The workaday world, sound of music(als) and triple TV trivia; Man & Manx, Woman & Wombat; Idioms, idiocy & dunces in D.C.; Uncertain about that “certain person?” States with shared letters and shapes; “A puzzle starring Farrah, Sarah & Dolly”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Idioms, idiocy & dunces in D.C.

Take the two verbs in an idiom coined decades ago in Washington, D.C. 

Double a letter and anagram the result to get a currently trendy word among politicians in
Washington D.C. and nationwide. 

What are this word and idiom?

Appetizer Menu

Primo Prime-time Appetizer:

The workaday world, sound of music(als) and triple TV trivia

“Around the workaday world”

1. 🌍🌎

Object:

The object of this puzzle is to fill in the 14 bracketed spaces in the paragraph below with anagrams of various countries from around the world, to complete the narrative. The number in each bracketed space shows the number of letters in the anagram that completes that space. Two countries can be anagrammed to form two words, so there are 12 countries in all.

Narrative:

Making my final [4] delivery of the day, in the [4], I was surprised by a large dog who saw me as his [5], causing me a few seconds of [4] terror. He had a [5], but I still took [5] to avoid him, fearing [6]. As I approached the house, I looked through a glass [5] in the door and saw a woman eating a [5] and [4] some [4] beans. She came to the door but suddenly let out a [4] as she saw the dog, who was now tearing up her flower bed. I had to catch a [5] to attend a conference of religious leaders and [5], so I made the delivery and left quickly.

“The Sound of Music[als]”

2. 🎝🎜Each clue below describes a phrase that, phonetically, names a classic musical of the screen or stage, or both. What are the phrases and the musicals?

1. Economy import for a lefty

2. Taxi driver’s demand of a female customer
who doesn’t want to pay

3. Place to store desert-dwelling animal originally from North America

4. Failed senatorial candidate’s air freshener 

5. Hot vessel in St Tropez

6. Hayward’s phone

7. Ordered arrangement of taxis

8. Larry, deceiving

9. Bit of auditory artistry for coach Bobby

“Decades of [decayed?] TV trivia”

3. 📺Take the last name of a fictional male character in a 1970s TV sitcom, in 10 letters. The first seven letters spell an adjective that is typically associated with a certain animal. The name of the animal is the same as the last name of an actor who starred in a 1980s TV sitcom.  

The last three letters of the 1970s character’s
last name spell a word that is frequently associated with actors generally. Double the last letter of this word to spell the last name of an actor who starred in a TV series that ran in the 2000s and 2010s.

What is the name of the 1970s character, and who are the actors who appeared in the 1980s and 2000s-2010s series? 

Hint: The 1970s series was set in the 1950s and 1960s, and the 2000s-2010s series was set in the 1960s.

“And yet more TV trivia”

 4. 📺📺

Think of a two-word snack item that is often eaten while watching TV. The first three letters of the first word and the first two letters of the second word combine to name an object that is associated with a kind of property crime and with a violent event that occurred at a college campus several years ago. Add a letter at the front of this word to spell the last name of an actor who starred in a 1960s sitcom set in the 1860s.  

What are the snack item and the object, and who is the actor?

“TV series turns menacing, artistic, geographic”

5. 😠🎨🗺Take the last word in the three-word title of a TV series that ran during the 2010s. 

Rearrange its letters to spell, in plural, something that can quickly ruin an outdoor gathering. 

Rearrange again to form a verb that describes the effect this outdoor menace will typically have on such a gathering. 

Rearrange once more to spell the last name of an American painter and sculptor known for depictions of wildlife. Rearrange a final time to spell the name of a German municipality. What is the word and what are the four anagrams?

MENU

A Guy Named Gregory Hors d’Oeuvre

Uncertain about that “certain person?”

Who is a certain person from the past named Gregory? 

The answer to that question contains two
words. 

Rearrange the combined letters in your two-word answer to name an uncertain person. 

What is your answer to the question? 

Who is the uncertain person?

U.S. Geography Slice:

States with shared (sharing) letters and shapes

Name two U.S. states with similar shapes. Take four different letters from one of the states. 

Rearrange them  – using some more than
once – to spell the other state. 

What are these states?

Riffing Off Shortz And Pegg Slices:

Man & Manx, Woman & Wombat 

Will Shortz’s May 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Ed Pegg Jr. (who runs the website mathpuzzle.com.) reads:

Think of an animal in which the singular form of the female and the plural form of the male sound like synonyms. What animal is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And
Pegg Slices read:

ENTREE #1

A.J. Foyt was an auto racing driver. Carl Sagan was an astonomer. Andre Agassi was a tennis player.

Take the surnames of a drummer, psychoanalyst and poet with those first names. Anagram the combined result to spell
the full name of a puzzle-maker, without using abbreviations.

Who are the drummer, psychoanalyst and poet? 

Who is the puzzle-maker? 

ENTREE #2

Name a potential animal in its “pre-chick stage of develpment.” Name also a word for a group of animals related to predators of that potential animal. 

Finally, name a Roman goddess whose Greek counterpart turned Callisto into a
bear.

Rearrange these 12 letters to spell the full name of a puzzle-maker, without using abbreviations.

What are this potential animal, the word for a group of animals related to predators of that animal and the Roman goddess?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

ENTREE #3

Note: Entree #3 is the brainchild of our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Think of a term for a young animal, in three letters, that sounds as if it has been “swallowed up” by a seven-letter animal. (That is, four consecutive letters within the second animal are a homophone of the young animal.) 

The three remaining letters of the second, seven-letter animal, in order, spell the first name of four women, past and present, surnamed Fujita, Noël, Swansea and Twigg.

What are these two animals?

What is the common first name of the four women?

Hint: Anagram a two-word synonym of the seven-letter animal to spell the surnames of a Finnish-American architect and an automobile racer associated with NASCAR (who shares his surname with a singer associated with “learning to fly” but also with “free falling.”)

ENTREE #4

Note: Entrees #4 and #5 are the brainchildren of our friend Tortitude, whose “Tortie’s Slow But Sure Puzzles” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Think of an animal which is not native to North America. Now think of a famous woman. Her first name is a term that is sometimes used for the female version of that animal. Her husband usually uses a nickname. He was called by another nickname when he was a boy. That nickname is a term for the animal’s baby. The last syllable of the animal’s name sounds like the first letter of their last name. 

Now think of another person associated with the man. Say his name out loud. The second
and third syllables sound like the name of a Nickelodeon cartoon character, who is an example of the animal in question. The character’s rarely seen last name rhymes with the second and third syllables of the associated person’s last name. 

What is the animal? Who is the famous woman? Who is her husband? What is the nickname? Who is the associated person? Who is the cartoon character?

ENTREE #5

Think of a shortstop who was part of a team that won two World Series in the 1970s. Drop the last letter from his first name. You’ll have the name of a male animal of a particular species. Drop the last letter from his last name. You’ll have the name of an underground place where the animal lives. 

Now anagram the more general name for the
animal (that is, not specifically male or female) to produce an item associated with baseball and an acronym associated with baseball. Who is the baseball player, male animal, and animal’s home? What is the animal? What are the two terms associated with baseball? 

ENTREE #6

Take the female word for a farm critter followed by the male word for that critter. Replace one letter with an “a”. 

The result is the surname of a signature writ largest. 

What critters are these?

What is the signature writ largest?

ENTREE #7

Take two different words for the same male animal. 

Change one word to its plural form. Anagram these combined twelve letters to spell, in two words, what law enforcement
officials do during “perp walks.”

What are the two words for the same male animal?

What do law enforcement officials do during “perp walks?”  

ENTREE #8

Name animals that, collectively, approximately rhyme with the word “saddle.” Name the singular forms of the female and male. 

The first two letters of the first word plus the first letter of the second word spell the word for a particular male bird. 

The remaining letters spell a Scottish verb
that, if pronounced so as to rhyme with the singular form of the male animal, sounds like a byproduct gleaned from ovine creatures.

What animals approximately rhyme with “saddle?”

What are the singular forms of the female and male?

What is the male bird?

What is the byproduct gleaned from ovine creatures?

ENTREE #9

Take the female and male names of an animal at home in woodlands, in three and four letters. Remove the last latter of the female and first letter of the male. 

The remaining five letters can be used, some more than once, to spell the names of a three-letter animal and two four-letter animals.

What are the female and male woodland animals?

What are the three other animals?

ENTREE #10

Think of the female and male names of an animal at home in the water, in five and six letters. The names share only two letters in common, including the first letter.

Add three letters to the beginning of the female name to spell a carnivorous mammal. Add five letters to the beginning of the male name to spell a carnivorous mammal whose
habitat is an upper Midwestern U.S. state. These mammals share four letters in common, including the first letter.

What are the female and male names of an animal at home in the water?

What are the two carnivorous mammals?   

ENTREE #11

Switch the initial letters of the male and female names of an animal. The result is a poorly drained tract of land and something that might
be dug in an attempt to drain such an area.

What are these male and female animal  names?

What is a poorly drained tract of land, and what might drain it?

ENTREE #12

Take the 12-letter surname of a Chicago resident who played the on-air National Public Radio Weekend Sunday Edition Puzzle with Will Shortz on May 14 – a Chicagoan who pronounces ther word “gerbil” with a “hard-g,”not a “soft-g.”

Remove all “sleepiness” from the surname, leaving nine letters that can be used to spell a trio of three-letter words:

* the surname of a Catholic foe of Martin Luther,

* Mata Hari or James Bond,

* a cylindrical container.

Who is this on-air NPR player?

What are the “sleepiness,” foe’s surname, Hari or Bond, and cylindrical container?

Dessert Menu

Marquee Dessert:

“A puzzle starring Farrah, Sarah & Dolly”

Take a noun associated with Farrah Fawcett, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dolly Parton in the1980s. 

Remove two consecutive letters to form a second noun that all three are known for. 

What are these nouns?

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.