My Friend Flicker! (Skydi Version); ...From Goldsmith to Greek myth; Fumbles! Blunders! Bobbles! Science fiction and Superheroes; Toenail, tailbone (but “No Tail!”) Nightingale and Guitarist

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Going from Goldsmith to Greek myth

Take a three-syllable adjective followed by a two-word-two-syllable brand-name food. 

Replace the adjective with a near-rhyming adjective. 

Scrunch together two adjacent letters in the fourth syllable to create what appears to be one different letter. 

Replace the fifth syllable with a rhyming word.

Remove the space between the fourth and fifth syllables. 

The result, in five syllables, is the adjectival form of a proper name –  a proper name that is the first of two words naming a psychological concept associated with Greek mythology that is “a group of repressed desires and memories that exerts a dominating influence upon the personality.” 

What are these ten syllables?

Hint: The three-syllable adjective and near-rhyming adjective begin, respectively, with an “e” and “O”.

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

“My Friend Flicker!” (the Skydi Version)

Note: The following puzzle, created by Mark Scott (aka “skydiveboy,” his screen name) is associated with the the “de-light-ful” illustration, below, that accompanies the puzzle text. 

It is an image of a classic 97-year-old lantern (date-stamped “February 1928”)  given to Mark’s mother by a friend of hers who inherited it from her grandfather. The friend knew the Scott family liked to go tent camping several times each summer, and she had no use for it herself. Mark still has it, and it has not required any restoration other than his replacing the cap gasket. He says the older lanterns were the better ones, and that he loves restoring them.

That said, here is Mark’s latest “skydiversion”:

There is a well known American genius inventor whose middle name must have been restraining during his long life... or at least at the end of his long life.

Can you name him?

MENU

Freeloading Hors d’Oeuvre

Fumbles! Blunders! Bobbles!

Place a space within an adjective that is associated with fumbles, blunders and bobbles. 

The result is two nouns: 

1. a lazy freeloader, and 

2. something that freeloader likely does not possess. 

What are this adjective and two nouns?

Naive Newcomer Slice:

Science fiction and Superheroes

Remove the name of a science fiction character from a superhero’s name to get a word for a naive or inexperienced newcomer.

What are these two names? 

What is the word for a naive or inexperienced newcomer?

Riffing Off Shortz And Terrien Entrees:

Toenail, tailbone (but no tail!)

Will Shortz’s February 2nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Lindsay Terrien of Chicago, Illinois, reads:

Name a part of the human body in seven letters. Add a B and rearrange the result to get another part of the human body.

Note: Lancek, who posts regularly on Blaine’s Blog, deserves credit for the parenthetical part of the headline: (but no tail!).

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Terrien Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker from Chicago, first and last names. 

Rearrange these 14 letters to spell the two-word name of a fictional street dog in Mexico who finds a home in Washington State where
he overcomes challenging situations “while keeping his head up and tail a-waggin’ through life’s predicaments.”

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the dog’s name?

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 were created by our good friend Nodd, author of “Nodd ready for prime time” on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #2

Name a part of the human body in seven letters. 

Add a B and rearrange the result to get a card game. 

What are the body part and the card game?

ENTREE #3

Name a part of the human body in seven letters. 

Replace a D with a B and rearrange the result to get a word for a short work of fiction that has a word count limitation. 

What are the body part and the word for a work of fiction?

ENTREE #4

Name a part of the human body in seven letters. 

Rearrange its letters to get a word for a kind of cheese. 

What are the body part and the cheese?

ENTREE #5

The same five letters can be arranged to spell two different body parts. 

What are the body parts?

ENTREE #6

Name a part of the human body in eight letters. 

Rearrange the letters to spell a two-word phrase that describes a steep slope or cliff.
(The first word of the phrase is an indefinite article.) 

What is the body part, and what is the two-word phrase?

ENTREE #7

Name a part of the human body. 

Rearrange the letters to spell the last name of a popular singer who is not of Asian descent.

What is the body part, and who is the singer?

Note: Entrees #8 through #10 were created by our good friend Plantsmith, author of “Garden of Puzzley Delights” on Puzzleria!  

ENTREE #8

Add a B to a seven-letter body part. 

Subtract the letters of a major broadcast channel. Mix the result to get a second body part.

Hint: The two body parts are not far from one another.

ENTREE #9

The following Plantsmith puzzle is a riff on ViolinTeddy’s Strad-Steiff Subtleties from last week:

Think of two near-homophones relating to the following two items: 

Trump Tower vs French dip. 

What are these two near-homophones?

ENTREE #10

Name something, in two words, seen on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates. 

Rearrange the letters to spell a two-word headline that might have appeared, but fortunately did not appear, in U.S. newspapers in early September 1975 and, if not then, later in September 1975.

ENTREE #11

Name an enclosure in which a creature may be fluttering. 

Five of its letters are the first five in the alphabet. 

Remove one of those five, then reverse the order of the letters to its left. 

The result is an enclosure in which a heart may be fluttering.

What are these two enclosures? 

ENTREE #12

Name a part of the human body in seven letters. 

Reverse the order of the last three letters and move the result to the beginning. The final result is a name that is preceded by Eddie, Lily or Herman. 

What are this body part and name?

ENTREE #13

Rearrange the eight letters in a part of the human body to spell a two-word description of
one of the people pictured in the image accompanying this puzzle text.

What are the body part and the description?

Dessert Menu

Anagram Hall Of Fame Dessert

Nightingale and Guitarist

Name two Hall of Fame music artists, a female singer-songwriter and a male guitarist, whose first names are anagrams of  each other. 

Who are they?

Every Thursday 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.

Transporting parts of speech; MacBeth: Red King of Scotland; Fabrics non-fishy and fishy; Pronoun emerges synonymous! Fish parts depart from 2 pelicans; Deep-sixing of end-parts leaves Doll Part

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

MacBeth: Red King of Scotland

Take a five-word phrase from Shakespeare’s “MacBeth.” 

Delete “a vowel that is not in ‘team’” from the second word. 

Replace the fifth word with a word between “truth” and “the American way.” 

The result is a fitting phrase for the month of January. 

What are these phrases?

Appetizer Menu

Homographitity Appetizer:

Transporting parts of speech

Each pair of words hinted at in #1 through #7 below are spelled the same (they are “homographs”), but are different parts of speech and have different meanings. 

For example, the word “scale” appears twice in the following sentence – first as a verb meaning “climb,” then as a noun meaning “weigher”:

“After you scale a mountain, you may weigh less the next day when you step on a scale.”

Thus, “climb vs ‘weigher’” = SCALE...

or, for another example, “tilt vs roster” = LIST

Find the common word for each:

1. trim vs fruit 

2. a “coming in” vs mesmerize 

3. cry vs fat 

4. wrote  vs  calm

5. mope vs children

6. weigh vs purposeful

7. to anger vs strong-smelling stick.

In #8, changing one vowel in a trisyllabic word changes its meaning but retains its part-of-speech – like, for example, “internal” and “infernal.

8. Change one vowel in a nine-letter adjective to turn it from a word that means truthful into a word that means hungry.

And, in #9, changing two letters in a trisyllabic word changes its meaning but retains its part-of-speech” – like, for example, “containing” and “captaining.”

9. Two nine-letter verbs are synonyms. Change the first two letters of the first verb to obtain the  second verb thusly:  ROT-7 the first letter of the first verb; ROT-8 the second letter.

MENU

Ruthlessly Yankee Hors d’Oeuvre

Fish parts depart from two pelicans

Place two words for two birds side-by-side. 

Yank a fish-part from the interior. 

The result is a synonym of “yank.” 

What are these bird-words, fish-part and yank-clone?

Unmerging A Merger Slice:

Pronoun emerges synonymous! 

Divide a pronoun into two parts. 

Change the last letter of the first part to
another letter. 

The result is a pair of synonyms. 

What are this pronoun and two synonyms?  

Riffing Off Shortz And Smith Entrees:

Deep-sixing of end-parts leaves Doll Part

Will Shortz’s January 26th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Greg Smith of Roscoe, Illinois, reads:

Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. Drop the
second syllable from each name and you’ll be left with the piece of a toy. What singer is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Smith Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker and the city from which he hails, in three words. Rearrange the combined letters in those words to spell:

~ a word that describes Mortimer and Minnie,

~ a word that follows Buck or Will,  

~ a word that precedes writer or Brewing (or -fish Brewing or Hawk Brewing or Town Brewing!

What are those three words? 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 were created by our good friend Nodd, author of “Nodd ready for prime time.” 

ENTREE #2

Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. 

Drop the second syllable from each name and switch the order of the two first syllables.

You'll be left with something that is a necessary part of many toys. 

Who is the singer, and what is the toy part?

ENTREE #3

A popular singer’s first and last names have five syllables in total. 

Replace the last letter of the last name with an N and an A. 

The first syllable of the first name, followed by the last name as modified, spell a popular dance. 

Who is the singer, and what is the dance?

ENTREE #4

Take the first and last names of a popular singer. 

The first two letters of the first name, followed by the last two letters of the last name, spell the last name of a famous person in U.S.
history. 

The singer’s first name is the same as the last name of another famous person in U.S. history. 

There is a connection between the two historical persons. Who are the singer and the historical persons?

ENTREE #5

Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. 

Change a double letter in the first name to a double letter in the last name to get a word for
an oppressive person. 

Who is the singer, and what is the word for an oppressive person?

ENTREE #6

Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. 

The first letter of the first name, followed by the first letter of the last name and the last two
letters of the last name, spell the title of a popular movie. 

Who is the singer, and what is the movie?

ENTREE #7

Take the alliterative first and last names of a famous singer. 

Together, the names describe someone you might see at a grocery store. Who is the singer, and who might you see at a grocery store?

Note: Entrees #8 and #9 were created by our good friend Plantsmith, author of “Garden of Public Delights.” 

ENTREE #8

Take a popular singer who goes by one name. 

Drop last letter and replace a vowel with a different vowel to get a musical instrument that is likely often used in the production of the singer’s songs.

ENTREE #9

Name a popular singer, first and last names, in three and two syllables. 

Drop first two and last two letters of the first name and the last three letters of the last name. The result is a toy piece.

Who is this singer?

What is the toy piece? 

ENTREE #10

Think of a popular singer whose first and last names each have two syllables. 

Take either syllable of the last name followed by the first syllable of the first name to spell a festive celebration.

Who is the singer and what is the celebration?

ENTREE #11

Name a singer whose ____ of work is indeed impressive. The first two letters of this singer’s
first and last names spell the word that belongs in the blank. 

Who is this singer?

ENTREE #12

Write the three-letter monogram of a writer twice without a space to name to name a kind of fly. 

Who is this writer?

What is this fly?

ENTREE #13

Remove from the name of a novelist six consecutive letters, leaving letters, in order, that spell the name of barnyard creatures. 

Rearrange the removed letters to spell the surname of a Barry who scribbled down a ballad about berets.

Who is the novelist?

Who is the ballad scribbler? 

ENTREE #14

From a novelist’s surname, remove a Second-Millennium year that is the product of two consecutive integers, leaving a Romance-language translation of “she.”

From the novelist’s first name, remove a synonym of “adult male,” leaving the English translation of the Romance-language possessive pronoun (also called a possessive

adjective) “son”

Who is this novelist?

What are the product of two consecutive integers and “she” in a Romance language?

What is the synonym of “adult male”?

Dessert Menu

Piscine Parts Dessert:

Fabrics non-fishy and fishy

Name a fish followed, without a space, by a hard fish part. 

Name also non-aquatic animals followed by a
hard animal part. 

The result is a  pair of fabric patterns. 

What are they?

Every Thursday 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.

5 pop icons in an 8-decade purse; Pulling strings brings lulling winds; An “Over-the-top” Cover-up?; Baseball, bulls and “belletrism” Shakespeare, Isolation & Cyclops! Pulling strings brings lulling winds; “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly... or maybe ‘Slopperly’?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Wouldn’t It Be Loverly... or maybe ‘Slopperly’?”

Capitalize the second-last letter of a word in a world atlas. 

Change the last letter to a different vowel. 

The result looks like a synonym of “sloppy.” 

What are this world-atlas word and “sloppy synonym?”

Appetizer Menu

Tortitudinal Appetizer:

Five pop “icons” in an eight-decade “purse” 

Name a singer who was mostly popular in the late 1950s and 1960s. 

Anagram the singer’s name into the last name of a popular actor of the past and the first word of one of his film titles. 

The actor starred in two movies that were released in the same year. 

Rearrange the last name of one character to produce the last name of the other character. 

Take the last name that appears first alphabetically. 

Place the last letter in the beginning, and add a space. Phonetically, you’ll have the name of a singer who had a hit with a song recorded in the same year as when the movies were released. The song reached #1 in the following year. 

Now take the first name of the first singer, and then add the full name of the second singer after that. 

Phonetically, you’ll have the name of another singer. This singer’s biggest hit was later a bigger hit by another singer. That singer replaced the first singer at the top of the Billboard charts with a different song. 

Who are the four singers? Who is the actor? What is his film? Who are the characters he portrayed? 

MENU

Anagrammatical Hors d’Oeuvre:

Shakespeare, Isolation & Cyclops!  

Anagram the letters of a Shakespearean character to spell either the name of some isolated spot on earth or a two-word phrase associated with Cyclops. 

Who is this character? 

What are the isolated spot and two-word phrase?

Hint: The two words of the two-word phrase begin with the same letter, but they do not “alliterate.”

Surnominal Slice:

Baseball, bulls and “belletrism” 

Divide the surname of an author into two parts.

The first part of the surname is a short synonym of a rearrangement of the combined ten letters of:

👣 a metrical foot,

🟥 a word heard at a bullfight, and

⚾ a word heard at a baseball game.

The second part of the surname is what the first part is more apt to do during high winds or speeds. 

Who is this author?

What are its two parts?

What are the metrical foot and two words heard?

Riffing Off Shortz And Weisz Entrees:

An “Over-the-top” Cover-up?

Will Shortz’s January 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Sandy Weisz of Chicago, reads:

Think of a familiar two-word phrase that means “a secret mission.” 

Move the last letter of the first word to the start of the second word. 

The result will be two words that are synonyms. What are they?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Weisz Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Think of a word that means “I love” in a language that is the root of all Romance languages, followed the first name of a puzzle-maker. The result is a two-word expression that Will Shortz – as well as those who follow him on National Public Radio (many who are versed in this root language!) – might exclaim after presenting another of this prolific puzzle-maker’s puzzles on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday “The Puzzle” segment.

Move the space between that “root-language word” and the puzzle-maker’s first name one place to the right, resulting in the first names of the two title characters in a long-running pioneering American radio show.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the root-language translation of “I love”?

What might Will and his followers exclaim?

What is the long-running American radio show?

Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the brainchildren of Nodd, of “Nodd ready for prime time” fame.

ENTREE #2

Think of an adjective that describes a secret mission. Remove the last letter and double the third and fourth letters. 

Rearrange to get a pair of  antonyms. 

What are the adjective and the antonyms?

ENTREE #3

Think of a word that describes the objective of many a secret mission conducted against a foreign adversary. 

Remove the third, fourth, and fifth letters. 

The remaining letters spell something that may become necessary if the secret mission is discovered by the foreign adversary. 

What is the word that describes the objective, and the word for what may become necessary? 

ENTREE #4

Think of a word for damaging an adversary’s asset to gain a political or military advantage. 

Remove the last letter. Rearrange the rest of the letters to spell a two-word vehicle that might be useful in damaging the adversary’s asset. 

What is the word for damaging an asset, and what is the two-word vehicle?

ENTREE #5

Think of a two-word phrase meaning a prearranged hiding place for the deposit and pickup of information obtained through espionage. 

Switch the order of the words in the two-word phrase and you will get an expression of intense scorn or dislike. 

What is the hiding place, and what is the expression?

ENTREE #6

Think of a slang term for an espionage agent who assumes the names of dead persons to create false identities for undercover work. 

Add an S. Rearrange to spell a word for a swamp. 

What is the word for such an agent, and what is the word for a swamp?

ENTREE #7

The names of two mammals are often used to describe persons who incriminate others. 

A two-word expression consisting of a place to sit, followed by the name of a bird, is also used in that way. 

What are the mammals, and what is the expression?

ENTREE #8

Think of a past very gifted artistic genius who had a physical handicap. 

You and others who DO NOT share this handicap are privileged  to  ____ ___ ___ __ ___iculated – in blanks containing 4,3,3 and 2 letters... and the first 3 letters of an 11-letter verb. 

These blanks contain the consecutive letters of a 5-letter body part, repeated thrice. 

The abbreviation “ICU” (Intensive Care Unit, which is associated with “death”) and the word “late,” which means “deceased,” appear consecutively in the 11-letter verb.

You, however, are still alive, and so can answer the following:

Who is this artistic genius?

What are the 5-letter body part and the words in the blanks?

ENTREE #9

In a grassy pasture or meadow (3 letters), an equine creature marked with patches of white and another color (5 letters) frolics and gambols , not “playing the horses,” but “playing
with the other horses.” 

In order to beat the heat, this “horse of two different colors,” along with a few of its “gambol-mates,” ____ ____ a nearby pond.

The two 4-letter words in the blanks contain the same letters in the same order as the 3-letter and 5-letter words.

What are this meadow and equine creature?

What do these horses do to enter the pond? 

ENTREE #10

Some war veterans choose to bring home medals, ribbons, weapons or other mementos of their service. 

But some vets also bring home mementos that are impossible for them to leave behind, examples of which are pictured here. 

Write a 3-and-5-word caption for that image. Move the space in that two-word description of mementos, forming “two new missing words” of 4 and 4 letters. This is a fitting caption for the second image pictured here. 

What are these two captions, in 3 & 5 and in 4 & 4 letters?

ENTREE #11

Professional carpenters grab their hammers, hit the nail on the head and keep pounding.

Amateur carpenters grab their hammers, hit the nail on their thumb and stop pounding (although the throbbing pain in their thumb keeps pounding!)

And predictably, after the amateur carpenter hits his thumb, he will usually ____ “__!” Those blanks contain a 4-letter verb and 2-letter exclamation! 

Remove the space and punctuation from that “blank-blank” expression to get a color.

What words belong in the blanks?

What is the color?

ENTREE #12

Often, a bull is slain by a toreador’s sword. 

But sometimes, the toreador is gored!

Think of a familiar term for sporting equipment,
in words of 3 and 5 letters, that comes in pairs.

Move the space one place to the right. The result is what happens after the toreador is gored... from that point of the bullfight on, the “mano a toro” spectacle will necessarily ___ ____. (The blanks contain a verb beginning with an “s” and a Spanish exclamation, in its plural form, beginning with an “o”.)

What is the sporting equipment?

 What happens when the toreador is gored?

ENTREE #13

Think of a mostly verbal three-word party game requiring two or more players, in 5, 2 and 4 letters.

The third word can be anagrammed to form two words associated with a personal letter in your mailbox.

Take the the first two words of the party game: 

Move the space between them two places to the left,  forming words of 3 and 4 letters:

🐘 The truncated first name of a novelist, and

🪚 A god with a carpenter’s tool.

The novelist and god are both associated with “Holly Golightning (sic).”

What is this party game?

What are the anagrams of the third word?

Who are the novelist and god?

Dessert Menu

Orchestral Dessert:

Pulling strings brings lulling winds

 Remove a letter from a stringed instrument. 

Change the first letter to the letter following it in the alphabet, then move it to the end. 

The result is a wind instrument. 

What are these instruments?

Every Thursday 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 Thursday.

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.