A mixed-up crazy patchwork quilt; ’Tis a “Fat Friday” cryptic feast! Thinking through the thick & thin; 76 trombones in the big-parading marching band; The great American bronco-busting novel

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

A mixed-up crazy patchwork quilt

Take a hyphenated word that means bizarre or crazy, like a patchwork quilt. 

Replace the hyphen with what may be used as a patch in such a quilt. 

The first seven letters and the last six letters of the result spell synonyms of “mixture.”

What are these two synonyms of “mixture”?

What is the hyphenated word that means bizarre or crazy?

Appetizer Menu 

Crypticker tape parade “Big-not-so-Easy-But-Lots-of-Fun” Appetizer:

’Tis a “Fat Friday” cryptic feast!

Mardi Gras 2022 – which is celebrated on March 1st this year – may be a month-and-a-half away, but we here at Puzzleria! just cannot wait for the fun to come. 

So, this week we are celebrating “Fat Friday” (or, in French, “Vendredi Volumineux”) by rolling out our 24th edition of Patrick J. Berry’s (cranberry’s) pleasantly pleasing yet puzzling Cryptic Crossword Creations.

Here are links to Patrick’s 23 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 23   

For those 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!

So, grab your Flambeaux, doubloons and “throws”... and let the festivity and fun begin!

ACROSS

1. Singer being honest with you—nervous before opening night(7,7)

9. Turning sixteen, given first car—excellent
life!(9)

10. Hint could go either way(5)

11. Somehow I learn to be smooth(6)

12. It’s a man, dancing with energy(7)

14. Safety hard, perhaps, for pop star at this time?(7,3)

16. Island involved in Fat Tuesday?(4) 

17. Bacchanal in which Bess's man goes topless?(4)

18. Nobleman gets a little titillated learning about some romantic actor(5,5)

21. Sailor achieves goals
(7)

22. Idiot in our party?(6)

25. Simple citizen, having no time(5)

26. Hanson excited about country song?(2,7)

27. Song by Bob Seger once more mixed—this went downhill from the start(7,3,4)

DOWN

1. Vanna lacks appeal—letter-turning part getting stale on air here?(5,2,7)

2. He was bound to turn in around 10—10?(5)

3. Lunatic made up tunes about California(7)

4. Jerk could be any knucklehead(4)

5. Exaggerates across America?(10)

6. Jet having run into fog(6)

7. Crazy proposition involving Scottish clothing?(3-6)

8. Novel, as a rule, is novel in style(8,6)

13. They may be cast as individuals without
one?(10)

15. Show business, oddly, getting husband out of pickle?(5,4)

19. Kids, primarily, getting in free—the ultimate pursuit(4-3)

20. Middle Easterner, supposed enemy close
to Israeli?(6)

23. Soldier has good time on mushrooms(5)

24. Hey, some wasps sting!(4)

MENU

Paperback Rider Slice:

The great American bronco-busting novel

Take the title of a ground-breaking American novel and the first and last names of its author. 

Rearrange those twenty-two letters to form:

📘 the fictional genre of the novel,

❗ An interjection used in this genre,

⭐ a city in Texas,

✍ the number of letters in the author’s name,

Ⅻ? the  Roman numeral for the number of words in the novel’s title.

Name the novel and author. 

What are the genre, interjection, city, number and Roman numeral?

Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices:

Thinking through the thick & thin

Will Shortz’s January 9th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Joseph Young, who conducts the blog “Puzzleria!,” reads:

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a five-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 51. Now take this word’s last two letters. Add their
values. (For example A and C would total 4.) Change these two letters to the single letter of the alphabet that represents their total. (In this case, D.) The result will be a new word that is the opposite of the original. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices read:

Note: Riff-off #1 this week was created by Puzzleria! contributor GB, whose “GB’s Bafflers” appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Riff-offs #2 and #3 this week were created by Puzzleria! contributor Ecoarchitect, whose “Econfusions” also appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Finally, Riff-off #4 this week was created by “Matt 413.” Matt is a good friend of mine from Minnesota who is a master crossword-puzzle solver and composer of sublime poetry.

ENTREE #1

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a five-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 77. 

Now take this word’s last two letters. Add their values. (For example A and C would total 4.)
Change these two letters to the single letter of the alphabet that represents their sum. (In this case, D.) 

The result will be a new word that is a synonym of the original. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #2

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a seven-letter word. The sum of the values of its second and third letters is 23.

Now form a new seven-letter word by replacing the second and third letters of the original word with two different letters. 

When when you subtract the value of the second letter from that of the third letter, the difference is 23.   

What words are these?

ENTREE #3

Think of two words that are antonyms, four letters in the first, five in the second.  Both start with the same first two letters.  

Remove those first two letters from each word and the result will be a movement that was popular in the 1960’s. 

What are these antonyms, and what is the movement?

ENTREE #4:

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a five-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 29. Now take this word’s last two letters. 

Add their values. (For example A and C would total 4.) Change these two letters to the single letter of the alphabet that represents their total. (In this case, D.) 

The result will be a new word that is synonymous to the original word. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #5

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a five-letter noun whose letters’ values add up to 89. Write it in lowercase letters and invert the middle letter. The sum of these five letters is now 82.

Replace the fourth letter with a duplicate of the new third letter. Re-invert the new third letter so that it again becomes original third letter. The sum of these five letters is now 83.

Finally, change the original fifth letter to the letter that precedes it in the alphabet. The sum of these five letters is now 82, and they spell a word that is the adjectival form of the original noun. If you capitalize the first letter of this adjective it spells the surname of a puzzle-maker.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the original five-letter noun?

ENTREE #6

“Count all total days in a non-leap year.”

Explain how the imperative sentence above
might be considered “self-answering.”

ENTREE #7

Let A = 1, B = 3, C = 3, D = 4, E = 1, F = 4, G = 2, H = 4,  I = 1, J = 8. K = 5 etc. 

Think of a four-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 10. 

Now think of a three-letter homophone of this word’s five-letter plural form. The values of the three letters in this homophone (which is also a plural form of the four-letter word) also add up
to 10.

What are this four-letter word, five-letter plural form, and three-letter homophone.

Hint: The three-letter plural form is often seen in the pages of the Herald, Tribune, Globe and Sun-Times.  

ENTREE #8

Let A = 1, B = 3, C = 3, D = 2, E = 1, F = 4, G = 2, H = 4,  I = 1, J = 8. K = 5, L = 1, M= 3, N = 1, O = 1, P = 3... X = 8, Y = 4,  Z = 10. 

Think of a six-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 26. The following instructions will help you to transform that word into a four-letter word whose letters’ values are half of that value – that is, 13.

The six-letter word is defined as “one of a series of short sharp turns, angles, or alterations in a course.”

The four-letter word is defined as “a test a college student or graduate student might take in a course such as zoology or calculus.”

First, replace this six-letter word’s last letter with a letter that has a value greater by one (for example, Y might replace P). 

Replace the first two letters of the word with one letter that has a value that is 10 less that the sum of those first two (for example, S might replace X and C).

Finally, replace the middle two letters of the six-letter word with one letter with a value that is four less than the sum of those middle two (for example, D might replace M and P). The letter that replaces the two middle letters in the six letter word is pronounced (in the four-letter word) exactly the same as those two middle letters are pronounced (in the six-letter word).

What are these six-letter and four-letter words? 

ENTREE #9

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of an eight-letter word whose letters’ values add up to 77 and an five-letter antonym of that word whose letters’ values also add up to 77. The words’ third-last letters are both an “i”. It is the only
letter they share. 

The sum of the first three letters of the longer word equals the sum of the last two letters in the shorter word. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #10

Let A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Think of a pair of five-letter synonyms that share no letters in common. The letter value sums of each word equals 48. The value of the last four letters of one word equals the value of the last three letters of the other word.  

What words are these?

Dessert Menu

Music-Making Dessert:

76 trombones in the big-parading marching band

Harmonica, trumpet, trombone, tonearm, marching band, orchestra... 

All six produce music. 

Identify six additional different words that also tie all six of these music-makers together.

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.