Five first-name’s-the-same fellas; Is YewTwo popUlar on YewTube? Rx this conjunctive eye test; Diviners, Dawdlers, Stockpilers, Publicans and other Mixed Fruits; Donovan Leitch & the Beach Boys wrote rhyming and chart-climbing hits

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Five first-name’s-the-same fellas

Name five fellas who share the same first name: a boxer, fictional character, architect, lead singer and movie actor. 

As for their last names, one is a homophone of a class of vertebrates; the four others are examples of those vertebrates – one of which is a female creature.

Who are these five fellas? 

Appetizer Menu

“Jefferiffic” Appetizers:

Diviners, Dawdlers, Stockpilers, Publicans and other Mixed Fruits

Diviners vs. Dawdlers

1. 🔮Change four letters in a word for one who predicts the future to form a word for one who postpones the future. 

Who are this predictor and this postponer?

Stockpilers & Publicans

2. 🍻Name something commonly stockpiled in modern American homes.

Rearrange its letters to get what you might call someone working in a pub.

Mixed fruits

3. 🍌🍇🍎🍍Take the name of a popular fruit. 

Switch the locations of two letters to get a very different fruit.  

What are these fruits?

MENU

Rhyme Eradication! Slice:

Donovan Leitch & the Beach Boys wrote rhyming and chart-climbing hits 

Take two parts of speech – a verb and noun – that rhyme with one another. 

Connect them to form an eight-letter adjective with three syllables, none of which rhyme with the verb or noun, or with one another.

What are this verb, noun and adjective?

Riffing Off Shortz And Elinson Slices:

Is YewTwo popUlar on YewTube?

Will Shortz’s February 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Elaine Elinson of San Francisco, California, reads:

Name a tree. In the very middle of the word insert a homophone of another tree. The result will be a new word describing what everyone wants to be. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Elinson Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker, first and last names. 

Take the last name. Remove three letters –two of them adjacent – that, in order, form a prefix followed by -bar, -tropic or -metric. Scrunch two of the remaining lowercase letters together to form a new letter. The result is the name of a tree.

Combine the letters you removed from the last name with all the letters of the first name. From this group of letters remove two that appear twice – for instance, “together” would become “togehr.” 

Rearrange the letters that remain to name a creature that is related to a fur seal but is larger and lacks a thick underfur.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the prefix and tree?

What is the creature?

Note: Entree #2 this week was composed by our good friend “Tortitude,” whose “Tortie’s Slow But Sure Puzzles” is featured regularly on Puzzleria! We thank her greatly:

ENTREE #2

Name a part of the body. 

In the very middle of the word insert a homophone of another part of the body. The result will be a new word that might offend a third part of the body.

What are the three parts of the body? What might be offensive?

ENTREE #3

Name a tree. Letters 1, 8, 4, 7 and 1 of the tree spell the surname of one of the two founders of a chain of department stores that opened more than a century ago. 

Letters 7, 6 and 8 spell the beginning of the other founder’s surname, which ends with a four-letter word for what the founders hoped to make – a word usually preceded by a one-letter word.

What is the tree? Who are the two department store chain founders, and what did they hope to make?

ENTREE #4

Name a tree with three vowels, all the same. Replace one of them with a different vowel. The last two syllables of the result are a brand name food product associated with Lorne Greene, Ed McMahon and, during the 1990s, a cartoon “spokes___.” The word in the blank is the first syllable in the tree. 

What is this tree?

What are the word in the blank and the brand name?

ENTREE #5

Name a tree. Near the middle of the word insert another tree. 

The first six letters of the result will be a new word that sometimes describes human sleepers or ____ when they ___. The last
seven letters of the result can be rearranged to spell the words that belong in those two blanks.

What are these two trees?

What word sometimes describes human sleepers?

What words belong in the two blanks?

Hint: The words in the blanks, in order, rhyme with “ice cap.”

ENTREE #6

Insert a non-English word for “friend” within the English word for “fliege.” 

The result is a kind of tree. 

What are these words for “friend” and “fliege”?

What kind of tree is this?

ENTREE #7

Name a word for particular birds that may perch in a tree. 

Anagram its second, third, fourth and seventh letters to name a kind of tree. ROT13 the remaining letters, in reverse order, to spell a mythical bird.  

What are these birds?

What kind of tree is it?

What is the mythical bird?

ENTREE #8

The people of Samaria couldn’t even afford to buy “doves’ dung,” according to the Hebrew scriptures of the Bible. 

But an alternative reading of the Hebrew text suggests that it is not “doves’ dung” but “seed pods” of a certain tree that the Samarians could not afford. Remove one letter from the name of this tree and switch the order of two others  to spell a word that is paired with the word “apple” to form a compound word that often precedes “tree.”

What is the tree with seed pods?

What is the word with “apple” that often precedes “tree”?

ENTREE #9

Name a lead actor in a past TV sitcom who has lately been in the news. There is a double-letter in his surname (like the “bb” in “gobble”). Remove one of the letters.

Place the name of a tree after this result, without a space. 

Place a space someplace within the tree. 

The result is the name, not of a publisher of fiction but of a fictional publishing company appearing in Network MCI commercials in the mid-1990s.

Who is the actor? 

Name the tree. 

What is the fictional publishing company?

Hint: The “stingray-shaped island” in the image has a homophonic connection to the tree.

ENTREE #10 

Name a tree. Remove its fourth letter. The result sounds like:

⚽ what a mom driving her kids to soccer practice might yell at a driver who just sideswiped her at an intersection, or

🏈 what outside linebackers might yell at pulling guards, before complaining to a referee, or

💇 a compliment that tonsorial or beauty shop patrons might give their hairdresser or barber, or a complaint they might make to one who
overcharged them. 

What is this tree, and what does it sound like after its fourth letter is cut off?

ENTREE #11

Take a name of a tree that is accented on its last syllable. 

Place the accent on the syllable preceding it. 

Replace the vowel sound in that last syllable with the short vowel sound of one of the letters in that syllable. The result sounds like something hungry campers and soldiers may use.

If you instead take the tree name and add to its end a syllable that is nothing but a long vowel sound, the result sounds like a bane that bothers both campers and soldiers.

What is this tree?

What are the “useful boon” and “bothersome bane” to both campers and soldiers?

ENTREE #12

Let a=1, B=2, C=3, etc. 

Name a tree. The first two letters of this tree each correspond to a number that is evenly divisible by 5. Replace these letters with one different letter that corresponds to a number that is also divisible by 5. 

The result is a different tree.

What are these two trees? 

ENTREE #13

Change the second letters of three trees to spell three fictional characters:

1. The surname of a  large, lumbering folk hero,

2. the first name of “Boopadoop-courter,”

3. a butler that Butler Bulldog coach Thad
Matta would likely like to recruit.

Add a letter to a tree to spell:

4. the surname of a fictional elderly amateur sleuth. 

Who are these characters?

What are the trees?

Dessert Menu

Linkin’ Logoi at Loggerheads Dessert:

Rx this conjunctive eye test

Place a conjunction between two nouns that are antonyms. The letters in the first half of this phrase, if you switch the order of two adjacent letters, are identical to, and in the same order as, the letters in the second half. 

What are these antonyms?

Hint: The first four letters of your answer form a third noun. If you replace the conjunction with the adverb “up,” that third noun and adverb form a two-word verbal phrase associated with the first of the two nouns that are antonyms.

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.