Brewing beers by shifting gears? Human “Anat-toe-knee” ramifies like a tree; Researching for Needles (pop. 5,000) in Cal-i-forn-eye-haystacks; In pursuit of a pair of POTI

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED

Welcome to our August 4th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

Our featured puzzle this week is a clever challenge created by a friend of mine, Nikki Rajala of Rockville, Minnesota. Her creation is an Appetizer titled “Brewing beers by shifting gears?” It involves automobiles and beers: two things that ought never be mixed on the road but can safely be served up in a puzzle parlor such as Puzzleria!

I got to know Nikki when we worked together in a newsroom in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She is a wonderful writer and published author who is on the verge of publishing Book 2 in a series of historical novels about a young French-Canadian voyageur named Andre.  

Merci beaucoup, Nikki, for sharing a slice of your creativity with Puzzleria! (And Kiitos paleon too! ...which Nikki informs me is the Finnish equivalent of the same sentiment).

Also on this week’s menus are seven other chewy challenges:

One Slice not of POT PIE but of POTI,

Five Riffing/Ripping-Off Shortz Slices about Palindrhometowns, U.S.A, and

One Dessert that doubles as an anatomy lesson.

So hop into your auto, take an inventory of its parts, shift into Drive, drive down to Puzzleria!, bite into a slice of POTI, shift some cities and states into reverse and, for Dessert, take an inventory of your body parts.

And, as always, enjoy the ride.

Appetizer Menu

Bland Royalty Appetizer:

Brewing beers by shifting gears?

What brand name for a particular part of an automobile, if you change its last two letters, creates the brand name of a beer?

MENU 

Lists Of Leaders Slice:

In pursuit of a pair of POTI

Consider the following two lists of significant leaders who served during the Twentieth and/or Twenty-first centuries:

List A:

Nelson Mandela, Elizabeth Domitien, Benigno Aquino, Thomas Sankara, Martin Luther King, Narendra Modi, David Cameron

List B:

Charles de Gaulle, Olof Palme, John Kennedy, Agatha Barbara, Salote Tubou, Bill Clinton

All leaders on List A share something in common. 

All leaders on List B share something in common.

What President Of England 2.0... oops, I mean, what President Of The United States belongs on List A? Explain why. 

Two POTUSes (or POTI, if you prefer a more elegant plural form) appear on List B. Who is the third President Of The United States that belongs on List B? Explain why.

Now explain why the President Of The United States who belongs on List A shares the “something in common” with the other leaders on the list in an extra-special “twofold” way.
Finally, which leader on  List A shares the “something in common” with others on that list in an extra-special “threefold” way. Explain.
Hint: One might argue that both Kim Jong-un and his father Kim Jong-il belong on List A and not List B. But one might also argue that they both belong on List B and not List A.

Ripping Off Shortz And Krozel Slices:

Researching for Needles (pop. 5,000) in Cal-i-forn-eye-haystacks

Will Shortz’s July 30th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Joe Krozel, reads: 

This week’s challenge... might require a little research. There is a city somewhere in the United States with a population of about 24,000 people. Change the last letter in the name of its state. If you now read the city plus the altered name of its state together, the result is a palindrome – that is, it reads backward and foreward the same. What city is it?

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

This puzzle might require a little research. There is an island somewhere in the United States with a population of about 1,600 people. Change the last letter in the name of a state that has something in common with this island that no other state has. If you now read the island plus the altered name of its state together, the result is a palindrome – that is, it reads backward and foreward the same. What island is it? What state shares something in common with the island?

TWO:

This puzzle might require a little research. There is a town somewhere in the United States with a population of about 150 people. Remove the last two letters in its name. If you now read the altered name of the city plus the  name of its state together, the result is a palindrome – that is, it reads backward and foreward the same. What city is it?

Hint: The palindrome is a king’s name sandwiched between half a laugh and a sigh of delight.

THREE:

This puzzle might require a little research. There is a city somewhere in the United States with a population of about four times that of Zion, Illinoiz (sic). Take the state this city is in and move its last letter to the beginning of the city, then discard the remaining letters of the state. If you now read all but the final four letters of this result backward, the result will be a different state. The final four letters of the result, read foreward, appear at the end of several U.S. cities, usually those situated near bodies of water. Althought the city you are to find is indeed situated near a body of water, the four letters at the end of its name are misleading. The city is eponymous. Its entire name is the surname of a pioneer settler in the region. What city is it?

FOUR:

This puzzle might require a little research. There is a city somewhere in the United States with a population of about 24,000 people. Take three consecutive letters from the name of its state. Insert them, in order, somewhere within the name of the city. (where you insert them will depend on which three consecutive letters you choose.)

If you now read the altered name of this city, the result is a number that would seem to be much larger that the population of the city. What city is it?

FIVE:

This puzzle might require a little research. Remove two letters from a state somewhere in the United States. If you now read the altered name of the state backward, the result is the surname of a well known actor or actress. What STATE is it?

Dessert Menu

Tinkering With Frankenstein Dessert:

Human “Anat-toe-knee” ramifies like a tree

Name a word for a human body part. Strings of consecutive letters beginning with the word’s third, fourth and fifth letters spell three other body parts. 

➔Six letters from the word can be rearranged to form plural body parts. 

➔Three letters can be rearranged to form other plural body parts.

➔Five letters can be rearranged to name something that protects body parts.

➔Five letters can be rearranged to name a word meaning physique.

➔Four letters can be rearranged to name a word meaning a body’s shape.

➔Four letters can be rearranged to name a particular collection of hundreds of similar very thin body parts.

What are these ten words related to the human body? 

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.

USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow? Drivers and divers in the car pool; Chimps go bananas, gnus go gaga; A tweet about a twit; Art Ferns? Lawyer-up like the dickens;

SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED  

Welcome to our July 28th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

Among our seven puzzle offerings this week is a creative challenge, similar to the ones Will Shortz periodically purveys on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday program.

This Puzzleria! “mini creative challenge” was sparked by a recent correspondence between LegoLambda and frequent Puzzleria! contributor Mark Scott of Seattle (aka by his screen name “skydiveboy”). You will find the instructions and rules of our challenge under the Appetizer menu. It is titled “USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow?” 
Thanks to Mark for that creative spark.

Note: The closest P! has come previously to offering a creative challenge was this puzzle involving “Acrofinitions” (a concept that might just be original to this blog). 

Also on this week’s menus are:

2. One dickens of an Appetizer,

3. One eco-friendly Slice,

4. One Reincemeat pie Dessert,

5. One car and driver and pool and diver Dessert, and 

6&7. Two Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz “only-two-consonants” caption puzzles.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your creative engines.... An’, Engeoy!

Appetizer Menu

Crime And Punishment Appetizer:

Lawyer-up like the dickens

Name a well known attorney who no longer practices law. The attorney’s last name is a noun which is also the name of a  criminal court that makes an appearance in a Charles Dickens novel. 
The remaining letters of the name by which the attorney is known spell out a verb for what criminals often try to do before ultimately being brought to justice.

Who is this attorney?

One-Week Creative Challenge Appetizer:

USA TODAY, Usurpia tomorrow?

In recent correspondence with master puzzle creator and Puzzleria! contributor Mark Scott of Seattle (also known as skydiveboy, his screen name) Mark mentioned to me that one of his pet peeves about the “United States of America” is that we have never really named it. The United States (U.S.) is not a name – it is more like a description. 

We call ourselves not “United Staters” but “Americans.” But, Mark added, all people in the entire Western Hemisphere – comprising North America, South America and Central America –call themselves “Americans”... which they are!

There are actually three “united states of America,” Mark continued. But the other two – Mexico and Brazil – had the creative vision and decency to actually name themselves.

That “skydiveboy/legolambda” conversation inspired the creation of a creative opportunity for Puzzlerians! 

And, that leads us to this “Mini-Creative Challenge”:

Provide a “real” name for the country we call the “United States.” Be clever, be whimsical, be “punny,” be outrageous and/or be historically correct. In any case, be creative. 

Generate as many answers as you wish. My best effort thus far is “Usurpia.”

Unlike Will Shortz’s two-week creative challenge, you will have only one week, not two, to come up with answers to this Puzzleria! creative challenge.

So, start pondering!

MENU 

Eco-Friendly Informal Artistic Slice:
Art Ferns?

Name a millennium-old art form in which the works of art are usually green. Interchange its third and fourth letters, then interchange its fifth and sixth letters to form the name of a nation. 

Note: The nation is also known by a longer and more formal name.

What are this art form and country?

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

Chimps go bananas, gnus go gaga

Will Shortz’s July 23th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads: 

What common three-word expression – 14 letters in all – has only N and G as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels? 

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

What uncommon seven-word expression – 27 letters in all – has only M and T as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels?

The expression might serve as a lengthy caption that I might have written for the image pictured here. Focus on the man at the left in the Los Angeles Dodgers uniform who seems to be peckish for leather. I played with him when I was a Dodger (sorry, that is fake news!). My caption (written in the past tense) would be in the form:

(preposition, 2 letters) (noun, 8) (verb, 3) (article, 1) (noun, 4) (preposition, 2) “(noun, 7)”

__ ________ ___ _ ____ __ “_______”
Hint: The initial letters of the first six words in the caption are: m, t, a, a, m and a. The seventh word is a made-up word that is a homophone of a word that appears in an image elsewhere in this week’s blog. 

TWO:

What uncommon twelve-word expression – 66 letters in all – has only N and S as consonants, and otherwise is all vowels?

The expression might serve as a lengthy editorial caption – not for the image pictured here but for a photo that might have been taken soon afterward. The image pictured is a photograph that might have been taken by one of the photographers in a phalanx of Shia and non-Shia Syrian journalists toiling side-by-side in a photo-journalists’ pool. The photo taken soon afterward would have had to have been taken by one of the non-Shia journalists, not a Shia journalist. The caption (written in the present tense) would be in the form: 

(adjective, 6 letters), (adjective, 7) (proper noun used as an adjective, 4) (plural noun, 9) (verb, 6) (plural proper noun, 6), (plural hyphenated proper noun, 9) –  (verb, 3) (adjective, 2) (plural noun, 6), (preposition, 2) (plural proper noun, 6)

______ _______ ____ _________ ______ ______, ___-______ – ___ __ ______, __ ______

Hint: The initial letters of the twelve words in the caption are: i, a, I, a, a, S, n, u, n, n, o, and S. The sixth and twelfth words are the same. The ninth word is the same as the eleventh word spelled backward.

Dessert Menu

Reincemeat Pie Dessert:

A tweet about a twit

On August 28, 2017, by-then-former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus will make a Tweet that will include these three word-snippets:

“...a nut’s comic anarchy...”

“...a month’s inaccuracy...”

“...Tony, an anarchic scum...”

Rearrange the letters in any one of the three snippets to reveal the first and last names of the person to whom Priebus refers.

Who is this person?

Gator Tail Dessert:

Drivers and divers in the car pool

Name something drivers might do, in two words, while being tailgated or cut off by other drivers, or while idling. 
Interchanging these words and pronouncing the result sounds like the name of a place popular with divers.

What might drivers do? Where might divers go?

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.

Belles lettres jackets; Be afraud, be very afraud! Tales of skewed cities; 12-ounces of cure is worth a pounding head of prevention

P! SLICES: OVER (765 + 43) SERVED

  

Welcome to our July 21st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! 

We offer 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Riffing/Ripping-Off-Shortz puzzles this week, all inspired by the fine NPR puzzle submitted to Will Shortz by Dave from Eugene, Onegin... I mean, Dave from Eugene Oregon! 

Also on this week’s menus are:

6. A fraudulent Appetizer.

7. A Spahnie Slice, and

8. A dusty Dessert with literary pretensions.

So, stay sane. Pray for rain if you are drought-stricken. 

But, as always, please enjoy our puzzles.

Appetizer Menu

Sullying A Profession Of Nobility Appetizer:

Be afraud, be very afraud!

Name an archaic word for a person who engages in fraud – in particular, a person who is a fraudulent practicioner of a certain noble profession. The word contains only two letters that are the same. 

Replace those identical letters with two different identical letters to form a word for a substance such a fraudulent professional might have occasion to use (or perhaps misuse) in his or her practice. What are these words?

Hint: a shortened portion of the archaic word survives still in modern English dictionaries.

MENU 

Bucs And Braves And Ballad Of Bubby Bibber  Slice:

12-ounces of cure is worth a pounding head of prevention

Friday, July 20, 1951, Braves Field in Boston: 

Bubby Bibber, a big backer of the Boston Braves along with his poker-playing chums are four of the 5,767 spectators in attendance to watch their brave and beloved Beantowners compete versus the National League’s perennial doormat, the plucky but pathetic Pittsburgh Pirates.

The game lasts a bit longer than two-and-a-half hours, during which Bubby and his buddies keep the concessions vendors hopping as they wash down dime foot-long Nathan’s frankfurters with a folding-money’s-worth of nickel Haffenreffer Lagers and Pickwick Ales.
The Braves win the game 11-6. Future Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn (“Spahn and Sain, and pray for rain”) is the winning pitcher, and drives in two runs himself. Bubby and his buddies celebrate by playing poker at Bubby’s place – dealing, bidding, holding, calling, picking up the pots and scarfing down even more cans of Pickwick’s and foot-long franks till they call it a night at midnight.

Bubby awakes the following morning with a pounding-hammer-headache and hangover. 

Now, most people in such a condition subscribe to “the CAAASSH cure,” an acronym for “Coffee, Aspirin And Alka-Seltzer Stop Hangovers.” But not Bubby. His remedy involves other ingestibles. So, he wobbles over to his Kelvinator fridge and picks out a pair of Pickwick’s left over from the previous evening’s pokering and, because he feels a bit peckish, also grabs a Nathan’s frankfurter.

The cure to which Bubby subscribes contains six words of 4, 2, 3, 3, 9 and 10 letters. The  six-letter acronym for his remedy, while not spelling out CAAASSH, does however spell out something Bubby and his buddies bought with “caaassh” the previous evening. 

What is Bubby Bibber’s remedy?

Epilogue: Bubby’s remedy/cure actually works! As a result, he and his buddies are four of the 3,263 spectators attending Saturday’s follow-up game versus the Pirates. The Braves win by the same score, 11-6. Vern Bickford is the winning pitcher. Pirate Vern Law, who was the losing pitcher in Friday’s game, is also the losing pitcher in Saturday’s game. 
Talk about your deja-vern! There oughta be a Law!

Hint: A form of the 9-letter word in Bubby’s cure is a lyric in a civil rights protest song.  The 10-letter word is a noun associated with pummeled boxers and patients who are being wheeled on gurneys into recovery rooms.

Ripping Off Shortz And Dave From Eugene Oregon Slices:

Tales of skewed cities

Will Shortz’s July 16th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Dave of Eugene, Oregon, reads: 

Name a U.S. city and its state – 12 letters altogether. Change two letters in the state’s name. The result will be the two-word title of a classic novel. What is it?

Puzzleria’s! Ripping Off Shortz And Dave From Eugene Oregon Slices read:

ONE:

Name a U.S. city and its state – 13 letters altogether. Change the first letter of the city’s name and move it between the city’s fouth and fifth letters. The result will be the two-word title of a classic American novel. What is it?

Hint: The city’s population is roughly 20,000.

Hint: 

The name of the U.S. city would be an excellent choice as a name for a possible merger between two particular adjacent midwestern cities. 

TWO:

Name two U.S. states followed by a city belonging to each state. Interchange the cities, removing two letters from the end of one of them. The result will be the first and last name of an American author, and a state followed by a food item that is very popular in that state. Change the first letter of the food item to get another city in the state where the food item is popular.

Hint: The states are on same side of the Mississippi River.

What are these states and cities?

THREE:

Name a city in a U.S. coastal state. Name another nearby coastal state. Insert the other state’s postal abbreviation (in lowercase letters) consecutively somewhere inside the city’s name. Divide the result into two words that might describe a herd of creatures found in the vicinity of a coastal state on the other side of the country. 

What are this city and two coastal states? What is the state on the opposite coast and the two-word description of the creatures?

FOUR:

Name a city in a western state whose capital and four-letter abbreviation are names of towns in a midwestern state. Write down the western city and midwestern state – 10 letters altogether. Change two letters in the state’s name. The result (if you add the word “The” at the beginning) will be the three-word title of a classic novel. What is it?

Hint: The western city is famous as the headquarters of a nationally known company brand. 

FIVE:

Name a U.S. city in a western state and the first word (after the word “The”) in the nickname of a southern state. The result is a type of cheese. 

What are the cheese, city and nickname?

Dessert Menu:

No Musty Dusty Pages Dessert:

Belles lettres jackets 

The title of a fictional work contains two words. The second word can be formed by rearranging the first three letters of the author’s full name as it appears on the dust jacket.

Remove from the first word of the title all letters that are the same as any of the remaining four letters of the author’s name, leaving six letters and an apostrophe. Remove the apostrophe. Those six remaining letters, taken in order, spell out the middle name of a poet whose first, middle and last names appear together on dust jackets of poetic volumes.

The last names of the author and poet begin with the same letter.

What is this fictional work and who is its author? Who is the poet?

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.