Coco, Rho-Rho, Do-re-mi; Historical struggles, surnames & synonyms; Some places, Some spaces; Playbills and bedrooms; “Is Genesis Dennis’s biblical book?” Remedy for pains... in the aspirin!

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Schpuzzle of the Week:

Historical struggles, surnames & synonyms

A famous historical person is sometimes identified only by a letter of the alphabet that appears, spelled-out, in his or her surname... (for example, if people were to refer to French baker and writer Eric Kayser as just “K”).

Take this person’s surname. Replace the spelled-out letter in it with something this person eventually struggled to do. The result will be two somewhat synonymous nouns. Who is this person?

Appetizer Menu

EnLightning Round Appetizer

Coco, Rho-Rho, Do-re-mi!

Coconuts & Cukes?

1. 🥥🥥 🥒🥒Think of a 10-letter word that names a natural food you would typically find in the produce section of a grocery store. 

Push the fifth letter four spaces down the alphabet (A = E, B = F, etc.), then remove the first and eighth letters. 

The remaining letters – with no rearranging – spell a word that rhymes with the 10-letter word. 

What are these two words?

Rho-Rho-Rhome?

2. 🌍🌎Three consecutive, identical letters phonetically identify a major world city with a population of several million. 

What are the letters? 

What’s the city?

1-2-3? do-re-mi? 

3. 🔢♯🎜Think of three names that rhyme. 

One name identifies a special set of numbers. 

A second name identifies a noted (but now deceased) 20th century musician and performer. 

And the third name identifies a world-famous 19th century musical drama which is still staged today. 

One of the names has eight letters, the other two have nine. All of them have four syllables, the last two of which rhyme. What are these three rhyming names?

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Recommended Novel-List Hors d’Oeuvre

Some places, Some spaces

Take the surname of a past novelist. 

Insert a “d” someplace, an “r” someplace else, and an “a” flanked by two spaces. 

The result will be something this novelist, and others, often did. 

Who is the novelist?

What did he do?

In The Beginning Slice:

“Is Genesis Dennis’s biblical book?”

Take a one-syllable word closely associated with a two-syllable name in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Let A=1, B=2, etc. 

Move the letters of that one-syllable word nine places later in the circular alphabet to spell a second one-syllable word closely associated with a second two-syllable name in Genesis. What are these two words and two names?

Riffing Off Shortz And Bickel Slices:

Remedy for pains... in the aspirin!

Will Shortz’s April 23rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Bob Bickel of Severna Park, Maryland, reads:

Think of a five-letter word for things a lot of people complain about. Add a letter and rearrange the result to get an example of these things. Then add one more letter and rearrange to get a remedy for these things. Five, six, and seven letters, respectively. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Bickel Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker in nine letters. Rearrange these letters to spell a word for “coarsely ground grain or meal typically used as animal feed” and a three-letter word for where you might find such grain.

These nine letters can also be anagrammed to
spell the stage name of a performer surnamed Campbell and the first name of a fictional character. This character’s surname starts with a flexible container and ends with colorless alcoholic beverages.

Who is this puzzle-maker? What are the names of the performer and fictional character?

Note: Entree #2 was composed and contributed by our friend “A Fan of Puzzleria!” whose excellent puzzles appear regularly on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #2

Think of a seven-letter word for something a lot of people complain about.  Remove four letters and arrange them to get a word for something that can result from such complaining.  

Arrange the remaining three letters to name something that can be a component of the seven-letter word.  What are these three words?

Note: Entree #3 was composed and contributed by our friend Ecoarchitect whose puzzling “Econfusions” appear regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #3

#1 Think of a three-letter word for something
many people have. 

#2 Add a letter and rearrange the result to get where you might see that thing. 

#3 Then add one more letter and rearrange to get a former brand of that thing.

#4Then add one more letter and rearrange to get a related thing with that brand name. 

#5 Then add one more letter and rearrange to name something you hope that thing isn’t. 

#6 Then add one more letter and rearrange to name what one should have done to avoid that.

#7 Then add one more letter and rearrange to name who might join you in that thing. 

#8 Then add one more letter and rearrange to name something you and your #7 would not want to see while using your #4 (although you might want to see the descendants of what you would not want to see).

What are the eight things?

Note: Entree #4 is the brainchild of our friend ViolinTeddy, Puzzleria!-Commenter/Solver Extraordinaire! LegoLambda helped a tad with the “packaging,” so we guess you might call it a “joint effort” – a “collaboration” created by “Violimbda!”

ENTREE #4

Name a thespian, first and last names.
Replace a verb with a creature, add a letter that sounds like a creature, and remove a creature. The result is a two-word non-food product seen on supermarket shelves. Who is this thespian? What is the product?

ENTREE #5

Think of a two-syllable word for an anti-social curmudgeon who seems to have no love in his heart for anyone – one who is always complaining about others. 

Add a letter someplace to get what you might complain about when you are sitting in your living room wearing three sweaters and a stocking cap. Then add one more letter and rearrange to get a third word for what everybody always complains about!

What three words are these?

Hint: A word in the first sentence is an anagram of the two-syllable first word. 

ENTREE #6

Think of a ten-letter word for something a lot of people complain about. 

Remove the first two and sixth and seventh letters and rearrange these four letters to form a word Australians use for a dog interbred from diverse breeds. 

The remaining six letters are an anagram of a word for a loud complainer.

What do a lot of people complain about? 

What are the Australian word and the word for a loud complainer?

Hint: Take an apostrophized word describing anything belonging to Red Sox Hall-of-Famer Carl. Remove the apostrophe and move each letter 14 places later in the circular alphabet to spell the Aussie word for a dog interbred from diverse breeds.

ENTREE #7

Think of a five-letter word for things that a gourmet food critic having lunch at a hash-house truck stop diner might complain about. 

Add a letter and rearrange the result to get what a wife or husband, after the honeymoon’s over, might complain about. Then add one more letter and rearrange to get affected or insincere individuals who pretend to be what they are not... exactly the kind of people who deserve to be complained about!

What three words are these?

ENTREE #8

Take a word for two things that Goldilocks complained about – things unrelated to porridge and chairs. 

Add a letter and rearrange the result to get, back in the day, what many hi-fi fans who bought a 45-rpm recording of a song that they really loved nevertheless complained about!

Change one letter to an “n” and rearrange the result to get the surname of someone many Americans complain about.

What things did Goldilocks complain about?

About what did hi-fi fans complain?

About whom do many Americans complain? 

ENTREE #9

Name someone about whom baseball fans in the stands often complain. 

Add a letter to get a body part that figure skaters who have just experienced a painful pratfall complain about. Then add one more letter to get the surname of someone many Americans complain about. 

About whom do baseball fans in the stands often complain?

About what do pratfallen figure skaters complain?

About whom do many Americans complain?

ENTREE #10

Take whom folk singer Tom Rush complained about in a 1972 song, in three words. Remove the last two letters in the second word. 

Rearrange the result to spell what may have been the three-word title of an photograph that Alfred Eisenstaedt might have taken five years into World War II and two years before it ended – when Americans perhaps celebrated in the streets after getting news of the successful Normandy invasion –instead of the famously iconic photo he snapped two years later when victory over Japan was finally declared.

About whom did Tom Rush complain?

What might have been the title of the photograph?

Hint: The second word in the title of the would-be photo is hyphenated.

ENTREE #11

People have been known to complain about bores who talk long and idly without saying much. Add a letter to a five-letter verb meaning “to talk long and idly” and rearrange the result to name a second verb for what these bores also usually do in the course of their endlessly idle monologues. 

Finally, add a letter to this second verb and rearrange to get a colorful two-word term for something bureaucratic that most everyone complains about. 

What are these two words and this two-word term?

ENTREE #12

Think of a four-syllable, seven-letter word for something a lot of people complain about. Subtract a letter and rearrange the result to get a hyphenated word for something else some people might complain about – like an advertising promotion that intends to entice or allure unsuspecting members of the public.

What are these words?

ENTREE #13

Think of a ten-letter word for living things that lots of people complain about. Subtract the fourth letter and rearrange the result to get a two-word term for a topic that is debatable or open to discussion. 

If you instead subtract the third and third last letters from the ten-letter word and rearrange you can get a two-syllable word for what people who are interviewed by reporters might complain about seeing in the newspaper the following day.

What are the ten-letter word, two-word term and two-syllable word?

Dessert Menu

“An If, An And, And An  Abut” About It Dessert:

Playbills and bedrooms

Describe something, in two words, that you might see next to a bed – a bed that abuts a wall. If you replace the space with a hyphen and insert a space someplace else, you will name a singular “don’t miss” play or concert performance that will not be repeated. 

What are this something seen next to the bed and the singular performance?  

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.

Indian strings, actor, tree bark? “What’s in a name, Iron Mike?” Sleet, Snow? Wither the weather? Productive defense, products displayed; Curvy Cursive Calligraphic Conundrum; Shepherd’s pie... Hershey’s for dessert!

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Productive defense, products displayed

“The (word?) erupted in a collective (word?) after Pittsburgh Pirate right-fielder Roberto Clemente made a game-saving catch.”

“(word?) is one of several (word?) that can be found on supermarket shelves.”

Use only two different words to fill in the four mystery words in the two sentences above.

What are these words, and where do they belong?

Appetizer Menu

Skydivebuoyant Appetizer:

Indian strings, actor, tree bark?

1.🕺Think of a famous hoofer of the past. Spoonerize his name to phonetically describe a well-known household product many would describe as being wonderful. 

Who is this terpsichorean artist and what is the

product?

2. 🎥Complete the following sentence by filling in the blanks with the first and last names of a well-known English-speaking movie actor in order to phonetically obtain a double meaning:

How does one get to _____ _____?

3. 🧒👶What do a person who sometimes 

takes care of small children and a
tiny version of an Indian string instrument have in common?

4. 🌳 A recent National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle made me think of a tree and something that might be on this tree sometimes. What I am thinking about will fit nicely in the blank spaces below and become a hint to the NPR puzzle: 

“There is something that sometimes a ___ _____ __.”

What is the tree? 

What might be on this tree? 

What words fit in the blank spaces?

What is the hint?

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Meteorologically Mysterious Hors d’Oeuvre

Sleet? Snow? Wither the weather?

Remove a “d” from the middle of a mystery word to spell a weather word. 

What is this mystery word with a “d” in the middle?

What is the weather word?

Ferrous-Fair Slice:

“What’s in a name, Iron Mike?”

Take a first name. 

Remove the first letter to name a food that is rich in iron.

If you instead remove its last letter you will
name a second iron-rich food.

What are this first name and two foods?

Riffing Off Shortz And Brooksby Slices:

Shepherd’s pie... Hershey’s for dessert!

Will Shortz’s April 16th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Jan Brooksby of Mesa, Arizona, reads:

Think of a common 8-letter word, in which the first three letters spell a word, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh letters also spell a word. These two little words mean the same thing. The fourth letter, when rotated 180°, becomes the eighth letter. What word is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Brooksby Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker, in eleven letters. Interchange the eighth and tenth letters, the fifth and seventh letters and, finally, the first and fourth letters. 

The first five letters of the result spell a instrument commonly used in the bluegrass musical genre. The next three letters spell an object you often see in what the last three letters spell. One example of the “something you see” is a word in two bluegrass song titles that end with the same U.S. state and that begin with adjectives that begin with the letter “B.”

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the instrument, the object and where you see it? 

What are the two song titles?

Note: Entrees #2 through #8 were composed by our friend Ecoarchitect (Greg VanMechelen) whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria! We thank him.

ENTREE #2 

Consider the image pictured here. Guess what the missing word is in the speech bubble. Rotate its penultimate and last letters 180°. The result is the first line in a song recorded in the 1960s by the Leaves, the Standells, the Surfaris and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. What are the word in the blank and the word in the song?

ENTREE #3

Rotate the 1st and 3rd letters 180° in a very common 4-letter word, and the result will be another word which, when combined with the first, makes a 2-word admonition to children in the weeks before Christmas. What are the two words?

Note: The very common 4-letter word contains some punctuation which should be deleted during your “rotation process.”

ENTREE #4

Rotate two letters 180° in a word for a relative. 

Insert a space someplace, and the result is a 2-word expression that might describe that relative. 

Who is the relative, and what is the description?

ENTREE #5

Name a well-known political figure. 

Rotate two letters 180° and the result will be a word that describes where this politician stacks up. 

Who is the politician, and what is the descriptive word?

ENTREE #6

Take a 6-letter word that might describe a person; this word was also one of the two title characters in a famous 19th Century novel. 

Rotate the 1st, 3rd, and 4th letters 180° and the resulting old-timey word is one the curmudgeonly author used. What are the two words?

Bonus: If you rotate the first letter of the old-timey word around a different axis (that is, “flipping it,” so that “b”, for example, becomes “p” and not “q”) and then add a “hook” (like the lower end of a “j”) at the bottom, the result will be the word for an adult male anatine creature.

ENTREE #7

Name an informal term for articles of clothing in six letters. 

Rotate the first two letters 180°. 

The result describes people who have removed those articles of clothing. What are those articles of clothing, and what is the description?

ENTREE #8

Rotate the first and last letters 180° in the name of a country. The result will be the last name of two well-known actors, a father and daughter, as e.e. cummings might have written it.

Rotating two letters 180° in the name of a European ethnic group will result in the last name of the father’s wife, who is also the daughter’s mother. This wife/mother is also an actor. 

What is the country?

Who are the three actors? 

What is the ethnic group? 

Hint: All three actors have been nominated for Academy, Emmy and BAFTA Awards.  

ENTREE #9

Think of a “commonplace” seven-letter word that can be either a noun or adjective. Delete the first and last letters. The remaining five letters form a pair of antonyms.

What are this “commonplace” word and antonyms?

ENTREE #10

“Behead” a synonym of “honesty” to form a pair of conjunctions in alphabetical order that are often separated by a s/ash or virgu/e.

Now name a major U.S. West Coast city. Remove from it the three acronymic letters of an evangelical Christian television network originally founded nearly 50 years ago in South Carolina. What remains is the same pair of conjunctions, but in reverse alphabetical order.

What are the synonym of honesty, West Coast city and acronymic letters of the television network?

What are the pair of conjunctions (in whichever order you chose to give them)?

ENTREE #11

Think of a 7-letter synonym of “aperture.” Replace the first letter with a copy of the seventh letter.

The last three letters, in order, and the first four letters, in reverse, are nouns in the title of a short verse by an American poet.

What are this synonym and the two nouns in

the title of the verse?

Who is the poet?

Hint #1: In the synonym of “aperture,” double the letter to the immediate right of a postal abbreviation. Remove the postal abbreviation. The result is a workplace.

Hint #2: One of the nouns in the title of the verse is related to the surname of the poet.

ENTREE #12

Think of a 7-letter word for literary or artistic works having a theme or quality devoted to, or tending to arouse, sexual love or desire.

Remove two pairs of consecutive letters and anagram them to spell a 4-letter cereal grain.

The remaining letters can be anagrammed to spell a second cereal grain in its singular form.

What is this word for literary or artistic works?

What are the two cereal grains?

ENTREE #13

Take a five-syllable word for the notion that myths – as some might label the Easter narrative – are traditional accounts of historical persons and events. 

A common Easter tradition is to _______ a hard-boiled egg into a bowl of ___ to change its ___. 

The letters in those first and third blanks are an anagram of the five-syllable word. The word in the second blank is a homophone of what Jesus had to do to make Easter possible.

What are the five-syllable word and the three words in the blanks? 

ENTREE #14

Take two one-word synonyms of “heavy-hearted” or “in the dumps.”

Put these synonyms together in reverse alphabetical order to form a seven-letter noun that means “the inside scoop.”

Insert a hyphen within this noun to form an adjective that means “wretched” and “disgusting.”

Capitalize the initial letter of the noun that means “the inside scoop.” Rotate all but one of the other six letters 180°. Anagram these letters to get a two-word description of Patricia vis-à-vis Lance, Kevin, Grant, Delilah and Michele.

What are the synonyms of “heavy-hearted” and “in the dumps?”

What is the seven-letter synonym of “the inside scoop?”

What is the adjective that means “wretched” and “disgusting?”

What is the two-word description of Patricia?

Dessert Menu

Handwritten-On-The-Wall Dessert:

Curvy Cursive Calligraphic Conundrum

Name a kind of curvy cursive calligraphic flourish. 

Move the fourth letter to the end, replacing the last letter.

Double the third letter. 

Place at the end an interjection that indicates hesitation. 

The result is a word for college courses – one of which is calligraphy, for example. 

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.