Rob from the Rich?; Bird Bug “Crawler” Canine Feline; “ROT-10” (or-13?) Fish!; Four synonyms, two rhyming pairs; ROT! For these five letters five is the limit!; Takin’ a trip to the Piggly Wiggly; “It’s the Berries!” Splash Slash Lash Ashbackwards! “Our cookie jar lid is ajar!” “The Pause (Button) that Refreshes?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle Of The Week

“It’s the Berries!”

The Schuzzle of this week is all about the berries!

You are challenged to identify eleven kinds of
berries... (like, say, “gooseberries” or “boysenberries”) that are pictured here — one kind in the “Schpuzzle of the Week” logo, and ten others in the illustration above, on the right.

Appetizer Menu

Mental ConTORTions Appetizer:

Rob from the Rich?; Bird Bug “Crawler” Canine Feline; “ROT-10”(or-13?) Fish!; Four synonyms, two rhyming pairs; ROT! For these five letters five is the limit! 

Rob from the Rich?

1.  🐦🎜⏺🎝Name two Top 10 songs by British artists that peaked in the same year during the mid-1970s. Remove the first letter from one title and you’ll have the title of the other song.

Both artists later had Top-20 songs with the same female vocalist. Both songs with this female “songbird” were on the same soundtrack album. 

The shorter song title also was also used in an earlier song by an act with a bird name. The longer title was used in an earlier song by an artist whose first name at birth is a bird. Remove the last letter from the last name, and it sounds like another bird. 

What are the two song titles? Who performed them? Who is the female vocalist? 

Bird Bug “Crawler” Canine Feline

2. 🐕🐈🐍🕷🐦 Name a six-letter animal in the canine family. ROT-13 the third letter and rearrange to get an animal in the feline family. Now change that letter to a different letter and rearrange to get a reptile. Change it again, and rearrange to get an insect. Remove the last two letters of the insect to get a bird.

What are the canine, feline, reptile. insect, and bird?

“ROT-10”(or-13?) Fish!

3. 🐟Think of a type of fish. ROT-13 each letter. You’ll have a type of insect. Now think of a famous fictional example of the fish. ROT-3
each letter to get a type of insect.

What are the fish, example of the fish, and two types of insects? 

Four synonyms, two rhyming pairs; 

4. 📖Think of two verbs that are synonymous. 

One word is six letters long and the other is five. 

They start with the same two letters. 

Now replace those two letters with two different
letters (same two new letters for both words). You’ll have two new synonyms that are synonymous with the first two words.

What are the words? 

ROT! For these five letters five is the limit! 

5. 📬Think of a common five-letter word. If you ROT-1, ROT-2, ROT-4, or ROT-5 the first letter,
you’ll have additional common words; however, no other changes to the first letter yield words.

What are these words?

MENU

Hard Copy & Soft Drinks Hors d’Oeuvre:

“The Pause (Button) that Refreshes?”

A word on the keyboard contains four consecutive letters of the alphabet – the last one twice, making it five. 

Remove three of the five, including one of the duplicate letters. Add an“app.” Rearrange the result to spell a soft drink brand.

What are this word on the keyboard and soft drink brand?

Clean-Up In Aisle-Nine Slice:

Takin’ a trip to the Piggly Wiggly

Name an “over-the-counter” item you might  purchase from your local supermarket, in two words.

Four consecutive letters spell what you might then purchase in the fruits section of the grocery.

The remaining letters, if your place the second letter at the end, spell a food you might purchase in either the produce section or baking aisle.

What are this “over-the-counter” item and two other possible purchases?

Riffing Off Shortz And Pickard Slices:

Splash Slash Lash Ashbackwards!

Will Shortz’s June 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by listener Michael Pickard, reads:

Name something in 10 letters that's found in a kitchen. Drop its sixth letter to name something
on a keyboard. Then drop the new word's fifth letter to name something no one wants to get. What words are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Pickard Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a three-word command a sleight-of-hand practitioner may give you or other member of his audience. 

Remove the two spaces, then remove two
adjacent letters that appear elsewhere in the command.

The result is the surname of a puzzle maker. 

Who is this puzzle-maker? What was the command?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the brainchildren of our friend and master riffmeister Nodd.

ENTREE #2

1. Name something in two words totaling 10 letters that’s found in a kitchen. Move the first letter of the second word to the fourth position of the first word. 

Then switch what are now the first and third letters of the second word. The result will name something no one wants to get. What are these two things?

ENTREE #3

Name something in six letters that’s found in a kitchen. Add a “C” and an “M” somewhere to
name things you put on breads. 

Remove four consecutive letters from the second word to name something no one 

ENTREE #4 

Name something in 10 letters that is found in a kitchen. 

Rearrange its letters to name a dish that might
be made using this item, and a word for what the cook might do if the dish turned out poorly. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #5

Name something in two words totaling 11 letters that is found in a kitchen. 

Replace its third letter with an “E” to describe something a person in Ireland might read. 

What words are these?

ENTREE #6 

Name something in nine letters that is found in a kitchen. 

Replace its middle letter with a space to name a part in the 1970 film “Pufnstuf.” 

What is found in a kitchen, and what is the part?

ENTREE #7

A 10-letter brand name often found in kitchens describes a character from the Disney movie “Peter Pan.” 

What is the brand name and who is the character? 

(Note: Entree #8 was created and contributed by our talented friend and riffmaster Plantsmith.

ENTREE #8

Take a nine letter item that could be found in the kitchen. 

Drop letter four to get someone
who might be found in a kitchen.

Then remove two letters that are found in a famous movie. 

They replace them with abbreviation used often  in texting, to get animal associated with the kitchen item.

Dessert Menu

Midnight Sweet Snack Dessert:

“Our cookie jar lid is ajar!” 

“Don’t get me wrong,” my next-door neighbor Gabe confided in me during one of our frequent over-the-fence conversations. 

“My wife Mabel and I love her nephew Timothy very much, and we enjoy having him as a guest at our home. But it would be difficult to estimate the number of her homemade cookies Tim ate during his midnight visits to the cookie jar in our kitchen!”

What is a tad repetitive in that narrative?

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.

“Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex” Two words... for the same bird; “Order in the Countdown Court!” Just a couple-a words in a couplet “A Nuclear (Family) Threat?” “It just don’t seem to add up... or subtract down!”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Just a couple o’ words in a couplet

Breezes toss and tickle rippling prints and tints,

Making taut the “sails” of clothes-pinned billowy chintz.

Within that couplet thou shalt find a pair

Of words that both a rare distinction share.

So (“unpoetically” now!) what unusual property do a couple of words in that couplet share?

Appetizer Menu

Delightfully Puzzley “Discophilia” Appetizer:

“Order in the Countdown Court!”

The list below  – if we base it on certain songtitles associated with the artists – is out of order. 

Can you put them in a more logical and “numerically fitting” order?  

On what did you base that order?  

What song titles did you use? 

Which song title was “doubly relevant”?

    1. David Bowie 

    2. The White Stripes 

    3. Bobby Bland 

    4. Three Dog Night 

    5. Freddie King 

    6. Sonny Boy Williams 

    7. Nina Simone 

    8. Dusty Springfield

    9. B.B. King  

    10. Merle Travis 

MENU

Unclear & Conflicted Hors d’Oeuvre:

A Nuclear (Family) Threat?

Name an informal term for a member of the nuclear family. 

Remove one of its letters to name a potentially life-threatening response triggered by the human immune system...

(Well, that’s kind of a downer... but consider this: If you replace a letter of that life-threatening response with a P, the result will be things that are enjoyable and refreshing!

What are this informal family-member term, life-threatening response, and things that are enjoyable and refreshing?

Birds-Of-Wordprey Slice:

Two words... for the same bird

Switch the initial sounds of two words:

~ some two-syllable colorful tropical birds and...

~ some two-syllable “Down-Under” mountain-dwelling endangered species of those same birds. 

The result (if you spell and pronounce the “Down Under” bird as if its last letter were a “y”) sounds like two foods that are often served together as a side dish. The colors of these foods share four common letters. 

What are these two birds and two foods?

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:

“Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex”

Will Shortz’s June 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Rearrange the letters of “NECESSARY MISPRINT” to spell a familiar phrase.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name an American idiomatic phrase that means "being in an enviable, highly advantageous, or superior position," in five words of 2, 2, 3, 7 and 4 letters. Rearrange this 18 letters to spell three words associated with the Bible:

~ a synonym of Eden,

~ a unit of Ark measurement, and

~ the ordinal number of the commandment
that proscribes coveting.

What are this phrase and three biblical words?

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

ENTREE #2

You can rearrange the letters in a two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell a two-word description of the 1942 film “Kings Row.” What are the item and the description?

ENTREE #3

You can rearrange the letters in another two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell a two-word description of what happened when the cold, hungry grasshopper implored the ants to let him into their shelter in the 1934 Disney film “The Grasshopper and the Ants.” 

What are the item and the description?

ENTREE #4

You can rearrange the letters in a third two-word food item you might have on your breakfast table to spell, in two words, what the producers of “Jeopardy!” undertook after Alex Trebek passed away. 

What is the item and what did the producers undertake?

ENTREE #5

Name a two-word phrase for something businesses are typically trying to achieve.

Rearrange its letters to get a two-word phrase for something that might get you arrested. 

What are the two phrases?

ENTREE #6

Rearrange the letters of a two-word subject currently in the news to get a phrase describing, in two words and one initialism, what the U.S. Air Force would be doing if they
were charged with evacuating the customers of a U.S. espionage organization from a foreign country. 

What are the subject and the phrase?

ENTREE #7

Rearrange the letters in the first and last names of a controversial business magnate to get the last names of a controversial baseball
manager of the past and a controversial current head of state. 

Who are these three persons?

ENTREE #8

If you rearrange the letters of TUTU and BERET (see image) you can spell three words: (1) a wager, (2) the name of a boy king, and (3) a synonym of the verb “regret.” 

Or, you can spell a whirlpool site, dimpled-sphere-prop and divot.

Or, You can spell a montana city and a synonym of “factual and accurate.”

Or... you can spell a familiar phrase.

What is this phrase? 

Dessert Menu

“Just sum screwy math... what’s the difference?” Dessert:

“It just don’t seem to add up... or subtract down!”

Explain how the six equations below might possibly be true:

1. Five minus two equals four.

2. Six minus one equals nine.

3. Seven minus four equals five.

4. Eight minus four equals one.

5. Eleven minus five equals five.

6. Twelve minus four equals fifty-five.

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.

Around the World in 8.0 Daze PART II; “Be not Led Astray!”; “Stylish Chic Hip Duds, Dude!”; “Do macho-chaps wear chaps?”; Pia“No Man Is An Island...”; Herculean Circular Logic;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Herculean Circular Logic

Note: Use logical rational reasoning to solve this puzzle: 

Print, in clockwise order along the perimeter of a circle, an eight-letter word containing seven different letters. It is a word associated with logical, rational reasoning. 

~ Rearrange a number of consecutive letters along this perimeter to spell the name of a country. 

~ A number of other consecutive letters, in
order clockwise along the perimeter, spell many a waterway in this county.

~ A number of consecutive counterclockwise letters spell an urban area. 

What are these four words? What specific city do the three shorter words suggest?

Appetizer Menu

“Ecosmopolitan” Appetizer:

Around the World in 8.0 Daze, Part II

Note: We featured Ecoarchitect’s “Around the World in 8.0 Daze Part I” in our March 19, 2026 edition of Puzzleria! 

That “World Tour” continues with this, his second installment, Part II:

“On this isle I’ll not be...”

1. 🏝 Name a well-known island. Replace the fourth letter with the letter two places later in the alphabet, and the resulting word is what you don’t want to be while visiting. 

What is the place and what don’t you want to be?

“Sex-change operation was reversed?”

2. 🌎Take a personal pronoun and add two related nouns, each three letters. 

Change the last letter of one of the nouns, and rearrange the words to come up with a well-known city in the US. 

What are the three words, and what is the city? 

A City Divided

3. 🏙The name of a well-known US city, can be divided into two words that are synonyms.

What is the city?

Ninety-six, South Carolina?

4. 🌆Name a well-known geographic feature in the world. 

The name of a well-known US city is a specific example of that feature. What is the feature, and what is the city?

Alps becomes “El Paso?”

5. 🏞Take the name of a European geographic feature in one syllable. 

Move the first letter to the end and the result will be a common word with three syllables. 

What is the feature and what is the word? 

“‘Doggod’ Bygone Deities!”

6. 🐕Reverse the name of a geographic location. 

The result will be a god of the past. 

What is the location and what is the god’s name?

Move a letter back, go back in time

7. ♔Move the middle letter of a country two places later in the alphabet and phonetically

the result will be the name of an ancient kingdom. 

What is the country and what is the kingdom?

Deleware, hawaii, new mexico, West virginia?

8. 🗽Delaware, Hawaii, New Mexico, and West Virginia all have something in common. 

What is it, and what three states could be
added to the list?

MENU

Art Studio Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Be not Led Astray!”

Take the title of a 21st-Century creation by a painter whose surname, if you delete one letter, is a sport.

The second syllable of the title is an anagram
of an adjective that describes the painting.

The first five letters of the title word are an anagram of a general term for the contents of that title word. 

The first three letters of the title word spell a specific noun for the contents of the title word.

What is the title of this creation?

Who is the painter? What is the sport?

What adjective describes the painting? What is the general term for the contents of the title word? What is the specific noun for the contents?

Affected Pretentious Slice:

“Stylish Chic Hip Duds, Dude!”

Write down the letters of an adjective that means “affectedly or pretentiously elegant or refined in manners or tastes.”

Add a letter to the end. Subtract a letter from the beginning. The result is an apparel brand marketed as stylish, chic, hip and cool. 

What are this word and brand?

Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:

Pia“No Man Is An Island...”

Will Shortz’s May 31st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Reiss, a longtime writer and showrunner for “The Simpsons,” reads:

Name a classic song with a two-word title. Drop the first letter. Add an R after the new first letter. The result will be the names of two countries one after the other. What song is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take an eight-letter plural noun that sometimes describes certain characters on the television show “The Simpsons.” This same noun may also occasionally describe viewers of “The Simpsons.” 

The six different letters in that noun, if you use three of them twice, can be arranged to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What is this plural noun?

Who is the puzzlemaker?

Entrees #2 through #7 are riffs created by Nodd, author of Puzzleria!s “Nodd ready for prime time.”

ENTREE #2

Take the first and last words in the four-word title of a classic R & B song. (5,7). 

Drop the last letter of the first word and move the third letter of that word to the beginning.
The result will be the names of two countries. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #3 

Take the two-word title of a rap song by a now-deceased artist (5,6). 

Change the second letter of the first word to a copy of the fourth letter. 

Rearrange the letters of the first word, as modified, to name a country in the Middle East. Insert an “A” somewhere in the second word of the song title to name a country in Europe. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #4 

Name a two-word (6,5) 1997 Indie Rock song. Change the first vowel in the first word to the next vowel in the alphabet and add a state postal abbreviation to the front of the word to get the name of a country in Africa. 

Move the first letter of the second word two places back in the circular alphabet and double the last letter, then rearrange to get the name of a country in Central America. What are the song and the two countries? 

(Hint: The first word in the song title is a Taylor Swift song title, and the second word is the name of a book. The name of the band that released the 1997 song appears in the book.)

ENTREE #5 

Name a 1974 folk-rock song with a two-word title (7,5). Remove the first letter of the first word and change the last letter of the second word to the next letter in the alphabet. 

The result will be the official currency of one country and the name of another country. 

What are the song, the currency, and the country?

ENTREE #6 

Name a 1983 New Wave/pop rock song with a three-word title (4,2,4). 

Add a letter to the beginning of the third word.
The result will describe the head of state of a certain country. 

What are the song and the description?

ENTREE #7 

Take the two-word title of a 1997 song by a renowned artist (4,4). Replace the last letter of the first word with an acronym for a civil rights law which is also the first word in the title of a 1969 novel by an Oscar-nominated author. 

Add the acronym for a Midwestern U.S. state university to the beginning of the second word of the song title. The result will be the names of two countries. 

What are the song and the countries?

ENTREE #8

The two-word title of a classic song can be anagrammed to spell a heavenly food and a Hawaiian food.

Or, if you are a masochist, the first two and last two letters of this song title can be rearranged to spell an unpleasant bodily sensation, while the remaining interior letters can be rearranged to spell a possible reaction to this unpleasantness.

What is this song title?

What are the two foods?

What are the unpleasant bodily sensation, and the possible reaction to it?

Dessert Menu

Dead-lifting the Weight of the World Dessert:

“Do macho chaps wear chaps?”

Name a strong muscular chap whose first name begins with the first half of a Latin American ballroom dance.

This chap’s surname is the same as the name of a Greek deity who is also associated with strength.

Our chap, however, is no deity. Indeed, he is only _____ (an anagram of a biblical book). 

Replace the second letter of this anagram with a different vowel, followed by a hyphen. The result, and a synonym of “non-Greek,” both end with the same three letters. Delete those identical endings. The remaining letters, in order, spell a noun describing the deity. 

Name this dance, chap, anagram of the biblical book, hyphenated term, and noun.

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.