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.