Chopper, chain, ship & savory; Poem, periodical & newspaper; Dennis the first-stone caster; “Mixed review” of an early role? “Strangers in the Night, Frank’s in a tray!” A square is “just right” angles, four of ’em;

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

A square is “just right” angles, four of ’em

Square a number. Multiply the result by ten. 

The first three digits of this product form a number that Goldilocks might think is “just right.” 

What number did you square?

Appetizer Menu

Lightning-Round Appetizer:

Chopper, chain, ship & savory

“Poached Eggbeater”

1. 🚁Last night I dreamed our helicopter was stolen. 

Of course, we don’t really own a helicopter – this was just one of those totally crazy dreams people have sometimes. 

Anyway, in the dream the fictional police tried to find it and got nowhere. 

Then we engaged a fictional detective who recovered the helicopter in short order. 

You can discover the detective’s name by rearranging the letters in consecutive words in this puzzle. Who is it?

Purchasing Personal Care

2. ⛓Name a well-known brand of personal care products. 

Swap the first and last halves of the brand name and you’ll identify a chain of stores where similar products are sold. 

What’s the brand? 

What’s the chain?

“The Yankee Clipper?”

3. 🚢The last name of a famous 20th century athlete sounds a lot like a word that identifies one side of a ship. 

The title of a 1980 Top Ten hit identifies the other side of a ship. 

Name the athlete, word, and hit.

State, Star & Scale

4. 🗣🌠⚖Start with a state abbreviation. 

Then add the name of the iconic fictional star of several action movies. 

Finally, add the name of a musical note in the Do-Re-Mi scale. 

You’ll name something that’s quite tasty. 

What is it?

MENU

Anagrahamcracker Hors d’Oeuvre:

Poem, periodical & newspaper

Name a kind of poem, a kind of periodical and a newspaper snippet.

Rearrange the combined letters in these three
words to form the title of a famous work of fiction. 

What are this title and these three words?

“A Palindrome Of Boundless Proportions?” Slice:

Dennis the first-stone caster

A palindrome is a phrase whose letters read the same backwards as forwards, as in “Dennis and Edna sinned.”  

Your task is to find a related palindrome about Dennis that refutes or denies that one!

Note: The inspiration, core, crux and content of the above puzzling creation come courtesy of Rudolfo, whose “Puzzles Rufolfo” appears often on Puzzleria! Lego Lambda suggested “the bookends.” 

Riffing Off Shortz And Picciotto Slices:

“Strangers in the Night, Frank’s in a tray!”

Will Shortz’s July 16th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by  Henri Picciotto of the National Puzzlers’ League, reads:

Name a famous singer (first and last names, 12 letters in all). Add a Y at the end, and the result, with respacing but not rearranging any letters, will spell a possible contribution to a picnic and how it might be served. What singer is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Picciotto Slices read:

ENTREE #1

“When David ____ played for ‘The Crimson Hose’ he would occasionally have to  _____ to _____ Hunter who played for ‘The Twinkies’.”

Rearrange the 14 letters in those three blanks to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What three words belong in the blanks?

ENTREE #2

Note: Entree #2 was suggested by an NPR Sunday Puzzle/Puzzleria! listener/reader, and friend of Puzzleria!

Name a famous Tennessean singer (first and last names, 11 letters in all). Replace the last two letters of the last name with the last letter of the first name, forming words of four and five letters. 

Switch the order of these altered names to spell the title of a 1950’s rock ’n’ roll song written and recorded by a young Texan.

Who are these Tennessean and Texan singers?

What  is the title of the Texan’s song?

Hint: The young Texan’s name is a synonym of “cohort” followed by word that follows “Fort.” 

ENTREE #3

Note: This Entree #3 riff-off was composed and contributed by our friend Jeff Zarkin, whose “Jeff Zarkin Puzzle Riffs” appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Take the name of a famous singer. 

Reverse it to phonetically get a place where one might eat.

Add a letter to get what one might order there.

Who is the singer, what is the place, and what might you order?

ENTREE #4

Name a character (first and last names, eight letters in all) that appeared on a teen drama television series that debuted on the Fox TV network two decades ago. 

Replace the last letter with an M, and the result, with respacing but not rearranging any letters, will spell a synonym of an anagram of a synonym of “dog tag.” 

What is this character’s name?

What are the synonym of “dog tag,” anagram of that synonym, and synonym of that anagram?  

ENTREE #5

Name a somewhat obscure character actor (first and last names, 14 letters in all) who nevertheless appeared in more than 100 films – including, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” “Pat and Mike” and “Mighty Joe Young.” 

This name is also a phrase for what an employee of the valet service offered by restaurants, stores, hotels, et cetera would become if a patron of such an establishment drives up in an air-cooled automobile manufactured in Syracuse between 1902 and 1934.

Who is this character actor?

What would an employee become?

ENTREE #6

Name a famous author (first and last names, ten letters in all). Add a Y at the end of the first name. Change the last letter of the last name to an “s”. The result is what you might witness on an athletic field in the wake of a competition.

Who is this author?

What might you witness on the field?

ENTREE #7

Name a German writer, historian and Nobel Prize laureate. Number the fourteen letters in the name 1, 2, 3...14. 

Now imagine a verbless five-word exclamation of incredulous disgust perhaps spoken by a gentleman who had just used a public restroom that had not been well-maintained. The exclamation is in the form:

“___   ____’  ____   ____...  ___!”

Use the letters in the German writer’s name to reveal the exclamation:

 “(1 2 3)   (11 13 14 12’)  (7 6 9 8)  (4 5 6 7)...  (11 9 10!”)

Note: In the last word of the exclamation (the one before the exclamation mark) letters #10 and #11 must be inverted. However, those two letters need not be inverted if the gentleman who had just used the not-well-maintained public restroom is a very young gentleman –say, age 10 or less.

Who is this German writer?

What is the exclamation?

ENTREE #8

Name a famous American preacher (first and last names, 14 letters in all) who was a pal of Jerry Falwell and whose divorce caused a minor controversy in the major denomination he led.

Remove a Y from the end. Put in its place a double-letter. 

The result – with respacing but not rearranging of any letters – will spell two possible pieces of advice a parent might give:

* to a young’un attempting to roast a marshmallow to make a s’more, and

* to a teen who may be sunbathing a bit too much.

Who was this preacher?

What are the two possible pieces of parental advice?

ENTREE #9 

Name a very successful past major league pitcher (first and last names, 11 letters in all). Remove the fourth and tenth letters.

The result, with respacing but not rearranging any letters, will spell a two-word description of Princess Diana of Wales, Queen Letizia
of Spain, or Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Who is this pitcher?

What is the two-word description? 

Hint: The pitcher also went by the nickname of a famous gunslinger.

ENTREE #10 

Name a probably-ought-to-be-more-famous actress (first and last names, nine letters in all) who shares a rare distinction with actress Betty White. 

Move the first letter of this actress’s last name so that it becomes the last letter of her first name, forming two new words. The result is the possible name of a store that specializes in certain clothing worn below the neck.

Who is this actress?

What is the possible store name?

ENTREE #11 

Name a famous novelist, poet, and journalist (first and last names, 12 letters in all). Lowercase the uppercase letters, and the result, with just one instance of respacing and just one instance of rearranging letters, will
spell:

1. a plural word (the first four letters of the novelist’s name, in reverse)

2. a female bird, and 

3. a rail-like bird.

The first, plural word might apply to the second and third “bird words.” 

Who is this novelist?

What are the three words?

ENTREE #12 

Name a 20th-Century prime minister (first and last names, 16 letters in all). Replace the first name with a more informal six-letter first name that was commonly substituted. Replace the fourth letter in this name with a “p”, resulting in a kind of bird.

The prime minister’s surname is a possible
word for this bird when it’s building its nest.

Remove the first letter of the prime minister’s surname to spell a word for this bird when it’s in the process of propagating its species.

Who is this prime minister?

What is the bird?

What might you call this nest-building bird and species-propagating bird?

ENTREE #13 

Name an American politician who also served as United States Secretary of State (first and last names, 17 letters in all). 

The first four letters of the first name can be used to spell “a fermented beverage made of
water and honey, malt, and yeast.” Remove also the sixth letter of the first name and the first two letters of the surname, three letters that can be used to spell “a type of beer with a bitter flavor and higher alcoholic content.”

Reverse the order of the two words that remain. Place a hyphen between them. 

The result is a hyphenated word describing a
kind of distinction that may provide an unambiguous criterion or guideline, especially in law or in diplomacy, which was this American politician’s bailiwick and forté.

Who is this politician and diplomat?

What are the beverage and the beer?

What is the hypenated descriptive word?

Dessert Menu

English as a Second Language Dessert:

A “mixed review” of an early role?

Name an actress. Anagram her surname to spell a verb that a small child might use – or that an ESL (English as a Second Language) student might use – to describe what this actress did in one of her early TV roles. 

Who is this actress and what is the verb?

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.

Strangers Bound North by Northwest on a South by Southeast Train; An era ere Happy Chandler was MLB Commissioner; An idiom becomes antonymical; Candy-brand transformation; Carbon-based black viscous coffee? Wait! Wait! Great Scott!

  PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

An era ere Happy Chandler was MLB Commissioner

A pitcher’s first name sounds like a sad word. 

Change the initial of an outfielder's surname to the initial of that sad word to form what sounds like a second sad word. 

Add a letter in the middle of the pitcher’s first name to spell a third sad word. 

Name these ballplayers and three sad words.

Hint: The letter you add to the pitcher’s first name is the letter in the alphabet that is to the left of the first letter in either of the first two sad words.

Appetizer Menu

“The Unusual Suspects” Appetizer:

Strangers Bound North by Northwest on a South by Southeast Train

Note: This word puzzle, cloaked in mystery, was created and submitted by a Puzzleria! habitue. Clues and hints to the puzzle solution can be found at every twist and turn in the following story:

It was a stormy and dark night when Edd Coe received a package containing a note and other items. The note read: 

“Capture the flag. Pen the poem again. Recite
the characters by the symbols.” 

Other items included: a mirror; a compass with the needle fixed to point only to “South”; an Edinburgh, Scotland, street map; and a July 7, 1930, issue of “Enigmatologist’s Fortnightly” newsletter. Clipped to the newsletter was a business card from an establishment on Badestan Str, Cairo, Egypt. On the back of the card was written: 

      3 4 26 / 16 21 22 26 / 6 12 / 14 13 24 2 18 /

      21 11 10 17 8 // 23 10 / 11 24 12 4

There was nothing else in the package.

Edd Coe realized that the numbers were a coded message and that clues necessary to find the key to the code and read the message were in the package. Edd Coe methodically deciphered the message and then set about identifying the package sender and planning a counterstroke.

What is the message?  

How was it deciphered?

MENU

Intimidating Hors d’Oeuvre:

An idiom becomes antonymical

Take an idiom consisting of an adjective and noun. 

The noun can also be a verb, like the words “rock” and “roll” are. 

An anagram of the adjective and the past tense of the verb are synonyms of “intimidated.”

(Note: The past tense of the verb, which ends in “ed”, is also an adjective.)  

What is this idiom?

What are the synonyms?

Piano Man Slice:

Carbon-based black viscous coffee?

Name what you might see on a piano bar piano or on a coffee shop countertop, in four words containing 13 letters. 

Spoonerize words #1 and #4, then switch words #2 and #3 to name what sounds like a mineral used as a fertilizer and a carbon-based black viscous liquid, separated by a contraction of a conjunction. 

What might you see? 

What are the mineral and viscous liquid?

Riffing Off Shortz And Gwinn Slices:

Wait! Wait! Great Scott!

Will Shortz’s July 9th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Peter Gwinn, who writes for National Public Radio’s “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!”, reads:

Take the first name of a famous movie director. 

Write it in uppercase and lowercase letters. 

Rotate the third letter of this name 180° and you’ll get the name of the main character in one of this director’s most popular movies. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Gwinn Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the full name of a puzzle-maker who, it seems, is on the NPR payroll. 

Write it in lowercase letters. 

A. Rotate the seventh and ninth letters of this name 180° and rearrange to get a caption for image A.

B. Rotate the first and seventh letters of this name 180° and rearrange to get a caption for image B.

C. Rotate the ninth letter of this name 180° and rearrange to get a caption for image C.

D. Rotate no letters of this name 180° and rearrange to get a caption for image D.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are these captions?

ENTREE #2

Take the surname of a famous movie director who dabbled a tad in television. Rotate the third letter of this name 180°. Move the second letter to the end so that it replaces the last letter. You’ll get the first name of a character in the main cast of an American mystery serial drama television series that this director directed. 

Who is this director?

What is the name of the character in the television series, and what was the series?

ENTREE #3

You are participating in a chess tournament. Your opponent’s ____ has just captured your queen. 

You exclaim, “____!”

Rotate two letters in the first blank 180° and you’ll get the word in the second blank. 

What two words are these?

ENTREE #4

Take the first three letters of a five-letter word one may be trying to rid him-or-herself of. 

Rotate two of these three letters 180° and you’ll get a word for where one might get ushered into to rid oneself of this word.

What are this five-letter word and three-letter word?

ENTREE #5

Capitalize the first and fourth letters of a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid known for its hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD.

Rotate the first letter 180°. Place a space before the fourth letter and an “r” after that fourth letter.
Reverse the order of the last two letters. Replace a Roman numeral equal to 51 with a Roman numeral equal to 5.

The result is the a horror movie director.

 What is this protoalkaloid?

Who is this director?

ENTREE #6

Take the 12-letter name of a famous movie director. Switch the order of two adjacent letters. Move the twelfth letter to the middle and place an “h” next to it, forming letter-segments – of five, four and four letters – separated by spaces. The result, after rearranging the four letters in the middle segment, is three parts of the human body.

Who is this movie director?

What are the three body parts?

ENTREE #7

Take the surname of a famous movie director. Move the last letter to the front and divide the result into three parts that make up the first two-and-a-half words of the first line in the chorus of a Johnny Cash hit song that was co-written by his future wife June Carter and Merle Kilgore. 

The first, sixth, fifth and fourth letters of the movie director’s eight-letter first name spell the last word in that “chorus line.”

Rearrange the four remaining letters of the first name to spell a word that belongs in both of the blanks below.

An international airport is named after this film director. Its International Air Transport Association ____ is RMI; its International Civil Aviation Organization ____ is LIPR.

Who is this director?

What is the first line in the chorus of this Johnny Cash hit song?

What word belongs in both blanks?

ENTREE #8

Take the full name of a famous Pulitzer Prize-winning and Obie Award-winning playwright and film director. 

Four letters in his name can be rotated 180° to form different letters, but don’t do that. 

Instead just rearrange the ten letters to spell: 

* the profession of a character named “Hazel” in a 1960’s sitcom; 

* the title of the actress who portrayed Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham on a popular PBS serialized drama; and 

* the medium that brought these characters into viewers’ living rooms.

Who is this playwright/director?

Who are the profession of the character and title of the actress?

What is the medium?

ENTREE #9

Remove one letter from the first name of a famous movie director. The result is a part of the human body. 

The surname of the director spells a calculus
that may form within an adjacent body part.   

Who is this director?

What are the two body parts?

ENTREE #10

Take a famous movie director whose surname is a plural noun. 

Rotate the first letter of the first name 180° to get what sounds like a four-letter singular noun. You can draw water from both nouns. 

Who is this director?

What are the singular and plural nouns?

ENTREE #11

Take the surname of a “film noir” documentary filmmaker. 

Change the first letter to the letter that precedes it in the alphabet and its fifth letter (a vowel) to the vowel that precedes it in the alphabet (U becomes O, O becomes I, etc.), and remove the last letter. The result is the surname of an actor who moved to America from Germany after Hitler took power.

Spell the first name of the filmmaker backward to spell that same surname.

Who are this filmaker and actor? 

Dessert Menu

Candy-Minty-“Brandy” Dessert:

Candy-brand transformation

Spell a nearly-century-old candy brand backward.

Switch the two vowels. The result sounds like an approximately-half-century-old brand of mints.

Replace the second vowel with a different vowel to spell a service brand, less than a decade old.

What is this candy brand?

What is the brand of mints?

What is the service brand?

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. 

Moods, Weather, Netherlands, French, Phonetics, and Shopping; Matthews and Mercury, Mutually; Race Cars Racing on Racetracks! Changing “healthful” to “harmful” by “raising the middle letter!” Dedicated is one to one’s duds!!! A puzzle that exercises your brain... and more!

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Matthews & Mercury, Mutually

Think of a two-word phrase, besides “popular singer” for example, that pertains to either Dave Matthews or Freddie Mercury. 

Move the space in the phrase six places to the left. Then remove three consecutive letters and close the gap they leave. 

The result is a two-word phrase that pertains to the s, v or z sound in English. 

What two-word phrase, other than “popular singer” for example, pertains to either Matthews or Mercury? 

What  two-word phrase pertains to the s, v or z sound?

Hint: There are two options for the three consecutive letters you remove. They may spell a woman’s name, or they may spell that same woman’s name backwards.

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

Moods, Weather, Netherlands, French, Phonetics, and Shopping

In the mood for a movie?

1. 🎥Think of a famous stage and film actor whose last name has seven letters. 

Change the initial letter to the one immediately before it in the alphabet. Say the result out loud to phonetically describe how his performance might affect your mood. Who is it?

Rip(tide) Torn(ado)?

2. 🌪Think of an actor/singer whose first and last names are weather events. 

Now name the TV series he/she starred in where the possibility of both of these events
occurring was plausible to the setting. 

Who was the star and what was the series? 

Nether-Netherlands?

3. 🏅Spoonerize a common two-syllable sports term to describe phonetically where a person who lives in the Netherlands might reside. What is this sports term? Where might a person who lives in the Netherlands reside?

Team Roster, Reims L’a Jetée

4. 🗼Spoonerize the name of an American naturalist everyone knows of to get phonetically the American pronunciation of a two-word French expression. 

Who is this naturalist?

What is the French expression?

Glacier, monsoon, coronation, horsey hesitancy

5. 🏇Each of these four things brings something different; but phonetically the things they bring sound the same:

a. A glacier

b. A monsoon 

c. King Charles’s coronation

d. A nervous person learning to ride a horse 

What are the four homophonic things brought by a glacier, a monsoon, a coronation and a nervous person learning to ride a horse?

Wood(wind) Gill?

6. 🎷Take the name of a place where people like to shop. 

Switch its two syllables to phonetically obtain one of the regional pronunciations of a musical
instrument. 

What is this place where people shop? 

What is one of the regional pronunciations of a musical instrument?

MENU

“Concraniumdrum” Hors d’Oeuvre

A puzzle that exercises your brain... and more!

Place two synonyms in alphabetical order. Remove the middle letter from the second synonym. The result is a puzzle that might exercise more than your brain. 

What are these synonyms and this puzzle?

Blankety-Blank-Blankety-Blank Slice:

Dedicated is one to one’s duds!!!

“You are (blank) with (blank)” and “You (blank) (blank)” are expressions of fondness for pairs of things you wear. 

The words in the first two blanks would rhyme
if the second one weren’t plural; the same goes for words in the last two blanks.

What are these four missing words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Lange Slices:

🚙e ⛟s  🚗ing  on  🚙et🚗ks!

Will Shortz’s July 2nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Darwin Lange of Mandan, North Dakota, reads:

Name a sports facility in two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

Three consecutive letters in the first word also appear consecutively in the second word. If you reverse these three letters, you’ll name something seen in this sports facility. 

What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Lange Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a young queen who, in a 20th-Century poem, was caught off-guard and, as a result, was ravished by a Greek god who had assumed the form of a cygnine creature. The event, somehow, led to the Trojan War. The course of ancient history could have been much different had only this queen been given a “heads-up” and escaped this rape!

The combined letters of the name of this “poem-queen” and a seven-letter word for a “heads-up” can be rearranged to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who are the queen and the puzzle-maker?

What is the seven-letter “heads-up”?

Hint #1: The name of the puzzle-maker is also an anagram of the section of a hospital, in two words, that is dedicated to the health of suprarenal glands, which are situated just north of the kidneys.

Hint #2: The name of the puzzle-maker is also an anagram of two words for:

* 2016 Riesling Spätlese-Rheinhessen, Germany;

* 2015 Famiglia Meschini Malbec Premium, San Carlos, Argentina; or

* 2019 Naia Verdejo, Rueda Spain, for three examples.

ENTREE #2

Note: The following excellent riff of this week’s NPR puzzle is the creation of our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” has long been featured on Puzzleria!

Take a sports facility. Two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) The first three letters in the first word spell an item used in another sport. The last four letters of the second word, in reverse order, spell what you might do if an object used in the “sports facility sport” met your toe.

What is this sports facility?

What is the item used in another sport?

What might you do if an object used in the “sports facility sport” met your toe?

ENTREE #3

Name a sports facility in two words. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) Three consecutive letters in the first word also appear consecutively in the second word.

Take these three consecutive letters. Change each of the first two letters to the letter six places later in the alphabet (A becomes G, for example).  

Change the third letter to the letter just four places later in the alphabet (A becomes E, for example). Rearrange these three new letters to name something that would cause the sporting action on this sports facility to cease.

What is this sports facility?

What would cause the action on this sports facility to cease?

ENTREE #4

Name a sports facility in one word. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

Remove four letters that can be rearranged to spell a verb meaning to “remove,” “cross out,” “edit out,” “scratch out,” “cancel,” “x-out,” or “blue-pencil.” The remaining letters, if you interchange the second and third, spell a noun not at all associated with this sports facility – a “loud noun.”

What is this sports facility?

What are this verb and “loud noun”?

ENTREE #5

Name a groundbreaking sports facility in one word. (This is a specific place, not a general term.) Move the fourth letter between the sixth and seventh letters.

The first four letters of the result are an anagram of a smaller structure – an ancient Greek portico. The remaining letters, in order, spell a five-letter ending of places where races are held. 

What is this sports facility? 

What is the ancient Greek portico?

What is the ending of places where races are held?

ENTREE #6

Name a rural vole in two words. Change one letter to spell a sports facility in two words.

Rearrange the letters in this sports facility to
name a caption for the image pictured here.

What are this rural vole and sports facility?

What is your caption?

ENTREE #7

Take two words for places where sports are played – like “court” (basketball, volleyball or tennis) and “course” (golf), for example.  

(These are general terms, not specific places.)  

Rearrange the combined letters of these two places to spell:

* A college campus building (4 letters),

* The source of party music blasting from the building’s windows (5),

* A noun passersby may use to describe the party music (3), and

* A word that rhymes with that noun for what the partyers may be imbibing (3).

What are these four words?

What are the two words for places where sports are played?

ENTREE #8

Take an informal name of a sports facility in one word. (This is a specific place, not a general term.) 

Names, first or last, of people who have competed at this facility may, or may not, have included: 

Rick, Barry, Birk, Brad, Brady, Cyd, Ricky, Darby, Darcy, Dick, Dicky, Dirk, Kirby, Ric, Ricky and Rik.

Using only the eight different letters in those 16 names – using one of the letters twice – spell the informal name of this sports facility.

What is it?

ENTREE #9

Name a sports facility in two words that is subject to the “whims of weather.” (This is a general term, not a specific place.) 

One of those “whims” is the “radiation” or “ground” variety of a weather phenomenon in which water droplets form in the evening air as the Earth’s surface heat radiates upward thereby, alas, decreasing visibility for those participating in the sport in the early morning hours.

Happily there is a remedy. The morning sun might well “burn off” this visibility-obstructing weather phenomenon, allowing participants in the sport to perform at their best.

Take the three letters of the weather phenomenon, the four letters in a synonym of “remedy,” and what the Romans would have called this specific “remedy,” in three letters. Rearrange them to spell the sports facility.

What is this sports facility?

What are the weather phenomenon (3 letters), synonym of “remedy” (4), and what the Romans would have called this specific  “celestial remedy” (3)?  

ENTREE #10

A 20-year-old up-and-coming Italian athlete named Jannik is seldom ______ at ______. 

The word in the first blank is a past participle of a four-letter verb. The word in the second blank is Jannik’s sport.

The first three letters of the past participle spell how we today might address the Italian poet Dante’s human muse, for short. 

The last three letters in the second blank, written in reverse, spell a major theme of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Jannik’s surname is a form of this word.) The last three letters in the first blank and the first three letters in the second blank spell the same two-digit number. That number, spelled backward, is a piece of equipment used in Jannek’s sport.

What are the words in the two blanks?

What are Jannik’s sport and his surname?

Who was Dante’s muse?

ENTREE #11

Name a sports facility playing surface, in one eight-letter compound word, that is associated mainly with one sport. (This is a general term, not a specific place.) The second part of the word is an implement used in a different sport.

Take the first part of the word. Change its last letter to a “t” to spell what you might reveal if your cleat creates a divot in this playing surface... at least in the days before the groundbreaking sports facility in Entree #5 came about.  

If you instead reverse the order of the letters in the first part of the word, and then again change the new last letter to a “t”, you will spell something else you might reveal if your cleat creates a divot in this playing surface.

What is this sports facility playing surface?

What is the implement used in a different sport?

What two things might you reveal if your cleat creates a divot in the surface?

Hint: You can rearrange the letters in the second part of the playing surface to spell the French word for the color of what the cleated divots reveal.

Dessert Menu

Synonymous Antonymous Dessert:

Changing “healthful” to “harmful” by “raising the middle letter!”

Let A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Take a synonym of “healthful.” Change its middle letter to the letter with a value that is ten higher (for example, A=1 would become K=11) to spell a synonym of “harmful.” 

What are these two synonyms (of “healthful” and of “harmful”) which are, of course, antonyms of one another?

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.

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