P! SLICES: OVER (pe)3 – (e4 + p3) SERVED
Welcome to our January 6th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! This is our first P! of 2017.
We offer ten puzzles on our menus this
week, including four that Rip Off Shortz.
Please enjoy all you can sol... all you care to solve.
Hors d’Oeuvre Menu
Cast Of Characters Hors d’Oeuvre:
Sitcomedy and tragedy
Take the first names of two characters
in the cast of a seminal television situation comedy. Put the two names
together and remove the consonant cluster (or blend) from the beginning of one
of the names.
If you say the result aloud it will
sound like a word connected to the death of one of the many celebrities to whom
the world bid adieu in 2016.
What are the first names of these two
characters, the sitcom, the celebrity, and the word connected to the celebrity’s
death?
Hint: The second, third and last letters
of one character’s first name are the same as the first, third and last letters
of the celebrity’s first name.
Morsel Menu
Sophs And Alums Morsel:
Videoversity
Name a sophomore
at a major U.S. university who appeared on national television recently, and
who will appear there again this coming week.
Name an alumnus
of that same university who very regularly appears on national television, and
who will very likely watch the sophomore’s appearance on television this coming
week.
The first names
of the alumnus and the sophomore rhyme. If you remove a four-letter word from
left and a five-letter word from the right of the alum’s surname, the letters
that remain are the soph’s first name.
Their surnames
are pronounced pretty much the same, and differ by just one letter. If you
remove the middle letter from the alum’s surname you are left with the
sophomore’s surname.
Who are these two
TV regulars from the same alma mater?
Hints: The
four-letter word that appears at the left side of the alum’s surname is a
synonym of a word that sounds somewhat like the three words filling the blanks
in the following sentence: “I don’t buy that breakfast cereal with the bunny on
the box anymore because my kids have become ____ _’ ____.”
The five-letter word that appears at the
right side of the alum’s surname is a homophone for a bird’s or mammal’s “natural
necklace.”
Appetizer Menu
Piece Of Crabcake Seafood Lagoon Appetizer:
A side you can spoon
What is the difference between Blind Faith
and a particular spoonable (but not-so-much forkable) side dish or appetizer
one might order at a seafood restaurant (such as Lego’s Seafood Lagoon)?
MENU
Tara, Oz And Shangri-La Slice:
Name a fictional place in two words. The
last five letters of its second word are the first five letters of a flowering
plant that might well help beautify the fictional place.
The remaining letters in the flowering
plant combined with the remaining letters in the second word of the fictional
place can be rearranged to form the name of the state situated immediately
below the state associated with the fictional place.
The flowering plant is eponymous –
that is, its etymology stems from a person’s name. The letters of the fictional
place’s first word can be rearranged to form a crop plant with an etymology
that stems from, well… from “stems.”
What is this fictional place? What is
the state situated below the fictional place’s state? What are the flowering
plant and crop plant?
Surnominal And Surgical Slice:
A Gray matter of anatomy
Recent medical research that made news this
past week was sufficiently significant so as to prompt editors to rename notes
in “Gray’s Anatomy.”
The research involved a newly reconsidered
part of the body vital to the digestive and cardiovascular systems – a part functioning to regulate blood flow and yet oft defer clots.
Rearrange the 18 letters in “rename notes
in Gray’s” to form a possible headline for the news story, in the form:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _
_ _
_ _ _ _ _
Add a V to the 16 letters of “yet oft
defer clots.” Rearrange these 17 letters to form the surnames of three
researchers – two from the late 1800s and one from the present – who are most responsible
for this medical breakthrough.
What is the headline and who are the three
researchers?
Ripping Off Shortz Slices:
Will Shortz’s January 1st NPR
Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Take the four-letter men’s names TODD,
OMAR, DAVE and DREW. If you write them one under the other, they’ll form a word
square, spelling TODD, OMAR, DAVE and DREW reading downward as well:
Take the four-letter men’s names TODD,
OMAR, DAVE and DREW. If you write them one under the other, they’ll form a word
square, spelling TODD, OMAR, DAVE and DREW reading downward as well:
Can you construct a word square
consisting of five five-letter men’s names?...
Puzzleria’s Riffing Off Shortz Slices
read:
ONE: Construct a 5-by-5 word square
grid. Fill its squares with words that satisfy the following five clues, in no
particular order:
Hint: Two of the words are anagrams of
one another.
1. AHA calls it “the pulse of life”
2. Prefix meaning threadlike
3. Brand of men’s cologne
4. Outrageously wicked; monstrous
(obsolete term)
5. Southern or Indian
Note: The following two puzzles are not “word
squares” but rather simple NxN crossword puzzles containing NxN letters with
N+N words to be entered into the grid. Again the clues are given in no
particular order.
TWO: Clues to a 4x4 crossword puzzle:
1. First word in a seasonal song title
2. Goads
3. Word preceding bill or ball
4. First name (short form) and
surname-initial of a president/general (this answer is an anagram of a synonym
of “unattractive”)
5. Second word in a seasonal song title
6. Church part that sounds like another
term for “mobile device programs”
7. Third word in a seasonal song title
8. Colors hair, or hair colors
THREE: Clues to a 5x5 crossword puzzle:
Hint: Two of the words are anagrams of one another.
1. Fish-trap in France
2. _____-nous
3.
4. Honda luxury brand
5. “Stations” where one can “fill up” a camel
6. Invasive grassy weed in Florida and other southeastern states
7. Voyageur vehicle
8. Briny deep
9. First word in an oxymoron describing
John Denver, Joan Rivers or one of those many guys that died just this past year
10. “Mars _____ Guitars!”
Note: The following challenge is an Nx(N+1)
crossword puzzle containing Nx(N+1) letters with N+(N+1) words to be entered
into the grid. Again the clues are given in no particular order. The number of
letters in the answer is given in parentheses.
FOUR: Clues to a 5x6 crossword puzzle:
1. Mary and Joseph inquired at the ___ __
see if there was any room there for them (5)
2. Message on a ubiquitous election day
sticker (6)
3. Golden throng (5)
4. Synonym for “fairy-like” that rhymes
with a word meaning “any edible mollusk or crustacean” (6)
5. Jesse Garon’s brother (5)
6. “I never saw a purple cow, I never hope
to ___ ___; (6)
7. Hearty sheep on certain Nordic isles (5)
8. Jazzy French horn player from Jersey (6)
9. Painter of “A Man Blowing Smoke at a
Drunken Woman” (5)
10. Rough shed that provides shelter (6)
11. Furlough, for example (5)
Dessert Menu
Country And Western Dessert:
Conrad Tweety-Birdie?
A bird and a color are mentioned in the
opening lines of a song composed and recorded by a country & western legend
circa the mid-20th-century. The legend’s last name is a man’s first
name if you remove one of its letters.
Another country & western legend
recorded a song a few years later that mentioned a bird of that color in its
opening lines. This legend’s last name is a man’s first name if you remove none
of its letters.
There are 11 sets of consecutive letter
pairs in the 12-letter name of the bird in the first legend’s song – three of
which are sets of double letters and four of which are U.S. state postal
abbreviations. (By contrast, there are 7 sets of consecutive letter pairs in
the 8-letter name of the bird in the second legend’s song – none of which are
sets of double letters and none of which are U.S. state postal abbreviations.)
Remove from the name of the 12-letter
bird one of its postal abbreviations and one letter from one of its three
double-letter sets, leaving nine letters. Wedge the middle three of these nine letters
between one of the remaining double-letter sets, forming a new 9-letter word
that is a synonym of the second legend’s first name.
Who are these two legends and two birds?
Every Friday 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.
