Schpuzzle of the Week:
Gophers & badgers & deer, oh my!
Take just the second halves of two creatures with the same even number of letters in their names – like badger and gopher, for example.
Rearrange these combined letters to spell words that are synonyms of the two-word subject and one-word predicate in “The female deer bounded.”These two creatures begin with the same four
letters in the same order. These four letters spell a prefix. The first three of these four letters spell still another creature.
What are these two creatures with the same even number of letters in their names?
What are the synonyms of “female deer” and “bounded”?
What are the prefix and the creature at the beginning of the prefix?
Appetizer Menu
Half-A-Dozen Puzzling Doozies Appetizer:
Initials, Isles, Prezzes, Pop, Toys & Dolls
Animal Isle
1. ๐๐Name an island. Place a copy of its last letter at the beginning. You’ll have a mammal spelled backwards, followed by a mammal spelled forwards.
Now change the first letter of the string (i.e., the duplicated letter) to the one that immediately follows it in the alphabet. You’ll have another mammal spelled backward, followed by the remaining letters in the string.
Anagram those remaining letters in the string to produce another animal, one that you might see near an island.
Indeed the island you named to begin this puzzle is especially associated with this animal.
What is the island? What are these animals?
“Pop goes Broadway”
2. ๐๐Name a pop band from the 1960s. Now think of one of their biggest hits in two words. Change the middle letter of the title to an “E” and rearrange the letters. You’ll have the last word in another one of their song titles. The last word in that song title is also the title of a song from a Broadway musical.
Now remove the first and last letters from the original two-word song title, and rearrange the letters. You’ll have another song title from the musical, which was also an album track for the band.
Who is the band? What is the two-word song title? What is their song title that ends in a song title from a Broadway musical? What is the musical? What song was an album track?
Beautiful toys
3. ๐ ๐Think of a current beauty company, one that has acquired many other brands during its existence of over a century.
Split the name in half, and place the second half before the first half. You’ll have a former toy company that was acquired by a larger competitor. Now take the first half of that name. You’ll have a current toy company.
What is the beauty company? What are the two toy companies?
Ken is dating an actress!?
4. ๐Take a two-word phrase that describes the Ken doll shown in the image. Change the
last letter of the first word to the letter that follows it in the alphabet, and delete a punctuation mark.
Rearrange the letters to produce the first and
last names of a well-known contemporary actress.
What is the phrase describing the doll? Who is the actress?
Acting presidential5. ๐ฆ Think of an actress who was well-known for two sitcoms and often used a nickname.
Rearrange the letters of her nickname to produce a nickname of an American president. Her last name is the last name of a different American president.
Who is she? Who are the presidents?
A phrase rich in initials
6. ๐บ๐๐Think of a familiar phrase in four words that you might use while commenting on a posting on Puzzleria! or Blaine’s blog. Take the initial letters of those four words:
1. The first, second, and third initials spell the initials of a well-known zone in England;
2. The first, third, and fourth initials spell the initials of a popular series of video games;
3. The first, second, and fourth initials spell the initials of a long-running ABC television show;
4. The second, third, and fourth initials spell the initials of a corporation that deals with trains, subways, and buses in New York City.
What is the phrase? What is the English zone? What is the video game? What is the long-running ABC show? What is the corporation that deals with trains, subways, and buses?
MENU
Political Two-step Hors d’Oeuvre:
Italian Shadow Dancing
Name a five-letter word for a centuries-old Italian dance.
Take a two-word political phrase, in eight and
six letters, that sounds like it is also a definition of this five-letter word. What are this dance and this definition?
Givin’ Me The Willys Slice:
“Stop, Rewolf!”
Unearth thirteen instances of efflorescence in the following account:Once upon a timing belt, I overpaid for an “Overland 4-Door Sedan,” a 1939 Willys I admit being an impulse purchase. It was an oil
burner. I routinely had to take the lid off a drum of “black gold” and funnel it in. My Willys may be somewhat collectible, but is definitely no
epic classic car!
I cram my family into the Willys to attend the occasional weekend auto shows. To avoid silly Ramada Inn rules, we always stay at nice motels, some that come equipped with hearths in each room! When there is a chill in the air, the heat increases with every big old log I ram into our fireplace... I try to cut them up with the fretsaw from my toolbox, but it is just not the right tool!
We wake up early to drive to the all-day shows in the Willys, arriving around noon. It’s a picnic atmosphere: Family and friends playing parcheesi, ring-toss and charades; franks, brats and Mississippi lutefisk on the grill, soon to be garnished and slathered with piccalilli relish. After lunch, it's time for our baby’s nap.Now is a good time to mingle with fellow aficionados of autos. An instructor of jujitsu told us to invest in vintage datsuns and Nissans. A genome naysayer told us he never touches any auto manufactures after 1930. A chemist proficient in alkaloid algebra invests only in eclectic electric cars.
Riffing Off Shortz And Meersman Slices:
Blue BayYew TapEntry
Will Shortz’s March 17th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Emma Meersman of Seattle, Washington, reads:
Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get a clue for a type of fabric, then change one letter in that word to get something related to trees. Your answer should be the two tree names you started with.
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Meersman Slices read:
ENTREE #1
Take the first and last names of a puzzle-maker.
The first three letters, in reverse, spell an
abbreviation by which this person may be addressed in writing.
The ninth, sixth and fourth letters spell a homophone of a letter of the alphabet.
The remaining letters, in order, spell a creature that may inhabit that homophone.
Who is the puzzle-maker?
What are the abbreviation, homophone and creature?
Note: Entrees #2 through #8 were composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!
ENTREE #2
Take two tree names of five and four letters. Say the first syllable of the longer tree name. Then say the shorter tree name. Finally, say the last syllable of the longer name. What you have said will sound like a word for certain items made of fabrics.
What are the tree names and the items made of fabrics?
ENTREE #3
Take a six-letter tree name and replace the last two letters with two different letters to get a kind of fabric.What are the tree and the fabric?
Hint: The tree is also known by a name that
consists of a compound word composed of two words, the first of which is also a kind of fabric.
ENTREE #4
Take a six-letter tree name and remove one letter to get a kind of fabric.
What are the tree and the fabric?ENTREE #5
Take a seven-letter tree name and replace the third and fourth letters with one different letter to get a word for an item made of fabric.
What are the tree and the item made of fabric?
ENTREE #6
Take a three-letter tree name and add a letter at the beginning and three letters at the end to get a word for an item made of fabric.
What are the tree and the item made of fabric?ENTREE #7
Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get the last name of a well-known American film actor. Now take his first name, spelled backwards, and add two Roman numerals at the end to get the name of a fabric. Who is the actor, and what is the fabric?
ENTREE #8
Take two three-letter tree names, combine them phonetically, and say them quickly out loud. The result will sound like something you might find yourself saying just before you reach for something made of fabric.Now take a synonym of the item made of fabric and remove one letter. The result will sound like a third kind of tree.
What are the two-three letter trees, the item made of fabric and its synonym, and the third kind of tree?
ENTREE #9
Place a short preposition between two three-letter tree names. Change the second of the two tree names to its four-letter plural form. Also change the first letter of a second tree name, which has an alphanumeric value of “x” to a letter whose alphanumeric value ends in “x”.
The result is a bit of invasive history involving Ike, Jack, Fidel, Che, Bobby, and others.
What are the two trees?
What is the bit of invasive history?
ENTREE #10
Take two three-letter tree names and combine them phonetically to get a two letters that, in their uppercase form, have a very similar shape. Remove those two letters from a game
played on grass to get a glass vessel that often contains water or wine, oil or vinegar.
What are these trees and the two letters?
What are the game played on grass and the a glass vessel?
ENTREE #11
Take two three-letter tree names and combine them to a nearly four-century-old now obsolete word for “a juggler’s trick” or “conjuring.” The author Ben Jonson described the word as “wicked” and suggested that “the devil is its
author.”
What are these two trees and obsolete word?
ENTREE #12
Take two three-letter words in the name of the “title tree” in a five-word 1960s movie. Spell these two words backwards to form two non-English words which, when translated into English, are “very very.”
What is the name of this “title tree”?
What are the two non-English words that mean “very very”?
Dessert Menu
Nontemporal Temples Dessert:
E pluribus una dea
Name an ancient temple dedicated to a goddess. Replace its third letter with its third-last letter, and remove the space left by the displacement of the third-last letter. The result is a temple dedicated to all the gods.
Who is the goddess?
What are the names of these two temples?
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 spice s (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.