Isle of Smiles?; A quartet of duos; David Nelson... and the Holding Company; All the novels fit to print

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

Welcome to Joseph Young’s July 10 edition of Puzzleria!

Today, 7/10, or “seven-ten,” represents supposedly the toughest spare to “pick up” in the sport of bowling – also known as the “seven/ten split.”

We hope this week’s puzzle slices are not so tough. But we also hope they are tougher than those one-pin spares that most keglers convert almost as easily as prison chaplains covert death-rowers on their eve of execution.

Along with the advent of automated scorekeeping machines in the 1970s came the demise keeping frame-by-frame bowling scores manually. Today, keglers who keep score with pad and pencil have become rarer than the bowling of a 300-game.

(Warning: Oxymoron Ahead!) Also increasingly rare are spectators who keep score (with a personal scorecard) during baseball games – marking down what each batter did during each at-bat, whom the batter may have plated and how the runs were scored.

I, for example, haven’t kept score since my Little League/Babe Ruth League days, when our coach asked anyone on the bench who knew how to keep score to volunteer do so. But I was reminded of my old score-carding days a few evenings ago while listening on the radio to the Minnesota Twins host the Baltlimore Orioles at Target Field in Minneapolis.

With Kyle Gibson on the mound for the home nine, a very unusual play unfolded in front of my ears that I would have recorded on my scorecard as “K 1-3.” 

Can any baseball aficionados out there provide a possible play-by-play description of what might have happened to produce K 1-3?

Aficionados of Will Shortz’s appearances on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday should have been pleased this past week because the puzzle master’s July 5 offering was both fresh and timely. 

In response, the following Puzzleria! “Piggyback” Puzzle (PPP) is moldy and spacey:

The words in the following sentences and sentence fragments have something somewhat unusual in common. What is it?

Silver... Wait! Edit that, thanks to Paul. It should be: Livers’ nights. Bordellos swing. Smitten ones dab lube (no sores!), stain sheet. “No saint era!” God opines.

Last week’s NPR puzzle is old news, you say? Okay. Here are a pair of pseudo-slices hot off the Puzzleria! Presses!:

News Cycle Slice:

All the novels fit to print

A person making news this past week has a first name that is the surname of a late late European novelist. The newsmaker’s surname is the first name of a late American novelist. The European novelist’s first name is identical to the American novelist’s first name, except for one letter.

Who are these two writers and the newsmaker?

Hints: Two titles – one a novel, one a poem ­– penned by the novelists crop up in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” A novel by the American novelist shares the title of an oft-quoted poem by an Irish poet.

Two-Part Harmony Slice

Spooning out a quartet of duos

Spoonerize the first names a musical duo, forming antonyms you might hear voiced at a hockey arena or tent revival. (No, not M*A*S*H, that would be a revival tent. This is more a matter of Elmer Gantry than Hawkeye Pierce.)

The first name of a member of a second musical duo means to “put something on.” The other member’s first name sounds like a word that means to “put something in.” (No spoonerizing is necessary for this duo, but the lyrics of a song they recorded does include the word “forks.” 

Spoonerize the surnames of a third musical duo. Pronouncing the last five letters of one of the spoonerized names sounds like a two-syllable word. Each of the syllables of the other spoonerized name, when spoken aloud, is somewhat synonymous with that two-syllable word. Or, more precisely, the two-syllable word is a “subset” of the homophonic words formed from all syllables in the other spoonerized name.

Spoonerize the first names of a fourth musical duo, forming the first names of a late singer-songwriter and his surviving wife, also a singer and songwriter. (Hint: The initial handful of letters of this married couple’s surname forms another surname, one belonging to a person who has lately been in the news.)

Okay. Enough already with all these spoons and forks. We are about to serve up some delicious puzzle slices. Just use your fingers. We won’t mind. (We like digits as much as we like letters!)

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Corporate Rock Slice:

David Nelson… and the Holding Company

(Note: This puzzle involves the names of a major U.S.-based company and two well-known American rock bands. All three names contain punctuation.)

Name a major U.S.-based company in two syllables. Divide it into two parts: a rock group, and a term for an instrument played by a member of the group. This instrumentalist’s name shares 7 of 9 letters with the name of a late American novelist, 6 of which are in the same positions in both names.

The names of the rock group and instrument total four syllables. (The letters not in common can be arranged to form a four-letter word used in this puzzle... and also in two other of this week’s four puzzle slices.)

The letters in the instrument are the first letters of the first name of the lead singer of another American rock group. The stage name of the person who plays that instrument in this group is one name for the punctuation mark in the U.S. company.

Hint: the company’s logo has a pretty direct connection to a Puzzleria! answer from our June 26 edition.

What is this company, its logo, the two rock groups, and the instrument. Who are the lead singer, two instrumentalists and the novelist who shares 7 letters with one of them?

A Frown Turned Upside-Down Slice:

Isle of Smiles?

Take a word for something that presumably promotes healthy smiles. Remove the letter that would appear last if the word’s letters were put into alphabetical order. 

Replace the last letter of this result with one that would occur four places before it in a “close-looped,” “circular,” or “seamless” alphabet (see illustration). W, for example, occurs six places before C. Z is two places before B.

The result is the name of a place that boasts a nickname peripherally related to smiling.

What are this healthy-smile promoter and the place name?

 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.

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