Where the Heck are we? Pearamount Pickedcherries? Continental Kingdom; Humanity taking a stand; A Unicorn golden, A Genie in a silver time capsule; “Car Talk” with Cleek and Cloak;

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Pearamount Pickedcherries?

Take an eleven-letter name associated with the film industry. 

Delete a letter. 

The result is a fruit and what is inside of it. 

What are this name, fruit and what is inside of it?

Appetizer Menu

Location Location Location! Appetizer:

Where the Heck are we? 

1.☕🧃Take the brand name of a beverage. 

Add to that the name of a laundry detergent. 

The result, phonetically, will be a well-known movie based on a location.

What are the two brands and what is the movie?

2.🌆 The names of a well-known US town and a different US city each contain six letters with the same vowel pronounced three different ways. 

What are the town and the city?

3.🌎Name a place in the world in seven letters, with a vowel pronounced three different ways. (The vowel is different than the vowel in puzzle #2, above)  

What is this place?

4.🏙 Name a well-known city that sounds like two words. The first word might be something that follows the second word. And most people would not want either to happen to them. What are the city and the two words?

5. Take the name of a European river in one syllable. 

Move the first letter to the end and the result will be a common word with three syllables. 

What is the river and what is the word?  

6.🏠 Name something found in your house followed by a well-known non-American slang  term for where you might find it.

Combine the two words and the result will be the location of a famous battle.

What is found in your home, where might you find it, and where was the famous battle?  

7.🔔 Take the name of a famous American landmark in two words.  

Remove a duplicated letter from the first word, rearrange, and the result will be the second word.  

What is this landmark?

MENU

Holding Sway Hors d’Oeuvre:

Continental Kingdom

From a state remove letters that someone might string

Together to spell out a continent.

The letters remaining will spell out a king

Holding sway on that mainland and flauntin’ it.

What are the state, continent and king?

Hint: The letters you remove from the state must be rearranged before you string them together.

Channellocking Tom and Ray Slice:

“Car Talk” with Cleek and Cloak

Imagine that vehicles can communicate with one another. 

Spell an automotive brand backward. Say the first three letters of this result aloud, each of which sounds like a word. The remaining letters spell a fourth word. 

These four words form an observation a vehicle might make to a certain vehicle of this brand manufactured before 2003. What brand is this?

Riffing Off Shortz And Berlin Slices:

A Unicorn golden, A Genie in a silver time capsule

Will Shortz’s October 11th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Eric Berlin of Milford, Connecticut, reads:

Take the word SETS. You can add a three-letter word to this twice to get a common phrase: SPARE PARTS. Can you now do this with the word GENIE, add a three-letter word to it twice to get a common phrase? Again, start with GENIE, insert a three-letter word twice, get a common phrase.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Berlin Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the word SETS. You can add a three-letter word to this twice to get a common phrase: SPARE PARTS. Can you now do this with the surname of a Milford, Connecticut-based puzzle-maker named Eric? 

To do so, you could add a three-letter word to the surname twice to get a word for a rosary-maker about whom a short documentary feature was filmed, followed by a hyphenated word for what this feature was used as, when it once preceded “Mother Angelica Live” on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network).

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What was the feature used as?

Note: The following riff is the brainchild of our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Take a possessive word and remove an apostrophe.  Add a three-letter word to this word twice.  You’ll get two words describing a person and a misfortune that person would be unlikely to suffer. What are the possessive word and the two additional words?

Note: The following riff was created by our friend  Ecoarchitect, whose “Econfusions” puzzle-package is featured in this edition of Puzzleria!

ENTREE #3

Take the word “genie.” You can add a three-letter word to this twice to get what California voters might have done to a former governor, or what Tonya Harding might have done if she were a professional golfer in the early 1960’s. 

ENTREE #4

Take a four-letter interjection that is used informally like “well” (as to introduce a remark expressing resignation or disappointment). For example:

“____, that was a bummer! I spent all day
Sunday and half of Monday trying to solve the NPR puzzle before I finally threw in the towel!”

Write, in order, the fourth, first, third and second letters of this interjection. Take the first name of an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. Place it between the fourth and first letters of the interjection. Place a copy of it between the first and third letters of the interjection. Place a hyphen between the fourth and fifth letters of this ten-letter result to form a verb meaning “to live or go along cheerfully in spite of minor misfortunes.” 

What is the four-letter interjection?

Who is the Academy Award-winning filmmaker?

What is the hyphenated verb?

ENTREE #5

Take the only city in the world to be surrounded completely by intact Roman walls, the tops of which can be traversed by foot. This four-letter city is in a peninsular country.

Take also the metaphorical four-letter name of a peninsula that is associated with Garo Yepremian, Lou Groza and George Blanda.

Pluck a vowel and consonant from this octet of letters and place them before “something rolled that is associated with serpentine orbs or hoboes’ havens.” Follow this with the remaining six letters (consonant, vowel, consonant, consonant, vowel, vowel), and a repeat of the same “something rolled that is associated with serpentine orbs or hoboes’ havens.”

The final result spells a three-word term for “Georgia on My Mind,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” or “The Loco-Motion.”

What are the four-letter city and four-letter name of a peninsula?

What is “something rolled that is associated with serpentine orbs or hoboes’ havens?”

What is the three-word term for “Georgia on My Mind,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” or “The Loco-Motion”?

ENTREE #6

Take the acronym ELT: (Extremely Large Telescope) an astronomical observatory featuring an optical telescope with an aperture for its primary mirror from 20 metres up to 100 metres across! “Wrap around” this acronym a
feminine pronoun.

Then wrap around this same acronym a British English/Scottish verb that means “to scour,” according to the Collins English Dictionary.

The result is the title of a song by a British band.

What are the pronoun and the English/Scottish verb that means “to scour?”

What is the song title?

ENTREE #7

Take the surname of an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. You can add a common three-letter word to this twice to get a two-word term for “a minor automobile accident.”

What is the name of this novelist?

What is the “minor automobile accident”?

ENTREE #8

A service a seamstress shop offers is posted on a sign in its window. The sign consists of a two-letter pronoun, a misspelled five-letter verb, and a seven-letter plural noun. 

A word seen on a standard computer
keyboard appears twice on the sign. Remove both of them, leaving the name of the shop – “WEAR HERS” – which is displayed on a neon sign above the shop’s entrance.

What is the word seen on a standard computer keyboard?

What is this misspelled service the seamstress shop offers?

ENTREE #9

Name a four-word, 13-letter idiom associated with crapulence.

Replace the first two letters with the letter that is equidistant from both of them in the alphabet. Move that letter so that it is in-between the original seventh and eighth letters. Remove all spaces.

The result is a pair of adjacent identical three-letter verbs flanked by identical three-letter abbreviations of a university whose athletic teams’ names are an anagram of a Scottish word that means  “frolic, carousal, commotion.”

What is the idiom?

What is the pair of adjacent identical three-letter verbs, and the pair of identical three-letter abbreviations? 

ENTREE #10

Take a three-word term – in 5, 4 and 4 letters – for 1600, 1776 or 1812, to name just three four-digit numbers. 

Remove a pair of identical three-letter parts of the body. The result is the four-letter first name of a Carter-era White House economic adviser and economist at the Federal Reserve, and a three-letter acronym of “the interest rate earned on an investment in one year, including compounding interest.”

What are the three-word term, the first name of the economic adviser and the acronym?

ENTREE #11

Name a “Preparation” product, a cola brand, and a brand whose Inside-The-Shell Electric Egg Scrambler won 84th place in Mobile Magazine's Top 100 Gadgets of All Time. Add two identical three-letter anagrams of a synonym of “triumphed” and two identical three-letter strings that are not words but are anagrams of a “masculine curtsy.”

The result is a bovine four-word phrase used in elocution teaching to demonstrate a “rounded” diphthong, followed by a six-letter word that may or may not be a horse of a different color.

What are the three products/brands?

What is the anagram of a synonym of “triumphed” and the three-letter strings that are anagrams of a “masculine curtsy.”

What are the bovine four-word phrase and the six-letter word that may or may not be a horse of a different color?

ENTREE #12

Take the surname of an American novelist who helped establish the cowboy as a folk hero in the United States and the western as a legitimate genre of literature.

You can add a three-letter word to this surname twice to get a three-word phrase that is a comparative characterization of an ancient Chinese bulwark.

Who is this novelist?

What is the three-word phrase? 

ENTREE #13

Take the postal abbreviations of a very populous US state and a sparsely populated US state. 

You can add a three-letter word to this twice to
get a common hyphenated word that means “in a haphazard or spontaneous manner.”

What are these postal abbreviations?

What is the hyphenated word?

ENTREE #14

Take the misspelled name of a Big Apple Fifth Avenue department store that is known for its world-famous holiday window display and theatrical light show. You can add a three-letter word to this twice to get a two-word term
for hearty Yuletide “Ho Ho Ho’s.”

What are this deparment store name and its misspelling?

What is the two-word term for hearty Yuletide “Ho Ho Ho’s”?

Hint: The misspelling substitutes a “ch” for a “k”.

ENTREE #15

Take the five-letter prefix that means “of, relating to, or involving computers or computer networks (such as the Internet).” Delete an “e” from this prefix.You can add a three-letter word to this twice to get a  two-word term for
Mars, Milky Way or Mounds. 

What is this prefix?

What is the two-word term for Mars, Milky Way or Mounds?

ENTREE #16

Take an American purveyor of baby food and baby products. You can add a common three-letter word to this twice to get a phrase for “a person who dresses and behaves like a
member of the opposite sex.”

What is the name of this purveyor?

What is the “person who dresses and behaves like a member of the opposite sex?” 

Dessert Menu

Darwinian Dessert:

Humanity taking a stand

A caption for the ancient image pictured here might be “Homo Erectus.” 

Write a second possible caption for the image, in two words of eight total letters. Rearrange these combined letters to name something that is timely.

What is your caption, and what is its timely anagram?

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.

Suitable, Digital, Mythical, Rangy, Differential, Poetic Puzzles! “Everyday” prime time property; Acts of the Apostle Islands? Jimmy a door, adore a Jenny; Bend, shape and cause curvature; Ah, abandon a habit!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED 

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Acts of the Apostle Islands?

Take the first four words of a verse in the King James Version of the Bible’s Book of Acts (of the Apostles, that is). Delete a preposition and a space. The result will be the names of two modern Middle Eastern countries. 

What are these two countries and the verse?

Appetizer Menu

Noddingly Approved Appetizer:

Suitable, Digital, Mythical, Rangy, Differential, Poetic Puzzles!

SUITABLE ARRANGEMENTS

1. ♠♥♣♦ The same letters can be arranged to spell eight words and one two-word phrase.  

Guess the words and the phrase from the following descriptions:

    1. Weapon

    2. No-frills

    3. Analyze

    4. Trims

    5. Major offenses

    6. Garners

    7. Copycats

    8. European or Asian food items

    9. In line with

DIGITAL FILMS

2. 🎥The title of a 1980’s film sounds like a number.  

Add the digits of the number to get a number that is the first word of the title of another 1980’s film. What films are they?

3. 🥛🦄Guess the names of the following deities from the Greek/Roman, Norse, and Egyptian pantheons of the ancient world, using the hints provided.  In some cases the hints are phonetic.

    1.  What the mother of a certain ancient ruler in the Middle East may have said when he was a child and spilled his milk.

    2.  Slopes from the vertical.  

    3.  What a lot of guys get as they age. 

    4.  Exists twice.

    5.  Five-sixths of a singing group.

    6.  Laid back.

    7.  80% of a sculptor, or 57% of a composer.

    8.  Blue gray color and a communication device.

    9.  Euphemism for an obscenity.

    10.  Fresh musical direction meaning twice.

HOME ON THE RANGE

4. 📖Think of a book for young readers about a young person growing up on the 19th Century American frontier.  The first word in the title names a person associated with a popular sport.  

The second word consists of a piece of equipment used in the sport, followed by a description of a part of the location where the sport is played.  The title is also the name the main character goes by.  Name the book, the piece of equipment, the part of the location, and the sport.

WHAT DIFFERENCE CAN ONE LETTER MAKE?

5. 😈😇An eight-letter adjective describes a kind of attitude. 

Add one letter somewhere in the word to describe how one might end up if he or she were to display such an attitude in dealing with employers or other powerful persons.

POETRY CORNER, by Anna Graham

6. 📕Fill in the blanks with four words that are anagrams of each other to complete the verse.

We _____, envision vast primeval seas,

Across the _____ of endless, leafless plain,

The _____ from which we sprang, and too the
trees,

That bore the _____ and pods with which, in vain,

We seek surcease of mortal earthly pain.

MENU

Scrapping The Chaps Hors d’Oeuvre:

Bend, shape and cause curvature

Take a word associated with the act of bending or causing curvature. 

Remove a number of letters that, in order, spell a synonym of “chaps.” 

Assign a number-value to the remaining letters: A=1, B=2. C=3, etc. 

The values of all ten of the remaining letters are evenly divisible by a single divisor (besides the number 1, of course). 

What is this “bendy-curvy” word? 

What is the synonym of “chaps”? 

What is the single divisor?

Dawn Quiche-Hymny Slice:

Jimmy a door, adore a Jenny

The donkey is a symbol of the Democratic Party. Jimmy Carter is a member of the Democratic Party who was elected president in 1976. 

“Jimmy” kind of sounds like “jenny,” a female donkey. One might say that, in 1976, Carter was “Jenny’s Jimmy” or the “Donkey’s Jimmy.” Alas, there is no famous singer whose name sounds like “Donkey’s Jimmy...” (Don Keeshimmy? Dawn Quiche-Hymny?)

However, can you name a famous singer whose name sounds like a symbol of a political party, in its possessive form, and the first name of that political party’s presidential candidate?

If so, who is the famous singer?

Riffing Off Shortz And Chaikin Slices:

“Ah, abandon a habit!”

Will Shortz’s February 18th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Andrew Chaikin of San Francisco, California, also known as the singer Kid Beyond, reads:

Think of a famous character in American
literature. Change each letter in that character’s name to its position in the alphabet: A=1, B=2, etc., to get a famous year in American history. Who is this person and what is the year?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Chaikin Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the two-word stage name of a singer who is also a puzzle-maker. Change each letter in the first word to its position in the alphabet — A=1, B=2, etc. — to get the year an Italian saint, a follower of Francis of Assisi, was born.
This saint founded a monastic religious order that followed a rule of strict poverty.

Similarly, change the first three letters in the second word to its position in the alphabet to get the year in the title of a “one-hit wonder” recorded by singers from Nebraska, a state surrounded by “squarish” states. Converting the final two letters in the second word results in a square number.

What is this stage name?

Who is, and in what year, was the saint born?

What is the square number formed by converting the last two letters of the stage name?

What are the year in the one-hit-wonder and the square number?

Note: The following riff was written by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” appears above, in this edition of Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Think of a famous year in American history. Change each digit in the year to the letter that corresponds to the digit when the letters of the alphabet are numbered from 1 to 26. The result will include two letters that are the same, and two that are different.

Now take the letter that corresponds to the two-digit number expressed by the two letters that are different. Insert that letter somewhere in the result. 

The final result will name something that many people needed in that year. 

What is the year, and what did people need?

Note: The following riff was written by our friend ViolinTeddy, whose “Strad-Steiff Subtleties” appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE#3

Name a famous opera character. Change each letter in that character’s name to its position in the alphabet to get a famous year in American history. 

Who is the character, and what is the year? 

Note: The following riff was written by our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #4

Take the first part of the two-part name of a significant and acclaimed American band. 

Subtract this first part from a significant year in world history. 

The result is a not-as-significant historical year that, when translated via the alphanumeric scale, becomes a word for what is sometimes
an unpleasant  substance.

What are the two historical years? 

What is the significant and acclaimed band? 

What is the substance?

Note: The following riff is a collaboration of sorts between a regular contributor to Puzzleria! and Lego Lambda.

ENTREE #5

Take the first name of the writer and recorder of an early 1960s novelty song. The alphanumerical values of the letters in the name form a five-digit string. 

Delete the last digit. 

The result is a famous year in world history that is associated with a volley of cannon fire and ringing chimes.  

Now reconvert each of the four digits in this year into the letters that are their alphanumerical equivalents. The result is the name of the title character in the novelty song.

Who is the the writer and recorder of an early 1960s novelty song, and what is its title?

What is the famous year in world history, and why is it associated with a volley of cannon fire and ringing chimes?

ENTREE #6

Name a two-word annual celebration. Change each letter in those two words to its numerical value in the alphabet.

The first two and final three letters in the
celebration have values that are square numbers. 

The first two letters of the celebration, when placed side-by-side, also form a square number. The last two letters of the celebration, when placed side-by-side, form a cube number.

 Add together the values of the penultimate and antepenultimate letters to get the square root of one of these six square numbers. The antipenultimate value is the square root of the value of the first letter in the celebration. 

What is this annual celebration?

What, in descending order, are the six square numbers?

What is the cube number?

ENTREE #7

Christmas is usually a joyous day. The most recent Christmas fell on a day that can be written as “12/25/23”.

Write a not-so-joyous day in history in such a form. Indeed, it was a tragic day. 

Delete the sixth digit.

Find three values using these five digits:

1. the value of the sum of the last three digits,

2. the value of the last digit 

3. the value of the two-digit number formed by the first two digits.

Take the three letters of the alphabet that
correspond to these three values to spell the monogram of the victim of the tragedy.

Take two letters — one corresponding to the third digit and another corresponding to the fourth digit — to get a two-letter shot pellet measuring 0.175 inch in diameter that, had it been substituted for the 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rounds, would surely have averted the tragedy.

What is this tragic date in history?

What is the monogram?

What is the shot pellet 0.175 inch in diameter?

ENTREE #8

Think of a famous seven-letter character in American literature. 

Change each letter in that character’s name to its position in the alphabet — A=1, B=2, etc. Ignore the value of the middle letter’s position, a number which is said to be unlucky.

The result is six numbers.  

The fourth, third and sixth numbers form a famous year in French and Russian history.

The second, fifth and first numbers form a famous year in a nation where Barbie was born, the music died, and 48 became 50.

Who is this American literature character?

What is the famous year in French and Russian history?

What is the famous year in a nation where Barbie was born, the music died, and 48 became 50?

ENTREE #9

Think of a famous character in American literature. Change each letter in that character’s name to its position in the alphabet
— A=1, B=2, etc. — to get a famous year in American history. Replace the first two digits in that year with their sum and convert these three values back into their letter equivalents, to spell a character in British fantasy literature.

Who is this famous character in American literature?

What is the famous year in American history?

Who is the character in British fantasy literature?

ENTREE #10

Take the first eight numbers in a famous infinite mathematical sequence. Change each number in that sequence to its corresponding letter in the alphabet — A=1, B=2, etc. to get
eight letters. 

The first, seventh and eighth letters, followed by a space, followed by the third, fifth, second, fourth and sixth letters, spell the name of a recently built volleyball complex at a Florida institution of higher learning. That institution is situated in an unincorporated two-word community of about 6,000 population. That community’s initials are the first and seventh letters in the name of the volleyball complex. The name of this community is associated with the works of both Franz Schubert and Walter Scott.  

What are this sequence and name of the volleyball complex?

What is the name of the Shubert-and-Scott-related community where the institution is located?

ENTREE #11

Think of a historic and fateful date in American history in the form 02/23/24. Change each digit in the date to its alphanumeric equivalent: A=1, B=2, etc. Ignore any zeros. This date includes one zero.

Rearrange the five letters you get to spell the last word in the following statement about the date:

“In the wake of this gray day in U.S. history, the hopes and dreams of a recovering nation _____.”

What is this date?

What is the word in the blank?

Hint: The alphanumeric equivalents of the first two digits in the year of this historic date (the “20” in “2024,” for example) are the initials of the first names of the man who was the focus of this fateful day and of the man who would have succeeded him had the fateful date occurred six weeks earlier.    

Dessert Menu

More Mundane Dessert:

“Everyday” prime time property

857, 7,027 and 271 are all prime numbers. 

Name another perhaps more interesting “everyday” property they share – one that neither cleaves nor cottons to the conventional entertainment conception of “prime time.” 

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.