“Four-letter words;” Inventors, musicals, novels and more! Hankerin’ for heaven-bound trains; Shirts vs. skins street roundball! ALBAnia? BRUT, Lebanon? mONAco?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Inventors, musicals, novels and more!

Each clue below has just one answer. 

One word in the clue will lead you to that answer. (Solve one of the eight, and you’ll likely solve ‘em all!) 

1. Her novel was deemed filmable, six times!

2. Literary contemporary of Arrowsmith’s author

3. President who withstood a governor’s
challenge

4. Inventor with an outstanding curriculum vitae

5. Stalwart composer of musicals

6. Reagan appointee with wisdom

7. Grim Reaper tale teller

8. Thoreau was once her schoolmaster

Appetizer Menu

“One-Letter-Later” Appetizer:

“Four-letter words”

What happens if you change each letter of a word to the next letter in the alphabet? 

Usually the result is nothing interesting ... for example, the word WORD itself would become XPSE. 

Yet in a few cases you do get another word ... a famous example is that STEEDS becomes TUFFET. 

So, here is our challenge:  

Find a pair of four-letter words that have this same relationship. The first word is a measure of electrical circuits; the second word is a measure of liquids.

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Sinfully Sinless Slice:

Hankerin’ for heaven-bound trains

Take a word for a person who hankers for heaven, and who may even believe she or he is surely heaven-bound.

Anagram the first four letters to name those who Jesus said might have difficulty attaining heaven. 

Anagram the remaining letters twice:

1. once, to spell a word associated with sin,
and 

2. a second time to spell a word associated with sinlessness. 

What are these four words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Bass Slices:

ALBAnia? BRUT, Lebanon? mONAco?  

Will Shortz’s June 5th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Ben Bass of Chicago, Illinois, reads:

The name of what country contains a deodorant and an air freshener in consecutive letters?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Bass Slices
read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first and last names and hometown of a puzzle-maker. Delete the two spaces between these three words.

The first name contains a mid-alphabet letter, spelled-out. Replace this spelled-out letter with  a mantra. Replace the fifth letter in the hometown with a “k”. Divide the result into a six-letter sock brand, a six letter razor brand and a board game. 

Who are this puzzle-maker and what is the hometown?

What are the two brands and the board game?

ENTREE #2

The name of a country begins with a noun that pertains to either Robert or Paul regarding their paricipation together in two Best-Picture-Oscar-nominated films (one which won). 

The remaining letters in the country are the first three letters in the name of a high-flying son of a Greek craftsman. 

The remaining letters in that name are the first three letters of a large Eurasian country.

What is this country?

What is the noun the pertaining to Robert or Paul? What are the name of the high-flying Greek and the Eurasian country? 

ENTREE #3

The name of what country begins with the first name of the wife and first cousin, “relativitibly,” of a well-known physicist.

The remaining letters are an anagram of a northwestern U.S. desert where female drivers have driven their vehicles faster than 500 mph!

What are this country, first name and desert?

ENTREE #4

Remove a word for a form of precipitation that is embedded within the name of a country. The remaining letters in order spell the 3-letter short form of a musical instrument associated with an island. A coastal city on that island experiences such precipitation, on average, about 270 days of the year. 

What are this country, precipitation, musical instrument and coastal city?

ENTREE #5

Change the third letter of a 10-letter island nation to a duplicate of either its second, sixth or ninth letter. 

Move this duplicate letter to the beginning. 

Move the 4th, 5th and 6th letters of this result to the front,  forming a 6-letter food. 

Spell the remaining four letters in reverse to spell a verb. Place it to the left of the food.

The result is what purveyors of “string” or “brick” do.

What is this nation? What do purveyors of “string” or “brick” do?  

ENTREE #6

Rearrange the first four letters of a Polynesian island to spell an inhabitant or the language of a country in Southeast Asia.

Rearrange the last five letters of this island to spell to spell a country that occupies the western part of a Carribean island.

What are the Polynesian island, the Southeast Asian inhabitant or language, and the Carribean country?

ENTREE #7

The name of what country begins with an anagram of the first word in a J.D. Salinger novella... and ends with the name of a Shakespearean king, spelled in reverse? 

ENTREE #8

Remove the first letter from the name of an African nation to spell the ancient name of a
peninsular kingdom. 

What are this African nation and peninsular kingdom?

ENTREE #9

The first four letters of the name of an nation plus just the second, third and fourth letters of that same nation spell a two-word beverage.

The remaining letters can be anagrammed to spell a container for that beverage.

What are this nation, beverage and container?

ENTREE #10

Name a 10-letter island chain that “connects” two island nations in the Carribean. (The chain is a part of one of these nations.) Delete the first two letters and the last letter, leaving seven letters.

Remove the 1st, 3rd and 4th letters of this result, leaving a 4-letter number. Then put the three letters back where they were.

Now delete the 5th letter, then move the two letters that follow that deleted 5th letter so that they are between the 2nd and 3rd letters. 

The result is a word for group consisting of a certain number of things; that number is the 4-letter number you discovered above.

What is this island chain?

What is the group that consists of a certain number of things, and what is that number?

ENTREE #11

The first half of the name of an Indian city contains a deodorant brand. 

The second half (if you move its letters 14 places ahead in the alphabet – so A becomes O, B becomes P, etc.) spells an American entertainment and media production company formed in 2001 by, among others, Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk.

What are this city, deodorant brand and production company?

Hint: The deodorant brand is sometimes “the word.”

Dessert Menu

Pick-Up Game Dessert:

Shirts vs. skins street roundball!

Something a handful of athletes may schedule sounds like two consumables that resemble one another.

What may a handful of athletes schedule?

What are these consumables?

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.