Green Rage, Blue Rage, Flowerage; “Joust a sport involving mail?” Ebon Missile, Lime Lioness; Butterfiles before a big race? Bookmarking “pads & payloads"; “What Wood yew dew?”;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Joust a sport involving mail?”

Take the first 29 letters of a British mailing address in the early 1950s. Ignore any digits you might see. 

Remove 14 letters that are an anagram of what happens when ice-grabbers are flung into a bag (in two words of five and ten letters). 

What remains is the name of a sports venue in the United States. 

What are this address, the result of flinging, and the sports venue?

Appetizer Menu

“What Is My Side Hustle?” Appetizer:

Green Rage, Blue Rage, Flowerage

Read the two narratives below carefully. Can you find 8 living things hidden in Part 1 and 24 living things (22 of them different) hidden in Part 2? 

Part 1: Green Rage

This story is mostly true; I can attest to the fact as I was an eyewitness. It takes place not in on the prairie, where broncos mosey in pastures, but in suburbia. 

A dispute arose on a city property about trees; their height and placement. 

It was a dispute that eventually resulted in the “disaster of 86” when a neighbor took things into his own hands and denuded an entire city block in order to get a better view of things. 

That neighbor lived next to my little brother, who sat in his living room BarcaLounger endlessly admiring those leafy godly gifts of which he was especially fond... but now gone! Notice I said “was especially fond...” This is hard for me to talk about, but  I must...

It had been a bad week for my brother, who had just received a second pink slip from Microsoft LLC. He had one inviolable rule: protect trees and greenery at all costs, above all. 

One day, looked out my window to see my brother heading over the neighbor’s fence with a chainsaw raised over his head, very Musk-like. 

After my brother’s neighbor called the police, things went downhill quickly. I am not sure how this happened but my brother took a different neighbor as a hostage! Now there was a full-blown standoff in south Tacoma – not exactly an area bereft of police activity. It was not an optimum outcome by any stretch of the imagination, anyway. 

When the police arrived they ordered my  brother to “put down your chainsaw immediately.” My brother shouted, “Make me!” Those were his last words.

Part 2: Blue Rage

“This chili lacks” spiciness,” complained Officer Toody to his police cruiser partner Sergeant Muldoon (first names Ole and Eric) during a drug-deal-stakeout on the streets of the Big Apple. 

Each sat in silence, his flashlight (or “torch”), ID-badge and service revolver at the ready, as they reclined in their cruiser’s Velcro-cushioned seats, dreaming of the “Taste-of-Jordan Deli on Broadway” blintzes or brand-name “Oomph Lox” (with its slogan, “We promise vitality, vigor and verve!”) that they might enjoy at the end of their shift, topped off with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for dessert! 

Or they might instead just stop off at an Irish bar and polish off a few off-duty double-daiquiris... or, perhaps partake in some post-police-work wine-tasting – white zin... Niagra-Falls-like volumes of it!...

Earlier that workday, just after their shift started, an undercover officer on foot and in plain clothes had stopped by Toody and Muldoon’s cruiser, asking them to be on the lookout for a drug dealer with particular facial features, including what he described as “Noseferatu lips.” 

Muldoon later mused, “That narc is suspicious that there is a drug ring operating in this neighborhood. He says there insane amounts of cash involved, perhaps
millions. That’s Charles Foster Kane money!”

Just then, in a flash, these two true-blue belligerent-if-need-be men-in-blue were roused from their reverie. 

Whipping and whizzing past them was a rented car sporting a Madagascar national flag flapping floppily in 100-mph-plus turbulence. This red, green and white flag was affixed to the rear whip antenna of a rental car National® Car Rental was quite unlikely to ever to see again! 

As our men-in-blue, sirens wailing, gained ground on the hot-wheeled runaway vehicle, they could hear technopop pyrotechnics blasting from the speakers (like discos most likely to pierce eardrums!) along with gunfire pinging and bombs exploding like warring Ninjas’ minefields!

Muldoon, the driver, skillfully performed a PIT Maneuver (Precision Immobilization Technique) on the fleeing vehicle, stopping it, then confiscated a suspicious lady’s slipper, as evidence, from the passenger’s seat of the vehicle. 

Officer Toody cuffed the culprit, who reportedly stood at a dais yelling racial slurs earlier that day. When Toody asked the “cuffee” if he regretted his hate speech, the culprit responded most surlily with a vulgar denial: “_ _ _ _  No!”

All in a day’s work for Car 54!

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Obscure Hors d’Oeuvre:

“What Wood yew dew?”

Rearrange the letters of a not-so-well-known title of a well-known book to get two things that are done to wood.

What is this book title?

What are the two things done to wood?

Synonymous Slice:

Bookmarking “pads & payloads”

Take a synonym of “copy.” 

Replace its first letter with a letter that preserves its pronunciation. 

Isolate the last letter and replace it with a three-letter synonym. 

Move that synonym at the left of the rest, followed by a space. 

The result is a pair of spoken words (words that often “bookend” nine other spoken words) that are associated with pads and payloads. 

What are this synonym of "copy" and pair of words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Jacobs Entrees:

Ebon Missile, Lime Lioness

Will Shortz’s August 24th National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by our own Bobby Jacobs of Glen Allen, Virginia, reads:

Take the first and last names of a famous athlete. Change the first letter of the last nameto L, and rearrange the result to get the first and last names of another famous athlete. In each case the first name has six letters and the last name has five. These are athletes everyone knows. Who are they?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz and Jacobs Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first word of a two-word double-pronged tool associated with coiffure.

Then remove all punctuation from the first word in a “biblically dreamy stairway to heaven” (not from Led Zepplin but from Genesis).

The result in the name of a talented puzzle-maker. Who is it?

Hint: Take a gerund associated with young star-crossed lovers. Delete four letters that can be arranged to spell a verb that means “to look at in a flirtatious or desiring way.” What remains is the two-word double-pronged tool
associated with coiffure.

ENTREE #2

Take the first and last names of a famous athlete.

Rearrange the letters of the first name. 

In the last name, change the first letter to L, then switch the first and third letters. 

The final result is a two-word description that completes the following sentence: 

“When it comes to Great Virginia Puzzle-makers, this week’s NPR challenge author is one of the _______ _____.”

Who is the athlete?

What is the two-word description that completes the sentence?

What is the name of a Great Virginia Puzzle-maker?

Hint: The name of one of the ______ ______ is also the answer to Entree #1, above.   

Note: Entrees #3 through #8 were composed by our friend Nodd.

ENTREE #3

Take the first and last names of a famous NFL player. Rearrange these eight letters to get the first name of a famous track star of the 1960s-70s and an informal term for something important to athletes generally. 

The track star’s last name, minus the last letter, is a drink. 

Who are the athletes and what is the informal term?

ENTREE #4

Take the first and last names of a famous athlete of the 1960s-70s. In 1970, this athlete did something unprecedented in his sport. 

Rearrange these eight letters to get the first names of a former NFL tight end and a former American bodybuilder. The bodybuilder has the same last name as a former professional baseball player who also did something unprecedented. 

Who are these three athletes?

ENTREE #5

Take the first and last names of a Hall of Fame center fielder of the 1950s-60s. Rearrange these 12 letters to get the first names of the following major league baseball players:

(1) A catcher of the 1870s who was one of the first catchers to stand directly behind the batter, allowing the introduction of the curveball;

(2) A Hall of Fame pitcher of the 1890s-1910s;

(3) A Hall of Fame outfielder of the 1920s-40s; an

(4) A Hall of Fame third baseman of the 1970s-80s.

Who are these five players?

* NOTE: The positions listed are those the players were primarily known for, but they may also have played other positions.

ENTREE #6

Take the last name of a famous athlete. 

Change the last letter to T and read the result backwards to get the sport in which this athlete
competes. 

Who is the athlete and what is the sport?

ENTREE #7

Take the first names of two athletes with the same last name. They dominated their respective sports, one in the 1930s-60s and the other in the 1990s-2020s. 

Add an R. Rearrange these ten letters to spell the first name of a sprinter who won three Olympic gold medals in the 1970s and the name of a professional sports team. Who are the three athletes and what is the team?

ENTREE #8

Take the original first and last names of a former NBA player who later changed his name. 

As a collegian, he was a member of a national
championship team during the 1960s. Rearrange these ten letters to get the last name of an American Olympic discus thrower and something found on a golf course, or sometimes on a racetrack. 

Who are the two athletes, and what is found on a golf course or racetrack?

Dessert Menu

Dietary Guidance Dessert:

Butterfiles before a big race?

Name a type of race. Remove from it a word that sometimes precedes the word race. 

The result, spelled in reverse, is dietary advice
perhaps given to competitors in the original race. 

What are this type of race, word preceding race and admonition?

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 Thursday.

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.