Actor, mascot, tater-prepper; From mildly amusing to deadly serious; Duffers know there are no holes in 1! A-Star-Moony lesson; Hot turkey & five delicious "sidely dishes"

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Note: There is no need to delay this special Thanksgiving edition of Puzzleria! It is ready to publish, so here it is! Enjoy nibbling on our puzzles after your meal, before the turkey-induced triptophan kicks in. I give thanks to all who contribute to, participate in, and enjoy our blog. 

— Lego 

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Duffers know there are no holes in 1!

There are three holes in 89. There are two holes in 96. There is one hole in 20. There are no holes in 53. 

Those statements are true. 

Replace 53 with a number that keeps the fourth statement true, but makes the statement sound false if the statement’s two nouns are spoonerized.

What number is this?

Appetizer Menu:

Worldplayful Appetizer

Hot turkey & five delicious “sidely dishes”

Hot turkey

1. 🦃Think of a word that describes a verbal
attack. 

Double an internal letter and add a space between the two newly-doubled letters. 

The result is a two-word phrase that could describe a roasting step. 

What is this phrase?

A P!uzzle

2. 🐉Think of a word used weekly on Puzzleria!. Move its last letter to the beginning to obtain a mythological creature. 

What is this creature?

Well-known number

3. (1776) On January 5, 1914, an assignment was made using a sequential series, yielding a number that is familiar to almost all Americans. 

What is this number? 

How was it determined?

Improper homophones

4. 🗺The demonyms for an inhabitant of a US state capital and for a European country are spelled identically but (usually) pronounced differently. 

What are these demonyms?

Henanatomical recipe

5. 🐔Write the names of two component countries of an overarching entity. Separate them by a space, in place of their real-life border. Insert an H into each component country: one at position one of country two and
one at position two of country one. 

Add a space and an apostrophe to the result. You now have a possible three-word description of the cetacean homologue of an anatomical feature of a female chicken that produces a familiar product. What is this phrase?

Lamentations

6. 🎱☆💪🏁Many would characterize the current political climate in the USA (and many other countries) with an idiomatic phrase. 

This phrase sounds like a combination of the following, in order:

1. A number

2. A state capital

3. A part of the human anatomy

4. A goal in a certain sport.

What is the phrase?

MENU

Adjectival Slice:

From mildly amusing to deadly serious

Take just the first syllable of a mildly amusing activity. Ignore the rest of the word. 

After this syllable’s first letter insert two letters associated with that activity. 

The result is a deadly serious adjective. 

What are this amusing activity and serious adjective?

Riffing Off Shortz And Picciotto Slices:

An A-Star-Moony lesson

Will Shortz’s November 20th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Henri Picciotto of Berkeley, California (who coedits the weekly “Out of Left Field” cryptic crossword) reads:

Name a branch of scientific study. Drop the last letter. Then rearrange the remaining letters to name two subjects of that study. What branch of science is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Picciotto Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker and the city in which he lives. Rearrange these letters to name a church-singer, throat-wringer and branch-clinger.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

Identify the church-singer, throat-wringer and branch-clinger. 

ENTREE #2

Name a branch of scientific study. 

Drop the last letter. 

Then rearrange the remaining letters to name two subjects of that study. 

What branch of science is it?

Hint: One of the study subjects is a vulgar x-rated word. One less vulgar synonym of that word begins with “ex-”. Another less-vulgar synonym of that word, if you change one vowel, is a word that describes kings, queens and jacks.

ENTREE #3

Name a branch of scientific study. 

Rearrange its seven letters to describe, in two words, a piece of rotten wood half-sunken in a swamp. 

What branch of science is it?

What is the description of the wood in the swamp?

ENTREE #4

Name a two-word branch of scientific study. 

Rearrange the letters in one of its words to form a new word. That new word — along with the other word in the two-word branch of scientific study — form a possible two-word synonym of cardiology.

What is this branch of scientific study?

What is the possible two-word synonym of cardiology?

ENTREE #5

Name a branch of scientific study associated with the body. 

Rearrange its letters to name something in your fridge that would likely be bad for your
body if you ate it. 

What branch of science is it?

What might be in your fridge?

Hint: If you ate massive quantities of the this thing in your fridge you might end up in a clinic that has the same name of what you ate.

ENTREE #6

Name a branch of a branch of astronomy dealing especially with the behavior, physical properties, and dynamic processes of celestial objects and phenomena. 

Rearrange the its letters to spell an alliterative two-word description of a glib, pretend-to-know-it-all talking head on the CNN, Fox News or MSNBC television networks. 

What branch of astronomy is it?

What is the two-word description?

ENTREE #7

Name a science of the mind and of behavior. Rearrange the letters to spell two prefixes – one relating to height or elevation, the other
relating to carbohydrates, especially sugar. 

What is this science of the mind and of behavior?

What are the two prefixes?

ENTREE #8

Name a branch of science that studies critters that produce a particular food. 

Drop the third letter to name what Bill Clinton delivered in 1998, what Tiger Woods delivered in 2010, what the Catholic church gave the the Jewish community in 1965, and what Canada gave to Indigenous Inuit People in 2019

What branch of science is it?

What did Woods and Clinton deliver, and what did the Catholic Church and Canada give?

ENTREE #9

Name a branch of scientific study. Rearrange the its letters to name two words related to a novel that is associated with this branch of study:

1. a seven-letter noun for a weapon used in the novel, and

2. a five-letter adjective that describes the title character.

What branch of science is it?

What are the noun and adjective?

What is the novel?

ENTREE #10

Many institutions of higher learning _____ the principles of an “artistic science,” the practice of which results in concrete things. Firms that build these concrete things may _______ graduates of these institutions in hopes of hiring them.

Rearrange the letters in the the twelve-letter word for this “artistic science” to spell the five-letter and seven-letter verbs in the blanks.

What are these verbs?

What is this “artistic science?” 

Dessert Menu

Dialectical Dessert:

Actor, mascot, tater-prepper

The first, seventh and eighth letters in a 12-letter word can be rearranged to spell a dialectical variation of a verb that can mean “to leave immediately.” Have those three letters “leave the word immediately,” leaving a surname of an actor and a first name of a second actor.

The first actor has the same first name as an unofficial mascot of an annual holiday parade. The second actor’s surname is an anagram of a person who prepares potatoes on that holiday.

What is the 12-letter word?

What is the a dialectical variation of the verb that can mean “to leave immediately?”

Who are the actors?

Who is the mascot of the annual holiday parade?

Who prepares the holiday potatoes?

Hint: The actors were both born in the 1950s.

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.

Tonic for illnesses chronic? Walking and waltzing underwater; Dashing past a haberdashery; “True fiction,” “sharp dullard” & other oxymorons; “Numbers that add up to themselves”

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“True fiction,” “sharp dullard” & other oxymorons

Find a two-word oxymoron – like, for example, “true fiction” or “civil war.”  

In this oxymoron, however, the two words begin with the same four letters in the same order. 

What is this oxymoron?

Hint: Each word in this oxymoron contains two words for things you can hear. 

A few examples of words that contain two words you can hear are “racketeering” and “violating.”

Appetizer Menu

Alphanumeric Appetizer:

“Numbers that add up to themselves”

1.＞💯Suppose A=1, B=2, C=3, ..., Z=26. 

What numbers add up to themselves if “and” is used in numbers greater than 100? (For example, 121 = one hundred and twenty-one.)

2.＞💯What numbers add up to themselves if “and” is not used in numbers greater than 100? (For example, 121 = one hundred twenty-one.)

MENU

Amphibious Slice:

Walking and waltzing underwater 

A two-word amphibian is capable of taking steps, according to its three-word nickname.

Take the second word  in this amphibian’s two-word name. Delete its first and final letters. 

Then replace a one-letter English article with a two-letter French article, forming a dance step.

What are this two-word amphibian, three word nickname and this dance step?

Riffing Off Shortz, Baggish And Fogarty Slices:

Dashing past a haberdashery

Will Shortz’s November 13th Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created independently by Steve Baggish and Neville Fogarty, reads:

Think of two well-known companies with two-
syllable names starting with J and D, respectively and whose names rhyme. One of these companies was founded in the last 10 years. What companies are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz, Baggish And Fogarty Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Think of two well-known clothing companies, one containing three letters and the other containing five letters and an apostrophe. Also name a four-letter opening in the lower part of a seam of a denim jacket, jeans or skirt that
these companies manufacture. Anagram these 12 combined letters to  spell the first names of two puzzle-makers.

What companies are these, and what is the four-letter opening in a seam?

Who are the puzzle-makers

Note: Entrees #2 and #3 were created by our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is a regular feature on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Pictured here is the “caterpillaresque” Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. You can visit it in a city smack-dab in the middle of America’s heartland, a two-word city that people sometimes shorten by using just its two initial letters. 

In the foreground is one of 1,700 restaurants in a worldwide chain. Local folks sometimes refer to this restaurant with the initial letters of the city followed by the six-letter name of the chain.

Remove the last letter from how the locals sometimes refer to the restaurant. The result rhymes with a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico.

How do local folks refer to the restaurant?

What is the American department store chain?

ENTREE #3

Take the brand name of the vehicle pictured here, in six letters and two syllables. 

Then, given the type of race in which the vehicle is competing, give a two-word description of the vehicle that rhymes with its brand name.

What are this brand name and description?

ENTREE #4

Think of two well-known companies – one in healthcare industry, the other in the pharmaceutical industry – with two-syllable names starting with K and P. These two names rhyme. 

What companies are these?

ENTREE #5

Think of a well-known insurance company with a two-syllable name that rhymes with the the two-word name of a Midwestern university.
The first letter of the company and the first letter of the first word in the university are consecutive in the alphabet. What company and university are these?

ENTREE #6

Name an American multinational financial services company in two words. These words rhyme with a verb and noun that describe what American Salvage Liquidators does.

What company are these?

ENTREE #7 

Think of two well-known companies with two-syllable names starting with J and D, and whose names rhyme. 

Choose either word and replace its J or D with a G and place a space between the syllables.
The result will sound like a could-have-been Democratic presidential ticket had the “top of the ticket” chosen the chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee instead of a Democrat who later endorsed John McCain for president at a Republican National Convention.

What companies are these?

What is the could-have-been Democratic presidential ticket?

ENTREE #8

Name a two-word American retail company with over 1,400 stores in 47 states. Remove the space to form a seven-letter string. 

The result of this “space removal” is not a word found in dictionaries. But, if it were a word, it would mean “people who can speak or write in two languages.”

What are this retail company and the “word that is absent from dictionaries?”

ENTREE #9

Think of a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935. 

Replace one letter with the letter four places later in the alphabet to spell an art of weaponless fighting employing holds, throws, and paralyzing blows to subdue or disable an opponent.

What are this corporation and martial art?

ENTREE #10

Think of the surname of a Wailer named Peter (along with Bunny and Bob) and the surname of a hoops legend named Henry. 

These surnames, together, spell the name of a Japanese multinational conglomerate
corporation that was once one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. 

What corporation is this?

Who were the Wailer and hoops legend?

ENTREE #11

Think of an American clothing company, founded about a half-century ago, known for its designer jeans. Divide it in half. 

ROT 21 the first letter of the first half and ROT 9 the remaining letters of the first half to form a word for what you might schedule with a doctor if you are suffering from the second half of the company’s name.

What is this company?

What might you schedule?

What are you suffering from?

Dessert Menu

Surgical Dessert:

Tonic for illnesses chronic?

Surgery was made safer thanks to a 19-century medical breakthrough. 

Rearrange its letters to spell the surname of the man responsible for this breakthrough and something he frequently conducted to achieve it. 

Who is this man and what did he conduct?

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.

Fishy platefuls and paintings; Seeking two trees and four folks; What’s this tool of the trade? “Linen Latin Lupe Lu!” Punchin’ punctuation into the ’puter

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Fishy platefuls and paintings

The word “fish” may be respelled phonetically as G-H-O-T-I, “ghoti” (using the sounds of GH from lauGH, O from wOmen, and TI from naTIon). 

Using a similar translation method, a “toloti,” T-O-L-O-T-I, is where you might find paintings of fish, or perhaps platefuls of fish. 

What is a “toloti?”

Appetizer Menu

Lightning Round Appetizer:

Seeking two trees and four folks

Shower & sink... cedar & sycamore?

1. 🌳🌲Look in your bathroom and kitchen.

Chances are good that the names of two trees
can be easily found there. 

What trees are they?

Name’s nearly the same

2. 💃🎖Think of two famous people. 

One is an entertainer with a five-letter last name. 

The other is in the military and has a six-letter last name. 

Remove one of the double letters from the six-letter last name to get the first name of the entertainer. 

Who are these people?

“An Officer and an Eponym”

3. 🎖🛳 An ably armored infantry transporter is named in honor of a well-known military officer. 

Identify the officer (in four and seven letters)
and the transporter. 

Note: An anagram of the officer’s name appears in this puzzle.

One actor, three prime factors

4. 🎥Take the full name (first and last, in seven and five letters) of a well-known 20th century actor. 

This name contains three syllables. 

To find them, unravel the following clues and put them in the correct order:

1. An important tag

2. Something consumed in France

3. A coin

What are the syllables? 

Who is the actor?

MENU

Offputting Inputting Slice:

“Linen Latin Lupe Lu!”

What do the words, “input,” “Latins,” and “linen,” and the name Mel Novak, an actor who is also committed to prison ministry, have in common?

Riffing Off Shortz And Seigel Slices:

Punchin’ punctuation into the ’puter

Will Shortz’s November 6th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Simeon Seigel of Brooklyn, New York, reads:

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. Somewhere inside this insert a word for what this punctuation mark may be part of or what it may represent. The
result will be a 10-letter word associated with painting. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Seigel Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a well-known French river, and a French city that “starts with a car.”

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

What are the names of this river, city and
puzzle-maker?

Hint: Take the French river. ROT 3 its first letter, reverse the order of its second and third letters, and double its fourth letter to name the river upon which the French city is situated.

Note: The following Riff, Entree  #2, was created and submitted by a friend and “A Fan of Puzzleria!”

ENTREE #2

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. Somewhere inside insert a letter which looks like something that when shouted sounds like a command. 

The result will be a sound made by obeying
that command. 

What words and letter are these?

Note: The following Riff, Entree #3, was created and submitted by our friend skydiveboy.

ENTREE #3

Name a keyboard key and then insert a word. 

You will describe what might be a fitting two-word description of several right-wing countries today, beginning with the United States. 

What are this keyboard key, inserted word, and two-word description?

ENTREE #4

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. 

Anagram the first six letters to spell “a shepherd of a human flock.” 

Anagram the remaining letters to spell a virtue the shephard might encourage his flock to adopt.

What are the punctuation mark and two anagrammed words?

Hint: Somewhere inside this punctuation-mark word is a “honer” made of leather.

ENTREE #5

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. Somewhere inside this, insert the singular form of the brand name of a flexible stick of red candy, forming a 17-letter string.

After the fifth letter, add an “e” and a space.

Take the 12 letters after the space. Move the second and seventh letters two places to the right, then delete either the fifth or sixth letter.

The result is an eponymous unit of electrical current and the name of a country bordering the homeland of the person after whom the unit was named.

What is this punctuation mark?

What is the brand name of candy?

What are the unit of electical current and the country? 

ENTREE #6

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. Its middle two letters are a state postal abbreviation. Replace them with two letters:

A. that sound like what a fellow thespian might do if you forget your lines

B. William F. Buckley’s magazine, for short,
and

C. a New York City-based news agency,

to form:

A. a storied vessel equipped with harpoons,

B. Booth Tarkington’s “Tom Sawyer,” and

C. a clinker-built open double-ended boat used for fishing in Maine.

What is this punctuation mark?

What are the trio of two-letter replacements?

What are the vessel, Tarkington’s “Tom Sawyer,” and the clinker-built fishing boat? 

ENTREE #7

Take the surnames of living contemporary pop Grammy-winning singer-songwriters named Paul and Paula. 

Anagram the combined letters of their surnames to spell a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard (or anywhere else the written word in printed).

What punctuation mark is this?

Who are the singers?

ENTREE #8

Anagram the letters of a word for a symbol of a key on a computer keyboard to spell two words of 3 and 4 letters that descibe a characteristic of a chess piece.

What is this punctuation mark?

What are the two words and the chess piece?

ENTREE #9

Anagram the letters of a key found on a computer keyboard to name the surname of an iconic science fiction character and the three-letter abbreviation of a U.S. state that was the primary residence of the actor who portrayed the character. 

What words are on this keyboard key?

What are the character’s surname and the primary residence of the actor?

ENTREE #10

Name a punctuation mark found on a computer keyboard. It is a five-letter word
paired with “burn” in a phrase for a farming method that involves the annihilation of plants in a woodland to create a field called a “swidden.”

Now take a seven-letter synonym of this punctuation mark that etymologically means “little twig.” Anagram this word to spell two cloth coverings — one for the face and another for the floor.

What are the word paired with “burn,” the seven-letter synonym, and the two cloth coverings?

Dessert Menu

Professional Dessert:

What’s this tool of the trade?

Take a word for a professional person. 

Move the fourth letter one place later in the alphabet and the fifth letter five places later.
The result is a tool this person might use.

Who is the professional person? 

What is this tool?

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.