Carve a pumpkin into a pump & kin An Exercise In Ousting Unvowels; Telling “A Tale of Two Kitties?” Who “lit” all these figurative fires? “Triangular letters and numbers”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Who “lit” all these figurative fires?

Take someone who puts out figurative fires, in two words and four syllables. Delete the second syllable and the space. 

“Squish together” the first two letters of the third syllable to form what resembles a new letter (for example, “r” and “n” would kind of resemble an “m”). 

The result sounds like a vehicle that can help put out literal fires.

Hint: The second syllable that you deleted is a synonym of either “compose” or “enclose.”

Appetizer Menu

Hall+o+ween Appetizer:

Carve a pumpkin into a pump & kin

Some longish words can be cut into two words, in more than one way.  

For example,  ANTELOPE  can be cut into ANT+ELOPE or  ANTE+LOPE.  

Similarly BROADSWORD  can be cut into  BROAD+SWORD  or  BROADS+WORD.

Find a word that can be cut into two words in three different ways!

All words should be at least three letters long. 

Hint: The undivided word is definitely Halloween-related! 

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Three-Sided Slice:

“Triangular letters and numbers”

Name a word for “triangular letters” that contains a triangular number of letters.

Riffing Off Shortz And Wei-Hwa Huang Slices:

An Exercise In Ousting Unvowels

Will Shortz’s October 23rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Wei-Hwa Huang of San Jose, California, reads:

It’s unusual for a multi-word movie title to consist entirely of words starting with vowels, none of which are the article “a” or pronoun “I”. Can you name a popular movie with a five-word title — with word lengths 10, 10, 3, 2, 4 — all of which start with vowels?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Wei-Hwa Huang Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take a six-letter three-syllable word that means “a Polynesian woman” or “a female surfer,” and the five-letter surname of father-and-son British writers whose names respectively begin with an “E” and an “A”. The father’s first name was the same as his first wife’s first name.

Anagram these 11 letters to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who are this puzzle-maker and the father and son?

What is the six-letter word?

Hint: The father-and-son’s surname sounds like the six-letter word’s first syllable.

ENTREE #2

Can you name a late-1970s Italian comedy movie with a three-word title — with word lengths 4, 3, 5 — that start with three different vowels?

Hint: Move the last letter of the first word to the beginning of the third word, then delete the
last letter in the third word. Also delete the entire second word. The result will be two words: an adjective and a noun it describes.

What are the title, adjective and noun?

ENTREE #3

Can you name a 2015 movie with a four-word title — with word lengths 4, 4, 2, 6 — that begin with four different vowels? Rearrange those combined letters to name three words:

* the surnames of two men of letters, one English and one French, whose life spans overlapped eight years.

* a five-letter word that, along with a less-formal form of the Englishman’s first name, is another name for the British flag.

What is the movie title?

Who are the two men of letters?

What is the other name for the British flag?

Hint: The English writer was also a  scholar and soldier who became a cleric in the Church of England. The French writer was also a mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher and theologian. 

ENTREE #4

Note: This puzzle has appeared before on Puzzleria!, but it fits the “Acronymical Nature” of this week’s NPR puzzle, so I am including it here as a Riff. And, IMHO, it is one of the better puzzles I have created.  

Take the title of a novel with a multiple-word title in which all the words have the same number of letters. Replace the last word in the title with a synonym. The initial letters of this result spell something you may grow in a garden.

What is the novel?

What is the synonym and what may you grow in a garden?

Note: The following Entrees (except for Entrees #5 and #6, which are my fault!) are a continuation of Ecoarchitect’s riff-offs of the October 16th “Conquer/concur” NPR puzzle:

ENTREE #5

Many people suspect what Emmylou ______ _____ in the the lyrics of her “Heartaches & Highways” album amounted to expressions of psychic pain and emotional __________.

The first two blanks contain words of 6 and 5 letters that are stressed on the first and third syllables. The third word is a three-syllable, ten-letter word that is usually stressed on its second syllable. 

Except for their different stresses, the 11-letters and 10 letters are pronounced the same.

What words belong in the three blanks.

ENTREE #6

Huey Long and Richard Nixon were not at all _______ with the _______ of, respectively, “All the King’s Men” and “All the President’s Men.”

Fill in the blanks with verb and noun that are pronounced and spelled the same but are accented on their opposite syllables. 

ENTREE #7

As his debt ________, Dennis, in order to keep afloat financially, had to ______ on withdrawing funds from his retirement nest egg. 

Fill in the blanks with words of 8 and 6 letters that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #8

Marijuana opponents often _____ to “______ Madness” to bolster their anti-legalization argument. 

Fill in the blanks with words of 5 and 6 letters that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #9

Maurice _____ knitted together a musical composition that many people mistakenly believed was named after a loose waist-length jacket that might _____ after many years of wear. 

Fill in the blanks with five-letter words that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #10

Although Old MacDonald’s hairline was beginning to ______, he compensated by proceeding to ______ his back-40 so that at least he would have something growing on his farm!

Fill in the blanks with 6-letter words that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #11

My excitement and enthusiam about my upcoming relaxing _______ getaway ________ after I heard weather forecasts about possible hurricane conditions in the Bahamas.

Fill in the blanks with a 7-letter word and 8-letter word that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #12

_____ Laurie Blue Adkins’ amazing success, with sales of over 120 million records and 15 Grammy Awards, tend to _____ the brains of even her staunchest fans.

Fill in the blanks with two 5-letter words that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #13

After watching the Green Bay Packers lose their fourth game in a row on his beloved _______ TV that he won 40 years ago on Let’s Make A Deal (it was behind Door #3), Joe Sixpack was able to lick his emotional wounds and  ______ himself by conjuring his fond past memories of the Lombardi, Starr and Favre glory days. 

Fill in the blanks with two 7-letter words that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #14

People who ______ riots usually lack _______ into the dire consequences of their actions, and lack empathy for those who are victimized.

Fill in the blanks with a 6-letter word and a 7-letter word that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #15

Many people assume, incorrectly, that the _____ gases (a group of odorless, colorless, monatomic gases on the far right of the Periodic Table of Elements) are named after the Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor and eponymous Prize bequeather Alfred Bernhard _____. 

But the name of these gases is actually a translation from the German noun Edelgas.

Fill in the blanks with two 5-letter words that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #16

Every time his deodorant lost its effectiveness, causing his body odor to _____, the “offensive ______” who was the star power forward on his basketball team would retreat to the locker room to reapply his Speed Stick.

Fill in the blanks with a 5-letter word and a 6-letter word that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables.

ENTREE #17

“Centerfield,” “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Don’t Worry Baby,” “Unchained Melody,” “Ruby Tuesday,” and even “Hound Dog,” _______ all being _______, also managed, ironically, to be major hit records.

Fill in the blanks with a 7-letter word and a 6-letter hyphenated word that are pronounced the same but are accented on their opposite syllables. 

Hint: Remove the hyphen from the six-letter word and change the first letter with the one immediately preceding it in the alphabet to spell a word that means “an utterance made by an actor that is heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters.”

Dessert Menu

Anagrammatical Dessert:

Telling “A Tale of Two Kitties?”

Anagram the combined letters of two characters from an ancient tale to form a two-word phrase describing one of them. The phrase consists of an adverb and adjective.

Who are these characters? 

What is the phrase?

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.

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