer to this puzzle.

ENTREE #2

Take a  Windows Explorer feature, in two words, that gives you a “sneak peek” of a preview that gives information about a file (images, text, videos or documents) without actually opening it.

Remove five letters. What remains, in order, is a two-word object a baker uses. 

What is this Windows Explorer feature?

What does a baker use?

ENTREE #3

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu while you and your spouse visit a married couple you know for an enjoyable evening of playing a game of charades.

Remove from the phrase the letters of the brand of soft drink your hosts serve with the hors d’oeuvres. Remove also, embedded in the phrase, a word for an amorous glance your host accuses you of making – a glance that
was not directed at your spouse!

What remains of the phrase, in order, is a two-word exclamation your host subsequently sputters! 

What phrase is seen on the laptop?

What are the cola brand, amorous glance, and sputtered exclamation?

ENTREE #4

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. Remove the last letter from each word. 

What remains is the title of a documentary film about guys named Donald, Roger, Neville and Wallace. 

What phrase is this?

What is the film title?

ENTREE #5

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. Remove the last letter. What remains, in order, after you move the space and add a second space someplace, are:

1. something potentially messy a kindergartner might use to make a collage,

2. a kind of club at a college,

3. the kind of class the collage-crafting kindergartner is in.

Take that same two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. Remove the last two letters. What remains, in order, after you add a second space someplace, are:

1. a two-and-a-half-millennia-old board game,

2. an amorous glance,

3. a word that follows “bug’s” or precedes “plugs.”

What phrase is this?

What are the six words?

ENTREE #6

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. 

Remove the first three letters, the last three letters, and the last letter of the first word. 

What remains, in order, is a two-word slang term for a sheriff in the United States. 

What phrase is this?

What is the slang term?

ENTREE #7

Think of video editing software you might have on your laptop, in three words. Remove the second word and two letters from the first word – the seventh and eighth most frequently used letters in the English language. 

What remains, in order, is a hyphenated synonym of a loose branch hanging or falling from a tree, or a blockage in a branch of the left coronary artery.

What video editing software is this?

What is the synonym?

ENTREE #8

Think of a two-word phrase you might see on a laptop computer menu. Remove nine consecutive letters. What remains, in order, are seven letters that spell what a policeman in a squad car sometimes does to protect property. The first six of the nine removed letters spell a kind of property. The last three of the nine removed letters spell a kind of person that may be up to no good on the property. 

What phrase is this?

What does a policeman in a squad car sometimes do?

What is the kind of property?

What person might be up to no good?

Dessert Menu

“Meet the Beetles” Dessert:

“... Even educated fleas do it...”

Name something some insects do. 

Spell it backward. 

Remove one letter of this result to spell some insects. 

Now return to the “something some insects do,” spelled backward. This time replace one letter. The result is other insects. 

What do some insects do? 

What are the two insects?

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.

“Sign on the dotted ‘lane’ ” Purloining letters from literature? Talk the talk, squawk the squawk; Write no wrong words in the rungs; In movie roles, Mercedes & Janice Ruhle & Rule!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Sign on the dotted ‘lane’ ”

Take a word seen on a traffic sign. 

Double the second letter and double the last letter. 

Rearrange the result to form a word that describes drivers obeying the sign. 

What are these two words?

Appetizer Menu

Note: Puzzleria! this week presents for your solving enjoyment the debut of cleverly crafted creativity by a guest puzzle-maker named “Rudolfo.” Enjoy!

Five-Step Ladder Appetizer:

Write no wrong words in the rungs 

Here is a little chicken-oriented word ladder with a special condition: going down the ladder, one letter changes at a step ... with the changes taking place in the first letter of the first word below PLUCK, then the second letter of the second word, and so on to the fifth and final word CHEE*.  Here the stars “*” show the letter changes.  

All the words are fairly common ones.

    

 P L U C K

    * _ _ _ _

    _ * _ _ _

    _ _ * _ _

    _ _ _ * _

    C H E E *

MENU

Reading Room Slice:

Purloining letters from literature?

Remove a number of consecutive letters from something people read. 

The letters that remain spell a U.S. state. 

Add a diminutive suffix to the end of the letters you removed to spell something else people read. 

What two things do people read?

What is the U.S. state?

Riffing Off Shortz And Nash-Resnick Slices:

In movie roles, Mercedes & Janice Ruhle & Rule!

Will Shortz’s October 17th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Abe Nash-Resnick of Los Angeles, California, reads:

Name a famous actress, in eight and six letters. Change the next-to-last letter of her first name to an “s”. Then reverse the order of the last three letters, and you’ll name a famous ruler. The actress’s last name is an anagram of where you would find this ruler. Who are the actress and the ruler?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Nash-Resnick Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the surname of a 19th Century German poet and journalist after whom a 20th Century European express train was named. 

Take places on that train, in two English words, where you can order kartoffelpuffers, quarkbällchen, zwiebelkuchen, buttered bayerische breze with tilset cheese or currywurst with a side of French fries.

Anagram the combined letters of that surname and the places on the train to name a puzzle-maker.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the places on the train and the name of German poet?

ENTREE #2

Note: Entree #2, this second riff-off of the NPR puzzle, was composed by our friend GB, whose “GB’s Bafflers” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria! 

Name a famous actor with five letters in both his first name and his last name.  

Drop one letter from the first name. The remaining letters, in order, spell a creature.  

Duplicate one letter in his last name and
rearrange. The result is another creature.  

Who is the actor and what are the creatures?  

ENTREE #3

Name a past British actor, playwright and composer, in four and six letters.

Reverse the order of letters in his first name. Place, in front of these letters, four other letters that can be anagrammed to spell the French word for a male peacock. The result is the first name of a French military and political leader.

This first name is shared by a porcine character in a British author’s 1945 novella. The British actor’s surname is a noun that describes this character.

Now anagram the letters of the military leader’s surname to form a three-word phrase of 1, 4 and 4 letters that describes endosteum or periosteum.

Take another word, of 6 letters, that this three-word phrase describes. Invert its first letter and
divide the result in half to form a word associated with the military leader (and, actually, with any military leader) and a “smaller-scale” synonym of that word. 

Who is this actor/playwright?

Who is this French military and political leader?

Who is the character who shares the military leader’s first name, and what is the novella?

What is the three-word phrase that describes endosteum or periosteum?

What other word does that phrase describe?

What are the word associated with the military leader and the synonym of that word?

ENTREE #4

Jacob, with the assistance of his mother Rebekah, fooled his father Isaac into giving him the birthright and blessing intended for ___ brother ____. Subsequently, Jacob embarked on a journey to the city of Harran. 

On the way, during an overnight dream, visions danced in his head – visions of God’s angels descending and ascending a ladder in the sky. 

Jacob awoke in awe, exclaiming, “This is the house of God, the gate of heaven!” Thus he dubbed the place ______, which means “House of God.”

The three blanks above contain a pronoun and two proper nouns containing 3, 4 and 6 letters. Anagram those 13 letters to name a famous actress, in nine and four letters. 

Who is the actress?

What are the three words in the blanks?

ENTREE #5

Name a famous actress whose first and last names total ten letters. 

The first two and last three letters of her name spell the first name of an actor, singer, songwriter and activist. 

The fourth, fifth and sixth letters of the actress’s name, spelled backward, are the first three letters of the actor’s surname.

Who are this actress and actor?

ENTREE #6

Name a famous actress, first and last names, in four and seven letters. Change the seventh letter of her name to an “c” and move it into the fifth position.

Move the first two letters of this result so that they become the fifth and sixth letters. 

Divide the result into four and seven letters to form an adjective and a person in a profession. 

Alas, this result is, more often than not, oxymoronic and incongruous.

Who is this actress?

What is the often-oxymoronic-and-incongruous two-word expression?

ENTREE #7

Name a famous actress, in five and six letters, whose first name is an informal pejorative term. 

The possessive form of her surname sounds like a six-letter term associated with Elon Musk. 

Who is this actress and what is the term associated with Musk?

ENTREE #8

Name a famous actress, in three and six letters. Her first name, when put in ALL-CAPS, is also a 75-year-old acronym related to the military. 

The first half of her surname, when its letters are reversed and put in ALL-CAPS, is a 103-year-old British institution related to the military, which is also an acronym. 

If you replace the first letter of her surname with its last letter, the first three letters of the result spell a lowercase third word related to the military. 

Who is this actress?

What are the three words related to the military?

ENTREE #9

Name a famous actress, in five and five letters, who had a reputation for being mysterious, classy – and anything but “trashy.” 

However, you can anagram the ten letters in her name to spell a synonym of trash and a word related to that synonym.

Who is this actress?

What are the synonym of trash and the related word?

Dessert Menu

American Historical Dessert:

Talk the talk, squawk the squawk

Name a notable figure in American history, first and last names, who was known as a statesman and orator. 

Remove from this name three consecutive letters. The letters that remain name an animal and something such animals do. 

Who is this figure?

Hint: Rearrange the removed letters to spell a synonym of “squawk” that often accompanies what the animals do.

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.

World Queries, and World Series? Nice and spicy, with savory flavor; “Pass the earplugs, please!” Finding an alphabetical string by using your bean; Raise high the barn beam, carpenters

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π  SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Finding an alphabetical string by using your bean

Name something, in two words, that grows in a handful of the United States, far west of the
Mississippi River.

This growing thing contains just four
consonants – one each from a four-letter string of letters in the alphabet. 

What is this thing that grows in the Western United States?

Appetizer Menu

WorldPlay(Ball) Appetizer:

World Queries, and World Series?

Impossible geography

1. 🗺Take the generic name of a geographic feature. 

Change one letter to yield a word that describes where  (in general) such a feature is not found. 

What are the feature and the descriptive word?

4(ROT1) + 1(ROT13) = City

2. 🗾🏙Think of a country. Increment each of the first four letters of the country’s name by 1. ROT13 the last letter. The five resulting letters, in order, spell a city in another country. 

What are the city and country?

Colorful baseball

3. ⚾Think of a baseball term. 

Add “-ing” to this word to obtain an unrelated word used for festive, colorful decorations
often associated with baseball stadiums. 

What are the two words?

Secured

4. 💰Think of a place to store valuables. 

Invert the order of the two words and insert

a preposition to form a sports expression. 

What are the place and the sports expression?

More important than life itself?

5. 🎼Think of a device that some think is more important than human life itself. Drop the last letter. 

Remove from the result a word that embodies the human creative instinct. Add to this second result one letter twice: in the second and in the final position. 

The result is a musical creation of the highest order. What are the device and the musical creation?

Homophones at war

6. 💣A certain word designates an agent in
asymmetrical warfare. Change one letter in this word to the next letter in the alphabet. 

Rearrange the new letter and its two neighbors in the word to give a 3-letter characteristic of a homophone of the initial word. 

What are the two homophones and 3-letter word?

MENU

Unpleasant-Sounding Slice:

“Pass the earplugs, please!”

Name music-making items that some people find unpleasant-sounding. 

Replace the first letter and remove the sixth letter to name creatures that some people find
unpleasant-sounding. 

What are these unpleasant-noise-making musical items and creatures?

Riffing Off Shortz And Fowler Slices:

Raise high the barn beam, carpenters

Will Shortz’s October 11th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Kerry Fowler, of Seattle, Washington, reads:

Name something you might eat for breakfast, in two words. Add a “g” at the end of the first word. Switch the middle two letters of the second word. Then reverse the order of the two words. You’ll name an old-fashioned activity. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Fowler Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a word that might precede the word “bee,” in six letters. Now name a noun, in five letters, that describes a bee when is buzzing.

Rearrange these 11 letters to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who is the puzzle-maker? What words might
precede the word “bee” describes a bee when it is buzzing.

Hint: The five-letter noun is also a word for an advertising circular.

ENTREE #2

Name something you might eat for breakfast, in three words of 5, 4 and 6 letters. Reverse the order of the three words. 

Add a “G” at the end of the new first word. 

Replace the second word with a one-letter word. 

Divide the new third word in two parts, then replace the first letter of the second part with an “FL”. 

The result is a four-word phrase that is a “no-no” for infielders (even though it will likely not affect their pitcher’s “no-no”). 

What might you eat for breakfast? What is a “no-no” for infielders? 

ENTREE #3

Name two entrees you might eat for breakfast (especially around this time of the year):

“_______ Pancakes with Cinnamon Brown Butter,” or

“_______ Waffles with Orange Walnut Butter.”

The recipe for each entree calls for a fraction of a cup of canned _______.

 Add a “g” at the end of the word that belongs in each of those three blanks. Divide the result in half to form a caption for the image pictured here.

What is the word in the three blanks?

What is the caption? 

ENTREE #4

Name an old-fashioned activity children might enjoy at a Hallowe’en party, in two words of five and seven letters. Remove a “g” from the end of the second word to spell a six-letter part of a sewing machine.

Move the letters of the first word 11 places later in the alphabet (so A=L, B=M, etc.). 

From this result, take the fifth, second or third, fourth and first letters to spell a four-letter part of a sewing machine. 

What is the old-fashioned activity?

What are the two sewing machine parts?

ENTREE #5

Name something you might eat for breakfast, in two words of four and six letters. 

Add a “g” at the end of the second word. The first four letters of that result can make your hands feel warm. The last three letters can be anagrammed to spell an alcoholic beverage that can make you feel warm on the outside but cold on the inside. 

Move the letters of the four-letter first word one place later in the alphabet (so A=B, B=C, etc.). Anagram the result to to name a kind of pear that is an ingredient in a cocktail made with the three-letter beverage hinted at eariler. 

What is this breakfast food?

What makes your hands feel warm?

What alcoholic beverage can make you feel warm on the ouside but cold on the inside?

What kind of pear is in the cocktail?

ENTREE #6

Name something you might eat for breakfast, in two words of four and six letters. 

Add a “y” at the end of the first word. Replace the last two letters of the second word with a “y”. 

The result is two adjectives – the first
describing a joke, and the second describing a person who might tell such a joke.

What is this breakfast food?

What are the two adjectives?

ENTREE #7

Name something you might drink for breakfast. Remove its last letter to form a color which, if you precede it with the word “bright,”
approximately describes the color of the drink. What is this breakfast drink?

What is the color?

ENTREE #8

May, 1971. Historic Franklin Field in Philadelphia was packed with track fans poised to watch a field of elite milers that included world record holder Jim Ryun (3:51.1) and 19-year-old Villanova phenom Marty Liquori. 

After the half-mile mark, the two rivals broke away from the congested pack. The crowd arose as one, craning their necks as the young milers ___ neck-and-neck as they approached the fourth and final lap.

The traditional track-and-field signal that sounds when runners reach the three-quarter mark ____ ... but no one heard it above the din of the crowd. (In earlier times, the “gun-lap” had been signalled traditionally by a loud bang from a pistol blank ... but, in this race and at this venue, no one would have heard that either!)

By the time Ryun and Liquori reached the the back stretch, both were nearly sprinting...

Add a “g” at the end of the word in the first blank to form the word in the second blank.

What words are these?

Possessive Producers Dessert:

Nice and spicy, with savory flavor

Rearrange the letters of a spice and savory plants to spell, in a figurative sense, what successful producers of these foods possess. 

What are the foods and what do their producers possess?

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.