Stradivari knotty homonyms etc.; In search of a mystery verb; Seeking periods of serial time; Bellicosity! Weapons! War! “Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick”; “Movels” And “Novies”

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

In search of a mystery verb

Subtract from a verb four consecutive letters of the “circular alphabet,” one of them twice, leaving three consecutive letters that appear elsewhere in the alphabet. 

Neither group of consecutive letters is in alphabetical order in the verb. 

What is this mystery verb?

Note: The “Monopoly Man & Mr. Peanut” illustration gives an example of an adjective (“monocled”) that can be formed by using strings of three and four consecutive letters of the alphabet.

Appetizer Menu 

Fine-Tuned Appetizer:

Stradivari knotty homonyms etc.

In puzzles #1 through #11, find the homonym that pertains to the clue words on either side of the “vs” abbreviations.

For two examples, the answer to “horsehide” flung batterward vs piney substance on the batter’s bat would be PITCH.
(These homonyms are pronounced the same.) 

The answer to “fault vs forsake one’s nation” would be DEFECT. (These homonyms are usually pronounced differently)

Then try solving #12, #13 and #14.

1. flower  vs  got up

2. metal  vs  ahead

3. costume  vs  company

4. climb  vs  calibrator

5. shore  vs  slide

6.  hint  vs  tilt

7. “trip around”  vs  “drink with tongue”  vs  “a seat”  vs   “hit gently”

8.   litter  vs  fret

9.  crewing  vs  kerfuffle

10. gun  vs  ransack

11. flee  vs  hardware

12. Name an exercise that is a palindrome.

13. Think of a past TV star, surname only. 

Remove the last letter, and reverse the remaining letters, to get the surname of someone who was “critical.”

14. A five-letter word has two different meanings, both of which are also five letter words, with only their second and fourth letters being different. 

What are these three words?

MENU

Lights! Camera! Literature! Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Movels” And “Novies”

Write down the name of a famous movie director in three words. Cross out the letters in the word noses to spell the name of a famous author in two words. 

Who are this director and author? 

Winter Spring Summer Or Fall Slice:

Seeking periods of serial time

Take periods of time that follow one after the other... as in the following categories:

Parts of the day: Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, Dusk, Evening, Night, etc.

Days of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, etc.

Days of the month: First, Second, Third, Fourth, etc.

Months of the year: January, February, March, April, etc.

Seasons of the year: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, (Fall)

Years of a decade: Twenty-twenty, Twenty-twenty-one, Twenty-twenty-two, Twenty-twenty-three, etc.

Decades of a century: Aughts, Teens, Twenties,
Thirties, etc.

Centuries of a millenium: Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty-third, Twenty-fourth, etc. etc. etc.

Remove a “u” from one of these periods of time to form a word associated with a second, more blustery, period of time in the same category – a period of time that does not contain “u”. 

What are these two periods of time? 

What is the word associated with the second, more blustery, period of time?

Riffing Off Shortz And McAllister Slices:

“Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick”

Will Shortz’s March 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mae McAllister, from Bath, in the United Kingdom, reads:

As you may know, each chemical element can be represented by a one or two-letter symbol. Hydrogen is H, helium is He, and so on. 

McAllister points out that there are two commonly known elements whose names each can be spelled using three other element symbols. Name either one.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And McAllister Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a puzzle-maker. Replace the last letter with the letter following it in the alphabet. Rearrange these combined answers to spell names of humpless camel-like creatures, murine mammals and “not-of-this-world” creatures.

Now take two five-letter words: something you might commit and where some folks say you will end up (or, rather, “down”) if you do so.

Rearrange these ten letters to spell the one-word name of an ancient Greek mathematician and inventor who was famous for making a discovery while he was displacing aitch-two-oh in a tub whilst taking a ____ (4 letters). As he made this discovery he exclaimed a pair of consecutive “_______!” (7 letters). 

The four-letter word is the hometown of the puzzle-maker. 

The seven-letter word, in “periodic code,” could be written as four numbers – numbers associated with Upshaw, Greene, Unitas and Baugh.   

Who is the puzzle-maker? 

What are the names of humpless camel-like creatures, murine mammals and “not-of-this-world” creatures?

What are the two five-letter words?

Who is the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor?

What are the 4-letter and 7-letter words in the blanks?

Why, in “periodic code,” do the numbers associated with Upshaw, Greene, Unitas and Baugh represent the seven letter word? 

Note: Entrees #2 through #8 were created by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Arrange three chemical element symbols to get a word for a resident of a  country to the south of the U.S. (The word also is the last name of a prominent U.S. resident.) 

What are the elements and the word their symbols spell?

ENTREE #3

Arrange four chemical element symbols to get the last word in the title of a work of historical fiction by a famous American author. (You will use one of the symbols twice.) The author’s first and last initials are the symbol for an additional element. What are the elements and the fictional work, and who is the author?

ENTREE #4

Arrange five chemical element symbols to get a word for a frightening mythical being. (It’s also the name of an American rock band formed in the 1990s.) 

What are the elements and the word? 

ENTREE #5

Arrange four chemical element symbols to get a word for a disease that usually affects the nose, throat or sinuses.

What are the elements and their symbols? What is the word for the disease? 

ENTREE #6

Arrange chemical element symbols as specified below, to get the following names of world leaders. 

Hint: all of the non-U.S. countries of these
leaders are English-speaking, and all are close U.S. allies.

(1) Last name of a current prime minister (four elements).

(2) Last name of a former prime minister (five elements).

(3) First name of a former U.S. president (four elements).

(4) First name of a former prime minister (four elements).

(5) Last name of a current prime minister (four elements).

ENTREE #7

In the mood for a snack? Think of a kind of nut and a soft drink. You can spell each one using two-letter element symbols that also happen to be state postal codes. What are the two words, the elements, and the states?

ENTREE #8

Feeling chilly? 

Spell the name of a nice warm fabric using, as 

in the preceding Entree, two-letter element symbols that are also state postal codes. 

What are the fabric, the elements, and the states?

ENTREE #9

Name the word for the union of atomic nuclei to form heavier nuclei resulting in the release of enormous quantities of energy when certain light elements unite. 

Then name the word for the splitting of an atomic nucleus resulting in the release of large amounts of energy. These names, respectively, can be spelled using five other element symbols and six other element symbols. 

What are these two names and eleven element symbols?

ENTREE #10

Name a seven-letter adjective that might be used to describe scientist-types who know the periodic table of chemical elements better than they know the back of their hands. 

The word is spelled using seven single-letter element symbols from the table. If you ignore the sixth letter of the adjective, the other six letters appear in the word in reverse alphabetical order.

The initial letters of these elements (two which are not the initial letters of their symbols) can be rearranged to spell an ingredient in a popular beverage and an ingredient in a container in which it was canned during the pre-World-War-II Era. 

The ingredient in the container is also an element on the periodic table.

What is this adjective?

What are the ingredient in the beverage and the ingredient in the container?

ENTREE #11

The surname of a scientist who was a friend of the farmer is composed of four consecutive chemical element symbols. The chemical elements themselves end with only “n’s” and “m’s”.

Who is this farmer-friendly scientist?

Hint: The first half of the surname is a kind of vehicle; the second half, spelled backward is something one might do to that vehicle. 

ENTREE #12

Take the first and last names of a scientific pioneer who added a pair of elements to the periodic table. The numbers of these elements differ by four. The first, fifth and third letters of the scientist’s first name followed by the scientist’s surname phonetically sounds like the element on the periodic table that differs by four from the lower of these two element numbers.

Now take the first half of the scientist’s lower-numbered element followed by a space and the higher-numbered element; replace the first letter of that higher-numbered element with the two that follow it in the alphabet. The result is a sports venue where you can cheer both humans and equines. 

Who is this scientific pioneer, and what pair of elements were added to the periodic table?

What is the sports venue?

What element do the first, fifth and third letters of the scientist’s first name followed by this scientist’s entire surname sound like phonetically?

ENTREE #13

Take not three B’s but four, yet no Ludwigs van...

(Of the four, two had powdered-pale-hued wigs on).

Add one C and one W,

(Sure, one B had no stubble, true!)

Still, all six played 

symphonic-etude gigs, shone!

This sextet was quite gifted and able.

You can spin their discs on your turntable...

And can slice up each surname,

(All five he’s, plus one “her name”)

Into symbols on Mendeleev’s Table! 

What are these six surnames that can be sliced into symbols on Mendeleev’s Periodic Table?

A note of great urgency!: Believe it or not (and, to be honest, the second option is the better of the two), I have just emerged from my basement chemistry lab and, after minutes of grueling research, I believe I have discovered a new element, Miscueum, Atomic Number 119, Symbol MS. If you like, you may use the symbol of this element (MS) to solve Entree #13... Indeed, You will not be able to solve it if you do not use my newfound Miscueum element symbol! Good luck!

Dessert Menu

Triple-Threat Dessert:

Bellicosity! Weapons! War! 

Anagram the letters in a well-known name associated with war to spell either a synonym of weapons or of bellicose beasts. 

What are these three 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.

Initials, Isles, Prezzes, Pop, Toys & Dolls; Italian Shadow Dancing; Blue BayYew TapEntry; E pluribus una dea; Gophers & badgers & deer, oh my! “Stop, Rewolf!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Gophers & badgers & deer, oh my!

Take just the second halves of two creatures with the same even number of letters in their names – like badger and gopher, for example. 

Rearrange these combined letters to spell words that are synonyms of the two-word subject and one-word predicate in “The female deer bounded.” 

These two creatures begin with the same four
letters in the same order. These four letters spell a prefix. The first three of these four letters spell still another creature.

What are these two creatures with the same even number of letters in their names?

What are the synonyms of “female deer” and “bounded”?

What are the prefix and the creature at the beginning of the prefix?

Appetizer Menu

Half-A-Dozen Puzzling Doozies Appetizer:

Initials, Isles, Prezzes, Pop, Toys & Dolls  

Animal Isle

1. 🐈🏝Name an island. Place a copy of its last letter at the beginning. You’ll have a mammal spelled backwards, followed by a mammal spelled forwards. 

Now change the first letter of the string (i.e., the duplicated letter) to the one that immediately follows it in the alphabet. You’ll have another mammal spelled backward, followed by the remaining letters in the string. 

Anagram those remaining letters in the string to produce another animal, one that you might see near an island. 

Indeed the island you named to begin this puzzle is especially associated with this animal. 

What is the island? What are these animals?

“Pop goes Broadway”

2. 🎜🎝Name a pop band from the 1960s. Now think of one of their biggest hits in two words. Change the middle letter of the title to an “E” and rearrange the letters. You’ll have the last word in another one of their song titles. The last word in that song title is also the title of a song from a Broadway musical. 

Now remove the first and last letters from the original two-word song title, and rearrange the letters. You’ll have another song title from the musical, which was also an album track for the band. 

Who is the band? What is the two-word song title? What is their song title that ends in a song title from a Broadway musical? What is the musical? What song was an album track? 

Beautiful toys

3. 🎅🎄Think of a current beauty company, one that has acquired many other brands during its existence of over a century. 

Split the name in half, and place the second half before the first half. You’ll have a former toy company that was acquired by a larger competitor. Now take the first half of that name. You’ll have a current toy company. 

What is the beauty company? What are the two toy companies? 

Ken is dating an actress!?

4. 🎎Take a two-word phrase that describes the Ken doll shown in the image. Change the
last letter of the first word to the letter that follows it in the alphabet, and delete a punctuation mark. 

Rearrange the letters to produce the first and
last names of a well-known contemporary actress. 

What is the phrase describing the doll? Who is the actress? 

Acting presidential

5. 🦅Think of an actress who was well-known for two sitcoms and often used a nickname.  

Rearrange the letters of her nickname to produce a nickname of an American president. Her last name is the last name of a different American president. 

Who is she? Who are the presidents? 

A phrase rich in initials

6. 📺🚆🚌Think of a familiar phrase in four words that you might use while commenting on a posting on Puzzleria! or Blaine’s blog. Take the initial letters of those four words: 

1. The first, second, and third initials spell the initials of a well-known zone in England; 

2. The first, third, and fourth initials spell the initials of a popular series of video games; 

3. The first, second, and fourth initials spell the initials of a long-running ABC television show; 

4. The second, third, and fourth initials spell the initials of a corporation that deals with trains, subways, and buses in New York City. 

What is the phrase? What is the English zone? What is the video game? What is the long-running ABC show? What is the corporation that deals with trains, subways, and buses? 

MENU

Political Two-step Hors d’Oeuvre:

Italian Shadow Dancing

Name a five-letter word for a centuries-old Italian dance. 

Take a two-word political phrase, in eight and
six letters, that sounds like it is also a definition of this five-letter word. What are this dance and this definition?

Givin’ Me The Willys Slice:

“Stop, Rewolf!”

Unearth thirteen instances of efflorescence in the following account:

Once upon a timing belt, I overpaid for an “Overland 4-Door Sedan,” a 1939 Willys I admit being an impulse purchase. It was an oil
burner. I routinely had to take the lid off a drum of “black gold” and funnel it in. My Willys may be somewhat collectible, but is definitely no
epic classic car!

I cram my family into the Willys to attend the occasional weekend auto shows. To avoid silly Ramada Inn rules, we always stay at nice motels, some that come equipped with hearths in each room! When there is a chill in the air, the heat increases with every big old log I ram into our fireplace... I try to cut them up with the fretsaw from my toolbox, but it is just not the right tool!

We wake up early to drive to the all-day shows in the Willys, arriving around noon. It’s a picnic atmosphere: Family and friends playing parcheesi, ring-toss and charades; franks, brats and Mississippi lutefisk on the grill, soon to be garnished and slathered with piccalilli relish. After lunch, it's time for our baby’s nap.

Now is a good time to mingle with fellow aficionados of autos. An instructor of jujitsu told us to invest in vintage datsuns and Nissans. A genome naysayer told us he never touches any auto manufactures after 1930. A chemist proficient in alkaloid algebra invests only in eclectic electric cars.

Riffing Off Shortz And Meersman Slices:

Blue BayYew TapEntry

Will Shortz’s March 17th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Emma Meersman of Seattle, Washington, reads:

Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get a clue for a type of fabric, then change one letter in that word to get something related to trees. Your answer should be the two tree names you started with.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Meersman Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first and last names of a puzzle-maker. 

The first three letters, in reverse, spell an
abbreviation by which this person may be addressed in writing.

The ninth, sixth and fourth letters spell a homophone of a letter of the alphabet.

The remaining letters, in order, spell a creature that may inhabit that homophone.

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What are the abbreviation, homophone and creature?

Note: Entrees #2 through #8 were composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Take two tree names of five and four letters. Say the first syllable of the longer tree name. Then say the shorter tree name. Finally, say the last syllable of the longer name. What you have said will sound like a word for certain items made of fabrics.  

What are the tree names and the items made of fabrics? 

ENTREE #3

Take a six-letter tree name and replace the last two letters with two different letters to get a kind of fabric. 

What are the tree and the fabric?

Hint: The tree is also known by a name that
consists of a compound word composed of two words, the first of which is also a kind of fabric.

ENTREE #4

Take a six-letter tree name and remove one letter to get a kind of fabric.  

What are the tree and the fabric?

ENTREE #5

Take a seven-letter tree name and replace the third and fourth letters with one different letter to get a word for an item made of fabric. 

What are the tree and the item made of fabric?

ENTREE #6

Take a three-letter tree name and add a letter at the beginning and three letters at the end to get a word for an item made of fabric.  

What are the tree and the item made of fabric?

ENTREE #7

Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get the last name of a well-known American film actor.  Now take his first name, spelled backwards, and add two Roman numerals at the end to get the name of a fabric.  Who is the actor, and what is the fabric?

ENTREE #8

Take two three-letter tree names, combine them phonetically, and say them quickly out loud.  The result will sound like something you might find yourself saying just before you reach for something made of fabric.  

Now take a synonym of the item made of fabric and remove one letter.  The result will sound like a third kind of tree.  

What are the two-three letter trees, the item made of fabric and its synonym, and the third kind of tree?

ENTREE #9

Place a short preposition between two three-letter tree names. Change the second of the two tree names to its four-letter plural form. Also change the first letter of a second tree name, which has an alphanumeric value of “x” to a letter whose alphanumeric value ends in “x”.

The result is a bit of invasive history involving Ike, Jack, Fidel, Che, Bobby, and others.

What are the two trees?

What is the bit of invasive history?

ENTREE #10

Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get a two letters that, in their uppercase form, have a very similar shape. Remove those two letters from a game
played on grass to get a glass vessel that often contains water or wine, oil or vinegar.

What are these trees and the two letters?

What are the game played on grass and the a glass vessel?

ENTREE #11

Take two three-letter tree names and combine them to a nearly four-century-old now obsolete word for “a juggler’s trick” or “conjuring.” The author Ben Jonson described the word as “wicked” and suggested that “the devil is its
author.”

What are these two trees and obsolete word?

ENTREE #12

Take two three-letter words in the name of the “title tree” in a five-word 1960s movie. Spell these two words backwards to form two non-English words which, when translated into English, are  “very very.”

What is the name of this “title tree”? 

What are the two non-English words that mean “very very”?

Dessert Menu

Nontemporal Temples Dessert:

E pluribus una dea

Name an ancient temple dedicated to a goddess. Replace its third letter with its third-last letter, and remove the space left by the displacement of the third-last letter. The result is a temple dedicated to all the gods.

Who is the goddess?

What are the names of these two temples?

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 spice s (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.