PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED
Schpuzzle of the Week:
Poetry Portends Pending Sports
The following puzzle is doubly timely – in light of the Holiday Season and an upcoming presentation of an annual sporting event:
Two words in one line of early-19th-Century poetry correctly predicted the participants in the inaugural playing of a major annual sporting event, nearly 150 years before it was played!
Name this poem, poet, two prophetic words, and how and why they are prophetic.
Appetizer Menu
“Pour yourself a Merry Little EggNodd” Appetizer:
Bah! Humbug! Unfair Christmas Fare; Puzzling Christmas Film; Better Late Than Never; All About (New Year’s) Eve; Holiday
Poetry Corner, With Anna Gingerbread Graham CrackerBah! Humbug!
1. 🕷Think of a word associated with the time period in which Christmas and New Year’s Day fall.
This word sounds like a pejorative description
sometimes heard of the work of a filmmaker who made a film commonly associated with Christmas. What are the word and the description?
Unfair Christmas Fare2. 🍲Remove one letter from a food traditionally served at Christmastime in a European country.
The result will spell what would have happened to Christmas if a fictional character had had his way.
What is the food and what would have happened to Christmas?
Puzzling Christmas Film
3. 🎥Think of a word that often appears in word puzzles. Change the fourth letter to a different vowel, the fifth letter from a consonant to a vowel, and the sixth letter to a different consonant. The result is the name of a popular Christmas film.
What are the puzzle word and the Christmas film?
Better Late Than Never
4. ♭♯𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅱𝅘𝅥𝅲Think of the last name of a composer to whom the melody of a popular Christmas song is attributed.
Say it aloud, followed by a word for a kind of
uniform. The result will sound like something you might want to arrange for if you are late mailing out your Christmas presents.
Who is the composer, what is the uniform, and what might you arrange for?
All About (New Year’s) Eve
5. 🎊A famous actress made a film during the 1930s in which a pivotal scene takes place on New Year's Eve. Her first name, with the third letter doubled, can be rearranged to spell a word for someone you might hear shortly before New Year’s Eve. Her last name, with the second letter doubled, can be rearranged to spell the last name of someone historically associated with New Year’s Eve.
Who are the actress and the other two persons, and what is the film?
Holiday Poetry Corner, With Anna Gingerbread Graham Cracker6. 📖Fill in the blanks with four words that are
anagrams of one another.
May this _____ _____ to soothe your ear,
And _____ all from cares and fear.
If from this task it _____ at times,
It’s only to complete the rhymes.
MENU
What’s for Christmas Dinner Hors d’Oeuvre:
Singular! Plural! Synonymous!
Name a traditional Christmas dinner entree. The singular and plural forms of this entree do not rhyme with each other. But each does rhyme with one member of a pair of synonymous nouns (like, for example, how the singular and plural nouns “die” and “dice” rhyme respectively with the synonyms “tie” and “splice”).
Name these entrees and synonymous rhyming nouns.
Dice-Like-Ice-Twist-Lemon-Slice:
Gold-&-many-colored-mini-boulders
Name two ingredients of a holiday drink, one of them optional. Rearrange their combined letters to spell two
valuable things – one of them gold, the other that comes in a variety of colors.
What are these ingredients and valuable things?
Riffing Off Shortz Entrees:
Volumes of bound pages bounded by “plages”
Will Shortz’s December 21st Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
I was at a library. On the shelf was a volume whose spine said “OUT TO SEA.” When I opened the volume, I found the contents has nothing to do with sailing or the sea in any sense. It wasn’t a book of fiction either. What was in the volume?Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Entrees read:
ENTREE #1
I was at a library. On the shelf was a volume whose spine said “OUT TO SEA.”
In my head, I transposed the S and E, moved the U to the very end, then removed all spaces (save the one in the middle), forming two first names. The name on the left was a punter; the name on the right was a hunter.
What are these first names? What is the surname of the punter? What is the name of the hunter’s brother?
ENTREE #2Creating all varieties of puzzles is just a “______ in the park” for ____ ______, a “masterful composer-of-posers and enigma-making ____.”
Rearrange the ten letters in the first and fourth
blanks to spell the two words in the second and third blanks. What are these four words?
Note: Entrees #3 through #8 are riffs composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is this week’s featured Appetizer.
ENTREE #3
I was looking for a book about a former Baltimore Bullets and New York Knicks shooting guard, known for his flashy moves,
who played from 1967 to 1980.I thought I had found one, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with basketball. What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #4I was looking for a book about large eco-friendly houses owned by wealthy people.
I thought I had found one, but when I opened
it, I found it had nothing to do with houses. What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #5I was looking for a book about playing roulette, checkers, and card games. I thought I had found one, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with gaming.
What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #6I was looking for a book about a spaceship featured in a 1979 movie.
I thought I had found one, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with space travel. What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #7I was looking for a book about Columbidae forelimbs.
I thought I had found one, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with ornithology.
What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #8I was looking for a book about the character played by James Stewart in the John Ford Western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
I thought I had found one, but when I opened
it, I found it had nothing to do with the movie or the Old West.
What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #9
I was at the library looking for a book about what Shakespeare claimed that a soothsayer had said to warn Julius Caesar about a possible assassination attempt on his life... or
a book about an Irish saint associated with snakes and shamrocks.I thought I had found one, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing at all to do with Shakespeare, Caesar or Irish saints!
What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #10I was at a library looking for a biographical book about a powerful, long-serving U.S. Senator from Washington State known as a “Cold War liberal” who championed strong national defense, anti-communism, civil rights, and environmental protection, while also pioneering energy and natural resource legislation during his 43-year career in Congress.
I thought I had found such a book, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with this Washington senator. What’s worse, the book was a fictional account of members of the media who dragged the good names of the likes of this senator through the mud!
What was the book and who wrote it?
Who is the senator?
ENTREE #11
I was at a library looking for an instructional book about a classic two-player abstract strategy board game played on an 8x8 grid with 64 double-sided discs (black on one side, white on the other), where players place discs to “sandwich” and flip their opponent’s pieces, aiming to have the most discs of their color on the board when it’s full or no more moves are possible.I thought I had found such a book, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with this strategic game! Indeed, I found instead the account of a military commander who is manipulated by an underling into suspecting his wife of infidelity.
What is this board game?
What was the book and who wrote it?
ENTREE #12I was at the library looking for an instructional booklet on how to cook up, in my own home kitchen, a reasonable facsimile of my favorite candy bar... that one that is famous for its fluffy whipped nougat dipped in creamy milk chocolate.
I thought I had found such a book, but when I brought it home and opened it, I found it had nothing at all to do with this heavenly confection!
What is the title of this library book?
ENTREE #13
I was at a library looking for a book about one of my favorite musical entertainers.I thought I had found one such book, but when I opened it, I found it had nothing to do with this singer-songwriter-guitarist.
What was the book title and who wrote it?
Who is this entertainer?
Note: There are two possible correct answers to this Entree #13 Riff – both are three-word titles. One title, with words beginning with T, C and P, is a book penned by a female author. The other title, with words beginning with T, L and P, is a book penned by a male author.
Dessert Menu
Triple-Dog-Dare Dessert:
“...Coming Down In Three-Part Harmony”
Name a two-word musical group followed by the first name of one of its members.Remove something, in two words, that a female quintet claimed to have.
The result is the name of a guitarist who influenced the musical group.
What is the group and one of its members?
Who is the influencer?
What did the quintet claim to have?
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.
Combine their last names and the result will be the first and last name of someone who has won an Oscar and two Emmys, who also reached a certain milestone in 2025. 
