This equality, unmercifully, is quite strained; Careering o'er the clouds; Akin to a king

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!

I, LegoLambda, have in the past occasionally jocularly claimed powers of clairvoyance. For example, a month ago, in the December 12, 2014 edition of Puzzle-ria!, we served up a puzzle slice titled “Hippo Triple-Team” describing an NFL contest featuring three teams with equine nicknames.

The answer: Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts, and the penalty-flag-flinging team of officials affectionately known as “Zebras.”

An so, on January 11, right after the Green Bay Packers make mincemeat of the Dallas Cowboys in a National Football Conference Divisional Playoff game, guess who is playing an American Football Conference Divisional Playoff game?

The Colts and the Broncos, with the Zebras officiating, that’s who! (The Zebras will not win.)

Which brings me to Word Woman and Paul, a pair of wonderful Puzzlerians! In the January 2 Puzzleria! comments section both posted several astute observations. Indeed, two of those comments (one each from Paul and Word Woman) proved to be quite clairvoyant about certain content in this week’s puzzle slices.

Perhaps both Paul and Word Woman have Magic 8-Balls embedded in their brains! Or perhaps they are the spiritual heirs to Carnac the Magnificent (see illustration at the top of this blog).

 The Carnac bit was a weird hybrid of the Oscars broadcast and Jeopardy! What are my nominees for the best answers that Carnac divined before opening the envelope to read the answers?

“El Paso” and “Sis-Boom-Bah.”

That same pair of Puzzlerians! (Word Woman and Paul) also set us off on a delightful theological tangent with other comments they posted. Word Woman got the ball rolling by providing a link to Enoch Light’s rendition of C’est Magnifique,” a number from the musical “Can-Can.” Paul followed up with multiple links that, collectively, approximated a veritable Enoch Light mini-concert.

The name “Enoch” then sent us onto a discussion of the Old Testament prophets Enoch and Elijah, and the theological controversy surrounding whether they experienced natural deaths or their bodies were otherwise somehow “beamed up” into heaven “Star-Trek-like.” 

The Bible says that Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind, and that Enoch “walked with God.” (If former basketball player Jim Chones is a pet lover, perhaps he walks with his dog.)

Finally, Word Woman on Thusday evening alluded to an 
“E-noch knock joke.” So, first I Googled, but then I DuckDuckGoosed “Enoch-knock joke,” and found the following:

Elijah: Enoch-noch!

St. Peter: Hey! Knock it off, will ya? That’s expensive mother-of-pearl ornamental inlay molding on these gates. Use the doorbell, dumbbell! 

Elijah: Oh, sorry about that. Ding-Dong!

St. Peter: Who’s there?

Elijah: Elijah.

St. Peter: Elijah who?

Elijah: The Elijah who blew up into heaven in the whirlwind...

St. Peter: Okay, whatever. But I’m afraid we’re gonna have to do something about that body. Up here in heaven we’ve got this rule: “No spirit, no soul, no service.” 

Elijah: But I do have a spirit and a soul. It’s just that I still have a body, too.

St. Peter: No, no, no. That’s not how it works. You don’t get your spirit and soul until your body dies.

Elijah: That’s not what they told us down on Earth.

St. Peter: Yeah, well there are lots of misconceptions swirling around down there, kind of like the whirlwind you claim you... 

Elijah: Hey, what about that guy over there? The old bloke walking with God. He’s got a body. And it looks like he might have an “in” with God, too.

St. Peter: Oh, him? That’s just Enoch. 

Elijah: What makes him so special? Why did you let him in? 

St. Peter: I just gave him a pass, that’s all. 

Elijah: But why? He’s got a body, right, just like me? 

St. Peter: Yeah, but when he approached these Pearly Gates he was 365 years old. I honestly thought he was dead. 

Elijah: Dead? Enoch?

 St. Peter: Hell no! He rang the everlivin’ doorbell. And if you would have done likewise, instead of perpetrating that infernal knock-knocking, I might have given you a pass, too. Holy Moses, what a dumbbell!

Incidentally, speaking of dumbbells, in a June 2014 edition of Puzzleria!, I predicted that the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals would compete in Super Bowl XLIX (sponsored by Ex-Lax?), less than a month away, and that the Vikings would plunder the Bengals, LIV to XIII.

So much for my clairvoyance!  

I do, however, foresee a salvo of “solvation” as you attack, with gusto, this week’s trio of fresh Puzzleria! menu slices:

Menu

Easy As Pi Slice:

Careering o’er the clouds

Name an adjective used often to describe people pursuing their dream career. The adjective also describes people who have already realized their dream career, if it is that of an astronaut, jet pilot, crop duster or some other  such “soary” excuse for a profession.

 

Remove the adjective’s final letter, forming a medicinal product that some say can be especially effective for those who must work at high altitudes.

What are the adjective and the product?

Regal Eagle Slice:

Akin to a king

Name a two-word fictional city that is associated with a King. Change one of its consonants to a vowel.

The result is two synonyms that are both associated with a king.

What is the city? 

What are the synonyms? 

Mathematical Slice:

This equality, unmercifully, is quite strained

Replace the variable X with any substitute necessary to make the following equation true:

A + B + C – √-1 + X + H = 21!

With what did you replace X? What does your finished equation look like?

Note: A, B and C are not variables but constants. Each is an irrational number and their sum is approximately 7.478… . The letters A, B, and C should be replaced in the equation by the names of the three numbers, each spelled out in letters of the English alphabet. You must decide what order to put the numbers in.

Note: The  symbol “√” is a radical sign, and “√-1” stands for “the square root of -1.”

Indispensable hint: The integer 21 is not a constant but rather a “reverse variable. ” (That is, it is not a letter that represents numbers but a number that represents letters.) It appears on the back of a certain NFL football player’s jersey, beneath his hyphenated surname. But it would bring smiles to his fans’ faces if the surname were replaced by his nickname. (Oh, and such a replacement is also necessary to solving this equation.)

Also, H is not a variable; it is an uppercase H.

 Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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 Puzzle -ria! Thank you.

"Well now, isn't that spatial!"; One dismaying concoction of grammar; Pucks 'n' Pigskins

Welcome to the first Joseph Young’s Puzzle-ria! of 2015.

We plan a happy new yearful of ever-lovin’, envelope-shovin’, fresh-outta-the-oven,
hot-off-the-puzzle-grilling-skillet slices, beginning with three this week.

Along with the new year, we introduce a new slice, the BYOB Slice, which stands for “Bring Your Own Baggage.” No, we are not suddenly charging carry-on fees, nor are we asking you to smuggle Zip-Loc baggies of oregano, pepper flakes, garlic salt and parmesan cheese into our blog.

A Bring Your Own Baggage Slice (BYOBS) is simply a puzzle that may well have more than one intended answer (and no wrong answers!), one that may require and extra measure of creativity from its solver, one that we hope is more of a “dessert” than a “main course.”

Speaking of main courses, please indulge me as I briefly recount an awful (which actually means “awesome”) pun I concocted during a New Year’s Eve dinner-date on Wednesday. My brother Mike and his friend and I and my friend were at a restaurant booth enjoying our meal, when somehow the conversation drifted toward the topic of rutabagas. (Yes, I know, we are scintillating conversationalists, all!) So, I concocted the following fabrication, hoping to elicit (successfully, as it turned out) groans from my dinner mates.

“When I lived in Baraboo (Wisconsin), the Sauk County agricultural agent urged local farmers not to use pesticides on their rutabaga crops, promising that this tactic would produce greater yields, a bountiful harvest.

And the agent was right. Not all rutabaga growers complied, of course, but those who did experienced a RUTABAGA BUGGY BUMPER crop!”

Here at Puzzle-ria! we plan to grow a (sometimes groan-inducing) year-long bumper crop of puzzles for all you Puzzlerians! to harvest, devour, and enjoy. Let’s start 2015 out by attacking this week’s puzzle-slice trio with brio!

 Menu

Specialty Of The House Slice:

“Well now, isn’t that spatial!”

Write down a word that has seemed ubiquitous for a year or so, especially so in the entertainment media.

Up above this word, write its fourth and fifth letters followed by its second and third letters, forming a four-letter word.

The placement of the original, longer word in spatial relation to the new, shorter word provides a definition for the original word.

What are these two words?

Hint: The word that has seemed ubiquitous in the entertainment media has also been ubiquitous in a field whose homophone is a conjunction in the title of one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Folk Songs of the Four Seasons.” (See illustrations here and at the top of this blog page.)

  

Easy As Pie Slice

One dismaying concoction of grammar

Choose an appropriate word to complete the following list:

Concoction, conjunctivitus, dismaying, grammar, horselaugh, horsepower, jangle, lifeboat, malapropism, sidecar, turnover…

Explain your choice.

Hint: Although the words are in alphabetical order, that should have no bearing on whatever word you might choose.

Bring Your Own Baggage Slice

Pucks ’n’ Pigskins

If the San Jose Sharks played the New York Jets in some kind of hybrid hockey/football contest, which would be the home team? Why?

(Note: As noted in this week’s Puzzleria! preamble (see above), a “Bring Your Own Baggage Slice (BYOBS), is a type of “creative challenge” in which there is no “correct” or “incorrect” answer. We do have an answer in mind, of course, but your solution is as good (and is likely better!) than ours.

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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 Puzzle -ria! Thank you.

Sweetheart of Sigma Chiasmus; When the mirror ball drops...; Ars (font) Poetica; The Name Game; Sun, moon, stars... fireworks!

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria! Happy New Year and Happy Puzzling! Here’s hoping your sprinkles, dashes and dollops of tangy, sage and piquant holiday seasoning linger well into this new year.

We resolve to see you all again in 2015, on January 2.

For some reason, this week’s puzzle slices seem to possess a somewhat romantic flavor, a full six months-plus before St. Valentine’s Day. (Sic! That should be “six-weeks-plus”... see Word Woman’s December 26, 7:15 AM comment/correction below, in the Comments Section) 

Hope you “love” ’em. Here they are:

Menu

Specialty Of The House Slice:

Ars (Font) Poetica

Take the first word of a well-known and beloved poem. Print it in all-lowercase letters, and in a font such as Ar Cena, pictured at the right, or Ar Darling, pictured below it. (Or, use a font such as Segoe Print, Century Gothic or Levernim.)

 

Rotate the word’s second letter 180-degrees clockwise and its first letter 45 degrees counterclockwise to create a shorthand form of a nine-letter word.

The shorter word is often misunderstood and controversial, but unjustifiably so because it is a perfectly legitimate form of the longer word. This nine-letter word (or its shorthand counterpart) is the subject of the beloved poem.

What are the two forms of the word and what is the poem?

Waiter, I Didn’t Order This Slice:

The Name Game

The following four names are in the wrong order:

Bobby, Malcolm, Rog and Mick 

Put them in the correct order and explain what they signify.

Reflexive Rotational Slice:
When the mirror ball drops…

Name something that is commonplace every December 31 at the midnight hour. Change the last two letters to their mirror reflections, replace their rounded corners and curves with acute angles and straight lines, and move these two new letters to the left of the others.

 

Replace each letter with the one that appears 13 places after it (or before it) in the alphabet (ROT13). The result is timely. What is it?

Spoon-fed Slice:

The Sweetheart of Sigma Chiasmus

It is January 31, 1879. Oxford University dean the Rev. William Archibald Spooner has just returned from a fortnight away from home as a visiting guest-lecturer (lecturing on “Christmas, Chiasmus and the Cross”) at the University of London. He is now back at his Oxford home spending a quiet romantic New Year’s Eve evening alone with his wife Frances, billing, cooing, spooning, canoodling and, at the stroke of midnight, kissing.

After their smooch, Frances coos to William:

“I’m happy having you near.”

William coos back a six-word response which adds the letters in the word “awe” to his wife’s five-word declaration, but also subtracts from it two vowels that do not appear in “awe.”

What was the Rev. Spooner’s response?

One-Hundred-Eighty-Degree Slice:

Sun, moon, stars… fireworks!

A lad and a gal in North or South America have a yen for one another. They kiss beneath the moon and stars.

On an island half a world away there is sun (not rising, already risen) and a lad and gal who have yen in their pockets and a yen for one another. A half-a-day before the American couple kissed, this couple also kissed beneath the moon and stars.

Take the three letters in “sun” and add one each to the words “lad,” “gal” and “yen.” 

Now rearrange each group of letters to form three new four-letter words that form a song title. What is this song title?

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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 Puzzle -ria! Thank you.