Friday, March 22, 2024

Initials, Isles, Prezzes, Pop, Toys & Dolls; Italian Shadow Dancing; Blue BayYew TapEntry; E pluribus una dea; Gophers & badgers & deer, oh my! “Stop, Rewolf!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5ฯ€e2 SERVED
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. ๐Ÿˆ๐ŸName 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. ๐ŸŽœ๐ŸŽName 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. ๐ŸŽ…๐ŸŽ„Think 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. ๐ŸŽŽTake 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 presidential

5. ๐Ÿฆ…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. ๐Ÿ“บ๐Ÿš†๐ŸšŒThink 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.


Thursday, March 14, 2024

Navigating two isles, Competitive puzzling, College campus caption; The ‘bloodhound’ leading the blind Our Lady of Lamborghini Church; Eed-nay? Int-pray? Oost-bay? Utton-glay? Umper-stay? Ear hears the arts, affecting the heart; “Workaday world” vs. “wordplay world”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5ฯ€e2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Eed-nay? Int-pray? Oost-bay? Utton-glay? Umper-stay?

A perceived lack of awareness about a particular issue was the impetus for an event that was intended to help remedy, or at least alleviate, that issue. 

Name that event by translating into Pig Latin a synonym of one of the eleven different nouns in the first two sentences of this puzzle. 

Those nouns are: 

1. lack 

2. awareness

3. issue

4. impetus 

5. event 

6. Pig 

7. Latin 

8. synonym 

9. nouns 

10. sentences 

11. puzzle   

What are that word and its synonym that you must translate into Pink Latin? 

What is the event?

Blown-To-Plantsmithereens Appetizer:

College campus caption, Competitive puzzling, Navigating two isles

College Campus Caption
1. ๐ŸซMorehouse College is a private historically Black men’s liberal arts college based in Atlanta, Georgia. 
If you had to write a three-word caption (in 3, 2 and 4 letters) for one of its graduation pictures, what might you write?
In order to see if you have written the caption that we have in mind, drop the fifth letter of your caption, remove the two spaces, and add a vowel at the beginning to get a plural word that denotes the desirable features that provide comfort, convenience and enjoyment, and that promote smoothness and pleasantness in social relationships in dormitories, classrooms and offices on the campus of Morehouse College. What are your caption and your plural word?
Competitive puzzling
2. ๐ŸฅWhat word that is sometimes associated
with puzzles do the images pictured here represent?
Hint: The first two syllables of the word associated with puzzles rhyme with the sport being played. This sport is also the name of a Mississippi River city that is nearer to the “Big Muddy’s true source, Lake Itasca, than to its delta.
Navigating two isles
3. ๐ŸThe altered image pictured below is an aerial view of a section of coastline on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii.
Take:
1. A word for any one of the four objects that alter the image,
2. The name of the geographical feature that is pictured (for example, “isthmus,” “valley,” or “mountain,” etc.), and
3. The Spanish word for the number of objects on either side of the geographical feature.
The three-word result will sound like the name of an island nation.
What is this island nation? 

MENU
Container-Containee Hors d’Oeuvre:
“Workaday world” vs. “wordplay world”
In the world of wordplay, a three-letter word is contained intact within a seven-letter word (for example, like “amp” within “example” or “eve” within “seven”). 
However, in the real workaday world of what words actually mean, that three-letter word often contains that seven-letter word. What are this three-letter word and this seven-letter word?
Venerating Vintage Vehicles Slice:
Our Lady of  Lamborghini Church
Name something seen in a church, in two words. 
Replace a charged atom in the first word with a common conjunction. 
The result is something seen on a vintage automobile. 
What are these things – one seen in a church and the other on a vintage automobile?
Riffing Off Shortz Slices:
Ear hears the arts, affecting the heart
Will Shortz’s March 10th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Take a body part. Add one letter at the beginning and another at the end to get a different body part. Then again add letter at the beginning and another at the end to get something designed to affect that body part.
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:
Note: Entrees #1 through #5 were composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!
ENTREE #1
Take an informal name for a body part. 
Add two letters at the beginning and two letters at the end to get a substance produced by another body part. 
What are the body part and the substance?
ENTREE #2 
Take an informal name for a body part. 
Add two letters at the beginning and two letters at the end to get something designed to affect that body part. 
What are the body part and the thing designed to affect it?
ENTREE #3
Take an informal name for a body part. 
Add three letters at the beginning and three letters at the end to get a person whose job is to protect people from certain types of diseases. What is the body part and who is the person?
ENTREE #4
Take a body part. Add a letter at the beginning and one at the end to get a second body part. Now take the first body part once again. Add three letters at the beginning and four letters
at the end to get a word for something associated with the second body part. 
What are the two body parts, and what is associated with the second body part?
ENTREE #5
Take a body part. 
Add four letters at the beginning and two letters at the end to get a word for a
group of people whose job is to protect the safety of the public. Name the body part and the group of people.  
ENTREE #6
Take a word for a bone or other skeletal body part followed by a part of the eye to get an Egyptian god who was husband and brother of an Egyptian nature goddess whose name echos a common verb.
What are these body parts, the Egyptian god, and the Egyptian nature goddess?
ENTREE #7
Take a four-letter body part below the waist. 
Add one letter at the beginning and another at the end to get a slang term for body parts that are also below the waist, but above the first body part. 
Again, take the original four-letter body part. Add a “t” at the beginning and, at the end, the word for a bone or other skeletal body part from Entree #6. Divide the result into two parts and spell the letters of the second part in reverse. 
The result is a body part that comprises the original four-letter body part. 
What are these three body parts?
ENTREE #8
Take a three-letter below-the-belt body part. Add two letters to the end to name the units of volume used to measure a liquid body part.  
Remove those two letters from the end. 
This time, add to the three-letter body part a letter at the beginning and another letter at the end to get a different body part – one that is a synonym of a compound word made up of two words with the same number of letters, and that start with the same letter.
What is the three-letter body part? What are the units of volume? What is the body part that is a synonym of a compound word?
Hint: The three-letter body part is also an object that might rest within a cushion.   
ENTREE #9
Take the singular form of a body part that comes in pairs. Add one letter at the beginning and another at the end to get a different body part – one that often “spans the skin” between the body parts that come in pairs. What are these two body parts? 
ENTREE #10
Take a word for “a buttock with its associated thigh.” This word is also “a cut of meat consisting of a thigh, especially one from a hog.”
Take the French word for this cut of meat. Add an “e” to the end and invert the third letter.
The result is a body part within the head.
What are the cut of meat, its French-word equivalent, and the body part within the head?
ENTREE #11
Take a “midsection body part” in seven letters. Transpose its first two letters and insert a space someplace to form a two-word term for “dark clouds” or  “a black cat” or “thirteen shards of a broken mirror.”
Take a three-letter synonym of this body part, and a four-letter body part that rhymes with that synonym. Place an “L” within, and an “E” and an “S” at the end, of the three-letter rhyming word to get an informal six-letter synonym of the four-letter rhyming word.
What are the “midsection body part,” two-word term for “dark clouds” etc., the three-letter synonym of this body part, the four-letter body part that rhymes with that synonym, and the six-letter synonym of the four-letter rhyming word?
ENTREE #12
Take a body part of a fish that rhymes with the largest organ in the human body. Add a rearranged unit of work to the end of the fish part to get a human body part. 
What are this fish part, the largest organ in the human body, the unit of work, and the human body part?
ENTREE #13
Take a four-letter exterior body part. Insert between its first two letters a two-letter theoretical “psychic part” of the unconscious brain.
Isolate just the final two letters of this result and insert a “y” between them to spell a three-letter body part that is visible, but is mostly interior.
Delete the final letter of this seven-letter result. The final result is an entirely interior body part.
What are this four-letter exterior body part and the two-letter theoretical “psychic part” of the unconscious brain?
What are the three-letter body part (that is visible but mostly interior) and the entirely interior body part?
Dessert Menu
Benevolence Breeds Malevolence Dessert:
“The ‘bloodhound’ leading the blind”
Take a five-word idiom suggesting that society’s response to civic contributions is civil retribution... that virtue is penalized along with vice. 
Rearrange the idiom’s letters to name a four-word requirement imposed on a mythological hero who lost his sight after he sought to do the right thing by ending a plague.
Hint: The idiom contains two consecutive words with double-vowels. 

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.