Math, Music, Meds and More; Peppy auto-parts professionals? Two habitats for tabby cats? Ranking the rank-and-file pieces; Budget + Judge = Bugles? Telemachus’ Mentor, or Tormentor?

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Ranking the rank-and-file pieces

Here is how I rank the six chess pieces:

1. Knight and Bishop (tied for 1st)

2. Queen (2nd)

3. Castle, also known as a Rook (3rd)

4. Pawn (4th)

5. King (5th)

What ranking system am I using?

Appetizer Menu

Friendly Yet Fiendish Appetizer:

Math, Music, Meds and More

(Note: The five appetizing puzzles below were composed by an irregular contributor to Puzzleria!”)

Body Parts & Other Fractions

1. 🦶✋Take a word for a human body part. Then take a word for certain fractions. 

Put those words together in that order to form a compound word for a general location. 

What is the general location? 

Music Genres & Geometry

2. 🧊Take a term for a three dimensional geometric figure. Add a letter. 

Rearrange these letters to name a term for
certain music genres. 

What are those terms?

Medicine & Geometry

3. ⬠🛑⧎Take a geometric shape. One letter appears three times; remove one of them. Then remove two letters that can be used together to form an abbreviation for a unit of measure often used for medicines. 

Take the remaining letters and rearrange them to get a term for professionals who dealt in medicines and drugs. 

What is the term? 

Controversy & Advocacy

4. 📰Name a controversial subject, often in the news, in two words and a total of thirteen letters. 

Remove a number of consecutive letters from the beginning of the first word – letters that can be rearranged to describe what you are now reading. 

Remove the first letter of the second word, then remove the space between the remaining letters. 

The resulting string of letters, in order from left to right, spells an adjective which advocates on either side of the controversy might use to describe the position of the advocates on the other side. 

What is the adjective?  

Hint: The first letter of the second word can also be the symbol of an element on the periodic table.

Tools, Tints & Potables

5. 🛠🍹Take the word for certain historical reaping tools. Change the second letter to the one following it in the alphabet. 

Then insert the name of a beverage after the first letter. Then insert the name of a color before the last letter. 

The first and last letter are the same. The resulting string of 14 letters can be divided into three words to make a three-word historical term for “keep calm.” The term is a caution not unfamiliar to many an English soldier. 

What are the tools and the term? 

MENU

Anthology & Atlas Hors d’Oeuvre:

Two habitats for tabby cats

Remove an interior letter from a word in a world atlas. 

The result, according to a popular anthology, is a pair of places where certain felines can be found. 

What are these two places? 

What is the word in the atlas?

Side-By-Side Slice:

Peppy auto-parts professionals?

Write a noun down twice, side-by-side, divided by a space. Add a consonant someplace. 

The result is a three-syllable term for the nimblest of clerical professionals.  

What is the noun?

What is this term?

Riffing Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices:

Telemachus’ Mentor... or Tormentor?

Will Shortz’s January 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Warren Bergmann of Neenah, Wisconsin, reads:

Think of a word for a person who helps you. Copy the last three letters and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word that names a person who hurts you. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a city that is the residence of a puzzle-maker whose name is an anagram of the three nouns in the sentence: “The wren ate from a manger in the barn.”

That city is in a state where the deer and some antelope play, some buffalo roam, where seldom a herd of moose can be heard but moos can be heard there all day. Replace the third letter of the city with a duplicate of the last letter, then copy the last three letters and repeat them at the front.

Divide the result into three equal parts, separated by two wide open spaces. The result is the title of a 1990 song by a Belgian band that was covered in 1996 by a German band and in 2011 by a German house duo.

Who is this puzzle-maker and what is his residence?

What is the title of a 1990 song? 

Note: Entrees #2, #3 and #4 were composed by Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is a regular feature on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2 

Take a word for a person who benefits you. 

Copy the last letter and repeat it at the front of the word and you’ll get a word that names a person who may try to take benefits from you.

What are these two words? 

ENTREE #3 

Take a word for a person who can help you succeed at something.  

Copy the last letter and insert the copied letter immediately after the first letter of the word. Add one additional letter to the end of the word and you’ll get a word that names something a person may engage in to try to keep you from succeeding.

What are these two words?  

ENTREE #4 

Take a word for a person who helps you acquire knowledge.  

Double the first letter. Move what is now the fourth letter to the front, and delete what is now

the fifth letter. You’ll name a person who may make you smart. 

What are these two words? 

Note: Entree #5 was composed by Plantsmith, author of the “Garden of the Puzzley Delights” feature on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #5

Take a word for someone who could help you. Replace the conjunction at the end with a three-letter chemistry term. Place a two-letter life-saving hospital space at the end. The result is someone who could hurt you.

Who could help you, and who could hurt you?

ENTREE #6

Think of an eight-letter verb whose last three letters and first three letters are the same, and in the same order.

If a creature does this verb, it is alive. The fourth, fifth and sixth letters of the verb, in reverse order, are associated with a creature that no longer does this verb.

What is this verb?

Hint: The verb’s middle two letters spell a number associated with “Middlemarch.”

ENTREE #7

Think of two words, six letters total, that stand for “nearly forty inches.” Copy the last three letters of this two-word phrase and repeat them at the front, remove the space, and you’ll get one new, longer word that is a trillion times as long as the “nearly forty inches” that the two words stand for.

What two words are these?

What is the longer word?

ENTREE #8

Think of a word for “a branched candlestick or lamp with several lights.” Remove from it the letters of the first name of a past professional athlete surnamed Dawson, leaving a seven-letter result that can be rearranged to spell a decapod crustacean and a Nabokov novel title. Copy the last four letters of this seven-letter result and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word for “a magical charm or incantation.”

What is this “branched candlestick or lamp?”

Who is the athlete named Dawson?

What are the decopod crustacean and the Nabokov title?

What is the “magical charm or incantation?”

Note: The letters of the first name of the past professional athlete surnamed Dawson appear in reverse order (but not 100% consecutively) within the “branched candlestick or lamp with several lights.”

ENTREE #9

“What exactly __ _______ under my insurance policy?”

“When his wide out or flanker __ _______ tightly by the free safety or cornerback it is nigh impossible for the quarterback to
complete a pass.”

“Each roof in the village __ _______ with icy snow, making deliveries difficult for Santa and his reindeer.”

Place the two words missing from any one of the three sentences above next to each other with no space between them. Copy the last three letters (which spell a color) and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a  word that means “found or realized again.”

What words are in the blanks?

What is the word that means “found or realized again?”

ENTREE #10

Place, without a space, a unit of work to the left of the shape of a circle. Copy the last three of these letters and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get a new, longer word that can precede “Railroad” or follow “Velvet.”

What are the unit of work and the shape of a circle?

What is the word that can precede “Railroad” or follow “Velvet”?

ENTREE #11

Think of a word for an iron or brass “mini-cannonball” that is heaved onto the field (but not onto the track). 

Copy the last three letters of this word and repeat them at
the front, and you’ll get a new, three-letter-longer term for a fast freight train, like the Wabash Cannonball. 

What is the word for the “mini-cannonball?”

What is the longer term for a fast freight train, like the Wabash Cannonball?

ENTREE #12

During the morning session of a 1976 weekend seminar training session at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, Beatrice listened to Werner Erhard himself expound on how the situations holding her back in life were working themselves out within the process of life itself. 

After this morning of “______,” Beatrice and many of her fellow seminar-goers spent their two-hour break-period _________ Bacon-Wrapped Scallops, Stone Harbor Nachos and Oysters Rockefeller at the hotel buffet.

Copy the last three letters of the six-letter word in the first blank and repeat them at the front, and you’ll get the nine-letter word that belongs in the second blank. What words are these?

Dessert Menu

Lip-Smack-Snack-Pack Dessert:

Budget + Judge = Bugles?

The surname of a past director of the Office of Management and Budget and the first name of a retired judge, both U.S. citizens, are the same. 

Place the director’s first name to the left of the judge’s surname. Remove the middle letter.

The result sounds like a popular snack. 

Who are this director and judge? 

What is the snack?

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.

Ringing in the New Year cryptically; “So, what’s on the Telly? Kojak?” “The Pirates of Penzaniness?” Lutherans and Masons maybe? Steve stabs us with Baggishesque bayonets! The “Singer” Sewing Machine Company?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“So, what’s on the Telly? Kojak?”

Insert a two-letter verb into a well-known television series title. 

Some consecutive letters of the result spell the first name of a television show’s host.

Some other consecutive letters of the result spell the surname of that television host’s successor. 

What is the TV series? 

Who are the hosts?

Appetizer Menu

MMXXIV Appetizer:

Ringing in the New Year cryptically

What better way to bring in and ring in the New Year than to celebrate 2024 by solving another incredible Cryptic Crossword created by Patrick J. Berry. It is his 33rd crossword to appear on Puzzleria! 

In my introduction to Patrick’s 32nd crossword on October 5th, I opined that it was “one of Patrick’s most amazing cryptic crosswords yet... and that’s saying something!” Well, I like this one even better! 

Granted, Patrick’s 32nd crossword featured an impressive “Housewives of Beverly Hills” theme. But this week’s crossword features an equally impressive musical theme. 

In his present puzzle, nine of his 28 clues (that’s almost a third, 32%) pertain to singers, songs, and to a movie with a memorable musical soundtrack.

If you have missed any of Patrick’s previous 32 cryptic crosswords on Puzzleria!, here are their links:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32      

For those of you who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled the following list of basic cryptic crossword puzzle
instructions:

Regarding the Across and Down clues and their format:

The number, or numbers, that appear in parentheses at the end of each clue indicate how many letters are in the answer.

Multiple numbers in parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in multiple-word answers. For example, (6) simply indicates a six-letter word like “puzzle,” (7,9) indicates a seven-letter and nine-letter answer like “cryptic crossword,” and (6-5) indicates a six-letter and five-letter hyphenated answer like “thirty-third.”

For further insight about how to decipher these numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s “Cryptic Crossword Tutorial” in this link to his November 17, 2017 cryptic crossword.

That Tutorial appears below the grid that contains the answers in that edition of Puzzleria!

So, sit back on your
Barcalounger, open Puzzleria!, plop a 78 rpm record down on on your Victrola spindle, and enjoy solving Patrick’s Cryptic Crossword #33:

ACROSS

1. Turned to leave, having permission—was given no permission to come in...(10)

6. ...and you run off, say, in the opposite direction?(2,2)

9. 12 11 singer screwed up lyrics—is thrown off, after some hesitation, in concert(6,4)

10. Counter with some brilliant insight(4)

12. Track 1 on the album appears to be most profound—it’s been covered by three different artists in this puzzle(3,5,3,2,3,7)

15. Saving company in money trouble(7)

16. Exploded near the Middle Eastern
capital(7)

17. Broadcast hijacked by rap rejects(7)

19. Getting in shape, probably die using such a drug?(7)

20. Special treat—he dug a movie from the 60s(3,8)

23. Said a little for a lot?(4)

24. 12 11 singer (and writer), way cool in show(3,7)

25. Rock music hard to follow? Understood(4)

26. Song by 24 Across—favorite one in shower?(5,5)

DOWN

1. Intimidate students with exam(4)

2. Eve’s first hangout!(4)

3. Terrible pity to have a player pass on(3,2,7)

4. Sorority: Fit place to welcome latest debutante(7)

5. I get to ramble about self, primarily!(7)

7. Actor from foreign country upset rest(4,6)

8. Chance for one to get last of washin’ done(10)

11. See 12 Across

13. Darn—he’s got awful rash!(10)

14. 12 11 singer, rated worst rendition?(3,7)

18. Facade’s ruined, not a happy sight(3,4)

19. Simple stereotype—the lad’s off riding donkey?(7)

21. Greek character put on fine cheese(4)

22. Sports channel has special power over men? Not me!(4)

MENU

Diva Hors d’Oeuvre:

The “Singer” Sewing Machine Company? 

Take the last name of a living American singer followed by the first name of a past American
singer who was also a jazz singer and bandleader.

Place a space between them. 

These two names form the name a manufacturing company established a century ago in the Midwest. Who are these singers, and the name of the company?

Celebrity Endorsement Slice:

Lutherans and Masons maybe?

Name a brand-name product and a celebrity who promoted it. Each name can be anagrammed to spell a word associated with Protestantism. What is this product? Who is the celebrity? What are the two words associated with Protestantism?

Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:

Steve stabs us with Baggishesque bayonets!

Will Shortz’s January 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts, reads:

Name certain weapons. 

Remove the middle four letters. The remaining letters, spelled backward, describe what these weapons do.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a long-eared creature and a word you might say to make the creature do “the right thing.” 

These six letters, if rearranged are the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth and  eleventh  letters in the name of a puzzle-maker. The second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth letters of this puzzle-maker can be rearranged to form a two-word five-letter synonym of something with a large screen. 

What is this creature and a word you might say to it?

What is the two-word five-letter synonym of something with a large screen?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

Note: Entrees 2, 3, and 4 are riffs created by a prolific puzzle-maker and friend of Puzzleria!

Entree #2 is a riff-off of the current “bayonets/stab” NPR puzzle;

Entree #3 is a riff of last week’s NPR puzzle; and

Entree #4 is a riff on December 28th’s “Minding Your P’s & Q’s Dessert: Edward Bear, George Geef, Sidney.”

ENTREE #2

Name a certain weapon. Change the first vowel to another vowel. The result, spelled backward, is a certain type of puzzle. What are the weapon and the puzzle?

ENTREE #3

Change one letter of a movie title and anagram to name another movie that came out 18 years earlier and 38, 51, and 58 years later. 

Then change one letter in that and anagram to
name a famous movie that came out 50 years after the first movie. 

What movies are these?   

ENTREE #4

Take two consecutive letters of the alphabet. Insert between them either of the two letters used in an abbreviation much in the news. Say the first of the consecutive letters, say the short pronunciation of the inserted letter, say the second consecutive letter.  The result sounds like a thing often associated with a protest. What is the thing?   

ENTREE #5

Name a fictional weapon. Rearrange its letters to spell two five-letter synonyms of rubbish, or twaddle. Or, rearrange them to spell two recreational conveyances associated with
snow.

What is this fictional weapon?

What are these synonyms of rubbish/twaddle and two recreational conveyances. 

Hint: One of the recreational conveyances is a four-letter hyphenated word.

ENTREE #6

Remove the first letter from a weapon. The result is a four-letter word. 

Put the letter you removed back where it was. The first three letters of this result can be rearranged to spell something farmers do with seeds. The first four letters, in reverse order, spell the parallel furrows where the farmer does this.

What are this weapon, two four-letter words and one three-letter word?

ENTREE #7

Take a two-syllable word for spears, clubs, guns or axes. Reverse the order of the second and third letters, then move the first letter to someplace in the interior of the word, preceded by a space. The result, spelled in reverse, is a vegetable. What are this word and veggie?

ENTREE #8

Name a weapon that is flung. 

Its first four letters spell the sound a bomb makes. 

The first letter followed by the last three letters spell the sound made by a rearrangement of three consecutive letters of a verb in this puzzle. What are this weapon, two sounds, and the verb?

ENTREE #9

Rearrange the letters of a two-word,14-letter weapon, to spell a synonym of hammer (but a synonym of hammer that is too small to do any harm as a weapon) and a branch of theology dealing with the promotion of peace.

What are this weapon, word for a hammer, and
peace-promoting branch of theology?

ENTREE #10

Name certain weapons, in nine letters. 

* The 5th, 6th and 7th letters, spelled backward, are a kind of poem. 

* The 4th, 7th and 8th letters name a particular writer of short stories and verse.

* The 4th, 2nd, 5th and 1st letters, spell a word for a versifier.

* The 8th, 7th and 9th letters spell a goddess
of the dawn.

* The 1st, 3rd, 2nd, 4th and 5th letters spell a figure of speech.

* The 7th, 5th and 3rd letters spell an apostrophized contraction often seen in poems.

* The 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 9th and 8th letters spell writing – unlike many a poem – sans meter or rhyme.

What are these weapons?

What are the seven other words?

ENTREE #11

“______ of Sunrise, Sundown’s Frowns”

During downy dawns, drab days,

Bright _______, like sun’s first-blush rays

May warm our souls in subtle ways,

Subdue our blues, allay our grays. 

Name a certain seven-letter weapon. Rearrange its letters to spell the plural form of a common figure of speech that is employed by the above  quatrain. Remove the second letter from that plural-form figure of speech. The result is the same missing word that belongs in both the blank in the quatrain’s title and the blank in the quatrain’s second line.

What are this weapon, figure of speech and word in the two blanks?

ENTREE #12

Name certain weapons, in eight letters. Remove the first two letters. 

The first four of the remaining six letters spell a singular human body part.

The last four of these remaining letters spell
human body parts that come in pairs.

Remove the first and fifth letters from this
sextet of letters.

The four remaining letters also spell human body parts that come in pairs.

What are these weapons and three body parts?

ENTREE #13

Name a certain weapon. Remove the middle letter. The remaining letters, spelled forward, spell two words: a place you can catch fish and a piece of equipment you might use to catch fish there.

What is this weapon?

What are the place you can catch fish and the piece of equipment?

Dessert Menu

Zany Dezzert:

“The Pirates of Penzaniness?”

Take the more common spelling of the second word in the title of a film starring a famously zany comedy troupe. 

Change the word's first letter to a letter that is half its value. 

Divide the result in half to name two synonyms of “zany”. 

What are this comedy troupe, the film title, and the two synonyms of “zany”?

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!