That’s a horse of a certain color; Summer in the sultry city; Capturing creatures with captions; Call-out Shelter; What’s with Achilles’ tendentious ‘tude, Dude? Demons and Cherubs; A cast of four thous… and thespians all; Regaining full sail-ient; A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou;

P! SLICES: OVER e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹ SERVED

Welcome to our May 20^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

This week our marquee feature is a gold medal puzzle about dramatic bronzed gods (and a goddess) playing parts up on the silver screen. The creator of this “mysterious cinematic mythology” is our friend Mark Scott of Seattle, also known by his cyber-screen name, skydiveboy.

 

Mark’s puzzle appears immediately beneath our main MENU under the title, “Silver Screen Slice: A cast of four thous… and thespians all.”

Also appearing on our menus this week are:

4 “Ripping/Riffing Off Mike” puzzles. (These four challenges “piggyback” off Blainesvillian Mike Hinterberg’s excellent NPR puzzle from this past Sunday.)

1 Grammytical Hors d’Oeuvre

1 Miraculous Morsel

1 Name-in-the-news Appetizer

1 Eat-no-lean Dessert

So, set your sights skyward, dive into our puzzle pool and, boy oh boy, please enjoy!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Grammy Hors d’Oeuvre (Tasty Indulgence):

Demons and Cherubs

Name a Grammy-worthy and Grammy-honored artist. Alter the artist’s full name by replacing its middle letter (a consonant) with a vowel, and by inserting an “R” somewhere in the beginning of the name and an “I” somewhere in the end of the name.

The first two-thirds of the altered name now spell out a member of an organization of youths. The final third of the altered name now spells out one of the artist’s demons.

 

Now add an “E” to the end of the final third of the altered name, forming a word that a member of the youth organization might well aspire to be.

What is the artist’s name? What is the artist’s demon? What is the organization of youths? What might a member of that organization aspire to be?

Ripping Off Mike Hinterberg’s d’Oeuvre:

Summer in the sultry city

Will Shortz’s May15th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle was submitted by Mike Hinterberg (whose screen name is “mike_hinterberg”), a regular poster on the excellent Blainesville puzzle blog. Mike’s puzzle reads:

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a T. Drop the T, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two related modes of transportation. What are they? 

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Mike Hinterberg’s d’Oeuvre” reads:

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a R. Drop the R, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two welcome words on a sultry summer’s day. 

What are they?

Morsel Menu

Medical Miracle Morsel:

Regaining full sail-ient

“No salient part in pants.”

Rearrange the twenty letters in that five-word phrase – a phrase which describes an unfortunate physical predicament – to form a two-word solution to the predicament.

The solution has made news lately in “Health and Medical” sections of newspapers and websites.

What is this two-word solution?

Riffing Off Mike Morsel:

What’s with Achilles’ tendentious ‘tude, Dude?

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains exactly one T. Drop the T, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two words related to “The Iliad.” 

What are they? 

Appetizer Menu

Name In The News Appetizer

Call-out Shelter

Name a word that means better-sheltered. Name a two-word phrase that might describe a place providing better shelter.

Call out the two-word phrase and the single word, in that order, so that everyone may hear the name of a person who has recently been in the news.

 

Who is this person? What are the word and phrase related to “shelter”?

Hint: the two-word phrase is spelled differently from the person’s first name. The single word and person’s surname are spelled identically.

Ripping Off Mike Appetizer:

Capturing creatures with captions

Name a creature in ten letters. The name contains a J. Drop the J, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell a two-word caption referring to the image shown here. 

What is this caption? 

MENU

Silver Screen Slice:

A cast of four thous… and thespians all

Take the first names of two actors, past and present, who share the same six-letter last name. Add an E and rearrange the result to get the last names of an actress of the past and an actor of the present.

Who are these four famous movie stars?

Flying Fish Riffing Off Mike Slice:

That’s a horse of a certain color

 

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a G. Drop the G, and the remaining eight letters can be rearranged to spell two different creatures: a fish and a horse of a certain color. What are they?

Name the same nine-letter creature, restoring its G. The name also contains a U. Drop the U, and the remaining eight letters can be rearranged to spell two different creatures: a flying insect and the same horse of a certain color as before (in the first half of this puzzle slice). 

What are they?

Dessert Menu

Mrs. Sprat’s Dietary Dessert:

A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou

Ron, Agnes, Ruth and Eric are slim, so dine on a plum, corn on the cob, oxen, possum in a pot, sea brine (ick!), gin or rum in a stein, and thou. Mercy, my God!

All 35 words in the paragraph above share something somewhat unusual in common.

What is it?

Hint: Exactly three words in the puzzle’s title, “A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou,” do not share the “something unusual in common.”

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.