Ten Not-So-Easy Word-Teasy ViolinTeddy-Tailored Appetizers; Civic Duty, Artistic Beauty; Keeping time, weighing in... counting Geigers? We need five more to reach twenty-four; "SlumberJacks"-and-LumberJills; "Little Tramp" Transforms Into "Sino-Sherlock!"

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle Of The Week

Civic, Duty, Artistic Beauty:

Name instructions, in two words, that voters may be given at the polls on election day – either orally or in written form. 

Anagram the combined letters of these two words to name a famous artist. 

Who is this artist?

What are the two words for those instructions?

Appetizer Menu:

Ten Not-So-Easy Word-Teasy ViolinTeddy-Tailored Appetizers:

“Solve All Seventeen!”

Find the seventeen words in the puzzles below:

ONE-WORD SOLUTIONS

Find one-word solutions to:

1. One-word: average vs preside       

2. One word: null vs sick    

3. One word: jump vs safe 

4. One word: Overeat vs fissure         

TWO-WORD SOLUTIONS

Find two-word solutions to:     

5. Two words: A race  vs  a  greeting  

[The second letters, both consonants, differ] 

6.  Two words: Moistening  vs  annoyance   

[The fifth letters, both consonants, differ]      

7. Two words: A type of candle vs  a snouty mammal

[The fourth letters, both vowels, differ]     

8.  Two words: Native of a South Pacific Island  vs  first name of a female model  

[The first letters (both consonants) are adjacent in the alphabet (no letters between them); the fourth letters (also both consonants) are five spots apart in the alphabet (four letters between them)]

9. Two words: Take a word for ‘meeting’; remove the first three letters to get a word for ‘balm’.

THREE-WORD SOLUTION

Find a three-word solution to:

10. Three words: What you might do to stay in shape vs what happens when you let it (or anything) go to pot vs pass or expire.  

[Add one vowel to the end of first word to get a second word]    

[Add one vowel to the beginning of second word to get a third word] 

MENU

Clean Sheets But Dirty Sheep Hors d’Oeuvre:

SlumberJacks-and-LumberJills

Remove consecutive interior letters from something in the bedroom that facilitates slumber. 

The removed letters spell a word associated with pain, and therefore contrary to slumber. 

What remains, however, are two words for something (in two words) conducive to sleep and pain relief that “log-sawing slumberers” may keep handy by their bedsides.

What are this slumber-facilitator, painful word, and the thing conducive to pain relief and sleep?

ConSEQUENCEial Slice:

We need five more to reach twenty-four

Fill in the five missing letters in this sequence of 24 letters:

_ E R _ N T W _ F U I V _ X G L Y D _ M B Q P C

What are these missing letters, in order?

Extra Credit: Please share, if you wish, how you you arrived at your solution.

Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices:

Little Tramp Transforms Into Sino-Sherlock

Will Shortz’s May 17th National Public Radio Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Joseph Young of St. Cloud, Minnesota, reads:

Name a famous actor of the past, seven letter first name and seven letter last name. 

Remove three consecutive letters from him last name and the remaining letters in order will be the well known lead character from a long running series of films. What actor and character are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Anagram the combined letters of a two-word city associated with a puzzle-maker to form two words that, although not exact antonyms, are a bit “antonymish.” 

A hyphenated synonym of the first word, if you remove the hyphen, replace the first letter with a letter near it in the alphabet, and then spell the result backward, yields two words related to puzzle-making.

The second word is an anagram of pennies, nickels, dimes, etc.

What are this city and its two anagrams?

What is the hyphenated synonym of the first anagram, and the two words related to puzzle-making?

What is the second word and its anagram?

(Note: Entree #2 through #7 were contributed by our brilliant friend Nodd, author of Puzzleria!s “Nodd ready for prime time.”)

ENTREE #2

Name a famous actor of the past (5,7). 

Remove the first two letters of both names and then switch the order of the names to name a comic book character. 

Who are the actor and character?

ENTREE #3

Name a famous actor of the past (8,7). Move the third letter of the first name two places later in the alphabet. The first name will now spell the last name of the title character in a
famous film. 

Now remove the fifth letter of the last name. The last name will now spell the first name of the title character in another famous film. Both films won Oscars for Best Picture. 

Who is the actor and what are the films?

ENTREE #4

Name a famous actor of the past (7,5). Change the fifth letter of the first name to an S. The first name will now spell the title character in a 1980s TV series. The actor’s last name is the last name of the title character in a comic strip and two TV series. Both title characters are in the same profession. 

Who are the actor and characters?

ENTREE #5

Name an Oscar-nominated filmmaker of the past (4,7). 

His first name, followed by the last two letters of the name of a recent Oscar-winning filmmaker, will sound like the name of a famous character from romantic literature whose story was adapted to movies several times. 

Who are the filmmakers and the character?

ENTREE #6

Name a famous living actor (4,9). 

Remove six consecutive letters and the space between the names to spell the last name of the title character in a popular “blaxploitation” film. 

Who is the actor and what is the film?

ENTREE #7

Name a famous actor of the past (5,5). Remove five consecutive letters, and the space between the names, to name a well-known company.

Now go back to the original first and last names. Move the third letter of the last name four places later in the alphabet and
remove the last letter of that name. 

The first and last names will now name the founder of another well-known company in the same industry as the company mentioned earlier. Who is the actor and what are the companies? 

(Note: Entree #8 was contributed by our brilliant friend Plantsmith, author of Puzzleria!s “Garden of Puzzley Delights.”)

ENTREE #8

Take a famous actor from the past –14 letters total in first and last names. 

Replace last six letters of the last name with the initials of famous volunteer  organization to
get a famous “living actor.”

Who are these two actors? What is the volunteer organization?

ENTREE #9

Name an past actor in 11 letters, first and last names. 

Replace the 2nd and 3rd letters with the 7th letter, then move a duplicate of the last letter into the 4th position. 

Remove all spaces.

The result is a word associated with a literary character whose first name is an anagram of a variant spelling of a medical word associated with ulcers.

Who is this actor? 

Who is the literary character, and what is the associated word?

What are the medical word and its variant spelling? 

Dessert Menu

“Open Your Workbooks” Dessert:

Keeping time, weighing in... counting Geigers? 

An “i” and “n” (both which appear within the physical quantity “distance”) form an abbreviation of “inch” (“in.”) which is a unit of distance. 

Name a different measurable quantity – like time, electric current, mass, weight, force, etc. – that contains consecutive letters that spell a unit of that physical quantity... not just the abbreviation of the unit, but the entire word!

What is the word for this measurable physical quantity, and the non-abbreviated unit of measure it “contains?”

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.

Hard(as)Rock-yet-Easy-“lisolving,” Classical, Pop Heavy-Metal & “acousticklers”... all spun for your funky-punky-shock-the-monkey-head-banging-against-the-wall-frustrational enjoyment by “Master DJ Jazzy Jeff Zarkin!”; Kitchen gizmos, Ocean creatures? Filling in the blanks of History; Fracas in Fleaflickerville!; “Revenge of the Tita..?. Tige...? No, Motor City Kitties!”; Can low-tech tools do high-tech tasks?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Kitchen gizmos? Ocean creatures?

Take a five-letter noun for an eggbeater or chopper when you begin using it, and a five-letter verb for what it may then do. 

Rearrange these letters to spell the two-word etymology of the name of a creature related to whales.

What are this noun, verb, two-word etymology and creature?

Hint: The creature related to whales is an African creature.

Appetizer Menu

Golden-Ratio-Brass Sections~Fretful attached strings tangled together into Gordian Knots~All Accompanied By Conundrum-Set-Percussion... Appetizer!:

Hard(as)Rock-yet-Easy-“lisolving,” Classical, Pop Heavy-Metal & “acousticklers”... all spun for your funky-punky-shock-the-monkey-head-banging-against-the-wall-frustrational enjoyment by “Master DJ Jazzy Jeff Zarkin!”

Note: Jeff, our great friend and master-puzzle-maker, recently wrote me a note that said: “for no rational reason” – music, and how it’s created, has lately been on his mind...

And so, as the expression goes, “Out of mind, onto Puzzleria!”

Enjoy the following five “symphonic sticklers” Jeff hath “composed”...

But first... before we “face the music,” here is a quite challenging vowel/consonant puzzle Jeff whipped up to whet our puzzle-hungry palates. Think of it as an “appetizing prelude to a symphonic feast!”

Two letters doing triple duty!

0. There are a number of three- and four-letter words that use two different letters (for example, OFF, SEES, NOON, EEK! etc.). 

Can you think of a six-letter words that contains only two letters?

This word, when spelled aloud in a kind of “wordplayful way,” can sound as if it only has four letters! 

What is this six-letter word?

Roy Or*ison’s Voice?

1. 🙏The name of a musical instrument can be rearranged to  get how one might describe an early Breton’s prayer. What are the instrument and prayer?

Peter, Paul & Emotive Music

2.  🔨🎕🍋✈Another musical instrument can be rearranged to spell the emotion described
in a Peter, Paul & Mary classic. 

What are the instruments, the classic and the emotion?

Instrumentally Mysterious  

3. 🔐🏠🏡📗Another musical instrument can be rearranged to something found multiple times in a Sherlock Holmes story. What are the instruments, the classic and the story?

Venus (in Bluejeans) Fly Trap?

4. 🪰🐜Another musical instrument can be rearranged to spell things used to trap pesky insects.

What are this instrument, and the pesky pest traps?

“More Greens but fewer ‘Greens’”

5. 🫑🥬🥗A  musical performance, can be rearranged to get what one might carry leaving an English Greengrocers. What is the art form, and what are you taking home?

MENU

A-Full-Of-F-Words Hors d’Oeuvre:

Fracas in Fleaflickerville!

Frank and a fellow named Fred, who had just moved into Fink Hollow, met at a neighborhood bar and, in-a-flash, became fast friends. 

As a token of their newfound mutual fellowship, Frank bought tickets for his sister Frida and his freshly-minted friend Fred to attend a Friday-night creature-feature film, “Frankenstein’s Theory of Captivity,” at the “artsy-fartsy” Fantasyfilm Flickerfest Family CinemaPlex, just down the freeway in the town of Fleaflickerville.. 

Alas, a felicitous Friday-night finalé (aka, a “happy ending”) was not in the offing... 

Fred got a bit fresh, Frida flung her Fresca in his face, and Fred phoned Frank, name-calling him a 14-letter epithet that is an anagram of the combined letters in the two-word 9-letter movie night and the 5-letter unflattering word that Fred used to describe Frida in his phone call to Frank. 

What are this unflattering epithet, two-word term for the movie night, and Fred’s unflattering word?

History’s Mystery Slice:

Filling in the blanks of History

Consider following sentence that you might read in a book of history:

“This nation’s capital, _ _ _ _ _ _,  _ _ _   _ _ _ _  on its soil in the early and middle years of the 20th Century.” 

Fill in the blanks. 

The letters of the second word are identical to the last three letters of the first word. 

The letters of the third word are identical to the first four letters of the first word. 

What are the three words?

Hint: The name of the nation, if “beheaded,” spells the surname of an actor who died just before the events of those 20th-Century “middle years.”

Riffing Of  Shortz And Green Slices:

“Revenge of the Tita..?. Tige...? No, Motor City Kitties!”

Will Shortz’s May 10th 2026 NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Joshua Green of Columbia, Maryland, reads:

Think of a popular film franchise with many sequels. Hidden in consecutive letters inside its name is a place mentioned multiple times in the Bible. 

Replace that place with a single letter and you’ll name a Major League Baseball team. What franchise and team are these?

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker from a state associated with Calico cats, blue crabs and rock fish. 

Rearrange the letters in this
puzzle-maker’s name to spell:

~ a breakfast beverage,

~ an additive for that beverage, and

~ the source of a breakfast entree ingredient.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the breakfast beverage and its additive?

What is the source of a breakfast entree?

Note: Entree #2 through #7 are puzzles crafted by our friend Nodd, author of “Nodd ready for prime time” on Puzzleria! 

ENTREE #2

Think of a popular film franchise and remove the first letter.  

Five consecutive letters are an anagram of something God does in the beginning of the
Bible. 

Replace those letters with a single letter and you’ll name an MLB team. 

What franchise and team are these?

ENTREE #3

Think of a film franchise in two words. 

The first word, plus one letter of the second word, name an MLB team. What film and team are these?

ENTREE #4

Think of a popular 20th century film that had a sequel in the 21st century. 

Five consecutive letters of the title of the original film are an anagram of a flower believed by some to be referred to in the Bible. 

Replace those letters with a single letter and you’ll  name an MLB team. 

What film and team are these? 

ENTREE #5

Think of a popular film franchise and remove the first word. From the second word, remove the first three letters. 

Then remove four more consecutive letters that are an anagram of a bodily substance. You’ll name an MLB team. 

What franchise and team are these?

ENTREE #6

Remove the second word of a two-word film franchise and the first letter of the first word.

Change one interior letter and insert a space. 

You’ll get a company associated with sports and a word associated with the company. 

What are the franchise, the company, and the word associated with it?

ENTREE #7

The first words in the names of two film franchises are the names of two MLB teams. The name of another film franchise, with one letter added, is the name of a third MLB team. The first word in the name of a fourth film franchise is the name of an NFL team. 

And if you remove three consecutive letters from the name of a fifth film franchise, you’ll name an NBA team. What franchises are these?

ENTREE #8

Name a popular 11-letter film franchise with many sequels. 

Replace a three-letter expression of greeting
or of leave-taking with a two-letter sun god and you’ll name a Major League Baseball team. 

What franchise and team are these?

Dessert Menu:

A “Tsk-Tsk-Text-it-a-Task-it” Dessert:

Can low-tech tools do high-tech tasks?

Name a two-word task easily accomplished by a using a high-tech tool.

Delete the initial letters to name two low-tech tools. What are this task and tools?

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.

“My Mother is my Friend, my Mommy is my Buddy”; Political tactics vs creature comforts; Breakfast with the Bard; Time on your fingers but not on your hands?; “...It’s good to reach the green green ryegrass of Augusta”; “Voiding a ‘Chase’, Avoiding a chase... Voiding banks of all portraits of Salmon P. Chase?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week (“...Back to the Few shooters?”):

“Voiding the ‘Chase’, Avoiding a chase... Voiding banks of all portraits of Salmon P. Chase?”

The DeLorean pulled into the parking lot  of a Chase Manhattan Bank in Manhattan, Kansas.

It did not display Kansas plates.

Two men exited the vehicle, entered the bank, committed a robbery with fingers on triggers, triggered an alarm (that did not disarm them), and exited the bank posthaste!

But before they could flee scot-free, a fleet-responding fleet of police squads greeted them with a symphony of sirens!

The  two hooligans grabbed their gats and hunkered down in prone positions in the DeLorean they had “borrowed” – one across the bucket seats, the other across the floor below him.

Serendipitously for them, “their” DeLorean’s gull wings allowed gunslingers seeking refuge in parked getaway cars to take pot shots at keepers of the peace from prone positions through the cracks between the doors and the floor!

Identify a series of consecutive “wordplayful words” in the previous sentence.

Mother’s Day Appetizer:

“My Mother is my Friend, my Mommy is my Buddy”

(Join us this Mother’s Day in celebrating those wonderful women who gave us the gift of life... and then nurtured it.

And what better way to do so than to enjoy a “Merry-Month Of-‘Mayternal’ Appetizer” from Bobby Jacobs. It is a loving tribute from a loving son, dedicated to his “dedicated mom!”)

1. Parallel Parental Pairings 

🍐What do the following pairs of synonyms have in common?

~ Mother, Mommy;

~ friend, buddy;

~ count, number; 

~ burro, donkey;

~ emulate, imitate;

2. A Duo of Trios

☘ 🎶Find a trio of synonyms with the same alphanumeric property as in #1, “Parallel Parental Pairings,” above.

Extra Credit: Find a second trio of synonyms with this same property.

MENU

Up-On-The-Hill Versus Down-On-The-Farm Hors D’oeuvre:

Political tactics vs creature comforts

A delaying tactic lawmakers sometimes use sounds a bit like a two-word role assumed by a farmhand charged with taming a specific creature. 

A verb that is key to the success of that political tactic doubles as a noun that is key to the creature’s comfort. 

What are this tarrying tactic and the role the farmhand assumes? 

What is the verb that doubles as a noun?

Shakespearean Slice:

Breakfast with the Bard

Transpose consecutive letters in a word associated with William Shakespeare. 

Voicing the result sounds a bit like a three-syllable food. 

What are this Shakespearean word and food?

Riffing Off Shortz And Graham Slices:

“...It’s good to reach the green green ryegrass of Augusta” 

Will Shortz’s May 3rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle challenge, created by Chad Graham of Philadelphia, Pennsylvavia, reads:

Name a well-known comic actor (4,5) whose name is an anagram of two terms in golf (4 and 5 letters, respectively). Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Graham Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Fill in the ten blanks

of the image pictured here with:

~ a slang term of the a synonym of the slang term “pin” (3 letters), 

~ a synonym of “possessed” (3 letters), and

~ the catenary structure (4 letters).

Rearrange those combined ten letters to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are these words, and who is the puzzle-maker?

Note: Entress #2 through #7 are contributions from our friend Nodd, author of Nodd ready for prime time on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

The last name of the lead actor in a one-season 1970s TV sitcom, followed by the last name of the lead character in a nine-season 1970s TV sitcom, is a two-word golf term. Name the actor, the character, and the golf term.

ENTREE #3

Take the last name of an actress who began her career with comedic roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Follow this with the last name of an actor whose best-known movie role was in a 1969 satirical comedy. 

Remove the third letter of the actor’s last name. The two last names together will now name a periodic golf event. 

Who are the actress and actor, and what’s the event?

ENTREE #4

The last word in the title of a 1960s musical comedy film, the last name of a mid-20th century TV personality with the third letter removed, and an alternative spelling of a famous film actor’s nickname are three related golf terms. 

What is the film, who are the TV personality and actor, and what are the golf terms?

ENTREE #5

The last names of a British-born actress, a British actor, and an American actor are three related golf terms. 

Who are the performers?

ENTREE #6

Name an American actress best known for her performance in a 1995 camp cult classic film (first and last names, four and seven letters). 

Rearrange to spell the last names of (1) a famous 20th century American golfer and (2) a main character in a 1970s comedy film that won multiple Oscars. 

Who are the actress, the golfer, and the character?

ENTREE #7

Name a well-known comic actress, first and last names, and change the second letter to a copy of the eighth letter. 

Rearrange to get two golf terms (four and six letters). The second term is also the last name of a famous 20th century golfer. 

Who is the actress and what are the terms?

Note: Entrees #8 through #10 are contributions from our friend Greg VanMechelen, author of Econfusions on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #8

Name a well-known comic actor (4,5) whose
name is an anagram of something you might
receive on your computer that might be NSFW (5 and 4 letters, respectively). 

Who is it and what is the term?

ENTREE #9

Name a well-known comic actor (4,3) whose name is an anagram of someone hooked on a legendary creature (3 and 4 letters, respectively). Who is it and what is the term?

ENTREE #10

Name a well-known radio host (4,6) whose name is an anagram of something that person might take for health (4nd 6 letters, respectively). 

Who is it and what is the term?

Note: Entree #11 is contributed by our great friend Plantsmith, author of Garden of Puzzley Delights on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #11

Name a well known actor whose name in part contains a golf-related term. 

Remove first letter of first name and last letter of surname. 

Now reverse the order of the remaining letters

of first name and switch first name with last to get a two-word arcade game.

Who is this actor?

Hint: The first word in the arcade game may describe a duffer who just nine-ironed his approach shot into “the drink” ...(no, not into his cup of Budweiser, but rather into the rearing pond adjacent to the putting surface!)

Dessert Menu

Bold & Brassy Dessert:

Time on your fingers but not on your hands?

Rearrange the letters in a two-word-fifteen-letter expression that means “brazen boldness.” 

The result spells two words that describe portable timepieces, made of red brass, that
are “handless,” but not “fingerless”). 

What are this “brazen bold” expression and pair of descriptive words?

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.