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?

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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?

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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.

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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.