Thursday, February 19, 2026

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, youll 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, youll 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, youll 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, you
ll 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.

Thursday, February 12, 2026

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.

Thursday, February 5, 2026

'Cast of Four' & 'Past Troubadour' 3 integers, 2 singers, 1 puzzinger! “Hall-of-Flamer?” “Do it behoove deer to don Reeboks?” “Punningnishment? Nay!... Punyshment? Yay!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

3 integers, 2 singers, 1 puzzinger!

Anagram the combined letters in three consecutive integers to spell two singers. ... (That is, two “singers,” not two “signers!” The center-frames in the illustration above are nothing more than a red herring!)

What are these consecutive integers and two singers?

Some singers/things-that-sing: choir, cantor, canary, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson...

Appetizer Menu

Fortuitous-Yet-Torturitous  Appetizer Menu:

Cast of Four & Past Troubadour  

An actress & three “tressless” actors

1. 🎥Think of a famous actress of the past. Remove the first two letters of her first name and the first and last letters of her last name. Rearrange what remains to spell the first name of her most famous role. 

Now think of the actor who starred with her. Take a first name that rhymes with his character’s first name, along with the actor’s last name. You’ll have another famous actor of the past. 

That particular actor was the first to play a well-known literary character on screen. Rearrange the first and last names of the character to get the first and last names of an actor who played on a long-running classic TV show. The actor has the same first name as the actress’s costar. 

Except the female character, all of these characters had essentially the same job title. The actress’s character was married to someone with that job title. 

Who are the actress and the three actors? 

What were their roles? 

What is the job title? 

Singer, song & “slangy snack”

2. 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅰 Name a famous singer and musician of the past. Now think of a hit by the artist that you’d most likely hear at a certain time of year. That song mentions several different foods and drinks. One of the foods mentioned is a slang term for a certain kind of food.

The singer went by a nickname. Remove the last three letters of the singer’s first name at birth. You’ll have the first name of a restauranteur who specialized in the food listed in the song and named his restaurant after himself. 

Now think of another hit by the artist, one that you’re likely to hear about six months away from the first song. Remove the last letter from the first word in the lyrics of the song. You’ll have the last name of someone associated with the food and the restaurant. 

Who is the singer? 

What are the two songs? 

What is the food (and the slang term)? 

What is the restaurant? 

Who is associated with the food and restaurant?

MENU

Puny-Not-Punny Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Punningnishment? Nay! Punyshment? Yay!”

Take a word for “a very small or puny person or thing.”

Replace the second letter of that word with a “c” to get a word that means “to make too small, short, or scanty.”

Replace the second and third letters of that second word with a “k” to get a word that means “to use less of something than is necessary.”

Once more, take the original word for “a very
small or puny person or thing.” This time, remove the first half of this word to get a word for a “small demon, mischievous child or urchin.”

Finally, restore the first half of that original word. But then replace the last two-thirds of that word with “a place to skate.” The result is a word that means “to become smaller.”

What are these five words associated with “decrease, depletion and diminishment?”

Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Entrees:

“Do it behoove deer to don Reeboks?”

Will Shortz’s February 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Alan Hochbaum of Duluth, Georgia, reads:

Think of two hooved animals. 

Take all the letters of one of them and the last three letters of the other, mix them together, and you’ll get the first and last names of a famous actress. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a “man of the soil” who, for a time, became a “man of the maritime,” and who caught many a freshwater cyprinid fish to feed those aboard his craft, including (among a menagerie of many) a critter and its mate (named “Dolly”) that had been invited along for the voyage. 

Dolly and her hubby were the kind of beasts that were homophones of a synonym of holy men who were priests (at least according to the Book of Ogden).

Rearrange the combined letters in:

~ the name of the man of the soil,

~ the name of the cyprinid fish, and

~ a name for the priest that sounds like a beast...

to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are these three names and the name of the puzzle-maker?

(Note: Entree #2 was composed by our friend Tortitude, whose “...Slow but Sure Puzzles” are featured on this week’s Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #2

Think of two hooved animals. Take the shorter name, which is only three letters long, and change the first letter to the letter that precedes it in the alphabet.

Rearrange the letters to produce the first
name, last name, and middle initial of a character from a 1980s sitcom.

Who is the character? What are the animals?

(Note: Entrees #3-through #8 were composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” puzzles are featured regularly on Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #3

Think of a hooved animal and a non-hooved mammal. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

(Hint: This actress is known for playing a TV character whose last name is the first name of another famous actress.) 

What are the animals and who is the actress?

ENTREE #4

Think of a hooved animal and a non-hooved mammal. 

Change one letter from a D to an R. Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress of the past. 

What are the animals and who is the actress?

ENTREE #5

Think of a noise made by a hooved animal and a word for parts of this animal’s body. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the noise and body parts, and who is the actress?

ENTREE #6

Think of two categories of hooved animals. Change a C to a K. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the animal categories, and who is the actress?

ENTREE #7

Think of a hooved animal and the last name of a famous actress. 

Remove an I (an “eye,” not an “ell”).
Rearrange the remaining letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What is the animal and who are the actresses?

ENTREE #8

Think of a hooved animal and a bird (the bird name is two words; use just the second word). Change an E to an A. Rearrange the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the animal and bird, and who is the actress?

Note: Entree #9 was composed by our friend Plantsmith. His “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is regularly, and proudly, featured on Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #9

Take the name of a (from time-to-time) popular video celebrity. 

Mix up the letters to get a hooved animal and an animal that might eat that hooved animal. 

The two left-over letters, in order, spell a sound this predatory creature might try to make (if it could) in an attempt to keep fellow predators from tipping off its prey! 

Who is the celebrity?

What are the hooved-prey animal, predatory creature and sound it might try to make?

ENTREE #10

Think of a pair of hooved animals, the second one boasting 9 letters and a hyphen. Take all the letters of the first animal in order, followed by the 5th 4th, 2nd, 1st, 1st (again), 8th and 9th letters of the second animal. What you’ll get is the first and last names of a famous living actress. 

Who is it?

What are the two hooved animals?

ENTREE #11

Think of a pair of hooved animals, in 7 and 12 letters, in that order. Number the letters 1 through 19. 

The letters corresponding to 1, 7, 12, 3, 1 & 7 spell the first name of a storied college football player, and the letters corresponding to 1, 9, 10 & 11 spell his surname.

The letters corresponding to 15, 8 & 7 and to 1, 9, 10, 11, 7 & 3 spell the nickname given to the player by his coach.

What are this pair of hooved critters?

Who is the football player?

What is his nickname?

ENTREE #12

Name a hooved (or “hoofed,” if your prefer) animal that is also “fanged.”

Place the name of the animal to the left of the word “fanged.” 

Number these letters from left-to-right, beginning with 1 and ending with a two-digit number.

The letters corresponding to: 12, 9, 2, 15 & 8

and to: 14, 11, 16, 11, 12, 8, 2, 15 & 17

and to: 7 & 13

and to: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5

spell the title, name and home base of a holy man who was the patron of brewers, printers and theologians.

What is this hooved and fanged animal?

Who is this holy man?

Slice of Dessert Menu

Crème Brûlée Flambé Dessert?:

“Hall-of-Flamer?”

The surname of a (baseball) Hall-of-Famer is a compound word. Its first part, a noun, is the result of its second part, a verb.

Move the first letter of the this athlete’s first name to the beginning of his surname. Divide this modified surname into two equal parts. 

What remains of the first name sounds like an adjective describing the new letter-longer word that follows it. The third word, if you place an “s” at its end, spells what the second word does (in a metaphorical sense).

Who is this Hall-of-Famer?

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.