Welcome to
Joseph Young’s Puzzle –ria!
The
illustration above depicts a popular processed food manufactured in
Minnesota. It pertains to the second slice on this week’s menu, the Grocery
Slice, “States of the Onion.” But it is not the answer to that puzzling slice.
Nor was it the
answer to the question asked of Miss South Carolina in the 2007 Miss Teen
USA Pageant.
Or was it?
Indeed, it is
my belief that everything mouthed by Miss South Carolina Teen USA “onion-rings” true if
only one realizes that she must be dyslexic and meant to say not maps, but Spam!
I reckon she
actually wanted to observe, “Some people out there in our nation don’t have
Spam.”
What? A day without
Spam! That’s like a power plant without amps, like a pot or pan without Pam’s
non-stick-to-it-tive-ness, like A&W Root Beer without the ampersand, & like some U.S. American people out there in our nation without maps!
“Whence Spam?”
one might well ask (well, probably only if one is some kind of creepy word-nerd
and is aware of what “whence” means).
Well, fellow word-nerds, the
product itself comes from the Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods Corporation.
The word “Spam,” however, seems to be even more of a mystery than the so-called
“mystery meat” that it stands for.
Wikipedia
says: Hormel claims that the meaning of the name “is known by only a small
circle of former Hormel Foods executives.” But popular beliefs are that the
name is an abbreviation of “spiced ham” or “shoulders of pork and ham.”
Or perhaps,
rather, “spurious ham?”
Cleaning off
the spindle:
In an October
21, 11:08 p.m. comment, we posted the following bonus slice:
In the news
this week is the banning of a popular song by some radio stations. One of (last) week’s Puzzleria! slices has a roundabout connection to that ban. What is it?
Our “Halve It
Your Way Slice” mentioned GEORGE Blanda & BRETT Favre.
More clairvoyance
& serendipity courtesy of Puzzleria!
Now, here are
this week’s amped-up, deep-pan-Pam-sprayed, topologically mappy and mysteriously
Spammy slices:
Menu
Easy As Pie Slice:
Title Search
Find a title, in two words, that
contains just one vowel and three different consonants. The total number of
letters in the title equals a factorial number minus the sum of the three factorial numbers preceding it. That is, the number of letters in the title
equals N, where N = n! – [(n-1)! + (n-2)! + (n-3)!].
Grocery Slice:
States of the Onion
Delete some letters from the beginning
of a U.S. state. Add a vowel and hyphen between the second and third letters of
what remains to create the name of a food-processing corporation which just so
happens to be formed by combining the beginnings of two other U.S. states. What
are the three states and the corporation?
Sense Of Touchy Slice:
Making sense…itivity
Take two synonyms of four and six
letters. Connect them with a hyphen and replace the last letter of one of the
words with two different letters to form a synonym for “touchy” or “overly
sensitive.”
What are the words?
Every Friday at
Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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
Tuesdays to post your answers and explain your hints about the puzzles. We plan
to serve up at least one fresh puzzle every Friday.
Ow, that was painful. Miss SC could not be helped by Spam, either on her plate or in her in-box. Given our current use of "spam" maybe a renaming campaign is in order. I believe "pressed 'meat'" is available.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of maps, how about a good geography question next week?
I have the last one. . .
Give her a break! Dirac equations are enough to spin anyone's head around (except mine -- I refuse to even look at them, for the present).
DeleteSpeaking of head-spinning, everyone here seems to have gotten somewhere with these puzzles except me. I'll try to remedy this situation before Tuesday (which is only postponing my inevitable confrontation with Dirac).
Is there only one Dirac Equation? Gee, it seemed like more.
DeleteOK, got GS.
DeleteAh, yes, got another one. Does Chef Lego Lambda have a good recipe for onion dip?
DeletePaul,
DeleteLet me reveal a “dirty little secret” about Chef Lego Lambda (and please don’t squeal to the health inspectors!). He don’t need no stinkin’ recipes! Never has. Cooks stuff up from memory, or whim, or “whimory,” or “Why me, worry?”
Measuring? Schmeasuring! Quarter cup, Half a cup, couple o’ cups, who cares? Teaspoons? For sissies! Lego tosses in a pinch of this, dash of that, drizzle of spritz, splash of mash, and tops it all off with a sprinkle of kitchen sinkle. It all comes out in the wash.
However, if you tend to be a bit more tediously fastidious chef, here is a recipe or two.
Lego(MarthaStewartDoesn'tCookHere)SlapDash
OK, got GS--> not Oklahoma, but "all right"
Delete“When it says Ore-Ida, it’s All Righta.”
"Onion dip"--> "thin-skinned" and "skinny-dipping'.
Maybe I should have asked for Jamie Oliver's recipe.
I completely missed Miss Mississippi.
I like Treet; costs a lot less, and tastes better, IMO.
I have solved the EAPS and GS.
ReplyDeleteWhen our daughters were younger, they got to pick their birthday dinner menu. Our younger daughter included one of the GS company's products as one of her menu items
I have all three, EAPS, GS, SOTS, and I'll play the avoider and offer only one hint to one of them.
ReplyDeleteI too have all three. Interestingly enough, EAPS was the last of the three for me to solve. My one clue about that: The title was never made into a movie; however, if you replace the last word with a new word that's one letter longer, sharing no letters in common except the only vowel, and then you do have a movie title.
ReplyDeleteI finally got the SOTS. I was a lot speedier solving your piggyback.
DeleteUsually by this time, we have at least one reply from Legolambda. I guess when everybody's solved 'em all, folks lose interest.
ReplyDeleteEnya_and_Weird_Al_fan,
ReplyDeleteA close friend of mine oft accuses me of being “too much of a helicopter blogger.” It is a fair point. I tend to hover over (BTW, those final two words are etymologically unrelated, I believe.)
This week’s puzzles proved easier than I had thought. In the SOTS, for example, I should have realized there are just not that many hyphenated synonyms for “touchy” or “overly sensitive.” I should have clued that a bit more mysteriously.
But, we don’t actually think most of our puzzles are too easy; we think most of our Puzzlerians! are just too darn smart!
We really liked your EAPS porcidorsal (piggyback) puzzle asking for a movie title. Bully for you! (You could apparently sense that our blog was in need of a “goose” this week, so you created a Puzzlerian’s Bonus Slice {PBS}).
Thank you.
LeGooseLautrec
EAPS:
ReplyDeleteTitle: MISS MISSISSIPPI. 15 letters using one vowel and only 3 different consonants. N=4, so N!=24, (N-1)!=6, (N-2)!=2, (N-3)!=1. Thus, 24 - 6 -2 -1 = 15.
GS:
FLORIDA, delete FL and add E- after OR to form the food processing corporation ORE-IDA, short for OREGON & IDAHO.
SOTS:
Synonyms: THIN = SKINNY. Add a hyphen and change the Y to ED to form THIN-SKINNED, meaning “oversensitive” or “touchy.”
My hint: “AVOIDER” = ORE-IDA + V.
This may be the first time I have ALL 3 intended answers & no “unintended answers”!!!
The “Enya_and_Weird_Al_fan” variation: MISS CONGENIALITY (4 +12 letters).
David,
ReplyDeleteWhat was your daughter’s Ore-ida birthday selection? I’ll wager it was Tater Tots, or, less likely, onion rings.
ron,
Very fine recapitulation, including Enya_and_Weird_Al_fan’s EAPS bonus piggyback slice. But, for the record:
Easy As Pie Slice:
Title Search
Find a title, in two words, that contains just one vowel and three different consonants. The total number of letters in the title equals a factorial number minus the sum of the three factorial numbers preceding it. That is, the number of letters in the title equals N, where N = n! – [(n-1)! + (n-2)! + (n-3)!].
Answer:
MISS MISSISSIPPI (as in a national beauty/scholarship pageant, or whatever they’re calling them these days)
Grocery Slice:
States of the Onion
Delete some letters from the beginning of a U.S. state. Add a vowel and hyphen between the second and third letters of what remains to create the name of a food-processing corporation which just so happens to be formed by combining the beginnings of two other U.S. states. What are the three states and the corporation?
Answer:
FLORIDA; ORE-IDA = OREGON + IDAHO (Do they offer an oriental food line under the brand GON-HO?)
Sense Of Touchy Slice:
Making sense…itivity
Take two synonyms of four and six letters. Connect them with a hyphen and replace the last letter of one of the words with two different letters to form a synonym for “touchy” or “overly sensitive.” What are the words?
Answer:
THIN, SKINNY, THIN-SKINNED
LeGonHoFoods
My E&WAF hint was "speedier". Sandra was in both Miss Congeniality and Speed.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter, for her birthday dinner, had Tater Tots (along with cheese omelet, pitted black olives that she could put on her fingertips, and cheesecake for dessert).
David,
DeleteWow, that's a dream birthday dinner! And that "pitted black olive" maneuver might be a good Halloween finger tactic, or toe tactic.
But did a daughter of yours ever ask for Spam on her birthday? Spam quiche, perhaps?
Speaking of which, (Spamwich!), the 1980s-era Gear Daddies, hailing from Austin, Minnesota, home of Hormel and Spam, included a Spam Quiche recipe in the liner notes to their second album.
These guys were prototypical sons of Minnesota, the self-proclained “State of Hockey.” Check out this final cut on their “Billy’s Live Bait” album.
LegoLamboni
No Spam for my daughter, but my father-in-law has been a "cooking with Spam" judge at a county fair in Ohio. He generously gave me his Spam t-shirt that he got for being a judge.
DeleteYeah, the hyphen and the onion gave away thin-skinned for me.
ReplyDeleteOkay, Puzzlerians, because our puzzle slices this week proved to be easier to hit out of the park than “softballs” served up to KC Royal Mike Moustakas, here is a bonus porcidorsal slice that “piggybacks” on the current NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle by Will Shortz. It invoves baseball:
DeleteName a well-known television and movie actress of the past. Put an R between her first and last names. Then read the result backward. The result will be a comment Mr. Hughes might have made to Uecker on a 1980s Milwaukee Brewers radio broadcast…
Those are mid-1980s Brewers play-by-play broadcasters Pat Hughes and Bob Uecker. Hughes’ comment would have been spoken after a Brewer outfielder (famous for his perennial low batting average and frequent strike outs, but also for his ability to draw walks and clout home runs) advanced to second base on a passed ball and then to third after the catcher pegged the ball into center field in a futile attempt to throw the Brewer out at second.
Who is the actress, and what is the comment?
Warning the comment includes an “initialism,” one often followed by a series of pickets on fan-held signs at sporting events.
Hint: The actress had a prominent role in one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite films.
LegOweYouOne
I started the the baseball player, which led to the actress.
DeleteI had no idea that was one of Steven Spielberg’s favorite films.
Actually, besides the set-up, there is (at least) one additional connection to the current NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle.
David,
DeleteRegarding the at least one additional connection:
Two years and one day after our first moon landing, the actress in the NPR puzzle and one of the characters in my piggyback puzzle appeared (along an Muhammad Ali nemesis) on a late-night talk show guest-hosted by a guy who on his own previous talk show shared the couch with a side-kick named Regis Philbin.
LeDownGoesLambda!