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.