“Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex” Two words... for the same bird; “Order in the Countdown Court!” Just a couple-a words in a couplet “A Nuclear (Family) Threat?” “It just don’t seem to add up... or subtract down!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Just a couple o’ words in a couplet

Breezes toss and tickle rippling prints and tints,

Making taut the “sails” of clothes-pinned billowy chintz.

Within that couplet thou shalt find a pair

Of words that both a rare distinction share.

So (“unpoetically” now!) what unusual property do a couple of words in that couplet share?

Appetizer Menu

Delightfully Puzzley “Discophilia” Appetizer:

“Order in the Countdown Court!”

The list below  – if we base it on certain songtitles associated with the artists – is out of order. 

Can you put them in a more logical and “numerically fitting” order?  

On what did you base that order?  

What song titles did you use? 

Which song title was “doubly relevant”?

    1. David Bowie 

    2. The White Stripes 

    3. Bobby Bland 

    4. Three Dog Night 

    5. Freddie King 

    6. Sonny Boy Williams 

    7. Nina Simone 

    8. Dusty Springfield

    9. B.B. King  

    10. Merle Travis 

MENU

Unclear & Conflicted Hors d’Oeuvre:

A Nuclear (Family) Threat?

Name an informal term for a member of the nuclear family. 

Remove one of its letters to name a potentially life-threatening response triggered by the human immune system...

(Well, that’s kind of a downer... but consider this: If you replace a letter of that life-threatening response with a P, the result will be things that are enjoyable and refreshing!

What are this informal family-member term, life-threatening response, and things that are enjoyable and refreshing?

Birds-Of-Wordprey Slice:

Two words... for the same bird

Switch the initial sounds of two words:

~ some two-syllable colorful tropical birds and...

~ some one-syllable “Down-Under” mountain-dwelling endangered species of those same birds. 

The result sounds like two foods that are often served together as a side dish. The colors of these foods share four common letters. 

What are these two birds and two foods?

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:

“Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex”

Will Shortz’s June 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Rearrange the letters of “NECESSARY MISPRINT” to spell a familiar phrase.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name an American idiomatic phrase that means "being in an enviable, highly advantageous, or superior position," in five words of 2, 2, 3, 7 and 4 letters. Rearrange this 28 letters to spell three words associated with the Bible:

~ a synonym of Eden,

~ a unit of Ark measurement, and

~ the ordinal number of the commandment that proscribes coveting.

What are this phrase and three biblical words?

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

ENTREE #2

You can rearrange the letters in a two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell a two-word description of the 1942 film “Kings Row.” What are the item and the description?

ENTREE #3

You can rearrange the letters in another two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell a two-word description of what happened when the cold, hungry grasshopper implored the ants to let him into their shelter in the 1934 Disney film “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” 

What are the item and the description?

ENTREE #4

You can rearrange the letters in a third two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell, in two words, what the producers of “Jeopardy!” undertook after Alex Trebek passed away. 

What is the item and what did the producers undertake?

ENTREE #5

Name a two-word phrase for something businesses are typically trying to achieve.

Rearrange its letters to get a two-word phrase for something that might get you arrested. 

What are the two phrases?

ENTREE #6

Rearrange the letters of a two-word subject currently in the news to get a phrase describing, in two words and one initialism, what the U.S. Air Force would be doing if they
were charged with evacuating the customers of a U.S. espionage organization from a foreign country. 

What are the subject and the phrase?

ENTREE #7

Rearrange the letters in the first and last names of a controversial business magnate to get the last names of a controversial baseball
manager of the past and a controversial current head of state. 

Who are these three persons?

ENTREE #8

If you rearrange the letters of TUTU and BERET (see image) you can spell three words: (1) a wager, (2) the name of a boy king, and (3) a synonym of the verb “regret.” 

Or, you can spell a whirlpool site, dimpled-sphere-prop and divot.

Or, You can spell a montana city and a synonym of “factual and accurate.”

Or... you can spell a familiar phrase.

What is this phrase? 

Dessert Menu

“Just sum screwy math... what’s the difference?” Dessert:

“It just don’t seem to add up... or subtract down!”

Explain how the six equations below might possibly be true:

1. Five minus two equals four.

2. Six minus one equals nine.

3. Seven minus four equals five.

4. Eight minus four equals one.

5. Eleven minus five equals five.

6. Twelve minus four equals fifty-five.

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.

Around the World in 8.0 Daze PART II; “Be not Led Astray!”; “Stylish Chic Hip Duds, Dude!”; “Do macho-chaps wear chaps?”; Pia“No Man Is An Island...”; Herculean Circular Logic;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Herculean Circular Logic

Note: Use logical rational reasoning to solve this puzzle: 

Print, in clockwise order along the perimeter of a circle, an eight-letter word containing seven different letters. It is a word associated with logical, rational reasoning. 

~ Rearrange a number of consecutive letters along this perimeter to spell the name of a country. 

~ A number of other consecutive letters, in
order clockwise along the perimeter, spell many a waterway in this county.

~ A number of consecutive counterclockwise letters spell an urban area. 

What are these four words? What specific city do the three shorter words suggest?

Appetizer Menu

“Ecosmopolitan” Appetizer:

Around the World in 8.0 Daze, Part II

Note: We featured Ecoarchitect’s “Around the World in 8.0 Daze Part I” in our March 19, 2026 edition of Puzzleria! 

That “World Tour” continues with this, his second installment, Part II:

“On this isle I’ll not be...”

1. 🏝 Name a well-known island. Replace the fourth letter with the letter two places later in the alphabet, and the resulting word is what you don’t want to be while visiting. 

What is the place and what don’t you want to be?

“Sex-change operation was reversed?”

2. 🌎Take a personal pronoun and add two related nouns, each three letters. 

Change the last letter of one of the nouns, and rearrange the words to come up with a well-known city in the US. 

What are the three words, and what is the city? 

A City Divided

3. 🏙The name of a well-known US city, can be divided into two words that are synonyms.

What is the city?

Ninety-six, South Carolina?

4. 🌆Name a well-known geographic feature in the world. 

The name of a well-known US city is a specific example of that feature. What is the feature, and what is the city?

Alps becomes “El Paso?”

5. 🏞Take the name of a European geographic feature in one syllable. 

Move the first letter to the end and the result will be a common word with three syllables. 

What is the feature and what is the word? 

“‘Doggod’ Bygone Deities!”

6. 🐕Reverse the name of a geographic location. 

The result will be a god of the past. 

What is the location and what is the god’s name?

Move a letter back, go back in time

7. ♔Move the middle letter of a country two places later in the alphabet and phonetically

the result will be the name of an ancient kingdom. 

What is the country and what is the kingdom?

Deleware, hawaii, new mexico, West virginia?

8. 🗽Delaware, Hawaii, New Mexico, and West Virginia all have something in common. 

What is it, and what three states could be
added to the list?

MENU

Art Studio Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Be not Led Astray!”

Take the title of a 21st-Century creation by a painter whose surname, if you delete one letter, is a sport.

The second syllable of the title is an anagram
of an adjective that describes the painting.

The first five letters of the title word are an anagram of a general term for the contents of that title word. 

The first three letters of the title word spell a specific noun for the contents of the title word.

What is the title of this creation?

Who is the painter? What is the sport?

What adjective describes the painting? What is the general term for the contents of the title word? What is the specific noun for the contents?

Affected Pretentious Slice:

“Stylish Chic Hip Duds, Dude!”

Write down the letters of an adjective that means “affectedly or pretentiously elegant or refined in manners or tastes.”

Add a letter to the end. Subtract a letter from the beginning. The result is an apparel brand marketed as stylish, chic, hip and cool. 

What are this word and brand?

Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:

Pia“No Man Is An Island...”

Will Shortz’s May 31st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Reiss, a longtime writer and showrunner for “The Simpsons,” reads:

Name a classic song with a two-word title. Drop the first letter. Add an R after the new first letter. The result will be the names of two countries one after the other. What song is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take an eight-letter plural noun that sometimes describes certain characters on the television show “The Simpsons.” This same noun may also occasionally describe viewers of “The Simpsons.” 

The six different letters in that noun, if you use three of them twice, can be arranged to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What is this plural noun?

Who is the puzzlemaker?

Entrees #2 through #7 are riffs created by Nodd, author of Puzzleria!s “Nodd ready for prime time.”

ENTREE #2

Take the first and last words in the four-word title of a classic R & B song. (5,7). 

Drop the last letter of the first word and move the third letter of that word to the beginning.
The result will be the names of two countries. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #3 

Take the two-word title of a rap song by a now-deceased artist (5,6). 

Change the second letter of the first word to a copy of the fourth letter. 

Rearrange the letters of the first word, as modified, to name a country in the Middle East. Insert an “A” somewhere in the second word of the song title to name a country in Europe. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #4 

Name a two-word (6,5) 1997 Indie Rock song. Change the first vowel in the first word to the next vowel in the alphabet and add a state postal abbreviation to the front of the word to get the name of a country in Africa. 

Move the first letter of the second word two places back in the circular alphabet and double the last letter, then rearrange to get the name of a country in Central America. What are the song and the two countries? 

(Hint: The first word in the song title is a Taylor Swift song title, and the second word is the name of a book. The name of the band that released the 1997 song appears in the book.)

ENTREE #5 

Name a 1974 folk-rock song with a two-word title (7,5). Remove the first letter of the first word and change the last letter of the second word to the next letter in the alphabet. 

The result will be the official currency of one country and the name of another country. 

What are the song, the currency, and the country?

ENTREE #6 

Name a 1983 New Wave/pop rock song with a three-word title (4,2,4). 

Add a letter to the beginning of the third word.
The result will describe the head of state of a certain country. 

What are the song and the description?

ENTREE #7 

Take the two-word title of a 1997 song by a renowned artist (4,4). Replace the last letter of the first word with an acronym for a civil rights law which is also the first word in the title of a 1969 novel by an Oscar-nominated author. 

Add the acronym for a Midwestern U.S. state university to the beginning of the second word of the song title. The result will be the names of two countries. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #8

The two-word title of a classic song can be anagrammed to spell a heavenly food and a Hawaiian food.

Or, if you are a masochist, the first two and last two letters of this song title can be rearranged to spell an unpleasant bodily sensation, while the remaining interior letters can be rearranged to spell a possible reaction to this unpleasantness.

What is this song title?

What are the two foods?

What are the unpleasant bodily sensation, and the possible reaction to it?

Dessert Menu

Dead-lifting the Weight of the World Dessert:

“Do macho chaps wear chaps?”

Name a strong muscular chap whose first name begins with the first half of a Latin American ballroom dance.

This chap’s surname is the same as the name of a Greek deity who is also associated with strength.

Our chap, however, is no deity. Indeed, he is only _____ (an anagram of a biblical book). 

Replace the second letter of this anagram with a different vowel, followed by a hyphen. The result, and a synonym of “non-Greek,” both end with the same three letters. Delete those identical endings. The remaining letters, in order, spell a noun describing the deity. 

Name this dance, chap, anagram of the biblical book, hyphenated term, and noun.

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.

Digital Desperation; The Breakfast Club; Don’t Badger Me With Phonetic Puzzles!; Put Letter In Its Place; Ars Gratia Artis(ts); Poetry Corner, With Anna Graham; Constellatory Obscurity; Nutritious Nostrum?... Yum!; Justice site, joint, goose egg; Bargain-basement real estate; Loading Letters Onto a 22-Car Quatrain; Loading Letters Onto a 22-Car Quatrain;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Loading Letters Onto a 22-Car Quatrain

The Heavenward Paddler

“I am paddling toward heaven,

Earth beneath me, Farewell...

Lord I pray, ‘___ or ______

This ________’_  ____!’”

“Load” 22 letters of the alphabet into the four
blanks of the “partially unloaded” quatrain above.

Hint #1: The combined 9 missing letters in the third line can be rearranged to spell the homeland of a couple (4 letters) and a body feature possessed by neither (five letters).

Hint #2: In the fourth line, replace the apostrophe with a blank space, then remove the existing blank space to its right, forming two words of 8 and 5 letters. These words provide hints, both to the “heavenward paddler’s” identity and to the predicament that paddler is in.

Appetizer Menu

Nodd Gives Us Puzzles That Get Our Nod Appetizer:

Digital Desperation; The Breakfast Club; Don’t Badger Me With Phonetic Puzzles!; Put Letter In Its Place; Ars Gratia Artis(ts);
Poetry Corner, With Anna Graham

DIGITAL DESPERATION

1. 🎓English professor Anna Graham submitted this worrying note with her “Poetry Corner” featured this week. See if you can find a dozen related words she concealed in the text. Spacing and punctuation don’t count.

As a teacher, I fear artificial intelligence will revolutionize roles of humans in educating our
young people. I can’t condone students using AI to do homework, and it worries me to the point that I find myself and those I work with reevaluating if our schools should continue to use computers in teaching at all. If I’ve gained anything from the advent of AI, it’s a kind of sixth sense for when AI has been used to do assignments, even by students who are capable of doing the work on their own. I think the benefits of using computers outweigh the disadvantages, so I’ve given in, expecting some AI-cheating but hoping it won’t occur too often. I do feel eventually it will get to the point where homework will become meaningless.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

2.  🎭Actors and singers Dennis, Warren, Judith, Halle, Chuck, James, Kevin, and Jon got together for breakfast. 

What did they have to eat and drink? (Use your ears as well as your eyes.)

DON’T BADGER ME WITH PHONETIC PUZZLES!

3. ⛷🎿Which Wisconsin town’s name sounds (kinda) like something that could spoil your ski trip?

PUT LETTER IN ITS PLACE

4. ✈Add one letter (not necessarily the same one) to each of the words described below to get a new word. The added letter may come at the beginning or end of the word, or somewhere in the interior. The new words are related to one another in a way that will become apparent once you have found the words.

1. Kind of residential property, briefly

2. Winnow

3. One enamored

4. Looking intently

5. Pallid

6. Hot or cold drink

7. Courageous person

8. On fire

9. List of participants

10. Candy shape

11. Pre-industrial agricultural laborer

12. Abnormal bodily growth

13. Go left

14. Move slowly

15. Affectionate sound

What are the beginning words and the new words?

ARS GRATIA ARTIS(TS)

5. 🖌 Which artist’s name suggests he or she…

1. Might have been involved in law
enforcement?

2. Might have been mistaken for a pteranodon?

POETRY CORNER, WITH ANNA GRAHAM

6. 📖Fill in the four blanks with four words that are anagrams of one another.

(Setting: an outdoor amphitheater)

________ line the sylvan glade.

The actress, ________ of the stage,

Through several ________ plies her trade,

Her playful ________ do engage,

Admirers of every age. 

MENU

Heavenly Hors d’Oeuvre:

Constellatory Obscurity

Name a celestial body and the shadow it casts. Remove the space between these words.

The ten-letter result:

~ begins with a body part,

~ ends with something worn on the body, and 

~ contains consecutive interior letters that spell a second body part.

What are this celestial body and its shadow?

What are the two body parts and what is worn on the body?

Hudson Shores Realty Slice:

Bargain-basement real estate

On their online website, the Hudson Shores Realty Company in Dobb’s Ferry, New York routinely posted listings of properties with greatly reduced trade-in sales evaluations. 

During the end-of-the-year holiday season,
these real estate bargains were listed under the heading “Santa’s Presents”.

Identify three pairs of adjacent words in the first two paragraphs of this “Realty Slice” in which three different creatures are lurking.

Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices:

Justice site, joint, goose egg

Will Shortz May 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Jim Francis of Kirkland, Washington, reads:

Think of a famous female singer (8,4). The first syllable of her first name, the second syllable of her first name backward, and last name forward again are all verbs associated with human desire. Who is this singer?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the combined letters in the name of a puzzle-maker and  state where he lives. Rearrange them to spell:

~ a word preceded by “short,”

~ a word followed by “roll,” and

~ a word followed by “puzzle.”

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the three words?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are bonus riffs created by Nodd, author of this week’s “Nodd ready for prime time” feature, whch appears earlier in this edition of Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #2

Think of a famous female singer (5,5). One letter appears in both names; change it to an H in the last name. Rearrange the first name to get a slang adjective. Rearrange the (modified) last name to get a noun. 

The adjective and noun together could describe John Lennon’s feelings for Cynthia Powell and Yoko Ono. 

Who is the singer and what are the adjective and noun?

ENTREE #3 

Think of a famous female singer (7,6). Remove the first letter of her first name. Rearrange the remaining 12 letters to spell a verb associated with human desire (5 letters) and another verb describing what a suitor must sometimes do to win the object of his desire (7 letters). 

Who is the singer and what are the two verbs?

ENTREE #4

Think of a famous female singer (6,5). Remove a two-letter Midwestern state abbreviation. 

Rearrange the rest of the letters to spell a verb associated with unfulfilled human desire (4 letters) and another verb associated with fulfilled human desire (5 letters).

Who is the singer and what are the two verbs?

ENTREE #5

Think of a famous female singer. (4,4) Remove one instance of a letter that appears three times. Rearrange the rest of the letters to
spell a pair of synonyms that describe how people feel when newly in love (4,3). 

Who is the singer and what are the two synonyms?

ENTREE #6

Think of a famous female singer who was active from the 1960s to 1990 (5,5). Rearrange all 10 letters to spell a verb describing what people do when they feel an
instant connection (5 letters) and a noun describing what couples may sometimes experience when they have been together too long (5 letters). 

Who is the singer and what are the two verbs?

ENTREE #7

Think of a famous female singer (4,4) and duplicate the third letter of her first name. Rearrange the letters to spell a verb and a
noun describing what people may do at a club to attract attention from those they are attracted to (5, 4). 

Who is the singer and what are the verb and noun?

ENTREE #8

Think of a famous female singer with a total of 12 letters in her first name and surname. 

Letters 1 2 7 3 & 4 spell the non-English word for a body part associated with the word spelled by letters 11 12 13 & 14 (which is also word often shouted out during certain sporting competitions).

Letters 1 2 3 4 & 5 spell a playing surface. A piece of equipment spelled by 6 7 5 may be suspended above it, or be stretched across it. Letters 11 10 9 9 7 & 8 spell a verb oft witnessed on the playing surface, one that keeps balls airborne.

What are this singer, body part, shouted-out word, playing surface, piece of equipment, and the verb that keeps balls airborne?

Dessert Menu

“Pain” is a French Comfort FooDessert:

Nutritious Nostrum?... Yum! 

I picked berries... got pricked by a thorn,

Made a painful shout... mournful, forlorn.

“Are there comfort foods everyone eats?...

Like some stew stuffed with veggies and meats!”

Although the quatrain above is not a recipe
containing directions, its text is not entirely devoid of them. 

There is one per each line... each is slightly disguised.

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.