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.

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.

“Patrick’s Cryptic Haberdashery” Beth ‘rounds-up’ extra math credit A phrase regarding garb that frays What Malone & Capone had in common; Della is yella, Perry’s canary, Paul is just pale! Tweak an adjective, make an antonym;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of  Week:

Beth “rounds-up” extra math credit

On her math test, Beth’s answers to “three to the fifth power” and “two to the eighth power” were, respectively,  250 and 260. 

Mr. Powers, her teacher, was about to give Beth half-credit for at least rounding up the correct answers... But then, he noticed something, and gave Beth extra credit for thinking outside the box. 

What did Mr. Powers notice?

Appetizer Menu

As Many Crosswords As Days In A Month Appetizer:

“Patrick’s Cryptic Haberdashery”

Cryptic crossword impresario Patrick J. Berry has stitched together a 31st puzzle for all challenge-loving Puzzlerians. 

When Green Bay Packer fans see the number 31 embazoned on the vintage threads of an NFL jersey, many of them recall the exploits of James (Jim) Taylor... (no, not the folk singer from the New England States, but the fullback from the Gulf States: Florida, Mississippi, Alabama (where Patrick hails from) and Louisiana where #31 hailed from.

Patrick has “taylor-made” this, his 31st cryptic crossword to appear on Puzzleria, for us so we could “try it on for size...” let’s just call it “cryptic haberdashery.” 

If you have missed any of Patrick’s previous 30 incomparably well-tailored cryptic crossword accoutrements 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 

For those of you who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled the following 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, (7) simply indicates a seven-letter word like “Packers,” (3,6) indicates a three-letter and six-letter answer like “Jim Taylor,” and (4-3) indicates a four-letter and three-letter hyphenated answer like “pick-six” (an interception that results in a touchdown).

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!

Before we bid you “adieu,” and without further ado, here are the clues to Patrick J. Berry’s Cryptic Crossword #31: 

ACROSS

1. Select and remix one of Bowie’s hits(4,5)

6. Some cloudburst...or monsoon!(5)

9. “Scandal” star runs into important politicians
here(5,10)

10. Kills dead, with terrible noise(4,2)

11. Certain football players with name in underwear?(8)

13. Confused by lingo, her kind(10)

14. They brought gifts with little imagination?(4)

16. Keen part of playing a game(4)

17. Holding or wearing robe?(10)

19. They ride off in force(5,3)

20. Eccentric writer’s back, shaking fist(6)

23. Rock icon on album, one using drug rarely(4,2,1,4,4)

24. They can smell new flowers right off?(5)

25. Democrat put in quotes “what Alabama and Tennessee are”(3,6)

DOWN

1. Popular on social media, perhaps (was dishonest, claiming “close to Facebook”?)(5)

2. Stranger rescuing critter has hard time escaping zoo(5-4,6)

3. Drunk lady sure to go topless when the sun is up(8)

4. Biblical character’s drama involves ark, primarily(4)

5. Historical figure, quite a gas to be around, no?(5,5)

6. Philosopher might make a scene(6)

7. Brando classic some watched in movie house, not about to resist hanging around(2,3,10)

8. Something for a girl to wear—could be riskin’ it with a little more on?(9)

12. Tour I fancy, desperate to see local entertainment(6,4)

13. Can be worn to bed—good to have flimsy thing on?(9)

15. Turned up news interrupting broadcast—loud!(8)

18. Comic is bald, uses improvisation(2-4)

21. Sort of nuts about Eastern music(5)

22. Charlie, silly old clown(4)

MENU

Opposites Attract Hors d’Oeuvre

Tweak an adjective, make an antonym

Move the third letter of an adjective to the end
and change an “a” to an “e” to get an antonym of the adjective. 

What are these two adjectival antonyms?

Fay Wray May Fray Slice:

Phrases regarding garb that frays

Name two articles of clothing that may fray. 

Rearrange their combined letters to spell examples of that fraying, in two words. 

What are these articles of clothing and the examples of fraying?

Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Slices:

Della is yella, Perry’s canary, Paul is just pale!

Will Shortz’s June 25th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg VanMechelen of Berkeley, California, reads:

Name a well-known TV character (5,6). Change the first letter of the first name to a Y and read it backward. 

You’ll get a synonym of the character’s last name. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a well-known puzzle-maker (4,11). Delete the second letter of the first name and move the first letter to the end of the first name. Switch the first and fourth letters of the last name.

The first six letters of the 14-letter result are someone John Lennon claimed to be in a song lyric. (He also claimed to be “The Walrus” in that song... but everyone knows that Craig Stadler, not John Lennon, is “The Walrus.”)

The next three letters sound like a rhyme of “wreck,” which was the last word in the title of the autobiography of a baseball executive with a “double-e” in his surname: “______ as in Wreck.”

The final five letters are the first word in the title of a song penned by Lennon’s fellow Beatle who, after the Beatles’ demise, formed a band called Paul McCartney and Wings. The song’s title sounded like the nickname given by Paul and Linda McCartney to their Land Rover. 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

Whom did Lennon claim to be?

Who is the baseball executive?

What is the title of McCartney’s “ode to a Land Rover?”

Note: In Entrees #2, #3, #4 and #5, Greg VanMechelen is riffing off his own “Della Street Alley” puzzle that was featured on NPR this past Sunday. Our gratitude to Greg (also known as “Ecoarchitect”) whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Take the first and last name of a famous character from television and other media.  To the first name add two alphabetically consecutive letters, one at the front and one at the back. The result will phonetically be where you don’t want to be during a traffic jam or while shopping at a grocery store.  Who is the character and where don’t you want to be?

ENTREE #3

Name a well-known TV character from the 1970’s who was considered very cool. 

That was also the name of another TV personality in the 1990’s and 2000’s who was called even cooler.

ENTREE #4

Name a well-known actor from the past, first and last name. 

Rearrange the letters in the last name and the
result will describe a certain group of hobbyists.  

Who is the actor and who are the hobbyists?

Note: Ecoarchitect was inspired by a comment “Jaws” made on Blaine’s Blog on June 26 to compose the following riff of his NPR puzzle:

ENTREE #5

Name a well-known actress, seven letters first name, five letters last. The last name is the location for a certain sporting event.  Remove a duplicate letter from the first name, rearrange, and the result will be what you'd like to score in that game.

ENTREE #6

Name a well-known TV character (5,6). Remove the last letter of the first name, then change the first letter of the first name to a Y and read the result backward. 

You’ll get a transitive verb followed by the words “up the” and the character’s surname. 

These four words describe what conscientious duffers do after taking several
sandy swings or digging several divots while attempting to blast their way out of a sand trap or deep rough embankment. 

Who is this character?

What does a conscientious duffer do?

ENTREE #7

Name a well-known TV character (6,6) who used two-syllable derogatory nicknames to refer to his son-in-law and wife. 

Spoonerize the son-in-law’s nickname to get what some hosts do to a beverage before serving it, especially in winter months, and the name of one such beverage that is made of water and honey, malt, and yeast.

Spoonerize the wife’s nickname to get the first name of a singer and a shortened form of a pronoun (substituting a “d” for the “th”) that he
used in his recording of “Ol’ Man River,” as did Paul Robeson, using that shortened pronoun before the words “bale” and “barge” in the 1936 production of “Showboat.”

Who is this TV character?

What were the two derogatory nicknames?

What is the beverage and what some hosts do to it before serving it?

What is the first name of a singer and a shortened form of the pronoun?

ENTREE #8

Name a well-known country singer (5,6). Change either the third or fourth letter of the first name to an E and rearrange the result to spell what the singer did on a 1970 remake of a 1930 Jimmie Rodgers hit record. 

Now spell the singer’s surname backward and divide the result into two equal parts to describe, in a negative way, the genre of music for which this singer is known.

Who is the singer?

What did the singer do on a 1970 remake of a 1930 record?

What is the two-word negative description of the genre of music this singer is known for?

ENTREE #9

Take the first and middle names of a person who is familiar to American historians. 

Spell the first name backward to form a word that might describe how a person might feel (at least during that period in history) — a person who would today be described by the middle name.

Who is this person with whom American historians are familiar?

Hint: Replace the third letter of this person’s surname with its mirror image and replace the second vowel with a duplicate of the first. The result is a seven-letter plural noun. 

Then take the surname of an inventor-painter who is also familiar to American historians. Add an “L” and “S” to the end to form a second seven-letter plural noun. 

These two nouns are synonyms.

ENTREE #10

Take a three-syllable word associated with names. Spell it backwards. 

The result is a woman’s name, followed by a word that means “name” in a language that is not English.

What is this three-syllable word?

What are the woman’s name and the word that means “name”?

Dessert Menu

Rhyme Zone Dessert:

What Malone & Capone had in common

Name, in two words, where Capone and
Malone both spent some time.

Note: There are two possible answers,
depending on whether you choose a fictional “Malone” or a non-fictional “Malone.” (Capone, alas, was non-fictional.)

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 an
d 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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