Creative Cryptic Chrysopoeia; Proactivity and the proper noun; Alphabetical ordinality ranking; Sweetly docile vs. creepily hostile; Composition and misconception; “The same heart beats in every human breast”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Proactivity and the proper noun

Name a two-word strategy that promotes health proactively. 

Replace the first syllable of the first word with a common preposition, forming a new word. 

Replace the second word with a proper noun that rhymes with it; this proper noun is the surname of a famous American that the new word describes. 

What are this strategy, new word and famous American?

 Appetizer Menu

Heavenly 37th “Crypt-Cross” Appetizer:

Creative Cryptic Chrysopoeia

Welcome to Patrick J. Berry’s cryptic crossword puzzle, the 37th one that we have presented on Puzzleria!

Two clues in this, his latest masterpiece sum up the artistry of Patrick’s cryptic oeuvre on our blog, and our appreciation of it:

3 DOWN: Difficulties of transporting gold in big trucks(6)

Well, Patrick (also known by his screen name “cranberry”) experiences no difficulties whatsoever in “mining” cryptic crossword gold from his creative cranium, and delivering it to us by the “Cyber-Brinks Truckload!”  

24 ACROSS: Kept going—and I mean it!(10)

Yes, Patrick... we all want you to “keep going!” Keep on creating your “classic crypticological gold” – alchemist-like! – and delivering it to us... and we mean it!

You can access Patrick’s previous 36 cryptic crosswords by opening the links below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 

For those who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled the following list of basic cryptic crossword puzzle instructions:

Regarding the Across and Down clues and their format:

The number, or numbers, that appear in parentheses at the end of each clue indicate how many letters are in the answer.

Multiple numbers in parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in multiple-word answers. 

For example, (9) simply indicates a nine-letter word like “cranberry,” (7,9) indicates a seven-letter and nine-letter answer like “cryptic crossword,” and (4-9) indicates a four-letter and nine-letter hyphenated answer like “head-scratcher.”

For further insight about how to decipher these numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s “Cryptic Crossword Tutorial” in this link to his
November 2017 cryptic crossword. 

That Tutorial appears below the grid that contains the answers in that edition of Puzzleria! 

Taking that tutorial will help train you to tackle Patrick’s playfully-wordy-thirty-seventh-heavenly-elliptic-cryptic-crossword!

Enjoy! 

ACROSS

1. See 7 Down

8. Leading man’s trouble coming back after catcall(4)

9. Where one may cross line, getting rejected—ultimate kick in the teeth, perhaps(10)

10. Kitty takes second job(4)

11. Was bragging about day being full(7)

13. Tops—those of a bigger size, we hear(6)

15. Some minor dictator from Scandinavia?(6)

16. Comic strip was bad back then, came off a little exuberant(6,3,6)

17. Train, then get uniform for team(6)

19. Tools a new surgeon shouldn’t use
working?(6)

20. Sorted out with first freeze’s thaw(7)

21. Last mention of old routine?(4)

24. Kept going—and I mean it!(10)

25. Dizzy Dean’s girl?(4)

26. Bloody hard playing in imperfect group using song by 13 Down(4,4,2)

DOWN

1. Save up to get a musical instrument(4)

2. Pickpocket has lost grip(4)

3. Difficulties of transporting gold in big trucks(6)

4. Right-wing website fellow possessing bit of whimsy, rather clever—getting his start, managed to keep name unknown(4,4,7)

5. To show or not to show?(6)

6. Mediocre actor needs repackaging(6-4)

7. 13 Down’s top act I’d see—works at it, surprisingly!(3,7,2,8)

11. Demanded decimal should be moved(7)

12. Give a little to old university having trouble with enrollment, initially(4,3)

13. Singer, one indeed changed by wealth(5,5)

14. Handy, or that is necessary primarily, in place of worship(10)

18. Recalled article about boy brought up near California(6)

19. While I pass around a certain type of cheese(6)

22. Close with some Indians in Oklahoma(4)

23. The first place and the last place in one’s house?(4)

MENU

Rank-And-File Hors d’Oeuvre:

Alphabetical ordinality ranking

Spell out a letter of the alphabet. Remove one of its letters. 

The result sounds like the spelled-out letter’s ordinal rank in the alphabet. What are this letter and its rank in the alphabet?

Piano Playtime Slice:

Composition and misconception

Remove the first and fifth letters from the title of a well-known piano composition, leaving a verb and small creatures. 

Although these creatures don’t move by means of this verb, some people nevertheless harbor the false notion that they do. 

What is composition title? 

What are the small creatures and the verb?

Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Slices:

“The same heart beats in every human breast”

Will Shortz’s November 17th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Michael Schwartz of Florence, Oregon, reads:

Think of a classic American author whose first and last names are each one syllable. 

The last name, when said aloud, sounds like part of the body. 

Insert the letters “A” and “S” into the first name and you have the location of this body part. Who is the author?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Think of a classic British author whose first and last names are each one syllable. The last name is also a four-footed creature that, when the initial letter is lowercased, looks like a word for one metrical foot – a word that has all lowercase letters except for its first letter. 

Now take the first and last names of an American puzzle-maker. 

The third, fourth, fifth, thirteenth, seventh, sixth and eighth letters spell the first name of the British author. 

The seventh, fifth and first letters spell a word that is a homophone of the four-footed creature. The sixth, seventh, second and fifth letters spell a nickname of this British author.

Who is this British author, nickname, and American puzzle-maker?

What is the homophone of the four-footed creature?

What is the word for one metrical foot?

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the handiworkmanlike wordplay of our friend Nodd, Riffmeister. 

ENTREE #2

Take the first and last names of a famous American author. Add an “I.” Rearrange the result to spell two body parts and an unpleasant bodily sensation that might result if either part makes forceful contact with a hard surface. 

Who is the author, what are the two body parts, and what is the unpleasant sensation?

ENTREE #3

Take the last name of a famous American author. Remove the fifth and sixth letters. Rearrange the result to spell a body part and an affliction that may cause the body part to become sore and inflamed. Who is the author, and what are the body part and the affliction?

EXTRA CREDIT: Add two “E”s to the two letters you removed to spell a second body part. What is it?

ENTREE #4

Take the first and last names of a famous American author. Add an “S.” 

Rearrange the result to spell a two-word phrase describing a condition that may cause a loosening of the skin. Who is the author and what is the two-word phrase?

ENTREE #5

Take the first and last names of an American
poet. Double  the last letter of the last name. Rearrange the result to spell two body parts that are located near one another, and an abbreviated term for someone who attends to people’s body parts. Who is the poet, and what are the two body parts and the abbreviated term?

ENTREE #6

The last name of a British author of the past sounds like a bodily affliction. 

Who is the author and what is the affliction? 

ENTREE #7

Take the last name of the pen name of a famous author.  Remove the fourth letter. 

Add a four-letter word for a deep black color.
Rearrange all of the letters to spell a body part. 

Who is the author, and what are the color and the body part?

ENTREE #8

Using a pencil, write down in six uppercase letters the name of a fist-sized interior organ of the human body. 

Erase the third letter and rewrite it in lowercase. 

Erase the fourth and sixth letters. Rewrite the sixth letter in the space vacated by the fourth letter. 

The result looks like a word for a second body part that abuts the first body part via a vertebra.

What are these two body parts?

ENTREE #9

Think of an American actor who portrayed Teddy Roosevelt in film. This actor also starred in a 1960s sitcom that had the same title as a 1970s hit song by Sly and the Family Stone. 

Rearrange the letters of this actor’s first name to name a body part.

Replace the second letter of his surname with an “n” and rearrange the result to name what people do with this body part.

Who is this actor? 

What is the body part and what do people do with it? 

Dessert Menu

Stephen Kingly Dessert:

Sweetly docile vs. creepily hostile

Spoonerize the two syllables of a word in a Stephen King title. 

The result is a kind of sweetly docile mammal and a kind of  creepy hostile bird. 

What are this title, mammal and bird?

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 hintsabout the puzzles. We serve up at least one fresh puzzle every Friday.

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.

Chad do-si-does with Victoria? Terms of uncommon distinction; Last names of past thespians; Carpentry tools create creature; “Utah Salt” yields “hula tats”? Pans-Eared Red Snapper

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Terms of uncommon distinction

Take a two-word term that, for an average human male adult, is between five feet and six feet, or thereabouts, above the ground.

The number of letters in the two words differs. The words do, however, share a more uncommon distinction in common.  

What is this two-word term?

What uncommon distinction do these two words share in common?

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

Chad do-si-does with Victoria?

1. Think of the name of a country in two syllables. 

Reverse the order of those two syllables and you will name the capital city of another country. 

What are the country and the city?

Indy Spectator vs. State Patrol officer

2. What is the difference between a fan at the Indy 500 and a state patrol officer observing the interstate highway?

MENU

Stage And Screen Hors d’Oeuvre:

Last names of past thespians

Take a past thespian’s surname. 

Move the first two letters to the end, so that they replace the last letter. 

The result is a second past thespian’s surname. 

Who are these thespians?

Woodworking Wordplay Slice:

Carpentry tools create creature

Name two woodworking tools that share a similar function. They also share identical letter-pairs (like SAW and AWL share an AW, for example). 

Remove one of the letter-pairs and rearrange the result to spell an animal. (For example, if you remove one of the “AW” letter-pairs from “SAW” and “AWL,” the letters that remain are “SAWL,” which can be rearranged to spell not an animal but the words “SLAW” or “LAWS.”)

What are these tools and animal?

Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:

Pans-Eared Red Snapper

Will Shortz’s November 10th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts, reads:

Using only the letters of PANDERS, and repeating them as often as desired, spell a certain entrée at a seafood restaurant (3-6 3 7).

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Using only the letters in a nine-letter word that means “the making or adapting of something
to suit a particular purpose,” spell the hometown of a prolific puzzler-maker. What is this nine-letter word? What is the hometown and who is the puzzle-maker?

Note: Entree #2 was created by our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” regularly vivifies Puzzleria!s pages.

ENTREE #2

Using only the letters in the word PANDERS, describe some unusual performers in two words of seven letters each.

Note: Entrees #3 though #8 were penned by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” regularly graces Puzzleria!s pages.

ENTREE #3

Think of a two-word dish featured at seafood restaurants. 

The first word, and the second half of the second word, in order, spell another seafood dish. The first half of the second word is an ingredient in a non-seafood dish often featured at upscale restaurants. 

What are the two seafood dishes and the non-seafood ingredient?

ENTREE #4

Think of a two-word dish featured at seafood restaurants. Rearrange its letters to spell something most people enjoy when dining out, and something most people don’t enjoy seeing when dining out.

ENTREE #5

Think of a seafood dish that is available in two main varieties. 

The last three letters of this dish, read backward and followed by the first four letters in order, spell a two-word phrase that describes one variety of the dish. 

What are the dish, the two-word phrase, and the variety of the dish that the two-word phrase describes?

ENTREE #6

Think of a two-word dish featured at seafood restaurants. 

The last five letters of the first word, in order, are the first five letters of the second word. 

The last four letters of the second word, in
order, spell what patrons of restaurants do after they arrive. 

What is the seafood dish, and what do patrons do?

ENTREE #7

Think of a dish featured at seafood restaurants. The name of the dish comes from a European language. 

Rearrange the letters of the dish to spell another seafood dish and a musical term associated with the same European country. What are the two seafood dishes and the musical term?

ENTREE #8

Think of a two-word dish featured at seafood restaurants. Remove a personal pronoun. 

Rearrange the rest of the letters to spell a one-word seafood dish and something that would be left after eating either dish. 

What are the two dishes and what would be left after eating them?  

ENTREE #9

Using only the letters of WINDSTORM, and repeating them as often as desired, spell what is on display (in words of 5, 5, 6 and 3 letters) in the previous six Entrees, #3 through #8.

What are these words? 

ENTREE #10

Using only the letters of POLYCENTRISM – using some once,  and repeating others over and over as often as necessary – spell a headline (in words of 5, 4, 7 and 6 letters) 
 that might have appeared in the Rolling Stone or Crawdaddy magazine in late 1968 or early 1969.

What is this headline? 

Hint: “...over and over...”

ENTREE #11

Using only the letters of ARTICLE, and repeating them as often as desired, spell a beverage and a dessert that customers might
order off a menu or list that prices items separately, in words of 6, 6, 1, 2 and 5 letters.

What are these menu items and the kind of menu that prices items separately?

ENTREE #12

Using only the letters of DROUGHTS, and repeating them as often as desired, spell:

* a two-word term (in 4 and 4 letters) for periods of the day when the most people commute to and from work, causing heavy traffic congestion on roads and public transportation;

* a slang term for large, heavy motorcycles, especially Harley Davidsons (4 letters); and

* a term for automobiles rebuilt or modified for high speed and fast acceleration (3 and 4 letters).

What are these three terms?

ENTREE #13

Using only the letters of UMPIRES, and repeating them as often as desired, spell three mathematical terms in 3, 5 and 5 letters.

What are these three terms?

ENTREE #14

Take a seven-letter synonym of “sickness” or “malady.” 

Using only those seven letters, and repeating them as often as desired, spell: 

* synonyms of “consume”(3 letters) and “consumed”(3 letters); 

* a synonym of  “breakfast,” “lunch” or “supper”(4); 

* a “hot drink”(3), a “cold drink”(4), an “alcoholic drink”(3); 

* a “candy”(4), a “fruit”(4);

* a word for “pot roast, steak, hamburger or turkey”(4); and

* a  “kind of bean”(4).

What is this seven-letter synonym of “sickness” or “malady?”

What are the ten other words?

Dessert Menu

Lake & State Dessert:

“Utah Salt” yields “hula tats”?

A well-known three-word phrase contains two names. 

Anagram this phrase to spell a name of a lake and a state that lake is in. 

What are this phrase, lake and state?

Hint: Take two names associated with the three-word phrase. One is an anagram of an empire. The other is an anagram of an island.

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 Friday.

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.

Compatible Partners, Starry eyes, From Inner to “O”uter, Dumping the “Dupes,” Crawl, Fly, Swim; Above and Below the Belly Button; Did Tesla “zap” TB in his Test lab? “Bored with board games?” Natural-food antepenultimatum; Organic anatomy lesson

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Above and Below the Belly Button

Take a word for things worn above the navel. 

Delete the three-letter end of this word.

The result will be things worn below the navel.

What are these things that are worn above the navel and below the navel?

Appetizer Menu

Turtle Torte-itude Appetizer:

Compatible Partners, Starry eyes, From Inner to “O”uter, Dumping the “Dupes,” Crawl Fly Swim; 

Compatible Partners

1. 👫Name a well-known entertainment duo of the past. 

Remove the final letter from one of the first names and anagram the remaining letters of that first name. 

You’ll have an item that was often seen with the other partner. 

That partner’s last name describes something that the item does. 

Who are the partners? 

What item is associated with one of them? 

What does that item do? 

Starry eyes

2. ✪👁👁Name a nine-letter word associated with stars or eyes. 

Within this word is another word associated with stars or eyes. 

Remove those letters from the nine-letter word, and anagram what remains to produce another word associated with stars or eyes. 

What are the three words? 

From Inner to “O”uter

3. 📥📤Think of a 13-letter noun describing some professional people who deal with internal matters. 

Add an “O” and rearrange the letters. 

You’ll have a noun describing a professional person who deals with external matters. 

What are these two nouns? 

Dumping the “Dupes”

4. 🎜🎝Name a famous lyricist. 

Consider the different letters of the first and last names; each letter appears exactly twice.

Remove each duplicate and rearrange the
remaining letters to produce a common word. 

There are two possible choices, including a word that is relevant to one of the lyricist’s works. 

Who is the lyricist?

What are the two words?

Why is one relevant to one of the lyricist’s works? 

Crawl, Fly, Swim

5. 🐍🐦🐟Name a famous novel in two words and a total of twelve letters. 

Rearrange its letters to produce three animals:
a type of snake, a type of bird, and a type of fish. 

What is the novel? 

What are the animals?

MENU

Red Sky In Morning Hors d’Oeuvre

“Bored with board games?”

Name a board game. Place before it, spelled in reverse order, what the boards it is played on resemble. The result is a warning you might see online.

Name the game, what the boards resemble, and the online warning?

Cinematic Slice:

Organic anatomy lesson

Take the surname of a person associated with cinema that can also be a common noun when written in lower case. 

This lower case noun may form within an organ that is adjacent to a second organ that appears in this person’s first name.

Riffing Off Shortz And Maxwell-Smith Entrees:

Did Tesla “zap” TB in his Test lab? 

Will Shortz’s November 3rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mark Maxwell-Smith, a writer and producer known for the game shows Bumper Stumpers (1987), Majority Rules (1996) and Talk About (1988). It reads: 

Name a place where experiments are done (two words). Drop the last letter of each word. The remaining letters, reading from left to right, will name someone famously associated with experiments. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Maxwell-Smith Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker in three words, the second and third divided by a hyphen. 

Drop the first letter of each word. Insert a space someplace in the second word. 

The remaining letters, reading from left to right, will name: 

~ a vehicle constructed during the last days of antediluvian times,

~ What the builders of this vehicle, in two words, likely had to do to build it, and 

~ a homophone of a word that many people might use to describe the account of this construction.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the vehicle, what its builders likely had to do to build it, and the word that might be used to describe the construction account? 

Hint: The homophone of the word that might be used to describe the construction account is a Scottish variant of the word “might.”

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the handiwork (and “handiwordplay)” of Nodd, “riffmaster extraordiaire.”

ENTREE #2

Name a four-word place in the Eastern U.S. where experiments are done. 

Insert the first letter of the third word between its last two letters. The last four letters of the word will now spell the last name of someone famously associated with experiments in physics. 

What is the place, and who is the person?

ENTREE #3

Name a place in the Western U.S. where experiments were done beginning in the 1940s. Take the first three and last three letters of the state where the place is located. 

Switch the middle two letters to spell the last name of someone famously associated with significant scientific experiments. 

What is the place, and who is the person?

ENTREE #4

Name someone famously associated with culinary experiments done at  a well-known three-word place in the Eastern U.S. Take five letters from this person’s first name and the
first letter from their last name. Rearrange these letters and add an “N” at the end to spell the third word in the place name. Who is the person, and what is the place?

ENTREE #5

Name a place in the world where numerous experiments have been done. 

The first two letters of the name, plus a copy of the second letter, spell the first name of someone  who made a historic visit to this place in the 1990s. 

What is the place, and who is the person?

ENTREE #6

Name a three-word place in which numerous experiments were done in the 1980s. 

The first and last letters of the name are the initials of someone famously associated with the place. What is the place, and who is the person?

ENTREE #7

Name a two-word place where a famous experiment was done in the 1950s. Take five letters from the name and add an “R” at the end to spell the last name of the scientist who was the most responsible for the experiment. 

The first letter of the place is also the first letter of the scientist’s first name. The last nine letters of the place can be arranged to spell a well-known three-word idiom meaning to cause harm to someone or something. The experiment in this case did both, to a significant degree. 

What is the place, who is the scientist, and what is the idiom?

ENTREE #8

Think of a single serving of a hyphenated-brand-name pastry that you can plop into your microwave or toaster. 

Drop the first letter of each word and replace the hyphen with a space. The result is a term for the abstract images pictured here.

What is this hyphenated-brand-name pastry?

What is the term for the abstract images pictured here?

ENTREE #9

Name a superhero in two syllables. Drop the last letter of each syllable. The remaining letters, reading from left to right, spell the nickname of a university.

There is also a two-word nickname for this university’s athletic teams that consists of the first word in a 1968 hit song title and a word that might follow either:

~ an anagram of a word for “a framed sheet of glass in a window or door,” or 

~ the first name of a Washington Irving character.

Who is this superhero?

What is the university’s nickname for its athletic teams?

What is the hit song title?

What is the framed sheet of glass?

Who is the Washington Irving character?

What is the two-word nickname?

ENTREE #10

Write a caption for the image pictured here, in two words of four and three letters. Place the second word in front of the first word. Remove last letter of each, along with the space between them. The result is the surname of a world leader. 

What is your caption?

What is the surname of the world leader?  

Dessert Menu

Three-Course Dessert:

Natural-food antepenultimatum

Spell a natural food backward. 

Move the new first letter into either the penultimate or the antepenultimate position. 

Replace the last two letters of this result with the letter that immediately precedes them in the alphabet. 

The result is a second natural food. 

Now take the natural food we started with, but don’t spell it backward.

Replace  the first two letters with a the letter that immediately precedes them in the alphabet, then move that letter to the end.

The result is a third natural food.

What are these three natural foods?

Hint: Five of the six different letters that appear in the three answers to this puzzle form a consecutive alphabetical string, like U V W X Y, for example.

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 Friday.

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.