Blue Bayou’s “Baritone Rouge” Three “overlapping” creatures; Manufacturing fiction and fact; “Seeking a Nitty Gritty Dirt Diva; Isle, Bay, Diet, Minus, “Vowelin’” and “My ABCs”

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Manufacturing fiction and fact

Take the title of a novel, in five words.

Remove one letter each from the first and fifth words. 

Change the second word to its homophone.

Delete the third word.

Keep the fourth word as it is. 

The result is a four-word sentence that applies to a press operator. 

What are this novel title and sentence?

Appetizer Menu

World Atlas Appetizer:

Isle, Bay, Diet, Minus, “Vowelin’” and “My ABCs”

“Hyphenectomy”

1. 🏝 Name a regionally well-known island resort. 

Remove a hyphen to obtain a plausible name for a specific animal in a famous photo from some years back. 

Where is this resort? 

What is the animal?

“Not me,” said the Bay State

2. 🗺 In 2020, Massachusetts attained an orthographic distinction through the action of others. 

What happened? 

What now distinguishes Massachusetts?

Alimentary reflux

3.😋 Think of things a child might eat. 

Spell them backwards to get how a mother might feel after her child ate too many of them.

Mysterious subtraction

4.❓ Drop the first letter from an odd number to make it even. Now drop the first letter from an even number to get an odd number. 

What are the two numbers?

Vowel movement

5. 🎻Think of a musical instrument. 

Exchange its two vowels to obtain a variant of a word that describes how many people (but not this writer) feel about the instrument.

My ABCs

6. 🏫What stands out about the word PRECONQUEST (as in: pre-Columbian Hispanoamerica)?

MENU

Roots Rock Slice:

Seeking a Nitty Gritty Dirt Diva

Name a musician in a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band that is known for its “roots rock ‘n’ roll.” Change one consonant in each syllable of the name of this musician to get three nouns associated with dirt. 

Who is this musician?

What are the three nouns?

Riffing Off Shortz And Holliday Slices:

Blue Bayou’s “Baritone Rouge”

Will Shortz’s September 11th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Roy Holliday of Nyack, New York, reads:

Name something, in eight letters, that you might hear at an opera. Drop three of the letters, without changing the order of theremaining five. You’ll name something you might see at an opera. What things are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Holliday Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker, in eleven letters, who shares his first name with a “white-hatted-and-horsed” cowboy, and who shares his surname with a gambler-gunfighter-dentist. 

Rearrange the letters to spell two words:

1. “something that is remarkable or outstanding,” and 

2. an exclamation of “joy, approval, or encouragement” one may make in the presence of that first “something.”

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What are the word for “something that is remarkable or outstanding” and the exclamation of “joy, approval, or encouragement?”

Who are the “white-hatted-and-horsed” cowboy and the gambler-gunfighter-dentist?

ENTREE #2

Name something, in eight letters, that you might hear at an opera. Drop three letters (in order but non-consecutive) that spell an interjection of surprise. Also drop the last letter (a duplicate of a letter that appears earlier in the eight-letter word). 

The remaining four letters, without changing
their order, will name a Norse god who was the basis of a character in a Richard Wagner opera. 

What might you hear at an opera?

What is the interjection?

Who is the Norse god? 

ENTREE #3

Name a response, in eight letters, that you might hear, in addition to cheering and booing, at Fenway Park. Remove three consecutive letters that are an anagram of what is honored by something sung by Fenway fans before the bottom of every seventh inning. The remaining letters, in order, are the fruit in a pie associated with this anagram.

What are this response, what is honored in song, and what is the pie fruit?

Hint: The “something sung” is invariably followed by the eight-letter response. 

ENTREE #4

Name something, in eight letters, that you might hear at a symphony music hall. 

Drop three of the letters, and change the order of the remaining five. 

You’ll name the first word of something, in two words, you might hear and see at a music hall. 

What things are these?

ENTREE #5

Name something, in eight letters, that you might hear at an opera. Drop five of the letters, without changing the order of the remaining three. Place a duplicate of the first of these three letters after the third letter. You’ll name something you might hear at an opera. What things are these?

ENTREE #6

Name something, in nine letters, that you might have heard at an opera – at the premiere performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La traviata,” for instance. 

Remove the second, fourth and fifth letters. 

Switch the order of the first two letters and of the last two letters of this six-letter result to spell a noun that describes either soprano
Fanny Salvini-Donatelli (who portaryed courtesan Violetta Valéry) or tenor Lodovico Graziani (who portaryed the young bourgeois Alfredo Germont).

What might you have heard at this opera?

What word describes Fanny Salvini-Donatelli or Lodovico Graziani?

ENTREE #7

Name a singing voice, in nine letters, that you might hear at an opera. Replace the first and fourth letters with an “h”. Anagram the first four letters of this eight-letter result, and move the last four letters to the beginning of  to spell, in
two words, a musical instrument you might hear at an opera.

What are this singing voice and musical instrument?

ENTREE #8

Name a style of opera in two words, eight total letters. Rearrange the first and fifth-through-eighth letters to spell name something you might see at an opera. 

Spell the remaining three letters backward. Add after the third letter the letter that follows that third letter, alphabetically. 

The result is a four-letter word for something seen on a musical score.

What are this opera style, thing seen at an opera, and thing seen on a musical score?

Dessert Menu 

Oxymoronic (Not Moronic Oxen) Dessert:

Three “overlapping” creatures

Take eight different letters, using two of them twice, to form a string of ten letters that contain the names of three fictional creatures of the same species. The sum of the letters in these three names – which overlap within the ten-letter string – is 13.

What are these three names?

Hint: The eight different letters in the three names can be rearranged to spell a three-letter woodland creature and a five-letter flower. 

The ten letters in the “string” can be rearranged to spell a two-word oxymoronic phrase – in four and six letters – that is synonymous with “a deafening creeping.” (The plural form of the five-letter flower and the six-letter word in the oxymoronic phrase both appear in a nearly-century-old song title.)

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.