Picking the Miranda right fruit; Rock 'n' rotate-around-a-fixed-axis; Sitcommerce; Mr. Capital Gain?; The sub-rosa way; Sunday punch

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{4 +} 5!  SERVED

Welcome to the August 28^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! This week we offer you fresh trending-news appetizers, an entrée slice, and, to top it all off, a dessert baked up by gourmet French puzzle chef Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme. Blog-followers may know the chef better by his cyber-screen-name “skydiveboy.” His friends know him as Mark Scott of Seattle.

 

So click and tighten your seat belts… you are in for a wild puzzle ride. But eventually, as you continue to gobble and guzzle our scrumptious puzzles, also be prepared to loosen your seat belts a notch or two – as at a Thanksgiving dinner served on a Greyhound bus, for instance, or at a drive-thru oriental buffet restaurant. 

Appetizer Menu

“Hi, Nabobs!” Race Appetizer:

Mr. Capital Gain?

A 2016 presidential candidate’s use of a two-word term (deemed by a number of people as “disparaging” or “pejorative”) sparked controversy this past week on the campaign trail. The two words in the plural term contain six letters each.

Each of the following nine clues leads to a three-word phrase that can be anagrammed to form the controversial term. (In the fourth clue only two words are anagrammed.)

1. Ubiquitous blare on Manhattan streets…

2. Scruffier inmate…

3. Opens some trash receptacle…

4. Pessimistic about the future silver-screen bankability of actor Kevin (two words divided by the word “on”)…

5. Taxi driver, fresh from the barber…

6. One emerging from a two-thirds vote of a synagogue congregation…

7. What a frisky kitten might do during Christmas gift unwrapping…

8. What a famished French filcher does while passing a patisserie…

9. John the Baptist, after days of wandering alone in the wilderness, addressing his lunch…

  

What is this controversial term? What are the nine answers to the clues?

Boxing Outside The Ring Appetizer:

Sunday Punch

On August 19, 1930, in Queensboro Stadium in New York, Justo Suarez delivered a knockout punch sending Bruce Flowers to the canvas with a thud. On April 27, 1996, in Miami Beach, Florida, Elieser Castillo delivered a knockout punch sending James Flowers to the canvas with a thud.

Just this past week, on August 23, half-a-world away in Asia, a mere boy engaging in “the manly art” stumbled against the ropes and seemingly was about to go down for the count, yet somehow managed to deliver a knockout punch so potent (or shall we say “puissant”?) and thud-provoking to yet another Flowers that the canvas was torn and had to be restored.

In what Asian city did this occur? Explain your answer.

Hint: The city sounds like a kind of personality or blood.

Distasteful Appetizer:

The sub-rosa way

The following statement may have appeared as a part of an editorial in the wake of a scandal in the recent news:

“People were led to believe these men were out to benefit (5-letter adjective) (8-letter noun), but sadly they were apparently in it chiefly to (5-letter verb) (8-letter noun).”

The 8-letter nouns are identical. The 5-letter adjective and verb are identical except for their first and third letters. What are these words?

Financial Interest Comedy-pounded Appetizer:

Sitcommerce

   

Imagine you are reading the Wall Street Journal to glean financial news of the day. Four words you might expect to see there are associated with a popular TV sitcom from the distant past.

Two of the words are surnames of two of the cast members, while a third word comprises the first seven letters, in order, of the surname of another cast member. The fourth word is the name of the title character after you remove from it what some people mistakenly believe is the postal abbreviation of a New England State.

Two of these four words were especially pertinent to recent reporting in the WSJ’s Markets Section.

What is the sitcom and what are the four words?

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Sounds Of Science Slice:

Rock ’n’ rotate-about-a-fixed-axis

Place the surname of a well-known scientist to the left of the surname of an engineer/inventor who ought to be more well-known. The result is a song title appearing on an early album by a popular rock musician.

The engineer/inventor founded and developed two upscale product brands. One brand appears in the lyrics of a title song track by the musician. The other brand appears in the titles of two songs by the musician.

Who are the scientist, inventor/engineer and musician? What are the early-album song title and the two brands founded by the inventor/engineer?

Dessert Menu

Fruit Of The Looming Solution Dessert:

Picking the Miranda right fruit

People and products from France are French. If from Italy they are Italian.

Think of another country and replace the last letter with a different letter to get the word commonly used to refer to their people or products. Now, rearrange those letters and you will name a fruit this country produces and exports.

What is this country and what is the fruit?

Every Friday 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 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.


Here is what Carmen Miranda looks like... after canning the fruit: 

Recipe for psalmthing beloved; Telev-angel is telling us of hellfire; Kodiak Zoolab'ar is on the map!; Pranswer precedes VIXen; Letterwurst-links sandwhich chain?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 5²  SERVED

Welcome to the August 21^st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Let’s begin this week with a trio of appetizers that lip-smack of “Names in the News & Trends in the Trenches”:

Names In The News And Trenchant Trending Appetizers:

Kodiak Zoolab’ar is on the map!

The gist of our first current news story includes three words. Two of them are the first and last name of a person. (Note: The smaller print in the second clue, crowbar, is intended on our part.)

Here are clues to the three words, in no particular order:

Zodiac sign

Crowbar

Mapmaker minus the final six letters of a telephone-booth-sized recording studio

Telev-angel is telling us of hellfire!

The gist of our second trending news story includes three words. Two of them seem to be the first and last name of a person, but they are in fact just two first names. 

Here are clues to the three words, in no particular order:

A president’s surname

Past tense of the surname of a TV Angel portrayer

Tree name that proves to be prophetic, post-forest fire + half a “hot” jar

Recipe for psalmthing beloved

The subject of our third trending news story includes two words – a three-syllable proper noun and a two-syllable common compound noun. Remove the space between the words.

Scoop out eight consecutive letters from the interior of this result. In their place, stir in a mixture of grated ginger with all traces of vitamin E removed… along with all traces of alphabet E. Bake at 353 degrees ‘til golden brown, let cool, and cut into two somewhat unequal pieces… a ratio of roughly 10 to 7. Serve on a silver platter.

When people comment, “This is delicious, what is it?” you simply reply, “’Tis the title of a beloved hymn.”

What are the two words in the trending news story? What is the hymn title?

Hint: Other words in this third news story might include: “retailer,” “fast-paced,” “crying,” “competition,” “stressful,” “performance,” and “bullying.”

Hint: Half of what you “scooped out” of the result was “pork.” Beats me (and Webster) what the other half was.

What does not beat me, however, is the following menu of puzzle slices. That’s because I know their answers… but only because I made them up. And I have faith they shan’t beat you either… even though many of you seem to be eggheads (in the intellectual/adept sense, of course, not the highbrow/snob sense).

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Cat Ate Canary Slice:

Letterwurst-links sandwhich chain?

 

Name a multinational restaurant chain. Take two letters that are significant and prominent in the resume of one of the Republican presidential candidates (two alphabetical letters, that is, not two letters of recommendation). “Sandwich” these letters around the first letter in the chain to form a musical genre.

 

What are the restaurant chain, the candidate and the two resume letters, and the musical genre?

Note: Add or subtract capitalization, spaces and/or punctuation as necessary.

Reversal Of Fiction Slice:

Pranswer precedes VIXen

Take a less common synonym for an adjective associated with a quite famous fictional superhero. Bisect this eight-letter synonym...

(Time out for a Pet-Peeve Usage Note:

“Bisect” {pronounced with a long i and its accent on the first syllable} means to divide something into two, usually equal, parts... as an eight-letter synonym can be divided, for instance.

“Dissect” means to separate into pieces, or to analyze… as a frog can be divided, for instance. It should be pronounced with a short i and its accent on the second syllable. Perhaps 1 or 2% of the population does that. Most pronounce it with a long i, and most put the accent on the first syllable. Alas, many dictionaries have caved in to and sanctioned these “variant pronunciations.” Sigh! But thank you for your indulgence.

Okay, enough venting. Now, back to the puzzle):

...Reverse the order of the second and third letters of the first half of the bisected synonym. Insert a duplicate of one of those reversed letters into the second half of the bisected synonym.

Finally, reverse the order of the two halves, leaving a space between them. This result is often followed by a V, I or X.

What is this result, and what is the original synonym for the adjective associated with the superhero?

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.

The case of the VEXing watch FOB; Anger management, lyrically; "Bluish rain, bluish rain"

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 5²  SERVED

Welcome to the August 14 edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

After last week’s circus maximus of animals, political and otherwise, I believe we could all use a mid-month breather this week. So, lighter, more mentally digestible fare is on the P! menu; and a relatively mere three puzzle slices.

Probably the most chewy (difficult to solve) puzzle will be the Fop With A Fob Slice: The case of the VEXing watch FOB. I created this puzzle three years ago, and have been reluctant to offer it on Puzzleria! because it seems to me to be a somewhat unfair puzzle. Arbitrary, in the whim sense.

Thus, I have piled the FWAFS high with hints. (But first, see if you can solve it sans hints, and use the hints only as confirmation of correctness after sussing your answer.)

Writing the titles for this trio of puzzles prompted the following pseudo riddle (“Pseudo” is pronounced by some as “piss-suede-oh” – see David’s August 12 at 1:05 PM comment on PEOTS):

The Minnesota Vikings, an NFL team I root for when they are not playing that Green and Gold team, is winless in four Super Bowl appearances. (The G&G team is 4 for 5 in Superbowl appearances.) But let’s pretend that the Vikings go on a tear, win “Super BowL Fifty,” and then go on to win also Super Bowls LI, LII, LIII, LIV (The “Ullmann/Tyler Super Bowl”) and LV. What would we call such a dynasty?

Answer: “The  __ __ __ __ __ __   __ __ __ __ __”

Now chew on and enjoy these three “Super Pans” of sliced puzzle:

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In Your Face Dances Slice:

Anger management, lyrically

Take a two-word phrase that means uncontrollable anger. The first word is one word of a trio in the lyrics of a well-known Who song.

 When confronted with such anger, many people take shelter, or take a powder.

Replace this first word with a different word from the Who-lyric trio to create a two-word phrase meaning anger that sounds as if it may be a little less intense, a little less “in your face.” Connect these two words and remove the initial letter to form something someone might take if confronted with the less in-your-face form of anger.

What are these two two-word phrases? What might someone take if confronted with the milder anger?

Award Winning…Okay, Award Mentioning Slice:

“Bluish rain, bluish rain…”

Name an award. Remove from it a blood type. Take an antonym of “obtuse” and rearrange its letters so that only two of them remain in their original positions. Insert this rearrangement in the space vacated by the blood type.

Remove the three letters that follow that rearrangement, forming a synonym of a word that rhymes with a word in a Badfinger song title.

Remove the first two letters from this synonym and put the three letters you removed back where they had been, forming a word associated with “blue,” “rain,” or a capitalized synonym for “an artistic eccentric.”

What are this award, synonym and word associated with “blue,” “rain,” or a capitalized synonym for “an artistic eccentric”?

Fop With A Fob Slice:

The case of the VEXing watch FOB

Name the next three letters in this sequence:

B, O, F, X, E, V, …

Hint: The “The case of the VEXing watch FOB” is a red herring.

Hint: The next three letters spell out a word when they are read backward.

Hint: Reminiscent of rationals

Hint: Déjà vu Déjà vu Déjà vu...

: Hint

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.

"He was born with a filver soot in his mouth!"; Precedential debate; "Just axin' with my oxen, Babe" ; The moo(n)cow, cat & dog dish ran away with the spoonerism; "Tigons & Ligers & Grolers, oh my!"; "Farmy and Zooey"

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{5 +} 5²  SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Will you enjoy this week’s head-scratching statements, questionable, assertions, puzzling comments, and other enigmatic offerings?

It’s debatable.

Yes, I am now watching the Republican varsity-team-of-ten’s debate broadcast from Cincinnati... (oops, I mean Cleveland) over the FOX News Channel (television). All ten ready-for-prime-time candidates are smiling, as if they are on “Candidate Camera.” And, all I can say is, “We’ve come a long way since Nixon-Kennedy!”

Is this the Super Bowl, or what? When the three FOX moderators announced the candidates I expected all ten to come bursting through paper banners on their way to the podia.

(But I guess it was not the Super Bowl, after all. Cleveland has never hosted a Super Bowl, after all, and The Cleveland Browns have never played in one… unless you count the Browns that moved to Baltimore and became Ravens.)

Can we get a rebate on this dee-bate? Well, no. But at least we can get a related puzzle slice or two.

The following scorecard should come in handy for the first two puzzle slices on this week’s menu:

The Main Event:

Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich

The Undercard:

Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Jim Gilmore, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal

The following scorecard (based on this web site) should come in handy for the second puzzle slice:

Waiting in the Democratic Wings:

Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb (and possible future declarers: Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, Dennis Kucinich, Brian Schweitzer)

There is an additional list, which we are not providing to you, which would also come in handy for solving the second puzzle slice.

Our third puzzle slice this week involves creatures that (sadly) often are forced to endure a different kind of “cage match” – in the kind of cage that holds non-human animals. The slice consists of a quartet of sub-puzzles “piggybacking” on the fine animal puzzle Will Shortz broadcast August 2 on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. 
The NPR puzzle reads:

“Name two animals. Exchange their initial consonant sounds, and the result in two words will be the name of a third animal. What is it?”

There seems to be the possibility of more than one acceptable answer, according to collective wisdom on the “Blainesville” and “An Englishman Solves American Puzzles” blogs. We shall find out on Sunday’s NPR broadcast if Will accepts more than one answer.

In the meantime, chew on these four puzzlitically correct slices. As you Puzzlerians! are well aware, acceptable answers will likely abound… and those provided by your humble puzzler will likely pale in comparison to those provided by the puzzlees. The animals are clearly running this Puzzoo!...

Gesundheit! And good luck.

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Flip-Flop Slice:
“He was born with a filver soot in his mouth!”

Spoonerize the names of each of the 17 candidates participating in the two August 6 Republican debates in Cleveland. Ponder your handiwork. Of these spoonerized results, consider both halves together; or just consider one half or the other. Consider either their spelling or just simply how they sound.

Please give your answers in spoonerized form:

Which spoonerized candidate would seem to merit acceptance and respect on the street?

…would seem to be the voters’ selection, preference, favorite, chosen one?

…seems “not ready for prime time”…and yet, alas, has already passed it?

…echoes, fittingly, a synonym for “fire?”

…is ailing after scurrying to the liquor cabinet?

…seems to be (or have been) on the lips of Meyton Panning, Brom Tady, Fett Bravre, Brerry Tadshaw, Moe Jontana, Noe Jamath, Tan Frarkenton, Stoger Raubach, and Start Barr?

…is just one letter-substitution away from being a creepy tracker?

…might be confused with a nearby Red prez? (Also sharing this plight are two 2012 Republican candidates who participated in debates – one, pre-convention; the other, post-convention.

…may lead us into a toddling and terrible age?

…obviously has something in common with four 20^th-century presidents?

…seems prone to fling doo-doo at spellers or quilters?

Exit FOX, Enter Puzzleria! Slice:

Precedential debate

  

Puzzleria! has graciously agreed to sponsor a future debate involving presidential candidates. A debate including all 17 would be unwieldy and impractical, so we whittled that number down to seven.
Based on one particular criterion, here is the list of the candidates we have invited:

John Kasich, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Andrew Cuomo and Joe Biden.

Yes, we realize Cuomo and Biden are Democrats, and that neither has even yet announced his candidacy (though some pols and pundits suspect they will). We invited them to our debate solely because, like the other five invitees, they also satisfy our criterion.

Hint: We will require two of the debaters, Bobby Jindal and Andrew Cuomo, to debate while suspended from the rafters, shod in gravity boots, their heads level with podium microphones, upside-down for the duration of the verbal crossfire. Or they can opt instead to stand upright but turn their backs to the audience during the debate, perhaps facing into a mirror so the audience can see them. Either method will satisfy the requirement of our criterion.

What is our Puzzleria! criterion  for candidates in our debate?

Piggybacking A National Public Radio Offering Slice:

Moo(n)cow, cat & dog dish ran away with the spoonerism

1.) Name two animals. Exchange their initial consonant sounds, and the result in one word will be the name of a third animal. 
What is it?*

2.) Name two animals. Exchange their initial consonant sounds, and the result will be the names of two other animals. What is this quartet of critters?

3.) Name an animal and an “eponicknymous”* word for an alcoholic drink. Exchange their initial consonant sounds and put them together, removing the space. The result will be an animal that is a two-syllable compound word. What are these two animals and the drink?

4.) Describe – using a one-syllable word followed by a two-syllable word – a container that normally holds an alcoholic drink but that has been drained of its contents. Reverse the order of the words and remove the space between them. The result in one three-syllable compound word will be the name of an insect. What are these two words and the insect?

* Puzzlerian! and Blainesvillian Paul also gets credit for creating this “piggyback puzzle” (a puzzle that rises out of and upon the “shoulders” of another), as does Blainesvillian Scott Bretzke, as does Ross Beresford, co-author of the AESAP blog. (He is An Englishman (who) Solves American Puzzles. 

All four of us came up with this piggyback of the NPR puzzle independently. (See my August 6 at 6:11 PM comment.)

As Paul commented to Scott on Blaine’s blog yesterday (Thursday), “Great minds think alike… they tend to ignore trivial details.”

Exactly, Paul! LegoLambda tends to ignore trivial details – details like going through the mundane motions of posting his comments after he composes them.

*eponicknymous adj. (i pa 'nik ni mes): a word describing a thing named after a particular person’s nickname, just as “eponymous” describes a thing named after a particular person’s name. 
Eponicknyms (i pa 'nik nims) are rarer than eponyms – examples of which are: sandwich, wisteria, guillotine and fuchsia.

Television Icon Slice:

“Just Axin’ with my oxen, Babe”

Name a television personality, host and announcer whose ubiquity on the small screen spanned half a century.

The personality’s last name describes something legendary lumberman Paul Bunyan does to a mighty redwood. A homophone of the personality’s first name describes something Paul Bunyan and Norb Onion (his fellow coworker, or should that be “fellow blue-oxorker”?) do to a mighty oak.

Who is this personality?

Hint: This personality appeared recently in a documentary film.

Test for confirming your answer: The last two letters of the personality’s middle name are adjacent in the alphabet, and in alphabetical order, like “qr,” for example. Replace those two letters with the next letter in the alphabet, and at the end add something that shelters. The result is a noun that seems not to apply to  this personality, because we personally believe the personality possesses a pleasant personality.

Wizard Of Zoos Bonus Slice:
“Tigons & Ligers & Grolers, oh my!”

Hybrids abound in nature, including the animal kingdom. 

Examples of such inter-species critters are:
Savannah cats, wholphins, camas, beefalo, geeps, yattle, yakows, leopons, zonkeys, zebroids, pumapards, mules and (whinnying) hinnies, etc.!

Consider the hybrid critter pictured here (above and left). What is it called?
Hint: Its name has four syllables.

Political Animal Bonus Slice:
“Farmy and Zooey”

Name a critter, in the plural, and in four syllables. Duplicate a letter in the critter’s name and place the duplicate next to the original. Remove a skein of five consecutive letters from this result. 

Those five letters, in order, name another critter. Scrunch the remaining letters together to form the surname of a 2016 presidential hopeful (not pictured above).

Who is this presidential hopeful? What are the two critters?
Hint: Neither critter is a Mama Grizzley. 

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.