American history and herstory and English nursery rhymes; Astronomy Biology “Chemystery!” Did Jesus enjoy cheeses? “Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick!” Politics, performers, presidents and prose

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

American history and herstory and English nursery rhymes

The first seven words of a traditional English nursery rhyme seem to describe two historical American events that happened 60 years apart. What are these seven words and two events?

Appetizer Menu

Note: We at Puzzleria! are proud to welcome our friend Nodd, the latest member of our sterling legion of guest puzzle-makers. His puzzles will appear under the title “Nodd ready for prime time.” Enjoy Nodd’s debut – there will be scores more such scrumptious stumpers to come.

Nodd Ready For Prime Time Appetizer:

Politics, performers, presidents & prose

“Political Connections”

1.🐫🐘 Take the first name of a prominent
U.S. politician.  

Add a letter in the middle to name a world capital city.  

Replace the first two letters of the name of the city with a single letter to name an animal that is found in the country in which the city is located.  

Can you name the politician, the city, and the animal?

“Performers, Past and Present”

2.🎥 Two well-known American actresses have the same last name.  Both were born in the 20th Century and one is now deceased.  

Rearrange the letters of the name to form the last name of a male American actor born in the 21st Century. The male actor made his film
debut in a movie that starred an actress with the same first name as one of the first two actresses.  

Who are these four performers?

“Presidential Branding”

3.📰One U.S. president’s last name has a characteristic that is not found in the last name of any other president.  

Switch the middle letter of the name to a different letter to form the brand name of a product you would expect to see at this president’s public appearances.  What is it?

“American Novelties”

4.📖 Take the two-word title of a well-known early 20th Century American novel. Delete the last two letters.  

Move the first two letters to the end, in reverse order. The result is a word that is familiar to
NPR Sunday Puzzle solvers.  

Now insert a copy of the first letter of the novel author’s last name in the middle of the name.  

The result is a word that appears in the title of another well-known American novel, this one from the mid-20th Century.

What are these two novels? 

What is the familiar word?

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Scientific Slice:

Astronomy Biology “Chemystery!”

Remove the last two letters from a term used in chemistry and biology. Reverse the order of those letters to spell a word that sounds like a letter. Place that letter at the beginning of the term.

The result spells an astronomical term.

What are these two terms?

Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices:

“Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick!”

Will Shortz’s February 26th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Jim Francis of Kirkland, Washington, reads:

Take this equation: 14 + 116 + 68 = 47. Clearly this doesn’t work mathematically. But it does work in a nonmathematical way. Please explain.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take this equation: 9 + 88 + 7 + 6 + 53 + 16 = the first name of a saintly Italian animal-lover.

Then take this equation: 19 + 77 + 19 + 57 + 60 = a Scottish church and where it sits, in two words.

The first equation also equals the surname of a puzzle-maker. The second equation also equals the name of this puzzle-maker’s hometown.

Who are this saintly Italian animal-lover and this puzzle-maker?

What are this Scottish church and where it sits, and this puzzle-maker’s hometown?

Please explain (if you indeed want to take a piece of your valuable time to do so).

ENTREE #2

Consider the equation illustrated in the accompanying image.

It reads: 

“The parenthetical mathematical expression (iPhones plus Networks) squared, equals (Phoniness)”

Is the expression true or false? 

Please explain your reasoning.

Hint: Some “selective ignorance” may be necessary to solve this puzzle.

ENTREE #3

A lifelong “over-consumer” of pastries wrote in his memoirs, confessionally, about his addiction: 

“I ate pie; pie ate at me.”

The first clause is the cause of the second clause, the effect.

Place five plus signs between the seven words in the two clauses. 

Do not place a plus sign between the two “pies”... (There is, after all, already a “Molson Ice” seMIcolon there!)

Do the math. Roughly how many times worse was the effect than the cause?

Hint: No selective ignorance is required, or even allowed, in solving this puzzle. Discard nothing in the clauses!

ENTREE #4

Spell out a number. 

Lop off two letters from the end. 

Divide what’s left into three numbers. 

Their product is more than 2.5 times the value of the original number. It is actually 2.55255 times the value of the original number.

What is this original number? 

What are the three factors whose product
exceeds that number?

Hint #1: The two letters you “lop off” from the number spell an antonym of one of the words in the “lopping-off” instructions. 

Hint #2: The “original number” in the intended answer is quite a bit larger than “seven.”

ENTREE #5

The sum of some of the parts of five consecutive one-digit integers is one-ninth the product of those same parts. 

Two of those five integers are prime, and are also the prime factors of the sum of the five integers themselves. The sum of the digits in the number for that sum is another one of the five integers.

What are these five consecutive integers?

What are the sum and the product of their “parts”?

What is the sum of the five whole-number integers?

Hint #1: For an example of what  a “part” of an integer might be, “went” is a part of “twenty.”)

Hint #2: Rearrange the “unused and ‘unsummed’ parts” of the five integers to spell a city in Belgium, a bog and a member of a monastic brotherhood of Jews in ancient Palestine.

Hint 3: As in Entree #2, some selective ignorance may be necessary in determining what parts to keep or discard.

ENTREE #6

Let A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Find the sum of the values in a six-letter word associated with beads.

Replace the first letter with a different letter of the alphabet that, when spelled out, begins with the letter you are replacing. 

Do likewise for the remaining letters. 

The sum of your six replacement letters will be
as low as 3.8 times the sum of the values of the six original letters in the word associated with beads, or as high as 5.9 times the sum of the values of the six original letters in the word associated with beads.

What is this word associated with beads?

Note: Entrees #7and #8 were created and submitted by our friend Tom Rymsza, who is both a playwright and a “puzzlewright.” You may know Tom from his occasional comments on Blaine’s Blog, or from his debut puzzle appearance last July 8 here on Puzzleria! in which he contributed Entree #9, an elegant anagram puzzle.

Now, enjoy our “resident puzzlewright’s” latest pair of masterful “dramysteries”:

ENTREE #7

Using just four different letters of the alphabet – two consecutive consonants and two sequential vowels – form a seven-letter word for “settled.”

What are the four letters and the seven-letter word?

ENTREE #8 

Note: Will Shortz presents an “on-air puzzle” each week during his National Public Radio “Weekend Edition Sunday” broadcast. Tom Rymsza submitted the following “on-air puzzle” titled “Ways to Move Around” to Will Shortz a few weeks ago. Will, who creates all on-air challenges himself, politely declined, and presented his fruit-themed “Orange You Glad You Played The Puzzle?” as the February 26 on-air puzzle. Tom sent us his puzzle, and NPR’s loss became Puzzleria!’s gain.

Oranges and other fruits are fine, of course, but we couldn’t enjoy them if we didn’t have vehicles to transport them! Tom’s “not-on-air” but “now-on-Puzzleria!” puzzle provides that transportation! 

So, pretend you just got the phone call from Will Shortz. Then settle back, relax... and don't embarrass yourself! You are now on the air!

(discordant piano riff plays) 

Ayesha Rascoe: It’s time to play The Puzzle! Joining us as always is Will Shortz... he’s puzzle editor of the New York Times and Puzzle MASTER of Weekend Edition. Hi there, Will!

Will Shortz: Good morning, Ayesha!

Ayesha: Welcome to the show, Puzzleria! followers. Are you ready to play The Puzzle?

Puzzlerian!s: As ready as we’ll ever be...

Ayesha: All right, take it away, Will.

Will: All right, Puzzleria! followers and Ayesha, in this week’s challenge, every sentence contains a form of transportation, split between two or more words.  

For example: “If you want to be covered, get extra insurance.” You would answer TRAIN, because the phrase “extra insurance” contains the consecutive letters “TRA+IN” connecting the two words “exTRA” and “INsurance.” Got it?  Okay, let’s play the puzzle:

1. The banjo guy is always in a rush.

2. That maniac artist took us for a ride.

3. The tax increase makes the fares go up.

4. That gumbo at Emeril's was the best of all time.

5. The news anchor seems to know about equines.

6. For Halloween, the witches club room is booked.

7. It was dumb using fake IDs.

8. Can you be ready by nine?

9. That sushi place on the bay was great

10. Ask a teacher how to dance on ice.

11. Your undershirt bled in the wash.

12. Are you for real?

Will: You got em all; that was impressive!

Ayesha: That was Amazing! You did a great job. How  do you feel?

Puzzlerian!s: Relieved!

Editor’s note from LegoLambda:

And then, before Will Shortz can announce what next week’s challenge will be, the on-air contestant fulfills what has probably been every vengeful on-air contestant’s fantasy going all the way back to the “postcard days” – putting the Puzzle Master himself on the hot seat! The contestant blurts out: “Okay, Mr. Puzzle Master, here’s one for you: Always use studded tires to climb icy Cleveland hills.”

Dessert Menu

Holiness and homophonics Dessert:

Did Jesus enjoy cheeses?

A name associated with sainthood is a near homophone of a word associated with spiritual redemption. 

What are these words?

Hint: The name associated with sainthood belonged to a college roommate of a fellow named Favre. The saintly fellow, however, excelled not on the gridiron but as a high jumper in the field events.

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.