Moods, Weather, Netherlands, French, Phonetics, and Shopping; Matthews and Mercury, Mutually; Race Cars Racing on Racetracks! Changing “healthful” to “harmful” by “raising the middle letter!” Dedicated is one to one’s duds!!! A puzzle that exercises your brain... and more!

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Matthews & Mercury, Mutually

Think of a two-word phrase, besides “popular singer” for example, that pertains to either Dave Matthews or Freddie Mercury. 

Move the space in the phrase six places to the left. Then remove three consecutive letters and close the gap they leave. 

The result is a two-word phrase that pertains to the s, v or z sound in English. 

What two-word phrase, other than “popular singer” for example, pertains to either Matthews or Mercury? 

What  two-word phrase pertains to the s, v or z sound?

Hint: There are two options for the three consecutive letters you remove. They may spell a woman’s name, or they may spell that same woman’s name backwards.

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

Moods, Weather, Netherlands, French, Phonetics, and Shopping

In the mood for a movie?

1. 🎥Think of a famous stage and film actor whose last name has seven letters. 

Change the initial letter to the one immediately before it in the alphabet. Say the result out loud to phonetically describe how his performance might affect your mood. Who is it?

Rip(tide) Torn(ado)?

2. 🌪Think of an actor/singer whose first and last names are weather events. 

Now name the TV series he/she starred in where the possibility of both of these events
occurring was plausible to the setting. 

Who was the star and what was the series? 

Nether-Netherlands?

3. 🏅Spoonerize a common two-syllable sports term to describe phonetically where a person who lives in the Netherlands might reside. What is this sports term? Where might a person who lives in the Netherlands reside?

Team Roster, Reims L’a Jetée

4. 🗼Spoonerize the name of an American naturalist everyone knows of to get phonetically the American pronunciation of a two-word French expression. 

Who is this naturalist?

What is the French expression?

Glacier, monsoon, coronation, horsey hesitancy

5. 🏇Each of these four things brings something different; but phonetically the things they bring sound the same:

a. A glacier

b. A monsoon 

c. King Charles’s coronation

d. A nervous person learning to ride a horse 

What are the four homophonic things brought by a glacier, a monsoon, a coronation and a nervous person learning to ride a horse?

Wood(wind) Gill?

6. 🎷Take the name of a place where people like to shop. 

Switch its two syllables to phonetically obtain one of the regional pronunciations of a musical
instrument. 

What is this place where people shop? 

What is one of the regional pronunciations of a musical instrument?

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“Concraniumdrum” Hors d’Oeuvre

A puzzle that exercises your brain... and more!

Place two synonyms in alphabetical order. Remove the middle letter from the second synonym. The result is a puzzle that might exercise more than your brain. 

What are these synonyms and this puzzle?

Blankety-Blank-Blankety-Blank Slice:

Dedicated is one to one’s duds!!!

“You are (blank) with (blank)” and “You (blank) (blank)” are expressions of fondness for pairs of things you wear. 

The words in the first two blanks would rhyme
if the second one weren’t plural; the same goes for words in the last two blanks.

What are these four missing words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Lange Slices:

🚙e ⛟s  🚗ing  on  🚙et🚗ks!

Will Shortz’s July 2nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Darwin Lange of Mandan, North Dakota, reads:

Name a sports facility in two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

Three consecutive letters in the first word also appear consecutively in the second word. If you reverse these three letters, you’ll name something seen in this sports facility. 

What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Lange Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a young queen who, in a 20th-Century poem, was caught off-guard and, as a result, was ravished by a Greek god who had assumed the form of a cygnine creature. The event, somehow, led to the Trojan War. The course of ancient history could have been much different had only this queen been given a “heads-up” and escaped this rape!

The combined letters of the name of this “poem-queen” and a seven-letter word for a “heads-up” can be rearranged to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who are the queen and the puzzle-maker?

What is the seven-letter “heads-up”?

Hint #1: The name of the puzzle-maker is also an anagram of the section of a hospital, in two words, that is dedicated to the health of suprarenal glands, which are situated just north of the kidneys.

Hint #2: The name of the puzzle-maker is also an anagram of two words for:

* 2016 Riesling Spätlese-Rheinhessen, Germany;

* 2015 Famiglia Meschini Malbec Premium, San Carlos, Argentina; or

* 2019 Naia Verdejo, Rueda Spain, for three examples.

ENTREE #2

Note: The following excellent riff of this week’s NPR puzzle is the creation of our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” has long been featured on Puzzleria!

Take a sports facility. Two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) The first three letters in the first word spell an item used in another sport. The last four letters of the second word, in reverse order, spell what you might do if an object used in the “sports facility sport” met your toe.

What is this sports facility?

What is the item used in another sport?

What might you do if an object used in the “sports facility sport” met your toe?

ENTREE #3

Name a sports facility in two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) Three consecutive letters in the first word also appear consecutively in the second word.

Take these three consecutive letters. Change each of the first two letters to the letter six places later in the alphabet (A becomes G, for example).  

Change the third letter to the letter just four places later in the alphabet (A becomes E, for example). Rearrange these three new letters to name something that would cause the sporting action on this sports facility to cease.

What is this sports facility?

What would cause the action on this sports facility to cease?

ENTREE #4

Name a sports facility in one word. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

Remove four letters that can be rearranged to spell a verb meaning to “remove,” “cross out,” “edit out,” “scratch out,” “cancel,” “x-out,” or “blue-pencil.” The remaining letters, if you interchange the second and third, spell a noun not at all associated with this sports facility – a “loud noun.”

What is this sports facility?

What are this verb and “loud noun”?

ENTREE #5

Name a groundbreaking sports facility in one word. (This is a specific place, not a general term.) Move the fourth letter between the sixth and seventh letters.

The first four letters of the result are an anagram of a smaller structure – an ancient Greek portico. The remaining letters, in order, spell a five-letter ending of places where races are held. 

What is this sports facility? 

What is the ancient Greek portico?

What is the ending of places where races are held?

ENTREE #6

Name a rural vole in two words. Change one letter to spell a sports facility in two words.

Rearrange the letters in this sports facility to
name a caption for the image pictured here.

What are this rural vole and sports facility?

What is your caption?

ENTREE #7

Take two words for places where sports are played – like “court” (basketball, volleyball or tennis) and “course” (golf), for example.  

(These are general terms, not specific places.)  

Rearrange the combined letters of these two places to spell:

* A college campus building (4 letters),

* The source of party music blasting from the building’s windows (5),

* A noun passersby may use to describe the party music (3), and

* A word that rhymes with that noun for what the partyers may be imbibing (3).

What are these four words?

What are the two words for places where sports are played?

ENTREE #8

Take an informal name of a sports facility in one word. (This is a specific place, not a general term.) 

Names, first or last, of people who have competed at this facility may, or may not, have included: 

Rick, Barry, Birk, Brad, Brady, Cyd, Ricky, Darby, Darcy, Dick, Dicky, Dirk, Kirby, Ric, Ricky and Rik.

Using only the eight different letters in those 16 names – using one of the letters twice – spell the informal name of this sports facility.

What is it?

ENTREE #9

Name a sports facility in two words that is subject to the “whims of weather.” (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

One of those “whims” is the “radiation” or “ground” variety of a weather phenomenon in which water droplets form in the evening air as the Earth’s surface heat radiates upward thereby, alas, decreasing visibility for those participating in the sport in the early morning hours.

Happily there is a remedy. The morning sun might well “burn off” this visibility-obstructing weather phenomenon, allowing participants in the sport to perform at their best.

Take the three letters of the weather phenomenon, the four letters in a synonym of “remedy,” and what the Romans would have called this specific “remedy,” in three letters. Rearrange them to spell the sports facility.

What is this sports facility?

What are the weather phenomenon (3 letters), synonym of “remedy” (4), and what the Romans would have called this specific  “celestial remedy” (3)?  

ENTREE #10

A 20-year-old up-and-coming Italian athlete named Jannik is seldom ______ at ______. 

The word in the first blank is a past participle of a four-letter verb. The word in the second blank is Jannik’s sport.

The first three letters of the past participle spell how we today might address the Italian poet Dante’s human muse, for short. 

The last three letters in the second blank, written in reverse, spell a major theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Jannik’s surname is a form of this word.) The last three letters in the first blank and the first three letters in the second blank spell the same two-digit number. That number, spelled backward, is a piece of equipment used in Jannek’s sport.

What are the words in the two blanks?

What are Jannik’s sport and his surname?

Who was Dante’s muse?

ENTREE #11

Name a sports facility playing surface, in one eight-letter compound word, that is associated mainly with one sport. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) The second part of the word is an implement used in a different sport.

Take the first part of the word. Change its last letter to a “t” to spell what you might reveal if your cleat creates a divot in this playing surface... at least in the days before the groundbreaking sports facility in Entree #5 came about.  

If you instead reverse the order of the letters in the first part of the word, and then again change the new last letter to a “t”, you will spell something else you might reveal if your cleat creates a divot in this playing surface.

What is this sports facility playing surface?

What is the implement used in a different sport?

What two things might you reveal if your cleat creates a divot in the surface?

Hint: You can rearrange the letters in the second part of the playing surface to spell the French word for the color of what the cleated divots reveal.

Dessert Menu

Synonymous Antonymous Dessert:

Changing “healthful” to “harmful” by “raising the middle letter!”

Let A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Take a synonym of “healthful.” Change its middle letter to the letter with a value that is ten higher (for example, A=1 would become K=11) to spell a synonym of “harmful.” 

What are these two synonyms (of “healthful” and of “harmful”) which are, of course, antonyms of one another?

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.

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