Tortie’s Septet of Stumpers; Monarchy? Parliament? Beatles? Holst seen and herd on the farm; Mister Joseph Lister Clean; Merrimac vs. Monitor? Merimad vs. Minuotar?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Merrimac vs. Monitor? Merimad vs. Minuotar?

Name a creature. Move its penultimate letter so that it is between the third and fourth letters.

The result is a place one might find that
creature. 

What are this creature and this place?

Appetizer Menu

Terrapinnable Posers Appetizer:

Tortie’s Septet of Stumpers 

“Fairest of the fairytale princesses”

1. 👸Name a popular singer. The first three letters of the singer’s first name and the last two characters of the singer’s last name spell the name of a Disney princess. 

Reverse the last three letters of the singer’s last name and add the last letter of the first name. You’ll get the name of someone who was a princess in a Disney film, but later became a queen. 

Move the first letter of the singer’s first name three spaces ahead in the alphabet (i.e., ROT-3). Move the third-to-last letter of the singer’s last name one space behind in the alphabet (i.e., ROT25). Rearrange the results to produce two additional Disney princesses. 

Who is the singer? 

Who are the Disney princesses? Who is the Disney queen? 

“Nicknamelodeon”

2. 📽Name a well-known movie from the late 1990s. Think of the first name of one of the leading actors from the movie, and delete the last four letters. You’ll be left with a nickname that is frequently used by people with this first name. The title of the movie, plus the nickname, contain eight consecutive letters of the alphabet. 

Remove those letters from the movie title and nickname, and anagram the three letters remaining to produce something that is used to “color grade” movies. Take the last letter of the first word of the movie title and the first three letters of the second word of the movie title and anagram them to produce a word that The New York Times used to describe the movie. 

What is the movie? Who is the actor? What is the nickname? What are the eight consecutive letters? What is used for color grading? What is the description of the movie? 

“A ‘quirky’... no, a ‘qwerty!’ type of writer”

3. ⌨Think of a famous American writer of the twentieth century. The letters of his first name may be found in order in his last name, although not consecutively, as implied by some of his book cover designs. Remove those letters from his last name. You’ll have five letters remaining. One letter is found twice. Replace one of those instances with a letter found next to it on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Add an “E,” and anagram the six letters. You’ll get what happened to certain objects in one of the author’s most famous works. 

Who is the writer? What were the objects? What happened to the objects? 

“Sam I am... name’s the same as my Uncle Sam!”

4. ⭖Two special locations in the U.S. have the same name. To determine the name, think of a two-word phrase roughly meaning “two places.” Swap the order of the words. 

Remove the last letter from the now-first word.
Swap the first and second letters of the second word, and repeat the last letter. 

What is the phrase meaning “two places”? What is the name of the site(s)? What is significant about the sites? 

“Connecticutah!” “Vermontana!” “New Mexicolorado!” “Ohiowa!”

5. 🌎Name two U. S. states whose names overlap with each other (i.e., the last letters of one state are the starting letters of the other).
The third most populous cities in each state rhyme with each other. 

What are these cities and states? 

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus; John, Acts, Romans

6. 🏌Name an Australian golfer. 

The letters of his first name plus the initial letter of his last name, in order, are the initial letters of part of a common sequence.

Who is the golfer? 

What is the sequence? 

“Utah” becomes “Eta!”

7. 🌆Take the name of a state. Remove its final letter. Now replace all of the vowels with new and different vowels that are in consecutive order alphabetically. Reverse the letters. You’ll have a well-known city within that state. 

What is the state? What is the city? 

MENU

“Celebritish” Slice:

Monarchy? Parliament? Beatles?

Hobbs, McWhiggin, Leotardo and Rabb plus a rearrangement of the eleven-letter, two-word term for a geographical feature that is 28,200miles long results in a three-word British institution. 

Who are Hobbs, McWhiggin, Leotardo and Rabb?

What is the two-word term for a geographical feature that is 28,200 miles long?

What is the three-word British institution?

Riffing Off Shortz And Keniston Slices:

Mister Joseph Lister Clean

Will Shortz’s March 26th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Katherine Keniston of Beaverton, Oregon, reads:

Name two brands of household products, each in three syllables. All of the syllables in the two brands rhyme with each other. That is, the first syllable in the first brand rhymes with the first syllable in the second brand, the second syllables in the two brands rhyme, and the third syllables rhyme. What brand names are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Keniston Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Consider the following extended incomplete caption for the image pictured here:

“The blades of a windmill loom from Wicken ___ ____ __ England’s oldest nature reserve.”

The three words that belong in the blanks – in 3, 4 and 2 letters – rhyme with the trisyllabic surname of a puzzle-maker.

What are the three missing words?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

Hint: The first three letters, middle two letters, and last three letters of the puzzle-maker, respectively, rhyme, approximately, with the three syllables in each of the missing words in the following paragraph:

In the waning decades of the 19th Century, the Reverend W.S. Randolph presided over the burial of a dentist who was fond of guns and hunting after gambling stakes, and who practiced in, and was a _______ of,  _______, Texas, which was the birthplace of a future U.S. president – one who hunted not for _______ steaks but for game “more fowl.” Five years later, across the pond, an archbishop delivered a _______ at the 1892 funeral service for ________, the author of “In Memoriam” and “Morte D’Arthur.”  

ENTREE #2

Name a household product brand name. The last one-third of the name is a multi-purpose tool.

The remaining letters spell a verb for a secondary purpose of the tool – a purpose which uses the end opposite its “business end.” It is a verb that
means “to ram, drive or pack down by a succession of light or medium blows.”

What is this brand name?

What are the multi-purpose tool and the verb that means “to ram, drive or pack down?”

Hint: The image is a hint to 83.3% of the brand name. 

ENTREE #3

Name a popular candy-brand product (that comes with a special dispenser) that many Catholics abstain from during Lent (although they may be tempted to request a special dispensation from their local bishop after making this sacrificial commitment).

Move each letter in the brand four letters earlier in the alphabet to name a room where a cleaning-brand product is often used – a brand whose spelling is a reversal of the candy brand’s spelling.

What are this candy brand and cleaning brand?

What is the room?

ENTREE #4

Name a two-word household-product brand. Three consecutive letters in the brand, if reversed, spell a word associated with grief, regret, or distress. Remove the letters of this gloomy word!

As a result, the first word is now a composite
number that is about 99.1% the value of the prime number represented by the second word.

What is this brand name?

What is the “gloomy” backward word you removed?

What are the two numbers?

ENTREE #5

Name a one-word household-product brand name. The use of this product leads to less usage of certain bathroom furnishings – furnishings that rhyme with the brand name. After you use one of these products, its singular form rhymes with an adjective that describes the product after it has been used.

What brand name is this?

What are the bathroom furnishings?

What is the adjective?

ENTREE #6

Name a nearly century-old five-letter household brand marketed as a product “for your most beautiful complexion...” 

Duplicate the brand’s middle letter and invert the “easternmost” one of these two “alphabetic doppelgangers.” Delete the initial letter. 

The result is the name of a more-than-half-century old company that sells health, beauty, and home care products. 

What are this brand name and company?

ENTREE #7

“Connoisseurs dining on gourmet hamburgers often _____  the ____’_ Catsup to the side in order to more easily reach the Grey Poupon mustard!”

What pair of anagrams belong in the blanks?

ENTREE #8

After troops go _______’ in to the latrine, do they hobble out with shards of _______ clinging to their army boots?

The words that belong in those blanks are anagrams of one another. What anagrams belong in the blanks?

ENTREE #9

Name an eight-letter household brand product consisting of an adjective and noun that might be used as a general term to describe, for one example, “rancid anise.” Place a duplicate of the seventh letter at the beginning, then remove the original fourth and fifth letters to form an adjective and a noun that adjective describes.

What is this brand?

What are the adjective and noun?  

ENTREE #10

Name a two-word eight-letter disposable beverage container developed in the United States more than a century ago. Also name a two-word eight-letter sandwich spread, also developed in the United States more than a century ago. Finally, name an American international fast food restaurant chain founded more than a half-century ago.

Take the disposable container. Move the first letter to the sixth position so that it replaces the sixth letter. Place a duplicate of the container’s last letter into the vacated first space. Finally, replace this eighth letter with two letters – one three letters later in the alphabet, the other four letters later. 

The result is the final pair of words in the following rhyming dialogue spoken by a title character in a more-than-century-old novel: “All you need is Faith, Trust and a little _____ ____.” (The title of the novel includes the brand of the sandwich spread. The non-possessive form of the restaurant chain is also included in the title of the novel.)

What are the disposable container, sandwich spread and restaurant chain?

What are the last two words in “All you need is Faith, Trust and a little _____ ____.”

ENTREE #11

Name a Minnesota-based corporation specializing in treatment, purification and hygiene of water. Remove its first and final letters, leaving four letters that spell a word that appears at the end of the brands of three similar soft drinks.

Use the other 19 letters in these three brands
to fill in the four blanks in the following sentence, in 6, 3, 7 and 3 letters:

“Up here on the Frozen ‘Wisconnesota’ Tundra, it could not be _____! Roads are ___, each hill is topped with a _______, and sub-zero temperatures are ___ for the course.”

What is this Minnesota corporation?

What are the three similar soft drinks?

What words belong in the four blanks?

Dessert Menu

See-Eye-See-Eye-Otic Dessert:

Holst seen and herd on the farm

Name a word for something seen on a farm. 

Move each letter eight spots later in the alphabet — so A would become I, B would become J, etc. 

The result will be something heard on a farm. 

What are these two words?

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.

False Equivalencies; Uppercase, lowercase... So, where’s the place? Phil Phosphor the Phillumenist; Everybody wants to rule the world... or at least a part of it; Adam and Evian? Jonah in Nivea?

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Everybody wants to rule the world... or at least a part of it

Take the two-word name of a world leader.

Take just one of the two names. Remove three letters, leaving the letters of the nation the leader leads. 

 Now take the other name. Anagram its letters  to describe many of the citizens of the nation. 

Who is this leader?

Appetizer Menu

Econfusingly Storied Appetizer:

False Equivalencies

Bierce, Borges, 

Chekhov, Cheever, Lardner, Oates, 

O’Connor, O.Henry, 

Parker, Poe, Salinger... all are masters of the short story. 

Now we can add the name “VanMechelen” to that list. Our friend Greg VanMechelen has created for our enjoyment a pair of puzzling and “Chuzzlewitty” short stories (the second shorter than the first), each with a mysterious bit of “word mischief” – words in plain sight that share a common hidden attribute. 

So, settle back into your Barcalounger, pour yourself a snifter of brandy, and enjoy these VanMechelen short stories: 

Short Story, #1:  

What is the common attribute shared by all 28 words that are five letters or longer in the following story? (We have highlighted these words by printing them in red.)

From the Laugh Factory

My red-haired grandpa stuck to nondescript
platitudes.

He’d yearn for more dough and each day awoke to improve what made his fortune.

If he did not give a jewel, he’d blather or foist a failure and fatigue his fans, who’d attack him with a taunt.

His eagerness did not impede or quell what may proliferate.

No milksop, he was intelligent, but did not comprehend why they shout at him.

He fell silent.

Shorter Story, #2:  

What is the common attribute shared by all seven words that are six letters or longer in the following story?

Defeat Is Hard to Swallow

The driver had to traverse a river to access the back-country and claim his land entitlement.

MENU

Surnominal Slice:

Uppercase, lowercase, So, where’s the  place? 

Take four consecutive letters of a well-known surname. 

Write three of them in uppercase and one of them in lowercase.

The result appears to be someplace you might see the person with this surname.

What is the surname?

Where might you see this person? 

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:

Adam and Evian? Jonah in Nivea?

Will Shortz’s March 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Name a pair of well-known commercial products in five letters whose names are anagrams of each other. 

One product is something
you’d probably see in your bathroom. 

The second is more  likely to be in your refrigerator. What products are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name something you might take in a park or forest and an informal word for something you might take in the bathroom. 

Rearrange their combined letters to spell the name of a puzzle-maker. 

The word for something you might take in the bathroom might also be seen on a jar in your refrigerator, preceded by a word that means “composition” in Indian classical music, especially Hindustani vocal music. 

Also, the word that means “composition,” if you switch its second and fifth letters and change the fourth letter to a duplicate of the first, spells a native or inhabitant of Bohemia or Moravia.

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What might you take in the park? What might you take in the bathroom?

What are the words on the jar in the refrigerator?

Hint: The informal word for something you might take in the bathroom is also a word that describes this particular puzzle-maker.

Note: Entree #2 was generously contributed by our good friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” puzzles are featured regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Think of the brand names of two products – one you might have in your bathroom, the
other in your kitchen. 

These brands are five-letter anagrams of one another. Neither product is meant to be ingested.

What are these brand names?

Note: The following Entree, #3, is a riff of the NPR puzzle created and generously provided by a valued friend and fellow Puzzlerian!

ENTREE #3

Think of the brand name of a product, in five letters, you might have in your kitchen or bathroom. Switch the fourth and fifth letters to spell a variety of an edible product you might have in your kitchen (but not in your bathroom) that is associated with vaches and montagnes. 

What are these two brand names?

Hint: The kitchen-or-bathroom brand name is sometimes paired (in a well-known verse, for instance) with the name of a Roman mythological deity whose Greek counterpart is an anagram of a common flower.

ENTREE #4

Name a well-known brand-name product in nine letters that you might have in your bathroom. Its name is an anagram of the combined letters in a verb and a noun: a synonym of “shell out” and a synonym of “versifier.” Change the verb to a noun by adding two letters to the end. 

The result is the surname of a British versifier who lived during 86 years of the 20th Century and the profession of this person.

What is this brand-name product?

What is the name of the British versifier?

ENTREE #5

“The ___ of a filly or ____ is ____ ____ or fewer.”

Rearrange the letters in the first two blanks to spell the brand name of a product you’d be likely to see in your bathroom.

Rearrange the letters in the last two blanks to spell two words: 

1) a “French fire,” and 

2) a “mysterious meditation” that consists of a Ms. Parks and a Mr. Cooder.

What are the four missing words?

What is the brand name of the bathroom product?

What are the French fire and “mysterious meditation?”

ENTREE #6

Name a well-known brand name found in the bathroom in five letters. Anagram it to form the name of a city that claims to be the site of the world’s first rodeo, just about ten years shy of a century-and-a-half ago.

What are this brand name and city?

Hint: The city might precede either “Bill” or “Hank.”

ENTREE #7

Name a brand name seen on a tiny tube – like “Sensodyne” or “Retinol,” for example. It is a product that you apply to your lips. Switch the two vowels in the brand name. 

Take the pair of words formed by the final five letters and first five letters of this result. Use this pair of words to fill in the blanks in each of the two sentences below:

“The bow-tied, mustachioed image on the cylindrical tube perched upon our kitchen table was a hint to the _____ of hyperbolic-paraboloid-shaped _____ within.”

“As our poker game progressed, the quality of the cards I was dealt regressed, and my once-towering _____ of _____ dwindled down to nothing!”

What is this bathroom brand?

What is the pair of words that appears in each sentence?

ENTREE #8

Name a two-word brand name you might see in your refrigerator’s freezer compartment or grocer’s freezer section. 

Remove and rearrange three non-consecutive letters to spell a pronoun suggested by a gender-symbol glyph that has no arrow.  

Remove and rearrange three consecutive
letters to spell a polymer represented by entwined helices.

Rearrange the remaining letters to spell a place associated with a strip.

What brand name is this? 

What are the pronoun, polymer and place?  

ENTREE #9

Name two well-known brand-name beverages: one in two words that you might see in your liquor cabinet, the other you might see in your kitchen. 

You might think that the drink from the kitchen might sober you up after over-indulging in the liquor cabinet drink, but you would be wrong, even if the kitchen drink contained more than the 0.3% of the bitter alkaloid composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen... which it doesn’t!

Take the combined letters in the kitchen drink and the second word of the liquor cabinet drink. Remove one letter that represents a “strikeout” on a scorecard. Rearrange the remaining letters to spell the name of a U.S. state. 

What are the names of these beverages?

What is the U.S. state? 

ENTREE #10

Name two well-known brand names, each in six letters, that are anagrams of one another if you replace an “o” in one of them with an “e”. The brand name you robbed of its “o” contains two words and is found in the bathroom or kitchen. 

The other brand name, in one word, might be found in the bathroom or on your nightstand.

What brand names are these?

Hint: The three words in the brand names are French words. The English translation of the French word for the brand name found in the bathroom or on the nightstand, if you remove its final letter, is spelled the same as the French word.

ENTREE #11

Name a five-letter brand name you might have seen in a 1950s era bathroom. 

Anagram this three-syllable name to spell a five-syllable reply you might make to a host who invites you to his downstairs TV Room or Rec Room and asks you “What would you like to drink?”

What are this brand name and your reply? 

ENTREE #12

Rearrange the combined nine letters of two well-known brand-name products you might see in a laundry room to spell either:

A word that “F” stands for in a fast food brand and a beverage brand associated with a past-but-once-high-flying future United States senator, or...

A one-syllable synonym of a four-syllable kitchen appliance and a one-syllable synonym of the three-syllable color of that appliance that was all the rage fifty-or-so years ago.

What two products are these?

Dessert Menu

Lego’s “Let Go” Pyro Dessert:

Phil Phosphor the Phillumenist

Take a one-word verb that means “let go.” 

Rearrange its six letters to form two three-letter words: a past-tense verb and a noun that is a homophone of a four-letter pronoun. 

This three-letter verb and four-letter pronoun (which describe a possible consequence befalling  a person who has “let go” of something) belong in the blanks in the following sentence: 

“When Phil Phosphor the phillumenist dozed off while working on his collection, his San Cristobal-brand stogie slipped from his lips and, ironically, ignited every last vintage matchbook in his display case. As a result, alas, he then ___ ____.”

What is the verb that means “let go”?

What are the past-tense verb, noun and pronoun?

Hint: The past-tense verb and pronoun are the last words in the first stanza of a popular nursery rhyme.

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.

Revere, rest, respiration & a recipe; Serving up a couplet of claptrap; “Ward, I’m worried about the Beaver” Rhumbatoid arthritis, herniated disco? LBN? KRN? Sure! But what about NiPeRia?

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Serving up a couplet of claptrap

Translate the following “couplet of claptrap” into the initial lines of a somewhat familiar verse:

“A leaf, Lady Fianna fuel,

Ewer, prim Edison, to Shaw: Cloud thy ode?”

What is the verse and who wrote it?

Hint: the first name of the author of the verse is the name of a city in a U.S. state that might call to mind Holly Golightly, Marge Simpson, the Ronettes or the B-52 gals.   

Appetizer Menu

Georgia On Our Minds Appetizer:

Revere, rest, respiration & a recipe

A place of rest, a plague of respiration

1. 🛏Take a place of rest. 

The first three letters plus the final letter of
this place of rest spell a shorthand version of a severe, acute, contagious and sometimes fatal respiratory illness.

Four consecutive interior letters in the place of rest sound like a symptom of this malady – something you might do if you have it.

Four other consecutive letters in the illness – if you move the fourth one 12 places down in the “circular alphabet stream” (So A = M, B = N, etc.) – spell another possible symptom of this malady.

What is this place of rest?

What is the respiratory illness, and what are two of its symptoms?

“Paul Revere of the South”

2. 🐎Name a historic town in north Georgia with a population of less than 1,000. Replace its fifth letter, a consonant, with a U.S. state postal abbreviation to get what is an informal name for an eponymous blog site associated with a famous puzzle aficionado.

What is this town?

What is the informal name of the blog?

Hint: Before1969, the second letter in the state postal abbreviation was the first letter in the town and the blog site. After 1969, the second letter in the state postal abbreviation was the last letter in the town and the blog site. 

Hint: The Georgia town was named after an American Revolutionary War veteran who was dubbed the “Paul Revere of the South.”

Recipe for “Vehicle Parmesan”

3. ⛟Take a multisyllabic Italian dish. 

Chop off the last letter but don’t throw it away... 

(Instead place it to the side... you’ll need it later.)

Chop what remains into three words. 

“Spatula up” the first word and put it at the end.

Now take the letter you placed to the side. 

Replace it with a homophone that is a body part. 

Take a number associated with that body part.

“Spatula up” that number and place it between the first and second words.

Set these ingredients in a preheated 250-Fahrenheit oven. 

Your finished four-word product will be a descriptive synonym of “an F-250 truck”

What is your finished product?

What is this multisyllabic Italian dish?

“Ailimentery, My Dear Watson” Slice:

Rhumbatoid arthritis, herniated disco?

Remove six consecutive letters from an ailment that is no fun.

Rearrange these six removed letters to spell a
dance that is lots of fun. 

What is this not-so-enjoyable ailment?

What is this quite enjoyable dance?

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:

LBN, KRN? Sure! But what about NiPeRia?

Will Shortz’s March 12th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Will Shortz himself, reads:

Name two countries that have “consonyms” that are nationalities of other countries. (“Consonyms” are words that have the same consonants in the same order but with different vowels.) In each case, the consonants in the name of the country are the same consonants in the same order as those in the nationality of another country. No extra consonants can appear in either name. The letter Y isn't used.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a three-syllable country, like Kazakhstan, and a two-syllable nationality, or demonym, of a country, like Cuban. Take five letters each from the country and demonym. Rearrange them to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

The unused seven letters can be rearranged to spell a 3-letter adjective describing a caged Norwegian Blue parrot, according to a pet shopkeeper in a skit, and what such parrots are prone to do “for the fjords.” 

What are the country and demonym? 

Who is this puzzle-maker? 

What word descibes the parrot? What are such parrots prone to do vis-a-vis the fjords?

ENTREE #2

Name the basic monetary unit that does not rhyme with “pretzel” but looks like it might. 

Now take the capital letter that is used as the currency sign for this monetary unit. Place this letter in front of a half-century-old brand name that is associated with gaming and the board game “Go.” Lowercase the initial letter of the brand name.

The result is the denonym of a Middle Eastern country.

What is this demonym?

What are the monetary unit and the capital letter used as its currency sign?

What is the brand name?

ENTREE #3

“Hostility. Ridicule. Indifference. It all _____ any thespian who wants to be lauded, applauded and appreciated for one’s talent and craft. 

But it especially anguished _____ ___ who, over the course of her career on stage, stuggled to escape the shadow of her unfortunately mediocre surname. Every ____ from an audience, every ___ from a critic... they are ____ puncturing one’s confidence, ___ smudging one’s hopes.”

The first blank is an anagram of a country.

The second and third blanks form an anagram of a demonym of that country. 

The fourth and fifth blanks form an anagram of a second demonym of that country, as do the sixth and seventh blanks.

Fill in these seven blanks.

What are the country and its two demonyms? 

ENTREE #4

(Remember: “Consonyms” are words that have the same consonants in the same order but with different vowels.)

Name a nation with eight consonants that also goes by a single word with four consonants. 

A consonym of that single-word nation is a demonym of that single-word nation. 

A second consonym of that single-word nation is the surname of a fleet centerfielder who, in his first-ever major league game, hit an opening-day game-winning walk-off home run for a team that, over the winter, had been transplanted from the east coast to the midwest.

A second demonym of the nation is a seven-letter adjective that seems at odds with the refined reputation of the sophisticated “upper class” in this nation. 

What are the longer and shorter names the nation goes by? 

What are the two consonyms of the shorter name?

What are the second demonym of this nation and its seven-letter adjectival consonym?

ENTREE #5

Take a demonym of a three-syllable nation. 

Remove the last letter. Replace the first letter with a prefix that means “twice, twofold, double.”

The result is an informal word for excessive fanaticism concerning a certain Princess.

What are the three-syllable nation and its demonym?

What is the informal word?

ENTREE #6

Take an alternative spelling of a demonym of a country in the Western Hemisphere, one that substitutes an “e” for an “i”. Its first three letters are an anagram of a piece of sporting equipment. Unscrew it and pack it back away into its case! 

The first five letters of this truncated result spell what it will take the narrator of a “Marvellous” metaphysical poem four centuries to do to two parts of his mistress.

The final four of these same remaining
letters can be anagrammed to explain just how or where, exactly, “Time's wingèd chariot” at the narrator’s back hurries.

What are this country and its demonym?

What is the piece of unscrewable sporting equipment?

What will it take the narrator of a “Marvellous” metaphysical poem four centuries to do?

How, or where, does “Time's wingèd chariot” hurry?

Hint: The title of the poem can be anagrammed to spell a term from biology associated with bone formation and a second science that complements biology.

ENTREE #7

“Put it on a tray, or bag it up?”

Or, in other words, “For here or __ __?”

Let’s assume that you are a polite person, a polite person in a hurry. You would answer:

“ __ __, ______.”

Remove the fifth and eighth letters from that response, leaving a demonym – that is, what you would call a denizen of a particular Eastern Hemisphere nation with a short coastline.

What is your polite answer to the question you are asked?

What are the Eastern Hemisphere nation and its demonym?

ENTREE #8

Name an island nation. Spell its demonym in reverse and divide the result into two equal parts. 

These parts form a rather affected (or even poetic) exclamation you might make to your mom or dad who is always telling you dress more modestly, your mother, brother or significant other who is always telling you to cut back on your cupcake consumption, or your best buddy who is always telling you to get off your butt and do some exercise!

What are this nation and demonym?

What is the rather affected exclamation?

ENTREE #9

Name any resident of a particular island nation in the Eastern Hemisphere. Take six consecutive letters from the interior, leaving a void. The first three of those six removed letters and the last four of those six letters, in order, spell synonyms of “void.”

What is this island nation demonym?

What are the two synonyms?

ENTREE #10

During the ____, insurrectionists storm the building, trying to ___ open windows. When this proves feckless, a rioter uses a baton to batter and breach the fortified bastion as those around him ___ “Break it down! Break it down!”

The letters in the first blank, in order, are the final four letters of a demonym of an island nation. The letters in the second and third blanks, respectively, consist of the 3rd, 4th and 2nd letters of the demonym, and the 1st, 4th and 2nd letters of the demonym.

What are the island nation and its demonym? 

What are the three words in the blanks?

ENTREE #11

Name a demonym of a European country. Take the sum of the alphanumenric values of its first two letters. Divide it by three.  

Replace the first two with the letter associated alphanumerically with the quotient.

The result is a trusted follower or “right-hand man.” 

What is this demonym?

What is this word for “right-hand man?”

ENTREE #12

Name a country with a demonym that sounds like what a chronic “oral libeler” might admit, in two words.

Take the alphanumeric values of the second and third letters in the demonym. Treble the value of the second, double the value of the third and add them together. Replace these two letters with the letter whose alphanumeric value equals this sum. 

The result is a noun that describes a resident of the country at least as well as its demonym does.

What is this country?

What might a chronic “oral libeler” admit?

What noun describes a resident at least as well as its demonym does? 

ENTREE #13

Name a landlocked country and its demonym. 

Replace the penultimate letter with a different vowel that does not significantly alter the pronunciation of the demonym. 

Place a space between the first two letters and triple the first letter.

The letters to the right of the space spell a product that induces the letters to the left of the space. 

What are this landlocked country and its demonym?

What is the product and what does it induce?

Dessert Menu

Dated Dessert:

“Ward, I’m worried about the Beaver”

“When the Cleavers, Ward and June, first got wind that their son Wally may second his brother Beaver’s decision to join the military and march forth into combat in Vietnam, June was worried.”

But, no need for concern; it was all just a rumor.

What six words in purple italics demonstrate that this puzzle is a bit dated?

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