Thursday, August 27, 2026

“Femi-name-ity!”; “Flighty” actress?; “An Alternating Alphabetical Order”; “That adder holds an herb in its piehole!”; “Storks come home to roost?”; Confounded by boundlessness?; “Surname’s the Same, Sir”; “Spatulalia Bacchanalia!” ; Frightful Tigerfish! Freightful Chevron Ships!; “Pilot-lit litanies”

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Frightful Tigerfish! Freightful Chevron Ships!

“Defiantly fresh tigerfish regret and denounce their loss of ‘reef rights’ due to oil freighters docking near their shore.”

Four strings of consecutive letters in that sentence share something wordplayful in common. 

What are these four consecutive letter-strings and what do they share?

VERY OPTIONAL HINT: The answer also involves two consecutive “alphabetical” strings of letters.

Appetizer Menu

Stellar Tortoiseshell Dwellers Appetizer:

“Femi-name-ity!”; “Flighty” actress?; “An Alternating Alphabetical Order”; “That adder holds an herb in its piehole!”; “Storks come home to roost?” 

“Femi-name-ity!”

1. 🎸 Name an actress. 

Her first and last names combined can be rearranged into two female first names. Her last name contains another female first name in consecutive letters. These three first names also belong to the only three women elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in a specific year. 

Who is the actress? What are the first names? Who were the three women elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in that specific year? 

“Flighty” actress?

2. 🪁Name a television and film actress
whose first and last names both relate to flying.

Who is she?

“An Alternating Alphabetical Order”

3. 🐘🐈🦛 Name an eight-letter animal where every other letter, starting from the second letter, are consecutive letters of the alphabet in order.

What is the animal?

“That adder holds an herb in its piehole!”

4.  🐍Name a famous person from the world of sports. The last five letters of the last name spell a type of animal. The first name is something that the animal has.

If you replace the third letter of the animal with a copy of the second letter of the last name, you’ll have a synonym of the first name.

Who is the person? What is the animal? What are the synonyms?

Storks come home to roost?”

5. 🦆Think of something a certain living thing has, in five letters. Rearrange the letters to produce something that a different living thing has.

Take a five-letter synonym of that word. It’s something that the first living thing also has.

What are these three words? What are the two living things?

MENU:

Flambée Hors d’Oeuvre

“Pilot-lit litanies” 

Name a world capital city.

Move one of its letters to a spot later on in the name.

Insert a space near the middle of the result. 

The final result, in two words, is what people who check their pilot light are looking at.

What is this world capital city? What do pilot-light checkers see. 

“Plated Pastries Slice”

“Spatulalia Bacchanalia!”

Pat used a pastry spatula to serve a ____ of _____ ___ from the ___ onto a plate. 

The combined letters in the first and fourth blank are an anagram of the letters in the second and third blanks. 

What are these four missing words?

Riffing Off Shortz Entrees

Confounded by boundlessness?

“Pondering Infinity makes my brain number!”

Will Shortz’s August 23rd Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Spell out the numbers from 13 to 20 –  THIRTEEN, FOURTEEN, FIFTEEN, SIXTEEN, SEVENTEEN, EIGHTEEN, NINETEEN, TWENTY. Select one letter from each word, in order, to name another number. No anagramming is necessary. What number is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Spell out the ten numbers in the following ten-letter sequence:

2, 5, 11, 12, 6, 3, 4, 13, 14, 0:

TWO FIVE ELEVEN TWELVE SIX THREE FOUR THIRTEEN FOURTEEN ZERO

Pluck one letter from each of the ten words to
spell the name of a puzzle-maker. Who is it? 

Here is a clue for finding the answer that involves ordinal (rather than cardinal) numbers:

2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 4th, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 1st

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are riffy conundrums drummed-up/dreamt-up by our friend and riffmeister extraordinaire, Nodd. 


ENTREE #2

Anagram a math term to spell a word that
applies to the world’s top mathematicians.

ENTREE #3

What math term has one meaning in geometry, a different meaning in algebra, andna third meaning in number theory?

ENTREE #4

Think of a math term in 11 letters. 

The first part of this term is a common abbreviation for a type of organization. 

The rest of the term is something those associated with such an organization typically try to make it be. What term is it?

ENTREE #5

What do these math terms have in common:
EXPONENT, HYPOTENUSE, DENOMINATOR, SCALENE TRIANGLE?

ENTREE #6

Anagram the last name of a word leader to get
a math term.

ENTREE #7

Using the letters in a spelled-out number between and one hundred as often as needed, spell 13 other numbers. 

ENTREE #8

Spell out the numbers from 94 to 100:

ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. Select one letter from each word, in order, to spell a word for another number. No anagramming is necessary. What number is it?

Now spell out the numbers from 90 to 84:

ninety, eighty-nine, eighty-eight, eighty-seven,
eighty-six, eighty-five, eighty-four. Select one letter from each word, in order, to spell the same number as the one in the paragraph above. Again, no anagramming is necessary. What number is it?

The answer is the same for each part of this two-part puzzle..

Dessert Menu

Stunning Dessert:

“Surname’s the Same, Sir”

Name a synonym of “gobsmacked.” 

Delete the fifth letter, leaving a space, Rotate the fourth letter 180-degrees around its x-axis. The result is a two-word vehicle.

Spoonerize the words of this vehicle to get two
different one-syllable surnames  – one belonging to a fellow with a ___-tail hairstyle, the other belonging to a cartoon character whose surname is the missing word in that blank space. This fellow and cartoon character share the same first name.

What is this synonym of “stunned,” etc.?

What is this two-word vehicle? 

What are the two one-syllable surnames?

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.

17 comments:

  1. To place a comment under this QUESTIONS? subheading (immediately below), or under any of the three subheadings below it (HINTS! PUZZLE RIFFS! and MY PROGRESS SO FAR...), simply left-click on the orange "Reply" to open a dialogue box where you can make a comment. Thank you.
    Lego...

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  2. Replies
    1. Nodd, two questions:

      In your Entree #7, I actually came up with a number that generates [unless I made some sort of giant, embarassing mistake, and/or counted wrong] 19 other numbers. I'm not quite sure what I am asking here, however.

      Secondly, in your Entree #6, is the world leader ALIVE and currently still a leader. Or is this someone from the past to whom we are sort of paying respect?

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    2. Correction: I should have said 18 OTHER numbers, i.e. not including itself. But Lego made the same mistake in his graphic, i.e. he included 74.

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    3. VT, the leader in 6 is still alive. As far as 7, you may have found a starting number that generates more numbers than the one I used. I think I found all the numbers one can generate from my starting number, but I could have missed some.

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    4. Also, the leader in 6 is still in power.

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    5. I just now found a number that generates 18 other numbers; perhaps that's the one you found, VT. Regardless, it's a better solution than mine. I wonder if there's one with more than 18 that I overlooked.

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    6. I can't really say too much, Nodd, without providing MORE of a hint that you would probably wish. We'll have to discuss it on Wednesday. I suspect you DID find the same starting number that I had found. I can't imagine what starting number YOU used that gave the 13. Will be eager to know.

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    7. Oh, I forgot: re your #6, I thought I had pretty much tried every current world leader (the big ones, that is) and didn't come up with anything useable. Guess I"ll have to try again.

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  3. Replies
    1. Got Appetizers #2-4, the Slice, Entree #3, and the Dessert. Found one anagram for a math term that would make more sense if you added two letters to the beginning of the anagram(will explain Wednesday), and one world leader surname that is actually a number, not necessarily a math term. If "number" could also apply as a synonym for "math term" here, then I've answered #6 as well(also to be explained Wednesday). Will need hints for all others tomorrow night.
      pjbOnlyReallyGotLuckyFindingThe"Number"InTheLastSundayChallenge(CannotSeeHimselfDoingThatAgainWithTheOther"WrittenOutNumber"Entrees)

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  4. IF YOU HAVE COMMENTS THAT DO NOT PERTAIN TO ANY OF THE FOUR CATEGORIES ABOVE, YOU MAY WRITE THEM BELOW THIS POST. THANK YOU.

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  5. Good Friday evening to all here upon the blog!
    Mom and I are fine. We ate out at Jim 'n' Nick's earlier this evening, with Bryan, Mia Kate, and Renae this time around. I had the BBQ chicken sandwich, French fries, Brunswick stew, and Coke Zero(w/refill). Mom had a loaded baked potato and a Sprite, and she brought the rest of hers home to eat tomorrow. I think Bryan and Renae might have shared theirs(brisket or something), and I do know Bryan just had water to drink, and Mia Kate had BBQ chicken, but not as a sandwich. I've forgotten what else anyone had to drink after that.
    Lots of conversation at our table tonight. Apparently, Bryan is now semiretired from Alfa Insurance. Somebody else got promoted to senior claims adjuster over him, so he just comes in, doesn't really do any work at all(maybe "rubberstamps" things, but that's it), and leaves at lunchtime. Only picking up a paycheck, that's all. And they probably all know it at the office, they're just afraid to talk about it. He says not a word has been said about it there. He also found out in thirty odd years, after Dad retired as a claims adjuster, the salary for the job, which Bryan took replacing Dad, hasn't been increased at all. Not at all. The whole time, Bryan basically made the same amount Dad did. And Renae said she actually likes having him come back home for lunch, and obviously sticking around after that. So Bryan just got the short end of the stick at work, and frankly, it's a wonder he'd still be showing up at all! He doesn't even help any younger adjusters with anything, nothing! Also, come to find out Atlanta Underground ain't what it used to be anymore. When they took Mia Kate to that concert she wanted to see in Atlanta this past week, they decided to go see the Undetground. Not much to see now, just a lot of bars("dive bars", as Bryan put it). Last time we all saw it was about 1993, when it was a company trip provided by Alfa. Renae also joined us, even though it would be another two years before she and Bryan tied the knot. Much better place then. Even had a theater in the mall, where we did watch a film that was out at that time, but none of us can remember what film it was. Mia Kate's doing well in school lately, having a few in-person classes and some online classes, and the workload hasn't been too much. If she had to, she'd be in the library looking up whatever she needed for up to four hours or so. Maddy, on the other hand, has had a bad week so far. The doctor changed her medication to Prozac, and she immediately got worse. She's been having difficulty with her sleep schedule, and she's got OCD now, and she's also been leaving long, rambling texts for Renae. And something about microwaving rice is a big problem for her now. Poor thing. At least she has been taking tennis lessons, so I guess that's good. Bryan says there have been a lot of other adopted Asian girls playing tennis with her, but she didn't seem to notice. Might not have even noticed they were also adopted, or that there were never any Asian parents in the stands!
    Good meal was had by all.

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    Replies
    1. Thoughts and prayers for Maddy. Rice -=gluten intolerance?

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  6. Now for my progress so far: I only got Entree #1(easiest hands down). Will actually have to start looking up stuff after I'm done here. Beyond that, nothing really struck me at first glance with the other puzzles. App #3, maybe. I tried to think of eight-letter animals, and at least one did appear to have every other letter in alphabetical order, but I can't be sure it's the intended answer. Will most likely have to wait for hints Sunday night to make sure. I also have to help Mom put the sheets back on her bed, and she didn't want to get that out of the way when we first got back home. So any work on these puzzles may have to wait.
    Good luck in solving to all, and please stay safe, and we may be going back to the condo in FL some time this next month, so if and when I tell you we're there, remember you heard it here first(maybe a good two or three weeks from now). Cranberry out!
    pjbWillSoonBeWatching"CarnacTheMagnificent"OnA"TonightShow"RerunFromBackWhenFordWasStillPresident,OnAntenna[TV]AfterThisCommercialBreakWhichJustStartedAsI'mStillTypingThis(AndNowI'mThrough!)

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