Demonymomania! Pondering wrinkles in a septuagenarian game; “Don’t obey the Golden Rule!” Giving thanks for addictive lipsmack! “He be GB, the crafty Baffler”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Let’s give thanks for addictive lipsmack!

It’s Friday, the day after Thankgiving. Thankfully, there are usually enough cold turkey leftovers in the fridge so that one need not go “cold turkey” on Thursday’s “addictive lipsmack”...

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day: plates heaping with piping-hot, aromatic, savory, succulent turkey thighs and cauliflower, ripe pineapple and Little Debbie pumpkin spice rolls...

What do the five words “thighs, ripe pineapple, cauliflower” and “Debbie” have in common?

Hint: Speaking of “addictive lipsmack,” the tryptophan in turkey just may be an antidepressant.  

Appetizer Menu

ganGBusters! Appetizers:

“He be GB, the crafty Baffler”

Beginning at the end

1. 🌍Consider the following grouping: 

📌Hemingway, to his pals; 

📌Garb for a soldier, but not a tinker, tailor or
spy; 

📌South Africa Provincial Pair; 

📌“Bean Capital of the world”; 

📌Sound copy; 

📌“Alpha” male Shakespearean title
character; 

📌“Inky” Asian Peninsula nation; 

📌Beginning!

What is significant about this grouping?

A country “conumberum”

2. 🗺Name a country that has numbers embedded in its name. 

Remove the numbers from the name.
The remaining letters, in order from left to right, spell the name of another country. 

What are the countries and the numbers? 

“I’ll alter a name to get an isle” 

3. 🏝 Name a country. Remove the first letter. 

Replace one of the remaining consonants with another consonant to get an island. 

What is it? 

Fixing freedom

4. 🩰💃Name a word in eight letters that indicates freedom of movement. 

Switch the first and second letters, then advance the new second letter eight places in the alphabet. 

The resulting word indicates a fixed position. 

What are these words? 

MENU

Triple Word Score Slice:

Pondering wrinkles in a septuagenarian game

How are the following quotation and attribution related to the number 120?

“A ‘no tie’ rule does seem wise, albeit curious.” 

— Gaming mavens together pondering Scrabble “wrinkles”

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:

Demonymomania!

Will Shortz’s November 21st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Name a country of six or more letters. Change two letters in it to name the resident of another country’s capital.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take a puzzle-maker’s last name, in six or more letters. 

Change the first letter to the next letter in the alphabet. Change the last two letters to the state postal code abbreviation of the state where the puzzle-maker resides.

The result is an adjective that might describe many of the fiendish puzzles this puzzle-maker creates.

Who is this puzzle-maker and what is the adjective? 

ENTREE #2

Name a past ballplayer whose surname is a synonym of “butchery” or “bloodbath.”

Take a six-letter word for his Major League status in 1938. 

Anagram the combined letters of this word and the letters in his first name to spell two different names for a resident of a particular U.S. state (that is, two demonyms).

Who is this ballplayer?

What are the two demonyms?

Hint: The state where the ballplayer played the majority of his career borders the state associated with the two demonyms.   

ENTREE #3

Name a country of five or fewer letters. Add one letter to the front of it to name the resident of another country’s capital.

What are this country and resident of another country’s capital?

Extra credit: How is this puzzle related to Entree #2?

ENTREE #4

Name an empire of six or more letters. 

Change two consecutive letters in it to name a resident of a country’s capital.

What are this empire and resident?

ENTREE #5

Take a word that means consticting, contracting or binding. It begins with “con” and ends with “ent,” with a string of six letters in the middle.

Replace the “con” with a “ham” and the “ent” with an “ing” to get a word that means “making ineffective or powerless.”

What is the “string of six letters?

What are the words beginning with “con” and with “ham”?

ENTREE #6

Name an Asian country of six or more letters.

Within the name appears the “present tense third-person singular” of “be.” Replace it with the first two-thirds of the “present tense second-person singular and present tense plural” of “be.”  

Oh, and then change the first letter of this result.

The final result is the name of any resident of another Asian country’s capital.

What is this country? 

What is the name for a resident of the other country’s capital?  

ENTREE #7

Name a resident of a European country of six or more letters. (The country is not Italy, but knowlege of things Roman may help you solve this puzzle.) 

Divide the first letter by X to get a new letter. Replace the first letter with that new letter.

Multiply a pair of interior letters by XVI, then add III. The result is a pair of letters that, one might argue, may be a less cumbersome alternative to that product. Replace those interior letters with that less cumbersome alternative.

The result of all this computation is the first word in another European county.

What are these two European countries?

What is the less cumbersome pair of letters?

ENTREE #8

Name a resident of an Asian country of six or more letters. Change each of its first two vowels to an “o” and remove its third vowel. 

The result is the name of a resident of a European country.

What are the names of these residents?

ENTREE #9

Divide the name of any resident of a certain European city into three parts. 

The first part is a tide and the third part is
a tint. The second part can be rearranged to spell a tint in a tube.

What is the name of this resident?

What are the tide, tint and tint in a tube?

Hint: Somthing edible that has the same as the name of the resident has white, pink and brown tints.

Dessert Menu

Do Unto Others Dessert:

“Don’t obey the Golden Rule!”

Name a word for people that we don’t want following the Golden Rule: 

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Hint: The word anagrams into two groups of
people – the majority of whom likely do indeed follow the Golden Rule.

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.

Arthur, King of the B-B-Britons; Coal, corncob, button, bucks; Capitals get their comeupperance Sally solves, Missy misreads; Please pass more cryptic crossword “cranberry” sauce!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week

Sally solves, Missy misreads

“Name a part of a vegetable and insert a letter to name how a chef may cook the vegetable.” 

Sally and Missy each find an answer to this puzzle. But they are different answers for how the chef may cook the veggie. 

Sally solves the puzzle correctly after reading it carefully. Missy misreads one letter in the puzzle’s text and thus gets a wrong answer. 

What are their answers?

Appetizer Menu

Twenty-Third Helping Appetizer:

Please pass more cryptic crossword “cranberry” sauce!

‘Tis the Thanksgiving Season. ‘Tis time also to be grateful for our great group of guest puzzle-makers who contribute their creativity to Puzzleria! 

One of the most prolific of these puzzle-makers is our master cryptic cruciverbalist
Patrick J. Berry, an Alabaman whose screen name is “cranberry.”

 This week we serve up Patrick’s twenty-third Cryptic Crossword on our “Puzzleria! Platter.” 

Here are links to his 22 previous Cryptic Crossword puzzles on Puzzleria:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

For those of you who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled a few basic cryptic crossword puzzle instructions regarding the Across and Down clues and their format:

The number in parentheses at the end of each clue tells how many letters are in the answer.

Multiple numbers in parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in multiple-word answers.

For example, (6) simply indicates a six-letter answer like “jalopy,” (5,3) indicates a five-and-three-letter answer like “cargo van,” and (5-5) indicates a five-and-five-letter hyphenated
answer like “Rolls-Royce.”

For further insight about how to decipher these numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s “Cryptic Crossword Tutorial” in this link to his November 17, 2017 cryptic crossword. 

The Tutorial appears below the grid that contains the answers in that edition of Puzzleria!

Thank you, Patrick... and thanks to all who contribute and have contributed puzzles to our blog.

So, now it is time to cross swords with our “Zorro of cryptic puzzledom.”

ACROSS

1. Knock media first off in column(8)

5. Hector’s girl back in high school(6)

9. One of Carole King’s records to hear(8)

10. I am so drunk after a little midmorning cocktail(6)

12. Certain viewers said to be savvy(7)

13. Shaky ground providing ultimate earthquake experience(7)

14. Musical act having limited success—about done with ’er, sadly(3-3,6)

17. A nice gift, our new toy(6,6)

22. Keep change put inside bag(7)

23. Money for tart hanging around rock star?(7)

24. Go back in restroom...(6)

25. ...being clean inside? Messy inside, outside of this(8)

26. The silent one who works at a bank?(6)

27. English Leather, sort of subtle(8)

DOWN

1. John looking for something to clean the place, claiming “lost hat”(8)

2. Dicky ate wrap with some tropical drink(3,5)

3. Dancing seniors, short of energy, embracing top Italian composer(7)

4. Western critter shot? No! That heartless
filmmaker!(12)

6. Princess’s death brought up after song(7)

7. A poet with nothing on?(6)

8. Follow suit, captivated by playwright(6)

11. When there’s change, but no tip?(7,5)

15. Eccentric fellow entering true to form(3-5)

16. Change ruse, oddly, to get in show(8)

18. Forget hard time in prison? That’s the spirit!(7)

19. Fancy picture to take home?(7)

20. Geezer scratching head about some animation with cat(6)

21. A friend with class and charm(6)

MENU

Honest Abe Fish Fin Slice:

Coal, corncob, button, bucks

Anagram a two-word term for button, coal or corncob to form a two-word term for five bucks.

What are these two two-word terms?

Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices:

Arthur, King of the B-B-Britons

Will Shortz’s November 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Peter Collins of Ann Arbor, Michigan, reads:

Name a famous TV actress of the past. Double her first name phonetically. You get the first name of a famous musician. If you put the last
names of the musician and the actress together, in that order, you’ll name a great legendary figure. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first name of a drummer who appeared in Genesis and the last name of an artist who whose artwork appears on Aretha and Yes album covers. 

Spoken together, these two names sound like two words:

1. something Jack Nicholson ofter appears in, and

2. a weapon he wielded in one of these things.

The first name of the artist and the last name
of the drummer form the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who are this drummer, artist and puzzle-maker?

ENTREE #2

Name a famous movie actress of the past. Her surname is the first name of a singer who once testified at a U.S. Senate hearing. 

The actress is known for playing the title character in a movie which marked the beginning of the entire “beach party film” genre, and which inspired a TV sequel starring a future best-leading-role-actress Oscar winner. 

The two vowels in this Oscar-winner’s
surname appear in the in the same order in the name of the character she portrayed as well as in the surname of the singer. If you remove them from the singer’s surname and insert an “a” within and at the end if the result, you will spell the first name of the famous movie actress of the past.

Who are this actress and singer?

Name the title character. What future Oscar winner portrayed this character on TV?

ENTREE #3

A famous 20th Century stage, movie and TV actress and a famous 19th Century stage actor share a surname.

That name is the middle name of a novelist, playwright and politician who lived during both of those centuries and summered and spent the winter of his years in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Add an “e” to the end of that name to spell the surname at birth of a 20th Century playwright and politician. 

Who are these four Americans?

ENTREE #4

Name an actor who performed  in two 1960s-70s-era TV series that each have a number in the title. The sum of these numbers is 78. Remove the last letter of his surname to spell the surname of an author.  

Now take the hyphenated nickname of a famous retired baseball player. 

Double the letter preceding the hyphen and place punctuation marks after each to form what precedes the surname of the above author on book covers. 

Change the last letter of the letters in the player’s nickname that follow the hyphen to spell the name of a character created by the author. 

The last name of another character this author created is a kind of bird, as is the first name of the actor.

Who are the actor and author? 

What is the baseball player’s nickname?

Who are the two characters? 

ENTREE #5

Name two actress who have the same first name and portrayed each other’s love interest in a 2015 movie. Double that first name and, phonetically, you’ll get the first part of a three-part professional name of a famous rapper and actor.

The second part of ther rapper’s name is associated with the last names of the two actresses.  

Who are these actresses and who is the rapper?

ENTREE #6

Take a mammal you might see on a safari or football field. Its first syllable sounds like a letter of the alphabet. Double it. 

The result, phonetically, is the first part of the
name of the longest-running band with an unchanged lineup in the history of popular music. The second syllable of the mammal is a synonym of the second part of the name of the band.

What are this mammal and band?

What are the synonyms?

ENTREE #7

Take the second word in the name of a well-known body of water. Double it and, phonetically, you’ll get the first two letters of a blues standard written and first recorded by vaudeville star Ma Rainey.

The first word in the name of the body of
water plus the remaining letters of the blues standard spell the two-word name of a character in a syndicated comic strip that ran during the days of FDR to LBJ.

What are this body of water and blues standard?

Who is the character in the syndicated comic strip?

ENTREE #8

Name a child TV actor who was a sitcom title character during the JFK administration.

Double his first name and, phonetically, you’ll
get the nickname of an actor who during the Ford-Carter era portrayed a teenage sitcom character when he was in his late 20s. (His nickname is the name of the character he portrayed.)

Inserting the surnames of the 20-something actor and the child actor, respectively, in the blanks below will result in a true statement.

“A ______ headed _____ from New Mexico will eventually enter Colorado.”

Who are these two actors"

ENTREE #9

Name a famous actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist of the past. Double her surname and, phonetically, you’ll get the first name of an actress who appeared in “Grease,” “Grease 2”  and the “Grease: Live” television special.

If you put the first name of the first actress in front of the last name of the second actress you’ll get, phonetically, what sounds like a river associated with Julius Caesar – a word that Merriam-Webster defines as “a bounding or limiting line, especially one that when crossed commits a person irrevocably.”

Who are these actresses?

What is the name of the river?

ENTREE #10

Name a character played by a TV actress of the past who appeared in a sitcom set in a town where everybody knows your name. 

Double her first name and, phonetically, you’ll get the first name of a second actress who appeared in a sitcom set in a saloon where everybody knows your name. 

The nickname of a politician sounds the same as the first name of this second actress. The surnames of the second actress and politician share the same first, second and eighth letters, and share a fourth letter in common. 

Who is this sitcom character?

Who are the second sitcom actress and politician?

Dessert Menu

edward estlin Dessert:

Capitals get their “comeupperance”

A gripe voiced by “CAPS-hating” typesetters,

That “Shortcomings have CAPITAL letters!”

   e.e.c. did displace

   Just by ________ his ____,

Thus _________ a man of _____ letters.

In the limerick above, fill in the four blanks with words of eight, four, nine, and five letters.

You won’t find the nine-letter word in any dictionary, but you will find its homophone there.

Hint: The initial letters of the four missing
words begin with the consonants in the plural word for one of the suits in a deck of cards. 

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.

Pastimes, music, sports & shoes; Diana dances o’er the rosy dawn; Slicing juliennes at the Juilliard; Racehorses and roundhouses; Agricultivacation!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π  SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Racehorses and roundhouses

Racehorses are athletes that gallop and snort. They carry human cargo.

Take a human athlete and something he does, in two words. 

Take two other words that form a plural noun
associated with carrying non-human cargo.

The first words in each two-word pair are anagrams of one another. The second words are homonyms that are spelled and pronounced alike.  

What two words describe the human athlete and something he does?

What two-word plural noun is associated with cargo?

Hint: The human athlete and the two-word plural noun are both associated with roundhouses.

Appetizer Menu

Chuck’s Challenging Appetizers:

Pastimes, music, sports & shoes

Coastlines & pastimes

1. 🌎Name a well-known North American coastal region in ten letters. Rearrange the
letters and you’ll find a word for some pastimes. 

What is the place? 

What are the pastimes?

Identifying an instrument

2. 🎷🎺Name an ID that’s worn or carried, in five letters. Add a duplicate of one of the letters. 

The result has special applicability to a popular musical instrument. 

What’s the instrument and how is the result applicable?

Sport’s drink

3. ⚽🏉🏀In seven letters, name those who play a particular sport. 

Rearrange to name a well-known brand of beverage. 

Identify the players and the brand.

Organizing your shoe closet

4. 👟Think of two well-known brands of athletic shoes. 

Put the brands together and rearrange to name – phonetically – a word for organs found in many animals, including humans. 

What are the brands and what are the organs? 

Hint: the brand names have the same number of letters.

MENU

Field Of Creams Of The Crop Slice:

Agricultivacation!

Take two words: and agricultural worker and an agricultural season. 

Anagram the combined letters in these words to spell a two-word place on the map with an agricultural field in its name. 

What is this place?

What are the agricultural worker and season?

Hint: The place on the map is associated with vacationing.

Riffing Off Shortz And Fogarty Slices:

Slicing juliennes at the Juilliard

Will Shortz’s November 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Neville Fogarty of Newport News, Virgina, reads:

Name a variety of song and a genre of music. Switch the initial consonant sounds of these two words, and, phonetically, you’ll name an object found in the kitchen. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Fogarty Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker. Remove from the surname the first name of a “Peachy Tiger.” Switch the initial consonant sounds of the two syllables that remain in that surname to form a two-word idiom meaning “to achieve much success.”

If you rearrange the combined letters of the full name you can form a two-word oxymoronic phrase containing a 7-letter adverb beginning with an “o” and a 7-letter verb beginning with an “f”.

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What is the two-word idiom meaning “to achieve much success?”

What is the two-word oxymoronic phrase?

ENTREE #2

(Note: Entree #2 was composed by our friend Plantsmith whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!) 

Take the brand name of one piece of candy, in two words containing a total of seven letters. 

Each word is the name of a music genre. 

Both genre names are shortened forms of longer names totaling 18 letters – a one-word name and a three-word name.

What is the piece of brand-name candy called?

What are the short and long forms of the two music genres? 

Hint: Rearrange the 11 letters that don’t appear in the short-form names to spell a two-word synonym of “money on the moon.” 

ENTREE #3

Name an implement, in two words, you can use to flip over a piece of barbecued beef or chicken before it burns. 

Switch the initial consonant sounds of these two words, and, phonetically, you’ll name a chirping, fluttery sound a flute might make, in eight letters (or perhaps five letters), and disk-shaped percussion instruments.

What is this implement?

What are the flute sound and the percussion instruments?

ENTREE #4

Name an object found in the kitchen, in two words. Switch the initial consonant sounds of these two words and move the last two letters of the second word to the end of the first word. 

The result, phonetically, will be the first person you often encounter when entering a Walmart or similar store and the subject of a phrase coined by Arthur Fletcher.

What is the kitchen object?

Who is the person you encounter first at Walmart?

What is the subject of the phrase?

ENTREE #5

Name an object found in the kitchen, an eight-letter compound word. Switch the initial consonant sounds of the two parts of the word, and, phonetically, you’ll name a piece of furniture that is rarely found in the kitchen and the brand name of a candy. 

The piece of furniture is bigger than the kitchen object, and a box of the candy is smaller than the kitchen object.

What is this object?

What are the piece of furniture and the candy brand?

ENTREE #6

Name an object found in the kitchen, in two words. 

Switch the initial consonant sounds of these two words, and, phonetically, you’ll name a hircine activity and a word for 128 cubic feet of firewood.

What is this kitchen object?

What are the hircine activity and the word for 128 cubic feet of firewood?

ENTREE #7

Motorists occasionally get a gander of a gander and her brood crossing the road in front of them. Why the gander does this is anyone’s guess. 

But there is no question about what courteous motorists do when they get a gander of such a gander.

Take the word for what courteous motorists do and a synonym of the gander’s brood. 

Switch the initial consonant sounds of these two words, and you’ll spell a compound word for an object found in the kitchen or a restaurant.

What is this object?

What do courteous motorists do, and what is the synonym of the gander’s brood?

ENTREE #8

Name an object found in the kitchen, a compound word. Divide the word into its two parts and switch their first letters. 

The result is something a child might make in
the days before Christmas and the name of a creature that helps to make materialize what the child might make.

What is the object found in the kitchen?

What does the child make?

What is the name of the creature that helps to make materialize what the child might make?

ENTREE #9

(Note: We might define a “half-spoonerism” as a transposition of initial sounds of two words – one begining with a vowel, the other beginning with a consonant or consonant blend. For example, “oil spill” would become “spoil ill.”)

Name an object found in the kitchen in two words, the second of which begins with a
vowel sound. Move the initial consonant sound of the first word to the beginning of the second word. 

The result, phonetically, is what sort of sounds like why the kitchen object may be malfunctioning.

What is this object?

Why may the kitchen object be malfunctioning?

ENTREE #10

Name objects found in the kitchen or pantry, in two words, that are associated with canning. 

Switch the initial letters of these two words, and you’ll spell the names of a Greek hero and Roman god. 

What are these objects?

Who are the Greek hero and Roman god?

Hint: The Greek hero shares something in common with both Ryan Dinwiddie and Pinball Clemons. The Roman god had a “ruddy wanderer” named after him. 

Dessert Menu

Camouflaged Dessert:

Diana dances o’er the rosy dawn

What four related things are hidden in the following paragraph?

I don’t often, but whenever I do color a portrait of the moon goddess, I select a florid and golden palette using Photoshop. Then I cut,
connect and paste the hues to produce Diana in her cerulean blue cape dancing o’er heaven’s rosy dawn.

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.