Three cows on the mountain; Mizzou-ri-fa-sol-la-ti-Doh! Seattle Supersonic Boom @ 1,126 ft/sec! Ramsey, Lampley, Ewing, Lambert, Rambis; Sharpshooting stars; Switcheroodles!

P! SLICES: OVER (5 + 4) x 3 x 21 SERVED

(Thanks, PC)

Welcome to our November 18^th edition of Puzzleria! This week’s edition ought to be a pretty big Hoop-di-doo.

That’s Hoop, as in basketball hoops… or, buckets, B-ball, round ball…

Three of this week’s puzzles involve basketball, and two involve “do-re-mi…” (which is fitting because many professional hoops players make lots of “dough-re-mi”)

Our sixth offering is a Slice Ripping Off Will Shortz’s fortnight-long creative challenge.

Enjoy the hoopla.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Big Game Hors d’Oeuvre:

Sharpshooting stars

Write one caption that could be used to describe either of the images pictured here.

Your caption ought to contain 11 characters – nine letters and two numerals that are not Roman numerals – plus one hyphen. The two numerals are adjacent to each other in the caption and form a square number.

Hint: The indoor photo was taken  this past April. The outdoor photo was taken  this past week.

What is your caption?

Morsel Menu

New Orleans Hornets Aplenty Morsel:

Ramsey, Lampley, Ewing, Lambert, Rambis

Orlando Magic, Oklahoma City Thunder, Charlotte Hornets, New Orleans Hornets, New York Knickerbockers (Knicks), Philadelphia 76ers (Sixers), Seattle Supersonics (Sonics), San Diego Conquistadors (Q’s), Los Angeles Clippers, Baltimore Bullets, Boston Celtics, New Orleans Pelicans, Golden State Warriors, Detroit Pistons, Milwaukee Bucks, St. Louis Hawks, Portland Trailblazers (Blazers), San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Cavaliers (Cavs), San Diego Sails, Houston Rockets, Kansas City Kings, Syracuse Nationals (Nats), Washington Wizards, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat.

 

The list above is a partial list of National Basketball Association (NBA) teams, some of which no longer exist. A few of the teams listed above were members of the American Basketball Association, which merged with the NBA in 1976. Some of the teams are/were sometimes called by a shortened form of their nickname (indicated in parentheses).

Each cager on the list below played for one or more of the teams listed above. These cagers are:

Maciei Lampe, Patrick Ewing, Doron Lamb, Ray Ramsey, Bill Laimbeer, Jim Lampley, Kurt Rambis, Frank Ramsey, Daniel Ewing, Jeremy Lamb, Jeff Lamp, John Lambert, Peter John Ramos, Patrick Ewing Jr., Bo Lamar, Sean Lampley, Cal Ramsey.

 

Take an NBA team that not a one of the above-listed cagers played for. (It is a team, therefore, that is not on the first list.) If all of these cagers had played for that team (and if we used the shortened form of the team’s nickname) we might have called the players:

_ _ _ _ _

_ _

_ _ _ _ _ _’

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.

The phrase is a twist on an idiom that is biblically based. What is the phrase?

    

Appetizer Menu

Service, Company And Product Appetizer:

Mizzou-ri-fa-sol-la-ti-Doh!

Name a Fortune 500 company, in six letters.

Replace its fifth letter with a different letter to form a product that benefits chaps who are experiencing a particular misery.

The fourth and fifth letters of the product form a homophone of one of the names of the notes on the tonal musical scale: “do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do.” 

Replace that note with the one that follows it on the scale to form the name of a commercial web-based service with a slogan that would suggest that many clients of the service hail from Missouri.

What are this company, product and service?

MENU

Bovine Emancipation Salvation Slice (Yanking):

Three cows on the mountain

 

This past Monday, November 14^th, a trio of cows were stranded on a small grassy outcrop after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in New Zealand. Rescuers dug a pathway for them and the cows ambled their way to safety upon more settled ground.

A more dramatic rescue, of course, would have involved a helicopter and a suspended cow harness. A caption for a photograph (something like the one pictured here) depicting such a rescue might have read:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _

_ _ _ _

Fill in those 17 blanks with a rearrangement of the 17 letters in the musical notes of the tonal scale – “do re mi fa sol la ti do.”

What is your caption? 

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Switcheroodles!

This week’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Puzzle is a two-week creative challenge presented by puzzlemaster Will Shortz:

The object is to write a conundrum or riddle that starts “What is the difference between ...” — in which the answer involves a transposition of words.

For example: What is the difference between a chatterbox and a mirror? 

Answer: One speaks without reflecting while the other reflects without speaking. Or: What is the difference between a lucky criminal and some Saran with a garden vegetable? 

Answer: One beats the rap while the other wraps the beet.

Change of spelling in the words is allowed, but not necessary. Entries will be judged on their sense, naturalness of wording, humor, elegance and overall effect. You may submit up to three entries. I will announce my favorites — and the overall winner — in two weeks.

LegoLambda’s Ripping/riffing Off Shortz Slice reads:

What is the difference between:

1. ...the title of Donald Trump’s second favorite book (second only to the Bible, according to Trump),

and the recent auctioning of Munch’s “Girls on a Bridge” which fetched $54 million at a recent Sotheby’s auction?

2. ...what grammar school children in grammar class are often busy doing,

and what Robert Potter had to do in 1989?

3. ...what you do so your GMC SUV won’t get stolen,

and what thieves do to steal your GMC SUV?

4. ...something your boss might do along with reducing your company health insurance coverage,

and what you subsequently might not be able to do if you need medical attention?

5. ...what an author might need to do after returning from a prolonged vacation,

and the nutritional information on the condiment bottle label on the author’s dinner table?

6. ...352 for the “End” at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, and 517 for the “Buffalo” at Jubilee Golf Club in Australia,

and the entire amount, everything, as much as possible?   

7. ...things in your wardrobe or closet,

and what might happen during an aircraft industry slump?

8. ...38 degrees vis-à-vis 52 degrees,

and to connive to win another’s praise?

9. ...what you do when you leave a “dinner bucket” or “build fence posts” at the end of the alley,

and what you’re watching people do in the image pictured here.

10. ...the title of an American folk song,

and what resulted when the hyperopic upholsterer mistook the Thanksgiving bird for an ottoman?

11. ...the gilded two-tablet-Ten-Commandment container,

and the promise God made to Noah to flood the Earth nevermore?

12. ...1:45,

and the ratio of bits relative to something with the head of a man and the tail of an eagle?

13. ...a Don Henley song title,

and the singular form of a Tracy Chapman song title?

14. ...what a commuter might do at Grand Central Station,

and what a corporate CEO might hire Tony Robbins, Suze Orman or Jack Canfield to do?

15. ...a person with a zero handicap,

and what is depicted in the picture shown here?

16. ...what Henry Ellenson (see the Dessert below and the photo at heading of this Slice) does when he is fouled in the act of shooting,

and what a “boy” ideally does when he is done with his “skydive.”

17. ...the title of a hit song by Huey Lewis and the News,

and what the words in that title must overrule in order to achieve peace, according to Gandhi?

18. ...what you must do to topple ten pins,

and what you’re watching lightning do in this video?

Dessert Menu:

Higher Than Hoops Dessert:

Seattle Supersonic Boom @ 1,126 ft/sec!

 

The National Basketball Association (NBA), which recently tipped off its new season, boomed into existence 70 years ago, in 1946, the birth year of the first Baby Boomers.

Over the years, nearly 4,000 men have played in the NBA. Each wore a numbered jersey. What was the highest number ever worn by a National Basketball Association (NBA) player, and who wore it?

Hint: My intended answer does not appear in any of the images that accompany the text of this puzzle. That includes the image of the horizontal former Cleveland Cavalier Matthew Dellavedova, #8… and also the image of Detroit Piston rookie Henry Ellenson, also #8, who has also been known to dive headlong for loose basketballs.

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.

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