The incredible shrinking pirate; Rotten Wally Dahl’s Isle of Pearl; Banking Cinderella’s pumpkin off the glass slipper backboard; Carpe De(fense) ’em; Picking paradoxical digits; Human creatures’ features

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED  
Welcome to our April 6th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

On our menus this week are:
ONE  Buccaneering Appetizer;
ONE  Let’s-Get-Physical Appetizer;
ONE  Dozen-Clue-Challenge Slice;
ONE   Carppy Dessert;
ONE   Last-Second-Shot Dessert; and
THREE oddly even Riff Offs.

Think Good, It’s Friday. Pick and choose from our menus, then chew on the mystery.    

Appetizer Menu:

Piecemeal Plank-walking Appetizer:
The incredible shrinking pirate

1. A pirate beheaded becomes quite irate.
2. He’ll soon vanish if head-chopped once more, at this rate.
3. A befooting befits this bilge rat’s peg-legged fate,
4. Re-behead? Walking plankton, at best more shark bait.
5. A beheading at last yields “naught left to truncate”
6. Save some galley-stowed tea… steep-sea jettisoned freight.

Identify the six relevant words in the sestet above: two in the first line, one in the second, one in the third, one in the fourth, none in the fifth and one in the sixth.

Double Features Appetizer:
Human creatures’ features

Name physical features most people have, in two words. 
Insert the first word, minus its last letter, somewhere within the second word to name physical features all people have, in one word. What are these two physical features?

MENU

Solvation Slice: 
Rotten Wally Dahl’s Isle of Pearl

Solve the twelve clues below. What do all the answers have in common?
1. Stuff oneself
2. Mother of Pearl
3. _____ Dahl
4. Wally’s dinner companion
5. ____, Iowa
6. It’s morning in Marseilles
7. Kevin _____, (who has a World Series championship ring, and who hit a home run in his last professional at-bat with the same team he began his career with, 24 years earlier)
8. Peaked
9. Stereotypical dog name
10. Real name of a guy with a Rotten stage name
11. Isle where Alfred and Algernon hung out
12. Chip ’n’ Dale’s croonin’ cousin?


Riffing Off Shortz And Iverson Slices:
Picking paradoxical digits

Will Shortz’s April 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Eric Iverson, reads:
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than four and 2 more than 10.
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz and Iverson Slices read:
ONE:
Pick a number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than three, 2 more than four and 3 more than two.
Hint: This number is also 1 more than seven... Really! 
TWO: 
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than five, 2 more than six, and 3 more than zero. 
Pick an odd number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than seven, 2 more than nine, and 3 more than eight.
Pick an odd number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than eight and 1 less than seven.
What are this one even and two odd numbers? 
THREE:
Pick an even number between 1 and 10 that’s 1 more than three, 2 more than six and 3 more than 5.

Dessert Menu

Poppyseed Dessert:
Carpe De(fense) ’em

The 2018 sixty-eight-team NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Men’s Basketball Tournament concluded on April 2. 
Some fans carped about the selection committee not choosing their team to make the field of 68. 
Others carped that their team received an unfavorably low seed.
Still others carped about poor officiating which, they claimed, led to their team early exit from the tourney. 
But most carped that the bracket they filled in predicting the games’ outcomes was “blown” (riddled with wrong predictions) after only the first round of the tourney. (Filling out NCAA brackets has become an annual rite of spring and a national pastime.)
Such NCAA carpers, however, were not the only fans who filled out tournament brackets. 
Across the nation fans filled out state high school regional and sectional brackets, collegiate conference and national tournament brackets – all choosing the teams they thought would prevail as champions and the paths they might take to get there.
Name a ten-letter synonym of “carpers.” Its letters, in the same order, also describe fans who fill out a certain 32-team bracket.
What are these letters?

4 and 20 Mean Birds Baked In A Pie Dessert:
Banking Cinderella’s pumpkin off the glass slipper backboard

Name an informal 2-word basketball term for a field goal scored just before time runs out, and a 2-word phrase for pieces of equipment reviewed by officials to confirm that the field goal counted.
Delete an “l” and a space from from the phrase to form the avian nickname of a team that greatly exceeded expectations in 2017’s National Collegiate Athletic Association “March Madness” basketball tournament (similar to the Loyola of Chicago Ramblers in the 2018 NCAA tournament). This 2017 “Cinderella” team, alas, in 2018 was invited to the neither the NCAA nor the National Invitational Tournament, the refuge of collegiate hoops “also-rans.” 
Place a “d” at the end of the first word in the term for field goal to form a 2-word term that sounds like what the “mean bird” in the team nickname might be called if it fought another notorious “mean bird.” This 2-word term also sounds like the term for the field goal.
What is the term for a field goal? What are the pieces of equipment?
What is the team nickname?

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.

My brooder’s peeper; Addition of words by subtraction of letters; Bunnies gone postal! Karl and Quayle on the campaign trail

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED

Welcome to our March 30th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!
On our menus this week are:
ONE Addition By Subtraction Appetizer;
ONE  Fake History Slice;
ONE  Toasting With Broodskis Dessert; and
SIX Leverets By Levering Riff Offs.

Think Good, It’s Good Friday. Roll back the rock, rise up, and rejoice in the solving!    

Appetizer Menu

Piece Of Cake Appetizer:
Addition of words by subtraction of letters 

Add a letter to the end of something people celebrate, forming a new word that was also the name of an erstwhile airlines.
Delete the first letter of this new word to form a synonym of the result of “backpaddling”... in a canoe for instance.
Delete the first letter of this result to form the surname of a Trump pal.
Delete the first letter of this result to form a word for a bird that is a homophone of a word in the title of a song with lyrics based on the Bible.
What are these four words and the name for something people celebrate?

MENU

Fake History Slice: 
Karl and Quayle on the campaign trail 

(Note: The following puzzle is based on fake history... that is, fake news from the past.)
Karl Rove was an Austin-based Republican campaign consultant to President George H. W. Bush during Bush’s run for re-election in 1992. 
Bush fired Rove early that year for planting a negative story about his rival, the campaign’s chief fundraiser. Rove’s  political “counsel” included dirty tricks, deceptive talking points and misleading messaging.
In May of 1992, just as the campaign was rounding the corner toward the homestretch, Vice President Dan Quayle chided Murphy Brown, a TV sitcon character portrayed by Candice Bergen, for opting to have a child outside of wedlock. 
Getting less publicity, however, was Quayle’s criticism of a trailer for the 1987 movie “Dragnet,” which portrayed anti-pornography moral crusaders in a negative light. 
To prove his point, Quayle inserted his video cassette of the trailer into his VCR and paused the tape at the lewdest images, then took out his Kodak Land camera and repeatedly took pictures of each of the most explicit freeze-frames. 
The vice president then sent copies of each bawdy image to the editors of  the Huntington Herald Press, Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis News, Arizona Republic and other Central Newspapers, Inc. journals owned by his grandfather Eugene Pulliam. 
Quayle strongly “suggested” that the editors publish his pictures of the risque freeze-frames.  

A newspaper headline on a story documenting Rove’s and Quayle’s activities that year read:
Rove postured; Dan pans Dragnet’s teaser, rephotographs
What does this headline have to do with a particular holiday? 

Riffing Off Shortz And Levering Slices:
Bunnies gone postal!

Will Shortz’s March 25th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Jim Levering, reads:
Name a small but well-known U.S. city, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. 
This string of letters, reading from left to right, spells two consecutive words that name distinctive characteristics of bunnies. What city is it?

Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz and Levering Slices read:
ONE:
Name a small but not-at-all-well-known U.S. town (population greater than 8,000), followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. Name a smaller and even less-well-known U.S. town (population greater than 200), followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. Both towns are in New England.
The larger town is the name of a groundbreaking bunny. The letters in the smaller town, combined with the four letters in the two states’ postal codes, can be rearranged to form a 7-letter word associated with bunnies and a 2-word, 7-letter jocular title that has been associated with a particular bunny.
What are these two towns? What is the name of the groundbreaking bunny? What are the word associated with bunnies and the jocular title? 
TWO:
Name a moderately populous but well-known New England city, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. This string of letters, reading from left to right, begins with a pair of letters that, when spoken aloud, sound like a part of the writing portion of the SAT test. These two letters are followed by a mathematical term that might be an answer on the vocabulary section of the SAT. 
What city is it?
THREE:
Name a quite populous and well-known U.S. city, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. This string of letters, reading from left to right, spells two consecutive words: a fish and something shaped somewhat like a fish. 
What city is it?
Hints: A song was written about the city. The somewhat fish-shaped something is one half of a symbol.
FOUR:
Name a large suburban U.S. city, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. Change the first letter in the city. 
This string of letters, reading from left to right, forms the former spelling of a token that allows tourists to make tracks all across a particular continent. 
What city is it?
FIVE:
Name a large and well-known U.S. city, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. Delete the last two letters of the city. This string of letters, reading from left to right, spells a large and well-known U.S. city. What city is it?
SIX (Bonus Riff-off)
Name a college town in the near geographic middle of a midwestern state, followed by its two-letter state postal abbreviation. Add an “n” somewhere in the middle, but not exactly in the middle. This string of seven letters, reading from left to right, spells... oops, sorry, I forgot what it spells. What city is it?

Dessert Menu

Barflies And Ducklings Dessert:
My brooder’s peeper

Name a 3-word toast a bunch of brooding barflies might make. Add a “y” to the end of the second word and add the words “on ducklings when” between the first and second words to name something you might see in a brooder. 
What is the brooding barflies’ toast? 
What might you see in a brooder?

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.

Starlets of stage and “synonma” Critters and their crooning cries; Zany poker face-off, pick a winner; Colonial cookware, eh?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED
Welcome to our March 23rd edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!


On our menus this week are:
ONE Cookin’ Appetizer;
ONE  Copacetic Slice;
ONE  Leading lady Dessert; and
SEVEN “Whamba bamba thank you mamba” Riff Offs.

Think Good, It’s Friday. Have fun solving!    

Appetizer Menu

World History Appetizer:
Colonial cookware, eh? 


Name a word (often preceded by “eh”) that was Regency-era (early 19th-century British) slang for “You know?” Place after this word, without a space, a term for a versatile cooking utensil. (Ancient versions of this utensil were found in Han Dynasty-era tombs. This particular term, however, was coined much more recently, around the time that Ike took office.) 


Spell this placement of word-plus-term backward to form a synonym of  “fawn” that has Oriental roots.

What is this word? 
What is this term? 
What is the synonym for “fawn” that is formed when you spell the word and term together backward?

MENU

Copacetic Slice: 
Zany poker face-off, pick a winner

Rank the following three sentences in their correct order, from best to third-best:
A: If I’ve been dealt all face cards I put on my poker face, hiding how peaceful and copacetic I really feel.
B: Thanks to social media networking I learned that many Deadheads have outworn their vinyl copies of the “Workingman’s Dead” album with its masterful picking.
C. The magician’s evening sleight-of-hand zaniness often climaxed with him pulling a jackrabbit from a hat, eliciting wholehearted applause.
There are six possible rankings: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, and CBA. Explain your ranking.

Riffing Off Shortz And Donabedian Slices:
Critters and their crooning cries

Will Shortz’s March 18th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Haig Donabedian, reads:
Think of a popular two-word song title in 7 letters. If you have the right one, you can rearrange the letters to name an animal and the sound it makes. What is it? Here’s a hint: The title is in a foreign language.
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz and Donabedian Slices read:
ONE:
Think of a popular three-word song title from the 1980s, in 9 letters. If you have the right one, you can rearrange the letters to name a carnivorous marine mammal and a carnivorous mammal that has been associated with Chanel No. 5. 
What are these mammals? What is the song title? 
Here are hints: The title is in a foreign language. One of its three words is an apostrophized contraction. The two mammals alliterate.
TWO:
Think of an mammal in 3 letters, and a word sometimes used to name an interesting and unusual part of its body in 4 letters. If you have the right word, you can rearrange the letters to name a kind of bird and the sound it makes. 
What are this mammal, body part, bird and sound the bird makes?
THREE:
Think of a ruminant mammal in 3 letters and a kind of food it doesn’t eat in four letters. If you have the right ones, you can rearrange the letters to name a smaller mammal and the sound it makes. 
What is this smaller mammal and the sound it makes?
FOUR:
Think of a popular one-word song title in 9 letters. If you have the right one, you can rearrange the letters to name fragrant things that are worn, in 4 letters, and how they were made, a past-tense verb in 5 letters. 
What are these fragrant things and how were they made? 
Here’s a hint: The title is in a foreign language.
FIVE:
Think of two winged creatures: a bird of prey in 4 letters and a productive insect in 8 letters. 
If you have the right ones, you can rearrange the letters (after replacing a “b” with a “d”) to name an animal, in 6 letters and the sound it makes, in 6 letters split by a hyphen. 
What are the animal and the hyphenated sound it makes?
SIX:
Think of a popular two-word song title in 11 letters. 
If you have the right one, you can rearrange the letters to name the first word in the three-word title of a joyous Christmas carol in four letters, and a word in the lyrics of a joyous Christmas carol with a five-word title. What is the two-word song title? 
Here’s a hint: The two-word song title is in a foreign language. The word in the lyrics of  the carol with the five-word title is one of four words in the song’s chorus, which is in a foreign language.
SEVEN:
Think of a popular three-word song title in 12 letters. 
If you have the right one, you can rearrange the letters to name a plural 4-letter noun for two participants in a same-sex marriage gone wrong, and an 8-letter verb for what the Catholic church might have done to the marriage after the same-sex couple divorced... assuming the church had somehow condoned the marriage in the first place. What is the song title? Here’s a hint: The title is in a foreign language.

Dessert Menu

Lead Lady Lead Dessert:
Starlets of stage and “synonma”

Remove a man’s first name from the end of  a past actress’s first name, forming a word. 
Change the second letter of her last name to an “m” and switch it with the third letter, forming a synonym of the first word. 
Who is this actress and what are these synonyms?

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.