Crime and cell-ebrity punishment; Wedding bells and whistles; Odyssey on a Titian Dawn; Trimming one letter from a tree; Bloody! Blade-Wielding! Veal Oscar! Egg MacGuffin! Aeschylus!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Odyssey on a Titian Dawn

In the Odyssey and Iliad, “rosy-fingered dawn” is a recurring graphic metaphorical image for “daybreak.” 

Take a three-word, 21-letter phrase describing that metaphor. 

Rearrange those letters to spell the full name of a graphic artist. 

What is this 21-letter phrase, and who is the artist?

Hint: The first five letters of the 21-letter phrase spell the surname of an artist whose life overlapped that of the graphic artist.

Appetizer Menu

Baff-film-ment Appetizer:

Bloody! Blade-Wielding! Veal Oscar! Egg MacGuffin! Aeschylus!

Tough-skinned, blade-wielding, heartless! 

1. 🎥 Name two countries that end in the same letter. 

Each contains an odd number of letters. 

The sixth, seventh, and eighth letters of one country followed by the third, fourth, and fifth letters of
the other country, in order, spell the name of a tough-skinned, blade-wielding and heartless character in a classic film. 

What are the countries and the who is the character? 

“One Egg MacGuffin to go, please!”

2. 🍔 Here is a puzzle for “cinematic eggheads.” It uses, for example, phrases and words like “mode of transport,” “infrastructure,” “protagonist” and “MacGuffin.”

Name a classic motion picture with a one-word title. Think of the classic MacGuffin, in three
words, upon which the tale in that motion picture is hung. The letters of those three words can be rearranged to name: 

* a mode of transport associated with the MacGuffin, 

* the name of an item of infrastructure associated with that mode of transport, and 

* an adjective that does not describe the main protagonist of the movie. 

What are the motion picture, the MacGuffin, the mode of transport, the item of infrastructure, and the adjective?

A bloody body-parts movie?

3. ✋👄 Name an award-winning motion picture with a one-word title. The first half of the title can be anagrammed to make a verb. Two body parts appear in the second half of the title, along with what one of them allows you to do. 

What is the motion picture?

Adverbs & Aeschylus

4. 📚 The lead actor in the motion picture that is the solution to Appetizer #3 was also the lead actor in a 2000s film which was based on a 1990s historical non-fiction book. 

The title of the book, but not the film, contains an adverb. That same adverb is the first word in the title of a 1960s novel and a 1970s TV mini-series based on that novel. The title of the novel and mini-series is drawn from a Libyan fable quoted by Aeschylus. 

(A second well-known actor, who often portrayed Western characters, played a major role in the 2000s film and also starred in the TV mini-series.) 

Who are the two actors? 

What is the title of the non-fiction book? 

What is the title of the novel? 

You Must “Re-Veal” Oscar

5. 🥩🎥 Take the three-word, sixteen-letter title of a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Move the last word to the beginning. 

The result could be read as a “synonym” of a two-word, eight-letter title of a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar three years later. 

Both films boasted Oscar winners in other categories. 

What are those films?

MENU

Bridal Display Slice:

Wedding bells and whistles

Think of a particular kind of wedding decoration, display or centerpiece that often graces the reception hall, grounds or church.

Now name – in two words divided by the word “of” – what that display had been before being transformed by an artist.

Then name – in two words divided by the word “a” – what a pastry chef may do prior to a wedding to prepare a different wedding display.

The two words of the first display are the same as the two in the second display, but in reverse order. 

What are these two words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Van Mechelen Slices:

Crime and cell-ebrity punishment 

Will Shortz’s April 3rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg Van Mechelen of Berkeley, California, reads:

Name two well-known celebrities of the past who had the same six-letter first names and
the same initial in their last names. What follows that initial in one of the last names is a criminal activity. And what follows that initial in the other name is the result of that criminal activity. What celebrities are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Van Mechelen Slices read:

ENTREE #1

A retired blueblood owns a stately New England gated estate, its grounds lush with greenery – luxuriously manicured lawns, floral gardens, “topiaried” shrubs...

But no trees.

So he seeks to _______ the beauty of his _____ by planting a single stately ___ tree near the entry gate to his estate, in the hope that he would become the ____ of his neighbors and all of New England. 

Name a retired professional golfer who has the same four-letter first name as a not-retired puzzle-maker. The initial letters of their surnames, if said aloud and in order, sound like the noun that belongs on the fourth blank, above.

The combined letters of the words in the first and third blanks can be anagrammed to spell the letters that follow the initial letter in the puzzle-maker’s surname. 

The letters of the word in the second blank can be anagrammed to spell the letters that follow the initial letter in the golfer’s surname.

Who are this puzzle-maker and golfer?

What are the four words in the blanks?

ENTREE #2

Name a writer and a film producer/entrepreneur, both Americans, who had the same four-letter first names. 

Remove the initial letters of their surnames.

What remains of the writer’s surname is a six-letter criminal (who by the nature of his work may employ numerous aliases).

What remains of the film producer’s surname
is a two-letter verb, and three letters that sound like a French word that translates to “formerly known as.”

A snippet from an official police report might well include, in order, the word for the six-letter criminal, the two-letter verb and a translation of the French word.

Who are this writer and film producer?

What is the three-word snippet?

Hint: The initial letters of their surnames, depending on which order you put them in, are two letters associated with the number 40 or two letters associated with a director named Griffith. 

ENTREE #3

Name an ought-to-be-well-known physicist and mathematician whom Albert Einstein ranked as the near equivalent of Isaac Newton. Also name an actor who physically resembles – but is less famous than – his father, who is also an actor.

These men had the same five-letter first names and the same initial letter in their last names.

What follows that initial letter in the physicist’s last name is something – in a two-letter verb and four-letter adverb – that a former Sunday school teacher from Fall River could apparently do. 

And a rearrangement of what follows that initial letter in the actor’s last name is something – in a three-letter verb and three-letter pronoun – that same former Sunday school teacher apparently did to her father.

Who are this physicist and actor.

What could the Sunday school teacher apparently do?

What, apparently, did she do to her father? 

ENTREE #4

Name a pretty-well-known physicist who made “quantum leaps” in the field of atomic theory. 

Name also a not-so-well-known palaeontologist who was a pioneer in the field of archaeozoology.

The combined letters of their first names are an anagram of “Reason: the Idol!”

These scientists had the same initial letter in their last names. What follows that initial letter in each name is the reverse spelling of a Greek letter.

Who are these scientists? 

What Greek letters are these?

ENTREE #5

Take the surname of a physicist whose research was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb.

Following the initial letter in that surname are a three-letter verb and four-letter noun describing a property (in the form “They ___ a ____”)  possessed by cartoon bombs of the past – like those favored by Wile E. Coyote, for
example.

Who is this physicist?

What is the property of past cartoon bombs? 

Hint: For the sake of accuracy, a five-letter adjective that rhymes with the four-letter noun ought to precede that noun, so that the description of the cartoon bombs would read: “They ___ a _____ ____.” 

ENTREE #6

Name two Americans – an inventor and an evolutionary biologist/geneticist/embryologist – who had the same six-letter first names.

What follows the initial letter in the inventor’s the last name, if you change an “i” to a “u” and anagram the result, is a word associated with the inventor.

What follows the initial letter in the evolutionary
biologist’s last name is a musical instument that produces the word associated with the inventor.

Who are these two Americans?

What are the word associated with the inventor and the musical instrument that produces it?

ENTREE #7

Name a pretty-well-known singer of the past and the alter ego of a present-day rapper. They have the same four-letter first names. 

What follows the first letter of the singer’s surname is a six-letter word for a type of
criminal. And what follows the alter ego’s surname are four letters that do not form a common English word. But, if they did, plural form of that word would sound like where the criminal will ultimately spend eternity.

Who are this singer and alter ego?

ENTREE #8

Name a not-so-well-known German scientist of the past who made major contributions to agricultural, organic and biological chemistry, and to the fertilizer industry. 

Reverse the syllables in his six-letter surname, which is preceded by the word “von”, to form a two-word phrase that has recently become a popular catchphrase, and that is a euphemism of a synonym of “fertilizer.”

Who is this scientist?

What is the catchphrase that is a euphemism of a synonym of “fertilizer”?

ENTREE #9

Note: We have saved our best riff-off for last. The following puzzle is the brainchild of our good friend Plantsmith, whose always-excellent “Garden of Puzzley Delights” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Take an actor – first and last names, in four and six letters.

In the first name, insert a duplicate of the first letter between the penultimate and last letters to form a word that is usually a crime.

Say the last name aloud, adding a long vowel sound at the end, resulting in what sounds like a crime.

Who is this actor?

What are the two crimes?

Dessert Menu

Decidedly Deciduous Or Coniferous Dessert?:

Trimming one letter from a tree

Remove one letter from the name of a tree to spell the name of another tree. 

What two trees are these?

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.)

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