Thursday, January 25, 2024

Acro-Orca-Metro-Video-Puzzles! Feline fish? Piscine pussycat? “Nothing is Young under the sun” Changing sea water into red wine? Big screen larger-than-life actor becomes even larger! Turning this “couplet of claptrap” into a “legitimate limerick”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Turning this “couplet of claptrap” into a “legitimate limerick” 

Translate the following “couplet of claptrap” into the initial two lines of an original limerick:

“Three saw cone a name leaf no a god,

Eon sit stream matted-pet to golf...”

And, for “Extra Creative Credit...”

Try completing the limerick!

Appetizer Menu

Conundrumbstriking Appetizer:

Acro-Orca-Metro-Video-Puzzles!

Acronymic

1. 🥇OSSTU, CEFIU, and ACNRS could be well-known acronyms except that each string of letters is out of order and each one has had a letter removed. 

All missing letters can be found in the word ACRONYM, itself. 

To discover each acronym, first restore a string’s missing letter and then rearrange the result. What are these three acronyms?

Metropolitan

2. 🏙🌆There is a small (pop. 100,000 or less) but well-known, affluent city with a two-word name. 

The first word can be rearranged to name a gemstone. 

The second word, without rearranging, names
a kind of singer. 

What’s the city, gemstone, kind of singer?

Palindromic

3. 🐫🐪Think of a palindromic four-digit whole number – that is, one that reads the same forwards and backwards. 

Convert it to Roman numerals. Print it out in capital letters with the first two numerals turned upside-down. The result is a common abbreviation virtually everyone knows. 

What’s the four-digit number? What does the abbreviation stand for?

“Audio-vidual”

4. 📺Think of a TV series popular in the late 50s and early 60s. 

A character featured in the show was also featured in a Top Ten hit song.

 And if you change one letter in the character’s nickname, you’ll find a treat. 

Who’s the character? What’s the song? What’s the treat?

MENU

Biblically Proportioned Hors d’Oeuvre:

Changing sea water into red wine?

Take a word for “the parting of the Red Sea” or “the changing of water into wine.” 

Spell it in reverse and insert a space. 

The result is an abbreviation for a biblical book and a creature in that book. What are this word, biblical book and creature?

Violent Detestable Moronic Slice:

Feline fish? Piscine pussycat?

Take a two-word term for a violent and detestable offense. 

Rearrange these twelve combined letters to
form an oxymoronic two-word term, like “canine cat” or “feline dog.” 

What are these four words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices:

“Nothing is Young under the sun”

Will Shortz’s January 21st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Joseph Young, who conducts the blog “Puzzleria!”, reads: 

Think of a familiar saying in seven words. The initial letters of the first three words in order spell a type of container. And the initials of the last four words in order spell something edible that might be found in this container. What’s the saying?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker who strives to foster in all of you faithful puzzle-solvers the “joy of solving enigmatic posers, happiness you obtain utilizing natural genius.”

Who is this puzzle-maker?

Note: Entree #2 is a riff contributed by Michigander Peter Collins whose puzzles have appeared often on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. 

ENTREE #2

Think of a familiar saying in six words. The initial letters of the first three words in order spell a kind of container. 

And the initials of the last three words in order spell a kind of cover. 

These two three-letter words, taken together but divided by a space, form a 121-year old term for a metal helmet. 

What’s the saying?

Note: Entrees #3, #4 and #5 are riffs created by Greg VanMechelen (Ecoarchitect), whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria! Entree #3 is a riff of this week’s edible-in-a-container NPR challenge; Entrees #4 and #5 are riffs of the on-air NPR puzzle in which the guest had to solve for proper names that started and ended with the same two or three letters in the same order.

ENTREE #3

Think of a “Big Bang Theory” character. 

What Shakespearean play would logically be his or her favorite?

Who is this “Big Bang Theory” character?

What is the Shakespearean play?  

ENTREE #4

Name “a writer at the heart of cruelty” whose surname starts and ends with the same two letters in the same order.

ENTREE #5

Name a famous person whose surname starts
and ends with the same three letters in the same order.

Note: Entrees #6 through #10 are NPR puzzle riffs created by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” puzzles are featured regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #6 

Think of a familiar saying in four words. The initial letters of the words, in order, spell a verb describing an imperfect pronunciation of certain sounds in English. (This verb may be more often used in the UK than in the US.)  

What is the saying, and what is the verb?

ENTREE #7 

Think of a familiar saying in three words that is also the title of a 2021 song by a European singer. The initial letters of the words, in order,
spell a word describing a small amount of a kind of beverage, the partaking of which may be an illustration of the truth of the saying.  What is the saying, and what is the word?

ENTREE #8

Think of a familiar saying in eight words. The initial letters of the words can be rearranged to
spell a kind of food and a kind of person who might particularly enjoy eating it.  What is the saying, and what are the food and the person?

ENTREE #9

Think of a familiar saying in six words. The initial letters of the words can be rearranged to spell a kind of food container and a substance that the food inside might contain.  

What is the saying, and what are the container and the substance?

ENTREE #10

Think of a familiar saying in seven words. The initial letters of the words can be rearranged to
spell a two-word phrase for something associated with a country in Asia that involves a kind of beverage.  

What are the saying and the phrase?

Note: The following riffs – Entrees 11, 12 and 13 – were created by our friend Tortitude, whose “Tortie’s Slow But Sure Puzzles” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #11

Name a well-known British actor of the twentieth century. His last name is the first word of a two-word container. Take the first two letters and last letter of his first name. Change the last letter to the letter before it in the alphabet. You’ll have the second word of the container. Take the first three letters of his first name to name something that may be found within the container. 

Who is the actor? What is the container? What item may be found within the container? 

ENTREE #12

Think of a familiar phrase in six words that an unhappy customer of a dating site might utter. Take the initial letters of those words. Now pretend that the customer actually found a good match. 

The first two letters of the six-letter initials spell a kind of symbol that might be used in the correspondence between the two romantic partners. The last four letters show an acronym that might be used when one significant other describes the other. 

What is the initial phrase? What is the symbol used in correspondence? What is the acronym used by the romantic partners? 

ENTREE #13

Think of a familiar saying in six words. The fourth word is a thing visible on the first word. The fifth word is a collective term for the first word. 

Place the fourth word before the initial letters of the first three words in order. You’ll have a
type of apparel.

What is the phrase? What is the apparel? 

ENTREE #14

Literary historians reportedly have unearthed an early folio of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” – one with text that differs slightly from the “generally accepted canonical” version. For example, in the  unearthed-folio version of Act I, Scene 4, the sentry Marcellus remarks to Horatio, Prince Hamlet’s closest friend and most trusted confidant, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark... death. Sir, it’s odd!”

The generally accepted canonical” version of the play omits the words that follow the triple-dotted ellipsis: “death” and “Sir, it’s odd!”

The word “death” in the early folio is an obvious allusion to the fratricide of King Hamlet committed by Prince Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius, whereas “Sir, it’s odd!” follows naturally from “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark... death.”

Explain how “Sir, it’s odd!” follows naturally from “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark... death.”

ENTREE #15

The sign on the church door read, simply, “This door...”

Below that, in much smaller print, were the somewhat cryptic words:

Vanity? Yonder Creator, Furious? Sunset? Handshake!

Those eight words on the church door pose a puzzle that will help you find eight other words that are more apropos of a house of worship.

Think of the words “This door” as the key that can unlock the meaning of the six, more cryptic, words beneath them.

Rearrange the combined letters in “Vanity,” “Sunset” and “Handshake” to spell four words (one of them apostrophized) that begin with T, H, I and S.

Then rearrange the combined letters in “Yonder,” “Creator” and “Furious” to spell four words that begin with the letters D, O, O and R.

Place a comma between this pair of four-word clauses to spell the sentiment apropos of a house of worship.

What is this eight-word sentiment?

Note: The following Entree is a riff created jointly by valued Puzzleria! contributor Greg VanMechelen and Joseph Young.

ENTREE #16

Take an acronym and two words:

AFTA: an acronym of the ASEAN Free Trade Area, an agreement established by the Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (another acronym, ASEAN!) member countries to promote economic integration and regional cooperation within Southeast Asia.

TSAR: an emperor, specifically the ruler of Russia until the 1917 revolution; or, generally, one having great power or authority.

TOMATO: a large, rounded, edible, pulpy berry of an herb of the nightshade family native to South America that is typically red but may be yellow, orange, green, or purplish in color.

AFTA are the initials of a novel title. 

TSAR are the initials of a novel title.

TOMATO, if you replace the last word of a novel title with a synonym, are the initials of that altered novel title.

All three novels are penned by the same author.

Who is the author?

What are the three titles?

ENTREE #17

In the 1974 movie movie “Harry And Tonto,” Art Carney, who won the Best Actor Oscar, wears a HAT in practically every scene.

Name the following film titles:

1. a 1980s Best Picture Oscar winner in which
Cleveland Browns place-kicker Lou Groza should have made a cameo appearance;

2. a 1990s black comedy set in the Roaring 20s in which the female leads sported a hairstyle (as did F. Scott’s Bernice) that was all the rage during that Flapper era;

3. a late-1980s romantic drama in which Rod Steiger ought to have made a cameo appearance, reprising his title role as “The Illustrated Man” and flaunting his “skin illustrations”;

4. a 1970s American romantic period drama film starring Richard, Brooke, Sam and Linda... but which could have benefitted from a fellow named Homer making a cameo appearance and blurting out his famous apostrophized catchphrase!;

5. a 1980s American drama film set during the Great Depression in Texas which would have been more fun had the costume designer fitted all members of the cast with those unmistakable symbols of imperialism: certain helmets also known as solar topees;

6. a mid-1930s Oscar award-winning one-reel short film about honey bees released by Educational Pictures could have even been better had it included footage of a dairy farm and had been retitled “Land of Milk and Honey”;

7. a 1960s American romantic comedy film adapted from a 1950s novella of the same name which would have been even more boffo at the box office had it been promoted by paraphasing Teddy Roosevelt’s “Walk softly and carry a big stick” as instead, “Go lightly and carry a big Louisville Slugger!” 

8. a 1930s animated Oscar-winning Disney film that shows forest flora (and a few fauna) doing calesthenics and dancing, thereby staying FIT and not becoming the three-letter alternative that differs by one letter,

Dessert Menu

Cinematic Dessert:

Big screen larger-than-life actor becomes even larger!

Name a famous cinematic actor, first and last names. 

Replace the last letter in each name to form two new words. The replacement letters are consecutive in the alphabet. 

Name the same same actor, first and last names.

This time replace the second letter in each name to form two other new words. This time the replacement letters are the same letter in the alphabet.

The four new words you formed all suggest “great size.”  

Who is the actor and what are these four “supersized” 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.

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Math, Music, Meds and More; Peppy auto-parts professionals? Two habitats for tabby cats? Ranking the rank-and-file pieces; Budget + Judge = Bugles? Telemachus’ Mentor, or Tormentor?

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Ranking the rank-and-file pieces

Here is how I rank the six chess pieces:

1. Knight and Bishop (tied for 1st)

2. Queen (2nd)

3. Castle, also known as a Rook (3rd)

4. Pawn (4th)

5. King (5th)

What ranking system am I using?

Appetizer Menu

Friendly Yet Fiendish Appetizer:

Math, Music, Meds and More

(Note: The five appetizing puzzles below were composed by an irregular contributor to Puzzleria!”)

Body Parts & Other Fractions

1. 🦶✋Take a word for a human body part. Then take a word for certain fractions. 

Put those words together in that order to form a compound word for a general location. 

What is the general location? 

Music Genres & Geometry

2. 🧊Take a term for a three dimensional geometric figure. Add a letter. 

Rearrange these letters to name a term for
certain music genres. 

What are those terms?

Medicine & Geometry

3. ⬠🛑Take a geometric shape. One letter appears three times; remove one of them. Then remove two letters that can be used together to form an abbreviation for a unit of measure often used for medicines. 

Take the remaining letters and rearrange them to get a term for professionals who dealt in medicines and drugs. 

What is the term? 

Controversy & Advocacy

4. 📰Name a controversial subject, often in the news, in two words and a total of thirteen letters. 

Remove a number of consecutive letters from the beginning of the first word – letters that can be rearranged to describe what you are now reading. 

Remove the first letter of the second word, then remove the space between the remaining letters. 

The resulting string of letters, in order from left to right, spells an adjective which advocates on either side of the controversy might use to describe the position of the advocates on the other side. 

What is the adjective?  

Hint: The first letter of the second word can also be the symbol of an element on the periodic table.

Tools, Tints & Potables

5. 🛠🍹Take the word for certain historical reaping tools. Change the second letter to the one following it in the alphabet. 

Then insert the name of a beverage after the first letter. Then insert the name of a color before the last letter. 

The first and last letter are the same. The resulting string of 14 letters can be divided into three words to make a three-word historical term for “keep calm. The term is a caution not unfamiliar to many an English soldier. 

What are the tools and the term? 

MENU

Anthology & Atlas Hors d’Oeuvre:

Two habitats for tabby cats

Remove an interior letter from a word in a world atlas. 

The result, according to a popular anthology, is a pair of places where certain felines can be found. 

What are these two places? 

What is the word in the atlas?

Side-By-Side Slice:

Peppy auto-parts professionals?

Write a noun down twice, side-by-side, divided by a space. Add a consonant someplace. 

The result is a three-syllable term for the nimblest of clerical professionals.  

What is the noun?

What is this term?

Riffing Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices:

Telemachus’ Mentor... or Tormentor?

Will Shortz’s January 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Warren Bergmann of Neenah, Wisconsin, reads:

Think of a word for a person who helps you. Copy the last three letters and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word that names a person who hurts you. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a city that is the residence of a puzzle-maker whose name is an anagram of the three nouns in the sentence: “The wren ate from a manger in the barn.”

That city is in a state where the deer and some antelope play, some buffalo roam, where seldom a herd of moose can be heard but moos can be heard there all day. Replace the third letter of the city with a duplicate of the last letter, then copy the last three letters and repeat them at the front.

Divide the result into three equal parts, separated by two wide open spaces. The result is the title of a 1990 song by a Belgian band that was covered in 1996 by a German band and in 2011 by a German house duo.

Who is this puzzle-maker and what is his residence?

What is the title of a 1990 song? 

Note: Entrees #2, #3 and #4 were composed by Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is a regular feature on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2 

Take a word for a person who benefits you. 

Copy the last letter and repeat it at the front of the word and you’ll get a word that names a person who may try to take benefits from you.

What are these two words? 

ENTREE #3 

Take a word for a person who can help you succeed at something.  

Copy the last letter and insert the copied letter immediately after the first letter of the word. Add one additional letter to the end of the word and you’ll get a word that names something a person may engage in to try to keep you from succeeding.

What are these two words?  

ENTREE #4 

Take a word for a person who helps you acquire knowledge.  

Double the first letter. Move what is now the fourth letter to the front, and delete what is now

the fifth letter. You’ll name a person who may make you smart. 

What are these two words? 

Note: Entree #5 was composed by Plantsmith, author of the “Garden of the Puzzley Delights” feature on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #5

Take a word for someone who could help you. Replace the conjunction at the end with a three-letter chemistry term. Place a two-letter life-saving hospital space at the end. The result is someone who could hurt you.

Who could help you, and who could hurt you?

ENTREE #6

Think of an eight-letter verb whose last three letters and first three letters are the same, and in the same order.

If a creature does this verb, it is alive. The fourth, fifth and sixth letters of the verb, in reverse order, are associated with a creature that no longer does this verb.

What is this verb?

Hint: The verb’s middle two letters spell a number associated with “Middlemarch.”

ENTREE #7

Think of two words, six letters total, that stand for “nearly forty inches.” Copy the last three letters of this two-word phrase and repeat them at the front, remove the space, and you’ll get one new, longer word that is a trillion times as long as the “nearly forty inches” that the two words stand for.

What two words are these?

What is the longer word?

ENTREE #8

Think of a word for “a branched candlestick or lamp with several lights.” Remove from it the letters of the first name of a past professional athlete surnamed Dawson, leaving a seven-letter result that can be rearranged to spell a decapod crustacean and a Nabokov novel title. Copy the last four letters of this seven-letter result and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word for “a magical charm or incantation.”

What is this “branched candlestick or lamp?”

Who is the athlete named Dawson?

What are the decopod crustacean and the Nabokov title?

What is the “magical charm or incantation?”

Note: The letters of the first name of the past professional athlete surnamed Dawson appear in reverse order (but not 100% consecutively) within the “branched candlestick or lamp with several lights.”

ENTREE #9

“What exactly __ _______ under my insurance policy?”

“When his wide out or flanker __ _______ tightly by the free safety or cornerback it is nigh impossible for the quarterback to
complete a pass.”

“Each roof in the village __ _______ with icy snow, making deliveries difficult for Santa and his reindeer.”

Place the two words missing from any one of the three sentences above next to each other with no space between them. Copy the last three letters (which spell a color) and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a  word that means “found or realized again.”

What words are in the blanks?

What is the word that means “found or realized again?”

ENTREE #10

Place, without a space, a unit of work to the left of the shape of a circle. Copy the last three of these letters and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word that can precede “Railroad” or follow “Velvet.”

What are the unit of work and the shape of a circle?

What is the word that can precede “Railroad” or follow “Velvet”?

ENTREE #11

Think of a word for an iron or brass “mini-cannonball” that is heaved onto the field (but not onto the track). 

Copy the last three letters of this word and repeat them at
the front, and you’ll get a new, three-letter-longer term for a fast freight train, like the Wabash Cannonball. 

What is the word for the “mini-cannonball?”

What is the longer term for a fast freight train, like the Wabash Cannonball?

ENTREE #12

During the morning session of a 1976 weekend seminar training session at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, Beatrice listened to Werner Erhard himself expound on how the situations holding her back in life were working themselves out within the process of life itself. 

After this morning of “______,” Beatrice and many of her fellow seminar-goers spent their two-hour break-period _________ Bacon-Wrapped Scallops, Stone Harbor Nachos and Oysters Rockefeller at the hotel buffet.

Copy the last three letters of the six-letter word in the first blank and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get the nine-letter word that belongs in the second blank. What words are these?

Dessert Menu

Lip-Smack-Snack-Pack Dessert:

Budget + Judge = Bugles?

The surname of a past director of the Office of Management and Budget and the first name of a retired judge, both U.S. citizens, are the same. 

Place the director’s first name to the left of the judge’s surname. Remove the middle letter.

The result sounds like a popular snack. 

Who are this director and judge? 

What is the snack?

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.