The answer is not (W)Al Green; Spoonin' with the buffoons; Singing drugstore cowboys (and cowgals?); Warblers, not Woofers; Eddie Cantor lives! A desperate cry for hell;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{6 +} pi² SERVED

Welcome to our April 29^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! This edition marks the end of our second year of original nutty and knotty puzzletry. Next Friday we shall begin our third year of Puzzleria!

We’re serving up six piping-fresh puzzles this week, including three of the “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” variety – an Hors d’Oeuvre, Appetizer and Slice. 

Also on our menus this week are a “novel” Morsel, a “doggonerel” Slice, and a mix ‘n’ match Dessert.

So, Think Good, It’s Friday TGIF). And, as always, enjoy:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

The answer is not (W)Al Green

Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle this past week reads:

Name a famous singer – first and last names. The last four letters of the first name spelled backward plus the first four letters of the last name spelled forward – read together, in order – name a section of products in a drugstore. What is it?

Here is our Puzzlerian! Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

Name a famous singer – first and last names. Take all but the second letter of the first name and spell the result backward. Place this in front of the first four letters of the last name spelled forward. Read the result in order to name a section of products in a drugstore.

What is this section? Who is the singer?

Morsel Menu

Minkskin Morsel:

Eddie Cantor lives!

Background and plot outline for a novel:

1941, Minsk, Belorussia: The German Army occupies the city. The Nazis round up thousands of Jewish refugees, executing the majority and imprisoning the rest in a ghetto erected on the outskirts of Minsk.

Within the ghetto, a Jewish resistance movement arises with help from the Communist underground. As the Holocaust and World War II wear on, the resistance succeeds in enabling approximately 10,000 Jews to escape from the ghetto to surrounding forests.

Embedded deep within the underground resistance network is a sub-network of yeshivas in which rabbis and seminarians resurrect the ancient tradition and spirit of “cabala” (which in Hebrew means “reception” in the sense of “hospitality” ). These underground cabals surreptitiously host Jewish refugees, providing them asylum until a safe pathway to freedom becomes possible.

The working title of the novel is “Cabals Via Yeshivas.”

Rearrange the 17 letters in that title to form the names of two Singers – one fictional, the other real. Both Singers, but especially the real one, have an ethnic connection to the subject of the novel and to the two longer words in its title.

Who are these two Singers?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:

Warblers, not Woofers  

Click this link (and look under “Next Week’s”) to read Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle from this past week. Now solve the riff-off puzzle below:

Name a section of products in a drugstore, a three-syllable plural word. Bisect the word. Add a letter to the beginning of the first half to name a well-known musical.

Take a synonym of “warble,” delete one of its double-letters and replace its vowel with a different vowel. Place this result after the second half of the plural three-syllable drugstore word to form a synonym of “musician.”

What is this drugstore product section? What are the musical and the synonyms of warble and musician?

 

MENU

Sons Of Unspayed Doggerel Slice:

A desperate cry for hell

Hell fires are stoked by fossil fuel that filth enriches.

The lecher, thief and liar are sons of sinful itches.

If heretics in hell have fun though, I’m a shoo-in…

So donate to my cause, effect my hellish ruin.

Each line in the quatrain above contains a number of words that contain a total of exactly 17 letters. Those letters can be rearranged to form a 17-letter four-word phrase that has been quoted in recent news stories.

What is the phrase?

Hint: In three of the quatrain’s lines, the “number of words” is three. In a fourth line, the “number of words” is four.

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Singing drugstore cowboys (and cowgals?)

Click this link (and look under “Next Week’s”) to read Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle from this past week. Now solve the rip-off puzzle below:

Name a famous female singer from the past – first and last names. Add a letter somewhere in the last name to form the last name of a male singer. Delete a letter from the first name, leaving a last name shared by a pair of hall of fame singers.

 

Name one of the male singer’s band mates (another male) from a hall of fame band. The last four letters of this band mate’s first name, spelled backward, form a noun that applies to the female singer at the beginning of the puzzle. 

The first, fourth and final letters of the male band mate’s last name are the same as the first, fourth and final letters of another male singer with the same first name. Both singers once played in bands with “avian” names. The first four letters in the second male singer’s last name are the first name of a female hall of fame singer from the past. The four-letter noun that applied to the other past female singer has sometimes also been applied to this singer (albeit in a somewhat looser sense).

 

Who are, in order: The past singer, the male singer, the two hall of fame singers with the same last name, the male singer’s band mate, the male singer who shares that band mate’s first name, and the second past singer?

What is the noun that has been applied to both past singers? What are the two bands with “avian” names?

Dessert Menu

Campagne For Dessert:

Spoonin’ with the buffoons

Each of the ten images pictured below is labeled with a number from 1 to 10 in its upper-left-hand corner. 

Write a two-word caption for each image, then arrange the ten images into five appropriate pairs: 
(For convenience, you can use the 1-to-10 labeling in your answer.)

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 <b>Wednesdays</b> 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.

“Restore the military drafts, man!” Stars cosmic and cosmetic; Character development; Salameandering Solutionward; Stiff-armed statuette of liberty and justice for all; Third Floor: Swiss army knives, navy slacks, marine vinyl…

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e^{6 +} pi² SERVED

Welcome to our April 22^nd edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

At the end of last week’s comments section I mentioned yesterday’s death of the musician Prince, and provided links to a few of his performances and covers of his songs. One of my links was to “When Doves Cry,” not my favorite Prince song, but the one I find the most innovative and unique. A handful of other songs I put in this innovative/unique category are these by Eno/Cale, Bruce Cockburn, Lindsey Buckingham, Incredible Casuals, Talking Heads, and, of course, Queen.

Wolf Blitzer on CNN Thursday made a “serendipitous slip” when he praised Prince by saying, “…All of us , of course, remember (Prince’s) ‘Purple Haze.’” (Blitzer misspoke by saying “Haze,” instead of “Rain”! Ironically and presciently, I linked to Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” in Wednesday’s comments because of the whole 4/20 marajuana-day observance thing.) 

The slip Blitzer made was serendipitous because Seattle-born Jimi Hendrix and Minneapolis-born Prince were both guitar virtuosi, and were obviously kindred spirits to boot. Jimi alas made it only to age 27, 30 years shy of Prince’s 57. Had Hendrix lived longer he  may have been as prolific as his fellow virtuoso.

As a Wisconsinite transplanted to Minnesota, I take pride in most all of our homestate artists – including Dylan, Prince, Replacements, Semisonic, Gear Daddies, Jayhawks, Cultivators, Trip Shakespeare, Hang Ups, etc.

Speaking of “hang-ups” and being “tripped up and shaken up,” we’re serving up eight fresh puzzles this week, including:

Three characteristically derivative “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” Slices;

One Heisman-worthy Hors d’Oeuvre;

One stellar Morsel;

One Appetizer that ought not be attempted by “rank” amateurs;

One dodgy draftsman military Slice; and

One timely yet crusty Dessert.

So go ahead, puzzle and party like it’s the 303^rd prime:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Double Reverse Hors d’Oeuvre:

Stiff-armed statuette of liberty and justice for all

Take the first and last names of a person in news of the nation this past week. If you say them aloud in reverse order – putting the surname to the left of the first name – it will sound as if you are pronouncing the surname of a Heisman Trophy winner.

Who is the newsmaker? Who is the Heisman winner?

Morsel Menu

Galactose-Packed Morsel:

Stars cosmic and cosmetic

Two stars from the entertainment industry have the same first name. Their eight-letter surnames are also identical except for their middle four letters. (Their midsections do share one letter in common but it is not in the same position.)  

The middle four letters of the still-living entertainer’s surname spell out a man’s name. If you spell the middle four letters of the deceased entertainer’s surname backward the first three spell out a title with which his/her close associate is sometimes addressed.

Fans of the living star associate her/him with a particular star in the sky, but for cosmetic rather than cosmic reasons. Fans of the deceased star associate him with that same cosmic star, because of something he/she once composed.

Who are these two stars? What is the cosmic star?

Hint: There is a tenuous connection between the living star’s surname and the national news story in this week’s Dessert.   

 

       

Appetizer Menu

Rank And File Appetizer:

Third Floor: Swiss army knives, navy slacks, marine vinyl…  

Name the founder of an eponymous upscale department store of the past. Remove the final letter of his first name and switch the two names. The result is a military rank, in two words.

The surname of one person who achieved this rank is the middle name of a founder of another department store of the past. Another person (whose surname was the same as the first name of the upscale department store founder) achieved a status equivalent to this two-word rank, but which was called instead “general of the army.”

 

What is this rank? Who are the two department store founders, the person who achieved the rank, and the person who became “general of the army”?

Hint: The first name of the person (“whose surname was the same as the first name of the upscale department store founder”) is the first name of the two entertainment industry stars in the Morsel puzzle above.

 

MENU

Complex Military Industrial Slice:

“Restore the military drafts, man!”

Name three military terms:

1. A large organized military group (5 letters)

2. Soldiers, or groups of soldiers (6 letters)

3. An military acronym regarding aircraft; 

or, a term for the area on a military air base where soldiers board transport aircraft (6 letters) (This term is more properly called an “apron.” But it is seldom called that in practice, perhaps because “apron” does not sound as “military” as the term we are seeking.)

Rearrange these 17 letters to form the names of two tools that that a military draftsman might use in designing, say, an air base, barracks or bridge.

What are these three terms and two tools?

Hint: All three military terms can be found in the final two paragraphs of this Los Angeles Times news story.

Ripping Off Shortz And Sandy Slices:

Character development

Will Shortz’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle this past week reads:

Here is a tricky challenge from Sandy Weisz of Chicago. Take the name of a famous musical. Write it in uppercase letters and lowercase letters as you usually would. Now turn one of the characters upside-down and move it to another place in the title. The result will be the last name of a well-known stage performer. What is the musical, and who is the performer?

Here is our trio of Puzzlerian! rip-offs/riff-offs:

ONE: Here is a tricky challenge from Lego Lambda of Sargasso: 

Take the name of a comedic movie, nine characters long. Change all uppercase characters to lowercase and move the first three characters to the very end.

Now invert one of the six characters that were not moved and rearrange those six characters. Add a space to this nine-character result to form a two-word phrase that describes “The Lonely Goatherd,” “Edelweiss,” or “Do-Re-Mi.”

Now re-rearrange those six characters at the left and re-position the space to form a two-word phrase that describes Mork and ALF. 

What is the movie? What are the two descriptive two-word phrases?

TWO: Here is a tricky challenge from Lego Lambda of Sapsago: 

Take the four-word title of a past operatic PBS series. Remove the title’s preposition and article. Turn two of the seven letters in the remaining two words upside-down.  Change all letters to lowercase and rearrange the result, forming something with a value of nearly 480 million. 

Now take a two-word description (consisting of an adjective and noun) of a performer featured the debut telecast of the past PBS series. Write all nine letters of the two words in lowercase and rearrange them. Turn two of the letters upside-down. The result has a value of more than 87 billion. 

What was this PBS series? Who was the featured performer? What is the descriptive two-word synonym?

THREE: Here is a tricky challenge from Lego Lambda of Lumbago: 

Take the four-word title of a black comedy movie released just before a Bush became president. Remove two punctuation marks and turn two characters upside-down. Form two lowercase characters by dividing one of the inverted characters in half with a horizontal “severing.” Change all but one of the uppercase characters into lowercase characters.

Rearrange these 17 characters to form four words – of 1, 6, 6 and 4 letters – that describe a character that portrayed a performance artist in one episode of a 1980s-90s sitcom. The third word is the sitcom’s title. The fourth word is the type of performance artist portrayed. The two six-letter words begin with the same letter but are not alliterative; the first of the two is an pejorative adjective.

What is this four-word description? What is the movie title?

Dessert Menu

AnagrahamCracker Dessert Crust:

Salameandering Solutionward

Write a caption – in two words of four and five letters – that could apply to any one of the three images pictured here.

Rearrange those nine letters to form the surnames of two people that appeared in the same national news story this past week.

What is the caption? 

Who are the two people? 

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 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.