“A Tale of Two (U.S.) Cities”; Machismo vs. modern amenities; Fun! Games! Gastroenterology! Rabbit, Rabbi, Cabbie, Abbot, Lab Rat!; Ballroom bees? Octopi of a different color?; Muskie scales, music scales, sails on the lake

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Muskie scales, music scales, sails on the lake

🐟Delete a musical-scale syllable from the name of a lake...

🎣squeeze a duplicate of the new first letter into the middle...

♭♯𝅘𝅥𝅯 transpose the second and third last letters...

⛵change the last letter to the letter after it in the alphabet...

to spell a city on that lake. 

What are this lake and city?

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

“A Tale of Two (U.S.) Cities”

Name a nine-letter U.S. city. 

Its last three letters spell a common noun. Remove those letters. 

The name of a second city is the result. 

This second city is home to none of those “common nouns.” The first city, however, is home to more than just a few of them.

What are these two cities and the common noun?

MENU

Doctor’s Prescriptive Hors d’Oeuvre!:

Fun! Games! Gastroenterology!

An anagram of something medical professionals do is the name of two-word city.  Consecutive letters in this city spell a board game piece, followed by the name of a board game that does not use that piece. 

What do medical professionals do? 

What are the city, the board game piece and the game that does not use it?

“Barbarian vs. Minute-Maid Marian” Slice:

Machismo vs. modern amenities

Describe – using a hyphenated adjective and a noun – football, rugby or power-lifting. 

Rearrange the result to spell a modern convenience. 

What are this adjective, noun and modern convenience?

Riffing Off Shortz And Legge Slices:

Rabbit, Rabbi, Cabbie, Abbot, Lab Rat!

Will Shortz’s April 26th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Gordon Legge of South Minneapolis, Minnesota, reads:

Name an animal whose first five letters in order spell a religious figure. 

And if you change the animal’s next-to-last letter, its last five letters in order will spell another religious figure. What animal is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Legge Slices read

ENTREE #1

Write captions for both images piggybacked here.

The image atop depicts a rugged canyon passageway along the River Kverna from Skógar in the Southern Region of Iceland.

The image below depicts the “bottom of the trash barrel” in late January.

Anagram the combined letters in either caption to spell the name of a puzzlemaker.

Who is it, and what are the captions?

ENTREE #2

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are creations from our friend Nodd, whose “Nodd ready for prime time” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!)

Name an animal and change the third letter. 

The first five letters in order will now spell a religious figure. 

Now change the fifth letter. The last four letters in order will now spell another religious figure. 

What are the animal and the religious figures?

ENTREE #3

A certain religion includes two titles within its hierarchy, one of which is also a word for an animal and the other of which is also a word
for a category of animal. 

What are the religion and the animals?

ENTREE #4

Name a large mammal and replace the last letter with a pronoun to spell a religious figure. Name a bird and replace the last letter with a state postal abbreviation to spell another figure in the same religion. 

What are the mammal and bird and the two religious figures?

ENTREE #5

Name an animal in two words. 

Change the fourth letter in the first word and rearrange the letters of that word to spell a religious figure. 

Remove the last two letters in the second word and that word will now spell another religious figure. 

What are the animal and the religious figures?

ENTREE #6

Name a fish. 

The first four letters can be rearranged to spell
the geographic center of a major world religion. The remaining letters, in order, spell the supreme deity in a different religion. 

What are the fish, the religious center, and the deity?

ENTREE #7

Name an animal whose first three letters in order spell the proper name of a religious figure. 

The last four letters in order, followed without a space by a preposition, will spell something this religious figure has the authority to do. 

What are the animal and the name of the religious figure, and what does this figure have the authority to do?

(Note: Entree #8 is the brainchild of our friend Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” is featured regularly on Puzzleria!)

Entree #8:

The first five letters of the name of an animal spell a place associated with a well-known important religious figure. 

If you take just the final four letters of this animal’s name, and change the third letter, you will spell the name of an earlier religious figure, in four letters. 

Who are these two religious figures and the place associated with the first one. 

Dessert Menu

“Heard It Through The Grapevine” Dessert:

Ballroom bees? Octopi of a different color?

Some critters communicate creatively...

Bees dance, gorillas hum, octopi change colors, mole-rats head-bang, chimps scratch and play footsie...

Name two different yet similar means of communication employed by human creatures, in nine and five letters. 

Anagram their combined letters to spell two creatures, in eight and six letters. What are these two means of communication and two non-human creatures?

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.

“...Clothed in celestial vestments”; “Franklin Vetoes? Teddy Svelto?”; “If at first name you fail, try, try a second, ‘Sir’!”; “Could this just be the Perfect Word?”; Ursine arson? “Shiny Happy People Laughing...” “Leafing through the Lexicon of Loud!” “The Gift of the ‘Ma-jerk?’” “Three, two, one, Exhale!”; Gerald versus Geraldine!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Shiny Happy People Laughing...”

Name a parlor game. Remove its first letter. 

Write down the first four letters of this newly “beheaded” game. 

Leave a space, followed by the final five letters of the game. Invert two adjacent letters of these final five. 

As a result of these meddlesome lexical
manipulations, the game has now been rendered edible... like a Christmas goose or Thanksgiving turkey! (Has this parlor game perhaps indeed become an entirely different kind of game!?) 

What are this game and this grub?

Appetizer Menu

Five “Enlight’ning” Appetizers:

“...Clothed in celestial vestments”; “Franklin Vetoes? Teddy Svelto?”; “Could this just be the Perfect Word?”; “If at first name you fail, try, try a second, ‘Sir’!”; Ursine arson?

“...Clothed in celestial vestments”

(Note: The following puzzle is an attempt to address the eternal question: “Do a celestial bodies need clothing?”)

1. 🪐Name a familiar celestial body. 

Add on a common name for its location from which you have deleted an “s.” Rearrange to identify a  brand of clothing that was well-known in the past. 

Name the celestial body, its location and the brand (9 letters).

“Franklin Vetoes? Teddy Svelto?”

2. 🚗Think of a renowned  president’s last name. Then think of a former make of car. Delete each letter in the  car’s name from the president’s name. 

Rearrange the resulting presidential name to see what occasionally happens to cars. 

“Could this just be the Perfect Word?”

3. 📖Many cities, large and small, have one. It has 8 letters. Letters 2 through 5 – in order – spell what it is. 

The remaining letters – in left to right order – spell its abbreviation. 

What is it that many cities have?

“If at first name you fail, try, try a second, ‘Sir’!”

4. 🃏🂡Name a famous fictitious character. 

The first name plus an added word suggests
failure. 

The last name plus the same added word suggests success. Who’s the character? What are the two phrases?

Ursine arson?

5. 🧸🔥A famous fictional character’s first and last names total 10 letters. 

Rearrange the name to make a short sentence which expresses a view different than the character’s original outlook. 

Who’s the character? 

What’s the sentence?

MENU

Soda Fountain Hors d’Oeuvre?:

“The Gift of the ‘Ma-jerk’”

Replace an article in the title of a work of art with a pronoun to get what sounds like something a jerk might give you. 

What are this work-of-art title, what a the jerk gives you, and the pronoun?

“Respiratorial” Slice:

“Three, two, one, Exhale!” 

Take a deep breath. 

Make a exhaustive exhalation, releasing every last molecule of carbon monoxide from your lungs.

That exhalation is a two-word anagram of the
combined letters that appear in three consecutive integers. (...–3, –2, –1, 0, 1, 2, 3...).

What are this anagram and the integers?

Riffing Off Shortz And Ellison Slices:

Gerald versus Geraldine!

Will Shortz’s April 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by James Ellison of Jefferson City, Missouri, reads:

Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of
the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Ellison Slices read:

ENTREE #1

In the following rhyming couplet with anapestic meter, the missing words contain seven and five letters.

Jars that _______ and jams find their place in

Are embossed oft with “Ball” or with “_____”.

Rearrange these combined dozen letters to spell the name of a puzzle-maker.

What are the missing words and the name of the puzzle’s author?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are creations from our friend Nodd, purveyor of “Nodd ready for prime time.”) 

ENTREE #2

Think of a popular movie of the 2010s. 

The title of this movie contains the last names of two U.S. politicians, one a former state governor and the other a former mayor of the same state’s largest city. 

What is the movie and who are the pair of politicians?

ENTREE #3 

Think of a popular movie of the 1970s. 

The title of this movie contains the first names of two well-known U.S. politicians who once ran against one other. 

What is the movie and who are the politicians?

ENTREE #4 

Think of a famous 1930s movie. 

The title of this movie contains the last names of two U.S. politicians, one who served as president and the other who served in the House and Senate. What is the movie and who are the politicians?

ENTREE #5 

Think of a popular 1950s fantasy-adventure movie. 

The title of this movie is the first name of a former U.S. president. 

The last name of the star of this movie is also the last name of a famous but unsuccessful U.S. presidential candidate who ran eight years before the election of the former president. 

What is the movie and who are the politicians?

ENTREE #6 

The titles of two horror movies from 1999 and 2009 contain the first and last names of a politician who rose to international prominence in 1997. What are the movies and who is the politician?

ENTREE #7 

The title of a 2010s comedy movie is the last name of a former U.S. president. 

Replace the last letter of the first name of the star of this movie with a word for something found in movie theaters to get the first name of the president. What is the movie and who are the star and the president?

(Note: Entree #8 is a gift from our friend Plantsmith, producer & purveyor of Garden of Puzzley Delights on Puzzleria!”)

ENTREE #8

Name a famous movie from around four decades back. 

Make the first word plural and change the last letter in the title.  The result will sound like a famous brand of confectionary.

What are this movie title and candy brand?

Hint #1: Some contents of the confectionary package are inedible... and yet desirable. 

HInt #2: Consumers of this confectionary, we hope, are not like the “kids these days” in a song that Tom Rush wrote and performed.

Dessert Menu

Turn Up the Volume Dessert:

“Leafing through the ‘Lexicon of LOUD’!”

Delete one letter from loud things and rearrange the result to get two other loud
things. 

What are these three loud things?

Hint: The answer consists of four words that contain a total of 25 letters.

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.

Roamin’ the High Seas – Empirically Speaking; “Rocketeers... Modern-day Musketeers?” The Blessed Virgin... Renovated Version? “Lions & Bengals & Zebras Oh My!” Trains, Planes & “Rivermo’boats!” Poof!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Rocketeers... Modern-day Musketeers?”

Note: A baker’s-dozen words related to lift-off lurk within the following text. Can you find them? 

After a peacefully successful splashdown landing in the Pacific...

Thanks to Wi-fi verifiability, and the expertise of NASA “rocket-torsi” X-ray specialists...

And after beholding shininess on sides of the moon both near and far, and experiencing zero-gravity...

That’s when the successful earth re-entry of the “crewquartet” of the Artemis II Space Mission around the Moon became history... 

And that’s also when our trustworthy quartet of “Planetary pioneers” helped to heighten hopes of our nation’s eventual colonization of that silvery-sometimes-slivery-sometimes-circular, satellite.

In the wake of the Pacific splashdown that concluded this historic NASA Artemis II lunar mission, the U.S. Navy helped extract these astronauts from their capsule... with the Artemis II Mission Commander Reid Wiseman – himself a “navy gob – last off.

(Note: This week’s Appetizer comes courtesy of a very inventive puzzle-maker and very valued friend of Puzzleria!)

Appetizer Menu

Knotty Nautical Appetizer:

Roamin’ the High Seas – Empirically Speaking

“Yo ho ho and a case of pelage”

1. 🛳🚢Take a compound word for a maritime officer with a particular responsibility aboard ship. 

One of the component words in the compound word names part of that responsibility.  The final consecutive letters of the compound word are the name of a legendary ship. 

What are the compound word, the component word, and the name of the ship? 

“Kick the Empire down the road” 

2. 📬🖃 Take a U.S. State postal code. 

Insert the postal code of another U.S. State to get the name of a civilization. Insert the name of that civilization into the postal code of a third U.S. State, and divide the result to get a two-word term for a common food container. What are the three postal codes, the civililization, and the container?

MENU

Vanishing Hors d’Oeuvre:

Poof!

A brand name ends with the name of a creature. 

Delete this brand’s last letter. Replace its first letter with a letter near it in the alphabet.

You will be left with nothing at all!

What are this brand name and creature?

Prolific Folk-Rock Slice:

Trains, Planes & “Rivermo’boats!” 

Name a late-yet-prolific country-folk-rock singer-songwriter who penned and performed songs about trains, highways, rivers and Americana. 

This guitar-______ whose first name is ______, is not a member of a century-old institution consisting of a prestigious collection of performing musicians. The name of this institution is an anagram of the missing letters in the blanks.

Reverse the syllables of something that shares the stage with this singer during live performances to reveal the surname.

What are the words in the blanks?

What is this institution?

With what does the singer share the stage during performances?

What is the name of this singer who is not a member of the institution?

Hint: Rearrange the letters in the three-word sign you might see on a drive-by kiosk near a seedy sleazy red-light district of a city to spell the surname of this singer.

Riffing Off Shortz And Rice Slices:

The Blessed Virgin... Renovated Version?

Will Shortz’s April 12th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Benita Rice of Salem, Oregon, reads:

Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Rice Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker (6 letters, 4 letters). Delete one pair of consecutive letters that spell a preposition in reverse. Reverse the order of the pair of letters bracketed by spaces (thereby forming a new

preposition!). But then remove the spaces.

The result is the name of Dante’s beloved.

What is the new preposition?

Who is this puzzle-maker?

Who was Dante’s beloved?

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are the creations of our “resident riffmeister” Nodd.)

ENTREE #2

Name a famous foreign landmark in nine letters. 

Remove the first two vowels. Rearrange the remaining letters to spell parts of the body that once figured prominently in activities at this site. 

What are the landmark and bodily features?

ENTREE #3

Name a famous foreign landmark in six letters. 

Rearrange its letters to get a material that
closely resembles a material found in a part of this landmark. 

What are the landmark and the two materials?

ENTREE #4

Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Remove the first and third letters and rearrange to spell (1) an adjective describing
this landmark and (2) a concern that led to the building of this landmark. 

What are the landmark and the two words?

ENTREE #5

Name a famous natural foreign landmark in ten letters. 

Change the first vowel to a different vowel. 

Rearrange to get a two-word phrase for something those who spend a night at this landmark probably would wish for. 

What are the landmark and the phrase?

ENTREE #6

Name a famous U.S. landmark in seven letters. 

Change the first vowel to a different vowel and add an S. Rearrange to name an activity that takes place at this landmark. 

What are the landmark and the activity?

ENTREE #7

Name a famous foreign landmark (6,6). 

Rearrange to spell (1) a means of transport
commonly seen there and (2) two substances you would rather not see in the water there. 

What are the landmark, the means of transport, and the two substances?

ENTREE #8

Name a famous foreign landmark, in five and four words. 

Rearrange these nine combined letters to form a high-risk-stakes bet (one often with a big payoff,
but perhaps also a low probability of winning), in four and five letters.

What are this landmark and this high-stakes bet?

ENTREE #9

Name a “town” in India with a 1.3-million population. 

Take the combined letters in the word “town” and in the name of the town, plus a letter you might see on a baseball scorecard. Anagram the result to spell a famous Eastern Hemisphere landmark, in two words. The landmark and “town” are about 1,500 miles apart.

What are the names of this “town” and landmark and the letter on the scorecard?

ENTREE #10

Name an iconic two-word world landmark. It is a landmark that is not “insane,” but is “close to being insane,” both geographically and phonetically. 

Number its letters, 1 through 11. 

Replace the 1st letter, a vowel, with the vowel that precedes it in the alphabet.

Replace the 2nd letter with the letter in the alphabet to its immediate left.

Replace the 9th letter with its inverted form.

The result is an new string of 11 letters. 

Spell three words using letters:

3   1   6  6,

4  11  8  9, and

7   2   5 

Place those three words to the left of the two-word landmark to name a five-word tragic event.

What is this landmark?

What is the new 11-letter string?

What is the five-word tragedy?

What new letters did its 1st, 2nd and 9th letters become?

Dessert Menu

Savannas, Pampas & Aerial Mountain Passes Dessert:

“Lions & Bengals & Zebras Oh My!”

“A septet of ________ simultaneously shrilled and echoed across a wide field filled with wildly combative Lions and Bengals and (and even Zebras) that all tangled together in the wake of a heated territorial turf dispute – the kind that ____ all one’s energy! (All this commotion had been precipitated by a controversial ‘____ call of the wild,’ if you will, bellowed by one of the striped creatures.”)

What are the three missing words?

How are the dozen missing letters in just the first two blanks related to a European mountain range?

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.