Carnival of carnivores; Ninth rock from the Sun; Significant other... than historically

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 7²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Plutozzleria! … we mean Puzzleria! We have Pluto on the brain. The New Horizons Spacecraft is crafting and transmitting some beautiful photos of this ice dwarf/plutoid/dwarf planet and its environs.

Pluto will always be the ninth planet in my mind. I consider it a “frawd” to call it a dwarf planet! When I learned the Solar System as a child, Pluto was the Disneyesque exclamation point punctuating the celestial skein: Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune…

I am in favor, however, of the word “plutoid,” which honors Pluto. I am also in favor of naming or renaming seven of the so-called 200-or-so dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt: Doc, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy and Sneezy. And I am in favor of coining the term “plutonic friendship,” referring to having a friend who is no longer in one’s social orbit, one who has been downgraded in status.

Those of you, however, who seek genuine scientific perspective and insight on the New Horizons mission and Pluto photos (or “Phlutos,” as Ruth cleverly called them over on Blaine’s blog) are well advised to access Word Woman’s wonderful Partial Ellipsis Of The Sun (PEOTS) blog.

Speaking of Pluto, I am reprinting the first part of a column I wrote 26 years ago, in the summer of 1989. In it, I mention Pluto, three years before its status as a planet fell into question. And, as usual, I was Nostrildamus-like (thanks, Paul!) in my prescience. (And, of course, I am Trumplike in my modesty.)

Back in 1989, I was writing for the Portage Daily Register and

Baraboo News-Republic. Baraboo is in Sauk County, Wisconsin, a farmer-in-the-Dells region somewhat north of Madison. I wrote the column on the 20^th anniversary of the first Woodstock Festival, held in 1969. But I pretended that was writing it in 2009, on the 20^th anniversary of some mythical festival I made up called “Woodsauk.”

Ah, the Summer of ’89. I remember it as if it were only yesterseason. George Bush was our president – not yet having resigned in the wake of the sordid Lee-Atwatergate scandal. George’s successor, Day Quayle, had not yet become Hollywood’s biggest-ever box office draw, thereby paving the way westward from our nation’s capital for an endless caravan of politicians drawn to dazzling marquee lights like matinee-idol moths, kind of like Reagan in reverse.

We had not yet broken the light barrier. Earth’s moon had not yet been colonized, nor had Mars or Uranus. We still considered Pluto to be a planet. (We realize today, of course, that Pluto is actually a diminutive snarkblarp that had strayed from its galaxy. Back in 1989 we hadn’t the foggiest idea what a snarkblarp was. The word didn’t even appear in dictionaries.

Haiti, Uruguay and Liechtenstein had not yet become the big-three world superpowers. The weapon that rendered atomic weapons penultimate – the Mobius Quark bomb – was still seven years from its initial testing phase. Steroids were not yet banned from the Olympic Games. Football players had not yet dreamed of injecting themselves with bovine growth hormones, a practice that effectively replaced weight-training as a means of body-building near the century’s turn.

Yes, we have all gone through some changes during the past two decades – decades that have slipped through our fingers like greased rosary beads. But for those of us who came of age in the Summer of ’89 its memory will remain etched upon our hearts, like a tattoo of a pitchfork (ouch!)

‘Twas a time of peas and love, of wild oats and condominiums, of amaranth and soybeans, of sweet corn knee-high-by-4th-of-July and alfalfa romeos. This magical, mystical Summer of ’89 culminated one mid-August weekend when a half-million designer-jeaned, Rebokked, peacenikking, picnicking flour children and MARPIES (Middle-Aged Rural Professionals) descended on a Loganville-area farm owned by Max Yasgur for a weekend of music, fun, sun, rain, mud and communion with nature.

In the early 1970s Yasgur had moved to Wisconsin from his upstate New York dairy farm after acres of his prime grazing land had become mysteriously overgrown with weedy vegetation that caused his cows to become paranoid – suspicious of the pigs.

Thus, the transplanted Yasgur became a host to history. For it was August of 1989, the Summer of Woodsauk. An estival festival was Woodsauk, ushering in the Age ofAgrarius… when the macaroon was in the seventh barn and junipers aligned with Mason jars, or something like that…  

Okay, enough of Woodsauk. Here is a quick pop pseudo-puzzle:

Frawdulent Skylarking Slice:

Ninth rock from the sun

Find one-word answers for each of these three definitions: 1. “to clear,” 2. “to plot,” and, 3. “frolicked,” “trifled,” or (one of our favorite words) “skylarked.” The three verbs you come up with will not necessarily be in the same order as the three definitions. When you say the three verbs together in the correct order they will form a word you might have heard recently in the news.

A Good Question from a Puzzlerian!:

On Tuesday, Bastille Day, at 10:11 PM PDT, patjberry wrote on Blaine’s blog: 

Just checked the Puzzleria! answers. Those hints helped this time. I got most of the duo puzzle (though I am unfamiliar with DAM being an antonym of SAVE in hockey), and once I figured out RE/MAX, I got everything in that puzzle but Pearl Buck. As for the puzzle about the late novelists and the smiles puzzle, they went over my head, much like the balloon in the RE/MAX logo. Took me until some time before or after midnight to find out. Lego, I thought the answers were to be revealed at 3 PM EDT. Why did it take so long this time?

In patjberry’s comment (which I am pleased that he shared on Blaine’s blog because I want all Blainesvillians to be aware that Puzzleria! exists) patjberry makes some excellent points.

For the first duo in our Two-Part Harmony Slice, we wrote: Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms you might hear voiced in a hockey arena or revival tent.

That was worded poorly. Our intention was to imply that hockey fans might say, “Nice Save!” or “Damn! The Blackhawks scored again.” We should have written:

Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms. You might hear them voiced in a revival tent. Or they might be voiced in a hockey arena, but not as antonyms.

Another excellent point patjberry made was his question about when we reveal our Puzzleria! answers. We have been delaying our “This week’s answers, for the record” a bit lately in hopes that Puzzlerians! would have ample opportunity to reveal their solutions first. But his is a point well taken.

We shall try to be prompter and to save you the bother of our being so damn imprecise with this week’s menu of plutonic puzzlery:

MENU

Summer Of ‘49 Slice:

Significant other… than historically

The year 1649 was historically significant. King Charles I of Great Britain was found guilty of treason and beheaded, and Oliver Cromwell abolished the monarchy, causing England to become a commonwealth for the next eleven years.

But 1649 also has a non-historical significance that is shared by only six other years between 100 and 10000.

What else is significant about 1649 and which is the next year that shares it?

Extra credit: What will be significant about the year 5125?

Salad Daze Slice:

Carnival of Carnivores

Name a two-word entrée that vegetarians would probably not order at restaurants. Replace the first two letters of the first word with two new letters. Replace the last letter of the entrée’s second word with a duplicate of one of the letters in the first word.

The result is a pair of synonyms.

Hint: The title of a work of fiction includes an adjectival form of the synonym formed from the first word in the entrée. The word it modifies appears in the text of this puzzle.

Hint: Take the synonym that was formed from the entrée’s first word. Double its third letter, reverse its antepenultimate and penultimate letters, and divide the result into two words that might be spoken as a command under the big top, with the response likely being a roar... albeit not from the crowd.  

Hint: A third synonym of the two synonymous words appears in one of these hints.

What are the entrée, the three synonyms, the work of fiction and the command?

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 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.