Decrepit Car: Contemporary Character, Anagram Plantation, Prophesying Profitability? Three Species; Anagramable Lifesavers; Bad Bunny: Bummer of a Slumber! Seldom seen or seen more? Limerick ’bout a Lexicon; No watering required

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Limerick ’bout a Lexicon

Fill in the three blanks in the limerick below with words of 11 letters, 8 letters, and about 14-or-so letters: 

Peg, a speed-reading abecedarian,

Begged a lexicon from her _________,

Began *scanning at “aardvark,”

Never needing a ________...

Ergo, now she’s an “______________!”

* (See: verb, definition 2b)

(Note: The word in third blank, no matter how you spell it, is one that Peg will not find in the dictionary.)

Appetizer Menu

Conundrumbstruck By Chuck Appetizer:

Three Species; Prophesying Profitability? Anagram Plantation; Decrepit
Car... Contemporary Character

Three Species

1. 🐼🐦🐟Think of a species of mammals in 8 letters. 

Without rearranging, delete the name of another species of animals in consecutive letters. 

Add a  P to the remainder and rearrange to name yet another species of animals. Name all three.

Prophesying Profitability?

2. 🏬Name a well-known company in 4 letters whose business activities go up and down in the short run but are profitable in the long run. Then add an “h”  to its name, rearrange, and identify one of its essential activities. 

What’s the company? 

What’s the essential activity?

Anagram Plantation

3. 🏭🪴

The brand name of one grocery item anagrams perfectly with the name of another
grocery item. 

One is made in a plant, the other is a plant. 

Identify the brand name and the plant

Decrepit Car... Contemporary Character

4. 🚗A classic old car and a modern movie character are called by the same 5-letter name. 

What is it?

MENU

“Thirstfree” Hors d’Oeuvre:

No watering required

Remove the first two letters from a synonym of “watering” and move the third-last letter to the end. 

The result is a food that requires no watering, planting or harvesting. 

What are this synonym and food?

Beach Blanket Slice:

Seldom seen or seen more?

“One seldom shall see 

a _____ in the ___...

But a _____ on the shore?

... Not just one, many more!”

(and beach blankets galore!)

~ 1st blank: an anagram of a synonym of the word in the second blank...

~ 2nd blank: a homophone of a non-blank word in the poem...

~ 3rd blank: a word that is one-letter-different from another word in the poem...

What are the three missing words?

Hint: The word in the first blank is an anagram of a synonym of the word in the second blank.

Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Entrees:

Bad Bunny: Bummer of a Slumber!

Will Shortz’s February 22nd National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg VanMechelen of Berkeley, California, reads:

Name something you don’t want to have at night using two words (3,5). Shift each of the letters of the second word nine spaces later in the alphabet. If your count reaches the end of the alphabet, continue counting from the start. The result will name a famous singer.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Move the first four letters of a puzzle-maker’s name 8 places later in the alphabet (that is, ROT-8 those letters). The result begins with where Dorothy ventures via yellow bricks and
ends with the postal code of the state across the Mississippi from her home state.

ROT-14 the next 3 letters in the name to get a general 3-letter word for a specific 3-syllable profession that is spelled by the last 75% of a pseudonym this puzzle-maker uses.

ROT-6 the next 4 letters in the name to get an organ that accounts for about 15% of a person’s total body weight. 

ROT-10 the fourth-last-though-penultimate and ROT-10 the antepenultimate-through-final letters in the name to get a 3-letter egg and a 3-letter voice.

Who is the puzzle-maker?

Where does Dorothy venture? What is the postal code location of the state adjacent to her home state?

What is the puzzlemaker’s pseudonym?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 were created and contributed by our friend Nodd, author of Puzzleria!s recurring “Nodd ready for prime time” feature.)

ENTREE #2

Name a three-letter term for something that may happen during sleep. Double the last letter and
add a J. Move these five letters nine places earlier in the alphabet and rearrange to get the first name of a famous deceased singer.

Now name something in five letters that may keep you awake at night. Move the fourth letter four places later in the alphabet. Then move all five letters, using the changed fourth letter, six places earlier in the alphabet. Rearrange the letters to get the last name of the singer.

What may happen during sleep, what may keep you awake, and who is the singer?

ENTREE #3

Name something in three letters that a child may take to bed. Add to the beginning of this word a two-letter rating given to films that may be suitable for children. Move all of the letters six places earlier in the alphabet to get the first name of a famous deceased singer.

Now name a six-letter bedding material. Move the first letter six places earlier in the alphabet to get the last name of the singer.

What may a child take to bed, what are the film rating and the bedding material, and who is the singer?

ENTREE #4

Name something in five letters that a child may take to bed. 

Move the first four letters ten places later in the alphabet, but leave the fifth letter as it is. 

You’ll get the first name of a famous singer.

Now name a four-letter word meaning sleepy. Double the third letter and add an X. Move these six letters 11 places earlier in the alphabet and rearrange to get the singer’s last name.

What may a child take to bed, what is the word meaning sleepy, and who is the singer?

ENTREE #5

Name something in two words of six and four letters that may keep you awake at night. 

Move the first five letters of the first word six places later in the alphabet and replace the last letter with the postal abbreviation of a Western US state. Rearrange to spell a musical genre that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s.

Now remove the last letter of the second word and move the remaining letters 14 places later in the alphabet to get a second musical genre.

What may keep you awake, and what are the musical genres?

ENTREE #6

Name a five-letter word for something that may keep you awake. 

Move the letters 13 places later in the alphabet to name a fictional institution that was featured in a 1978 film that also featured a fictional musical group. What may keep you awake, and what are the institution and musical group?

ENTREE #7

Name, in alphabetical order, two things you might find on a girl’s bed, ten letters total. Move the third and fourth letters ten places earlier in the alphabet. 

Move the sixth letter four places later in the alphabet. The result will name a famous deceased singer. 

What are the two things and who is the singer?

Note: Entrees #8 and #9 are were created by our friend Plantsmith, author of Puzzleria!s “Garden of Puzzley Delights.” 

ENTREE #8

Take a two-word experience you don’t want to have at night. 

Drop one instance of a letter that is repeated. 

Mix it up to get a two-word description of a particular singer during a 1991 concert in Utah. 

What are the two-word experience and two-word description of the singer?

ENTREE #9

Name something, in two words, that you don’t want to have at night. Replace the first and final letters with the letter “s”. 

Mix up the result to describe a country singer during her March 1991 concert tour. What are these two words? Who is the singer. What are the two words that described her?

Note: Entree #10 is a “self-riff” created by our friend Ecoarchitect, author of “Econfusions” on Puzzleria! and also author of this week’s National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle.”

ENTREE #10

Name a well-known fictional character from the 19th Century.  

Remove 5th and 6th letters from the first name, then add a letter to the front.  The result
will be the first and last name of a well-known singer from the 20th Century.  

Who are the character and the singer?  

Added bonus: Both hailed from the same state.

Dessert Menu

Maritime Dessert:

Anagramable Lifesavers

Anagram the 13 letters of a life-saving device to spell a two-word simulated emergency exercise that promotes maritime safety. 

What are this pair of potential life-savers?

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.

Landing some seafood, Skydiveboy-style; Appliance mixed up a mess o’ Applesauce! “Well I’ve been to the Desert playInn’ games with two names...” Beauty & the Bug? A couplet for couples; Souped-up car, kinda fishy!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Well I’ve been to the Desert playInn’ games with two names...”

Pool or Billiards? Hoops or Basketball? Clue or Cluedo? Words with Friends or Scrabble? Monopoly or Rich Uncle? Quidditch or Quadball? Table Tennis or Ping-Pong? (...Sorry, Will Shortz!); Soccer or Football? Tenpins or Bowling? Bingo or Housey-Housey
Squash or Zucchini? (Oops, ignore that last one... zucchini is no game, just a gourd!)

The following trio of clues (which is actually a sextet of clues) point to one game that goes by two different names (the clues for the name of the second game appear in purple within parentheses):

~ the first word of a lullaby (or, just the first half of it) 

~ something made from mixed-up mash (or, just mixed-up “mash”) 

~ what Bernice does to her hair... (no BS!) 

What are the two names of this one game?

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

Landing some seafood, Skydiveboy-Style!

Landing some seafood

🐟🦀Think of a seafood in seven letters. 

Remove the initial letter and say the remainder out loud to phonetically name a land food.

What are these foods?

MENU

Ubiquitous Ambiguous Hors d’Oeuvre:

Beauty and the Bug?

Take a U.S. State Postal abbreviation followed by a ubiquitous abbreviation that contains more than just two letters.

The result is a word that is a beauty... or a bug!

 What is this “ambiguous beauty-or-bug” result?

Hint: The second abbreviation is embedded in the middle of a major U.S. city that is home to a vibrant street motor-racing scene.

Blissful Slice:

A couplet for couples

Name a pair of blissful things that peaceful creatures do:

One is like a kiss, the other’s sung by two who woo.

Do as the couplet suggests. 

Name the two blissful things.

Riffing Off Shortz And Streit Entrees:

Appliance mixed up a mess o’ Applesauce!

Will Shortz’s February 15th Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Tom Streit, of Crozet, Virginia, reads:

 A man said to a friend: “I’m thinking of a 9-letter word that contains my name, Ian (“I-A-N”), embedded somewhere inside it. 

If you replace my 3-letter name with your 4-letter name, you’ll get a familiar word in 10 letters.” What are the two words, and what is the name of Ian’s friend?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Streit Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Take the last word in the title of an Alfred Hitchcock-directed movie and the only word in a second such Hitchcock movie, both from the 1950s. 

Also take the second word of a 4-word 1970s movie with the director as its leading man. 

Change the last letter of this second word with the only letter in the alphabet that rhymes with it.

Rearrange these combined 17 letters to spell the first name, surname and home state of a puzzle-maker.

What are these three movie title words and the name of the puzzlemaker?

Note: Appetizers #2 through #7 are the handiwork of our friend and riffmaster-general, Nodd.

ENTREE #2

An 8-letter word contains actor-director Ron Howard’s first name somewhere inside it. If you replace his name with the 3-letter first name of another famous actor, you’ll get a different 8-letter word. 

What are the two words, and who is the other actor?

ENTREE #3 

A 9-letter word contains actress Ari Graynor’s first name somewhere inside it. 

If you replace her name with the 4-letter first name of another famous actress, you’ll get a 10-letter word. 

What are the two words, and who is the other actress?

ENTREE #4

An 8-letter word contains actress Mena Suvari’s first name somewhere inside it. 

If you replace her name with the 4-letter first name of a famous fictional character, you'll get another 8-letter word. 

What are the two words, and who is the character?

ENTREE #5

A 7-letter word contains political commentator Ann Coulter’s first name somewhere inside it. 

If you replace her name with the 4-letter first name of another famous commentator, now deceased, you’ll get an 8-letter word. 

What are the two words, and what is the name of the other commentator?

ENTREE #6

A 9-letter word contains actor Tim Allen’s first name somewhere inside it. If you replace his name with the 5-letter first name of another famous actor, you’ll get an 11-letter word. 

What are the two words, and what is the name of the other actor?

ENTREE #7

A 13-letter word contains past singer-songwriter Reg Presley’s first name somewhere inside it. 

If you replace his name with the 3-letter first
name of another famous past singer, youll get a another 13-letter word. 

What are the two words, and who is the second singer?

ENTREE #8

A plural 6-letter word for certain birds contains the first name of a Tarzan-portrayer (not surnamed Weissmuller) somewhere inside it. 

If you replace this first name with the 3-letter first name of an actor who appeared on “Seinfeld” you’ll get a different plural 6-letter word that pertains to people named Hunt, Mirren and Thomas. 

What are the two words, and who are the two actors?

Dessert Menu

Fishtailing Dessert:

Souped-up car, Kinda fishy!

Name two words that mean to speed away from someplace in a souped-up car, motorcycle, van or other vehicle.

Move the first letter into the space between the words to form a word for a kind of fish.

What are these three words?

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.

Donning padded pants one pin at a time, Shaggy Belafontone!, Currency of the Century; Service with a Simile: “As you like it” or “Like you like it!” Tank & Kat at the “Cordial Teahouse” A “Fall Night” foreshadows looming winter; “Appliance? Apple Pliers?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Tank & Kat at the “Cordial Teahouse”

Most hungry patrons of the “Cordial Teahouse” truck stop cordially greet their waitress, Kat, with a 5-word anagram of that 15-letter name.

A creative trucker named Tank, however, slyly substitutes a 6-letter synonym in place of the third word in that five-word greeting. 

That six-letter synonym, along with the last word in the greeting, can be rearranged to spell an 11-letter appetizer that Kat then serves Tank the Trucker. 

What are the 5-word  greeting, 6-letter synonym and appetizer?

Appetizer Menu

Posed-By-A-Pal-Of-Puzzleria! Appetizer:

Donning padded pants one pin at a time; Currency of the Century; “Shaggy Belafontone!”

Note: These posers are the product of the creative gray matter of a longtime contributor to, and “friend of, Puzzleria!”  

Currency of the Century!

1. 💸Take an early 21st Century year, four digits, which is an important milestone in the development of a significant form of currency. Change a number in that year to a letter, and add a space in the year, so that the result appears to name two other forms of currency. 

What is the year? What are the two other forms of currency? How was that solution reached? 

Donning padded pants, one pin at a time! 

2. 🩳Name a football action, defensive in nature, carried out while a team is on offense, but nominally executed by neither the offense nor the defense. Replace a vowel in the name of that action by two other different vowels to name something a team would like to have, particularly in a close game. 

What is the action, and what would a team like to have? 

“Shaggy Belafontone!”

3. 🐶Take the first two words of a sporting event that took place mostly in the first 48 hours of January 2026. 

Remove five consecutive internal letters and a
punctuation mark. 

What remains, when read aloud, sounds like a signature lyric from a still popular traditional folk song recorded for release 70 years ago. 

What is the sporting event and the lyric? 

MENU

Confounding Compound Hors d’Oeuvre:

A “Fall Night” foreshadows looming winter

Name a compound word associated with a certain time of day. 

Switch the two syllables and add a space to get two words associated with a sport. What are these three words?

“Oh Barbarian!” Slice:

Appliance? Apple Pliers?

Rearrange the letters in certain kitchen appliances to spell a two-word term
(consisting of a proper name and a plural noun) that describes David, Jay, Jimmy,
Jimmy, Stephen, Seth, Jon and John.

What are these appliances and the two-word term?

Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Entrees:

Pie Plates Negate Pilates!

Will Shortz’s February 8th Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Michael Schwartz of Florence, Oregon, reads:

Name something in seven letters that’s designed to help you lose weight. Insert the letters EP somewhere inside this word to get a two-word phrase naming things that are likely to add weight. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

~ A grand (4-letter-word) homer, 

~ a rookie-phenom-(4-letter-word)-kid, and 

~ a (7-letter-word) that is the “cathode” to the pitcher, who is the “anode.”

Rearrange the 15 letters in those three
missing words to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are the three words?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

Note: Entrees #2-through-#7 were composed and contributed by our friend Nodd, author of “Nodd ready for prime time” on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #2

Name something in 8 letters that is designed to help you lose weight. 

Replace one letter with the two letters “A” and “N” and rearrange the result to get something that is likely to add weight. What words are these?

ENTREE #3

Name something in 7 letters that some people do to lose weight. 

Insert an E somewhere inside this word to get
something that is likely to add weight. 

Then go back to the original word and replace one letter with the letters RO to get something else that is likely to add weight if you eat it a lot. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #4

Name something in 7 letters that some people do to lose weight. Insert an S somewhere and an L somewhere else to get a kind of eating that is likely to add weight if done often or with rich food. What words are these?

ENTREE #5

Name a two-word phrase that describes products designed to help you lose weight. 

Remove the last letter of each word and rearrange the remaining letters to spell a word

for something you probably should not do too much of if you want to lose weight. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #6

Name something in 7 letters that may help you lose weight. 

Remove the first letter and double what is now the first letter. 

Rearrange, inserting spaces as needed, to get a three-word phrase naming a method of food preparation that is unlikely to help you lose weight. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #7

Name something in 9 letters that's designed to help you lose weight. 

Remove two letters and rearrange to get some
things that are likely to add weight if you make a habit of eating a lot of them. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #8

Name a seven-letter word that’s may help you lose excess verbiage. Move the first letter into the third position to spell a new word, one that may help you lose excess avoirdupois. What are these two seven-letter words?

Hint: The first seven-letter word, properly applied, would eliminate all words like “avoirdupois” from your vocabulary and prose!

Dessert Menu

Just Serving Up A Just Dessert:

Service with a Simile: “As you like it” or “Like you like it!”

Those who serve drinks and those who  serve time have something in common?

What is it?

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.