“Off by just one Letter, Man!” Small-yet-tall-caliber literature; Suckers & leeches & shrimp, Oh my! Driving screws and river crews; If only works of art had words... Swearing in the swelter?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Leeches & suckers & shrimp, Oh my!

“Shrimp” and “crab” are insulting when applied to people but are delicious when ordered off a menu. 

Take a third word you might see near them on a menu and spell it backwards. Replace two adjacent vowels with a new vowel to spell a third insulting word. 

What is this third word?

Appetizer Menu

TV Guise Appetizer:

“Off by just one Letter, Man!”

Through an unfortunate miscommunication in outsourcing, the titles of a series of television programs accidentally had one (and only one) letter changed. 

Due to imperfect artificial intelligence, the guide automatically generated descriptions of the shows that are just not quite right.  

Can you name the mistaken and the original titles of these shows? All shows are well known, either having run for at least five years or having a lasting impact on popular culture.  

Note that while only one letter is changed, occasionally punctuation, capitalization and spacing between letters are changed to create
new words.

Here is an example in which all that changes is just one letter:

Madcap misadventures of one’s sister working in a greasy spoon.  

“You’ll flip!”  

Answer: “The Frying Nun”

Here is this week’s TV GUISE line-up... Enjoy!:

Misadventures of two New York City cops as they search out over four dozen watering holes.  

“This vehicle will make you L-I-V-I-D!”

Using his extraordinary abilities, a government agent in Austin makes an outrageous number of arrests.

Four aging fish live together in Miami, sharing their lunging for life.

“This show made us blanch!”

Travel shows with each episode focusing on such spots as San Francisco, Manila, Bengal, Tampa, Fundy, Guantanamo, and Chesapeake.  

“Soak in the entertainment!”

Reality show hosted by Cheech and Chong presenting token stories of people not yet taken from across the nation

Humorous nightly commentary about the support for the Tea Party and the interlacing of politics.  

“It’s paper thin!”  

“You’ll laugh all the way to the bathroom!”

Reality show look at the lives of east coast sex workers at the beach, including Madison, Elizabeth, Leonia, Beverly, Florence, and “Cherry Hill.”
A courtroom reality show featuring an irascible former New York politician who never seems to get anything right. 

“Hundreds of millions went into this production!”

Weekly news program where a former "head" of the country faces off with his internal impulses, with potentially explosive results to the fabric of the nation.

“Feeling the blues!”

Two hunky California motorcycle patrolmen showcase the best in leggings.  

“These bears be smokin’!”

A cold war team has no success creating nuclear reaction.  

“They weren’t using cruise control!”

Hesitant islander questions entering his sixth decade.  

“Oh Lord, it’s not funny, more like a low HA!”

 Ex-FBI agent files mystery tales of her

former partner, who was obsessed with the occult.  

“Skullduggery on Fox!”

MENU

Artsy-Craftsy Hors  d’Oeuvre:

If only works of art had words...

Imagine what either of the items pictured here might say if they could talk. 

If your guess is a three-word statement consisting of a contraction, article and noun, then you may have a shot at solving this puzzle.

Replace the antepenultimate letter in the statement with the only letter in the alphabet that it rhymes with.

The letters in the result – in reverse order, with the apostrophe and spaces removed – spell the artsy craft that was employed to create the items.

What might the two items say?

What is the artsy craft?

Hint: The noun in the three-word statement is an abbreviated form of a three-syllable word. The third syllable in that word is and anagram of a city on a panhandle.

Summer’s Day Slice:

Swearing in the swelter?

Rearrange the letters of a three-word exclamation you might hear on a sweltering
summer’s day to get where, in two words, you would likely not hear it. 

What are this complaint?

Where would you be likely not to hear it?

Riffing Off Shortz And Selinker Slices:

Driving screws and river crews

Will Shortz’s October 13th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Selinker of Renton, Washington, reads:

Think of something to drink whose name is a compound word. Delete the first letter of the first part and you’ll get some athletes. Delete the first letter of the second part and you’ll get where these athletes compete. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Selinker Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Remove the two initial letters from the name of a puzzler-maker. The result is 1) the nickname of a U.S. president and 2) one who uses a
certain tool that helps users save and edit material from the web to create content like email newsletters, website content, and social media bios.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the nickname and user of this tool?

(Note: Entree #2 was penned by a good friend of and faithful contributor to Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #2

Take a venue where some Olympic athletes compete. Add a letter at the front to get a color.  

Take another venue where some Olympic athletes compete, Add two letters to the front
to get a slang term for “influence.”

The two new words, when placed in this order (“color” followed by “slang term”) name something to drink. But when they are placed in reverse order, they name the source from which the drink is produced.  

What are the these four words?

(Note: Entrees #3 through #8 were composed by Nodd, of “Nodd ready for prime time” fame.)

ENTREE #3

Think of a nine-letter drink name that consists of three three-letter words strung together. 

Six of the letters can be arranged to spell the last name of a famous NFL athlete. 

The athlete once lived in a location that has the same name as the drink. His nickname came from a particular part of the location. 

What is the drink and who is the athlete?

ENTREE #4

Think of the name of a drink consisting of two
words. Five of the letters can be arranged to spell the name of an NFL team. All of the letters, plus an “I” and an “S,” can be arranged to spell a two-word phrase that undoubtedly applies to the place where the team plays. What are the drink, the team, and the two-word phrase?

ENTREE #5 

Think of the brand name of a non-alcoholic beverage you might buy at the supermarket. The first four letters of the name, read backward, spell a kind of alcoholic beverage. 

All of the letters of the name can be arranged to spell two words, one of which describes what occurs on an athletic playing field, and the other of which is a term for something that is important to PGA athletes. Five of the letters of the name, plus an “E,” can be rearranged to name a member of a certain MLB team. 

What are the brand name, the alcoholic beverage, the two words that can be formed from the brand name’s letters, and the MLB team member?

ENTREE #6 

Think of the brand name of a non-alcoholic
beverage you might buy at the supermarket. 

The brand name’s letters can be rearranged to spell a word for some athletes. 

A French word for something you might add to the beverage, plus an “O,” can be arranged to spell the place where the athletes compete. What are the beverage, the athletes, and the place they compete?

ENTREE #7 

Think of a two-word term for a place where certain athletes compete. Remove four letters that can be arranged to spell a a singular pronoun and a west-of-the-Mississippi U.S. state abbreviation. 

Arrange the remaining letters to form a common misspelling of the last name of a person who enjoyed great success in the sport that is played at the place where the athletes compete. 

What are the two-word place, the singular pronoun, the state abbreviation, and the correct and the incorrect spellings of the competitor’s last name?

ENTREE #8

Think of the first word in the two-word name of an alcoholic beverage. This word’s letters can be arranged to spell a monetary unit and an animal name that is also a word for a member of a certain NFL team. 

What are the beverage, the monetary unit, and the NFL team member?

ENTREE #9

Think of things to drink, a compound plural word. 

Delete the first letter of the first part and you’ll get any athlete on an American Football League Team that once played in Houston, Texas. Delete the first letter of the second part and you’ll get the surname of a football coach who once led the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.

What is this compound plural word?

What are the names of the athlete and surname of the football coach?

ENTREE #10

Think of something to eat whose name is a compound word. Delete the first letter of the first part and the first letter of the second part to form two new words – the fourth and first
words, respectively, in a hyphenated phrase associated with buffet restaurants. 

What is this compound word? 

What is the hyphenated phrase associated with buffet restaurants?

ENTREE #11

Think of any beverage, in two words, that may contain cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, anise, nutmeg or black pepper. Delete the first letter of both parts and you’ll get a place where athletes practice and compete. 

What is this beverage?

Where do athletes practice and compete?

ENTREE #12

Think of a four-syllable compound noun for Aesop, Homer, Jane Austen, Dr. Seuss, Madeleine L’Engle, Stephen King or Garrison
Keillor. 

Delete the first letter of the first part and you’ll get what sounds like the first name of a five-time All-Star Minnesota Twin. 

Delete the first letter of the second part and you’ll get the surname of five-time All-Pro Minnesota Viking.

What four-syllable noun is this? Who are the Twin and Viking?

ENTREE #13

Think of a compound word for a chap who is sometimes “____-donned.” 

Delete the first letter of the first part and you’ll 

get an interjection used especially to express sudden pain.

Delete the first letter of the second part and you’ll get Yiddish expression of exasperation or dismay.

Who is this sometimes ____-donned chap?

What is the word in the blank?

What are the interjection of pain and expression of dismay?

ENTREE #14

Think of a two-syllable compound word for a portable container, like “suitcase,” for example.

Replace the fourth letter with a hyphen. Delete the first letter.

The result is an antiaircraft gun.

What are this portable container and antiaircraft gun?

ENTREE #15

Think of a two-syllable compound word for queues of famished people during the Great Depression. Remove the initial letter of each compound part of the word. The result is what actors and voice-over announcers do.

What are these queues of famished people?

What do actors and voice-over announcers do? 

Dessert Menu

A “Piece” Of Dessert:

Small-yet-tall-caliber literature

Name a small-caliber gun manufacturing company and a slang term for “handguns.” 

The slang term is the first syllable of the surname of a novel’s title character. 

The gun manufacturer is the first name of the title character’s love interest. 

What are this gun manufacturer, slang term and novel’s title?

Every Thursday 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.