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.