Thursday, February 12, 2026

Donning padded pants one pin at a time, Shaggy Belafontone!, Currency of the Century; Service with a Simile: “As you like it” or “Like you like it!” Tank & Kat at the “Cordial Teahouse” A “Fall Night” foreshadows looming winter; “Appliance? Apple Pliers?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Tank & Kat at the Cordial Teahouse

Most hungry patrons of the Cordial Teahouse truck stop cordially greet their waitress, Kat, with a 5-word anagram of that 15-letter name.

A creative trucker named Tank, however, slyly substitutes a 6-letter synonym in place of the third word in that five-word greeting. 

That six-letter synonym, along with the last word in the greeting, can be rearranged to spell an 11-letter appetizer that Kat then serves Tank the Trucker. 

What are the 5-word  greeting, 6-letter synonym and appetizer?

Appetizer Menu

Posed-By-A-Pal-Of-Puzzleria! Appetizer:

Donning padded pants one pin at a time; Currency of the Century; “Shaggy Belafontone!”

Note: These posers are the product of the creative gray matter of a longtime contributor to, and “friend of, Puzzleria!”  

Currency of the Century!

1. 💸Take an early 21st Century year, four digits, which is an important milestone in the development of a significant form of currency. Change a number in that year to a letter, and add a space in the year, so that the result appears to name two other forms of currency. 

What is the year? What are the two other forms of currency? How was that solution reached? 

Donning padded pants, one pin at a time! 

2. 🩳Name a football action, defensive in nature, carried out while a team is on offense, but nominally executed by neither the offense nor the defense. Replace a vowel in the name of that action by two other different vowels to name something a team would like to have, particularly in a close game. 

What is the action, and what would a team like to have? 

Shaggy Belafontone!

3. 🐶Take the first two words of a sporting event that took place mostly in the first 48 hours of January 2026. 

Remove five consecutive internal letters and a
punctuation mark. 

What remains, when read aloud, sounds like a signature lyric from a still popular traditional folk song recorded for release 70 years ago. 

What is the sporting event and the lyric? 

MENU

Confounding Compound Hors d’Oeuvre:

A “Fall Night” foreshadows looming winter

Name a compound word associated with a certain time of day. 

Switch the two syllables and add a space to get two words associated with a sport. What are these three words?

“Oh Barbarian!” Slice:

Appliance? Apple Pliers?

Rearrange the letters in certain kitchen appliances to spell a two-word term
(consisting of a proper name and a plural noun) that describes David, Jay, Jimmy,
Jimmy, Stephen, Seth, Jon and John.

What are these appliances and the two-word term?

Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Entrees:

Pie Plates Negate Pilates!

Will Shortz’s February 8th Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Michael Schwartz of Florence, Oregon, reads:

Name something in seven letters that’s designed to help you lose weight. Insert the letters EP somewhere inside this word to get a two-word phrase naming things that are likely to add weight. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Schwartz Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

A grand (4-letter-word) homer, 

a rookie-phenom-(4-letter-word)-kid, and 

~ a (7-letter-word) that is the “cathode” to the pitcher, who is the “anode.”

Rearrange the 15 letters in those three
missing words to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are the three words?

Who is the puzzle-maker?

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

ENTREE #2

Name something in 8 letters that is designed to help you lose weight. 

Replace one letter with the two letters A and N and rearrange the result to get something that is likely to add weight. What words are these?

ENTREE #3

Name something in 7 letters that some people do to lose weight. 

Insert an E somewhere inside this word to get
something that is likely to add weight. 

Then go back to the original word and replace one letter with the letters RO to get something else that is likely to add weight if you eat it a lot. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #4

Name something in 7 letters that some people do to lose weight. Insert an S somewhere and an L somewhere else to get a kind of eating that is likely to add weight if done often or with rich food. What words are these?

ENTREE #5

Name a two-word phrase that describes products designed to help you lose weight. 

Remove the last letter of each word and rearrange the remaining letters to spell a word

for something you probably should not do too much of if you want to lose weight. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #6

Name something in 7 letters that may help you lose weight. 

Remove the first letter and double what is now the first letter. 

Rearrange, inserting spaces as needed, to get a three-word phrase naming a method of food preparation that is unlikely to help you lose weight. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #7

Name something in 9 letters that's designed to help you lose weight. 

Remove two letters and rearrange to get some
things that are likely to add weight if you make a habit of eating a lot of them. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #8

Name a seven-letter word that’s may help you lose excess verbiage. Move the first letter into the third position to spell a new word, one that may help you lose excess avoirdupois. What are these two seven-letter words?

Hint: The first seven-letter word, properly applied, would eliminate all words like “avoirdupois” from your vocabulary and prose!

Dessert Menu

Just Serving Up A Just Dessert:

Service with a Simile: “As you like it” or “Like you like it!”

Those who serve drinks and those who  serve time have something in common?

What is it?

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.

Thursday, February 5, 2026

'Cast of Four' & 'Past Troubadour' 3 integers, 2 singers, 1 puzzinger! “Hall-of-Flamer?” “Do it behoove deer to don Reeboks?” “Punningnishment? Nay!... Punyshment? Yay!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

3 integers, 2 singers, 1 puzzinger!

Anagram the combined letters in three consecutive integers to spell two singers. ... (That is, two “singers,” not two “signers!” The center-frames in the illustration above are nothing more than a red herring!)

What are these consecutive integers and two singers?

Some singers/things-that-sing: choir, cantor, canary, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson...

Appetizer Menu

Fortuitous-Yet-Torturitous  Appetizer Menu:

Cast of Four & Past Troubadour  

An actress & three “tressless” actors

1. 🎥Think of a famous actress of the past. Remove the first two letters of her first name and the first and last letters of her last name. Rearrange what remains to spell the first name of her most famous role. 

Now think of the actor who starred with her. Take a first name that rhymes with his character’s first name, along with the actor’s last name. You’ll have another famous actor of the past. 

That particular actor was the first to play a well-known literary character on screen. Rearrange the first and last names of the character to get the first and last names of an actor who played on a long-running classic TV show. The actor has the same first name as the actress’s costar. 

Except the female character, all of these characters had essentially the same job title. The actress’s character was married to someone with that job title. 

Who are the actress and the three actors? 

What were their roles? 

What is the job title? 

Singer, song & “slangy snack”

2. 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅯𝅘𝅥𝅰 Name a famous singer and musician of the past. Now think of a hit by the artist that you’d most likely hear at a certain time of year. That song mentions several different foods and drinks. One of the foods mentioned is a slang term for a certain kind of food.

The singer went by a nickname. Remove the last three letters of the singer’s first name at birth. You’ll have the first name of a restauranteur who specialized in the food listed in the song and named his restaurant after himself. 

Now think of another hit by the artist, one that you’re likely to hear about six months away from the first song. Remove the last letter from the first word in the lyrics of the song. You’ll have the last name of someone associated with the food and the restaurant. 

Who is the singer? 

What are the two songs? 

What is the food (and the slang term)? 

What is the restaurant? 

Who is associated with the food and restaurant?

MENU

Puny-Not-Punny Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Punningnishment? Nay! Punyshment? Yay!”

Take a word for “a very small or puny person or thing.”

Replace the second letter of that word with a “c” to get a word that means “to make too small, short, or scanty.”

Replace the second and third letters of that second word with a “k” to get a word that means “to use less of something than is necessary.”

Once more, take the original word for “a very
small or puny person or thing.” This time, remove the first half of this word to get a word for a “small demon, mischievous child or urchin.”

Finally, restore the first half of that original word. But then replace the last two-thirds of that word with “a place to skate.” The result is a word that means “to become smaller.”

What are these five words associated with “decrease, depletion and diminishment?”

Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Entrees:

“Do it behoove deer to don Reeboks?”

Will Shortz’s February 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Alan Hochbaum of Duluth, Georgia, reads:

Think of two hooved animals. 

Take all the letters of one of them and the last three letters of the other, mix them together, and you’ll get the first and last names of a famous actress. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a “man of the soil” who, for a time, became a “man of the maritime,” and who caught many a freshwater cyprinid fish to feed those aboard his craft, including (among a menagerie of many) a critter and its mate (named “Dolly”) that had been invited along for the voyage. 

Dolly and her hubby were the kind of beasts that were homophones of a synonym of holy men who were priests (at least according to the Book of Ogden).

Rearrange the combined letters in:

~ the name of the man of the soil,

~ the name of the cyprinid fish, and

~ a name for the priest that sounds like a beast...

to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are these three names and the name of the puzzle-maker?

(Note: Entree #2 was composed by our friend Tortitude, whose “...Slow but Sure Puzzles” are featured on this week’s Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #2

Think of two hooved animals. Take the shorter name, which is only three letters long, and change the first letter to the letter that precedes it in the alphabet.

Rearrange the letters to produce the first
name, last name, and middle initial of a character from a 1980s sitcom.

Who is the character? What are the animals?

(Note: Entrees #3-through #8 were composed by our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” puzzles are featured regularly on Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #3

Think of a hooved animal and a non-hooved mammal. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

(Hint: This actress is known for playing a TV character whose last name is the first name of another famous actress.) 

What are the animals and who is the actress?

ENTREE #4

Think of a hooved animal and a non-hooved mammal. 

Change one letter from a D to an R. Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress of the past. 

What are the animals and who is the actress?

ENTREE #5

Think of a noise made by a hooved animal and a word for parts of this animal’s body. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the noise and body parts, and who is the actress?

ENTREE #6

Think of two categories of hooved animals. Change a C to a K. 

Rearrange all the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the animal categories, and who is the actress?

ENTREE #7

Think of a hooved animal and the last name of a famous actress. 

Remove an I (an “eye,” not an “ell”).
Rearrange the remaining letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What is the animal and who are the actresses?

ENTREE #8

Think of a hooved animal and a bird (the bird name is two words; use just the second word). Change an E to an A. Rearrange the letters to get the first and last names of a famous actress. 

What are the animal and bird, and who is the actress?

Note: Entree #9 was composed by our friend Plantsmith. His “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is regularly, and proudly, featured on Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #9

Take the name of a (from time-to-time) popular video celebrity. 

Mix up the letters to get a hooved animal and an animal that might eat that hooved animal. 

The two left-over letters, in order, spell a sound this predatory creature might try to make (if it could) in an attempt to keep fellow predators from tipping off its prey! 

Who is the celebrity?

What are the hooved-prey animal, predatory creature and sound it might try to make?

ENTREE #10

Think of a pair of hooved animals, the second one boasting 9 letters and a hyphen. Take all the letters of the first animal in order, followed by the 5th 4th, 2nd, 1st, 1st (again), 8th and 9th letters of the second animal. What you’ll get is the first and last names of a famous living actress. 

Who is it?

What are the two hooved animals?

ENTREE #11

Think of a pair of hooved animals, in 7 and 12 letters, in that order. Number the letters 1 through 19. 

The letters corresponding to 1, 7, 12, 3, 1 & 7 spell the first name of a storied college football player, and the letters corresponding to 1, 9, 10 & 11 spell his surname.

The letters corresponding to 15, 8 & 7 and to 1, 9, 10, 11, 7 & 3 spell the nickname given to the player by his coach.

What are this pair of hooved critters?

Who is the football player?

What is his nickname?

ENTREE #12

Name a hooved (or “hoofed,” if your prefer) animal that is also “fanged.”

Place the name of the animal to the left of the word “fanged.” 

Number these letters from left-to-right, beginning with 1 and ending with a two-digit number.

The letters corresponding to: 12, 9, 2, 15 & 8

and to: 14, 11, 16, 11, 12, 8, 2, 15 & 17

and to: 7 & 13

and to: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5

spell the title, name and home base of a holy man who was the patron of brewers, printers and theologians.

What is this hooved and fanged animal?

Who is this holy man?

Slice of Dessert Menu

Crème Brûlée Flambé Dessert?:

“Hall-of-Flamer?”

The surname of a (baseball) Hall-of-Famer is a compound word. Its first part, a noun, is the result of its second part, a verb.

Move the first letter of the this athlete’s first name to the beginning of his surname. Divide this modified surname into two equal parts. 

What remains of the first name sounds like an adjective describing the new letter-longer word that follows it. The third word, if you place an “s” at its end, spells what the second word does (in a metaphorical sense).

Who is this Hall-of-Famer?

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.

Thursday, January 29, 2026

“From happy to hoppin’ mad!” “Pens, Guns, Spoons?” Mike KitKat? “O Sole... Kiss me...!” “Forty Freddy Footpower!” “Search Petty Officer?” “Unleashing Alicia’s Keys!” “Throw a spooner in the works?” “Hey! A herd is both seen and heard!” “Does it ‘smolder’? It may be a ‘holder’!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Does it ‘smolder’? It may be a ‘holder’!”

Name smoldering emotional dispositions, in two words, that may flare up into all-out rages. 

The final four letters of this word-pair spell containers. 

The remaining letters, rearranged, spell other
containers. 

What are these emotional states and two kinds of containers?

Appetizer Menu

“One Delightfully Puzzley Plantsmithian Appetizer!”

“From happy to hoppin’ mad!” “Pens, Guns, Spoons?” Mike KitKat? “O Sole... Kiss me...!” “Freddy-Forty Footpower!”

“From happy to hoppin’ mad!”

1. Take a word associated with hilarity.

Remove one letter to get a word associated with anger. 

What are these two words?

“Pens, Guns, Spoons?”

2. Spoonerize (that is, exchange first letters of) a piece of apparel to get a Biblical character followed by a non-word that sounds like what
this character might or might not have done. 

What is this apparel? What might (or might not) have the Biblical character done?  

Mike KitKat?

3. Remove first and last letter from a candy name to get an NFL player’s last name. 

What are this candy name and NFL’s last name?

“O Sole... Kiss me...!”

4. Exchange the initial letters in the first and middle names of a person who often appears in the Comments Section of Puzzleria! 

The result spells a “foreign car companion.”

Who are the person and this “foreign car companion?”

Freddy-Forty Footpower!”

5. Exchange first letters in an animal to get a vehicle you might see in a cartoon. 

What are this critter and this vehicle?

MENU

Hostile Chaotic Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Search Petty Officer?”

A word that precedes “officer” or follows “search” consists of syllables that are words associated with hostility and chaos. 

What are this word and its syllables?

Spooner: Wisconsin Railroad Capital Slice:

“Throw a spooner in the works?”

Spoonerize a natural air filter that humans possess, in two words. 

The second word of this spoonerized result, if applied to this filter, would render it ineffective. 

What are this natural filter? 

What would render it ineffective?

Hint: The first word of the spoonerized result is structurally similar, and also functions somewhat similarly, to the first word of the natural air filter that humans possess. 

Riffing Off Shortz And Kalish Entrees:

“Unleashing Alicia’s Keys!”

Will Shortz’s January 26th Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Evan Kalish of Bayside, New York, reads:

Name a famous living singer whose first and last names together have four syllables. The second and fourth syllables phonetically sound like things a dog walker would likely carry. What singer is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Kalish Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker whose first and last names together have four syllables. 

The third and second syllables phonetically (and in that order) sound like a hardy leafy cabbage a multipurpose enclosed motor vehicle with a boxlike shape that might carry or transport that cabbage. 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are this leafy cabbage and motor vehicle?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are artistry courtesy of Nodd, creator of “Nodd ready for prime time.”)

ENTREE #2

Name a famous living singer, first and last names. 

The first four letters of the first name, plus the last letter of the last name, spell things a dog walker might keep track of. 

What singer is this?

ENTREE #3

Name a famous deceased singer, first and last names. 

The last five letters of the last name, followed by the first syllable of the first name, sound like something a golfer might carry. 

What singer is this?

ENTREE #4

Name a famous living singer whose first and
last names together have four syllables. 
The second and third syllables sound like a WWII weapon. What singer is this?

ENTREE #5

Name a famous deceased singer whose first and last names together have three syllables.

The first and third syllables sound like an animal formerly kept as a pet but now considered endangered. 

What singer is this?

ENTREE #6

Name a famous living singer whose first and last names together have five syllables. 

The third and fourth syllables together sound like something employees likely would not want to receive. 

What singer is this?

ENTREE #7

 Name two famous living singers with the same first name. 

The last name of one singer, followed by the first syllable of the last name of the other singer, sounds like good news for certain East Coast hoops fans. 

What singers are these?

Dessert Menu

Old MacDonald Had A Dessert:

“Hey! A herd is both seen AND heard!”

Move the letters of something seen on a farm eight places later in the alphabet. The result spells something heard on a farm. 

What are seen and heard on a farm?

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.