Joseph Young's Puzzleria!: May 2017

Friday, May 26, 2017

On our menu: Rank Seafood! “Sartor Resportus” U R outta here! “Que sera, sera… the truth is now ours to see”

P! SLICES: OVER (76 +543) SERVED

Welcome to our May 26^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Last week we encouraged you to listen to Joseph Young’s appearance on Will Shortz’s puzzle segment on the May 21 Weekend Edition Sunday program hosted by Lulu Garcia-Navarro on National Public Radio.

This week we encourage you to listen to Mark Scott’s appearance on the May 28 Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle segment on NPR. It ought to be very entertaining. Some might call it a “battle of the Wills:

Will Shortz vs. a a strong-willed on-air contestant who is a Mark (but is not an easy mark).”

Others might call it a “real Lulu!”

Mark – who hails from Seattle (home also of sea turtles) and whose screen name is skydiveboy – was one of the first Puzzlerians! to provide us with great guest puzzles for publication on our blog. His offerings were consistently elegant and clever.

Mark truly has been an excellent supporter, contributor and friend to Puzzleria! And I also consider him a friend.

We are serving up nine puzzles this week, including 6 Rip/Riff-offs of Will Shortz’s “Creature from the Puget Lagoon Feature” puzzle.

Also on our menus are:

7. An Hors d’Oeuvre steeped in sartorial splendor,

8. An Achy Breaky Breaking Newsy Appetizer, and

9. A Rank Baked Alaska Salmon for Dessert.

Please enjoy our puzzles with a flask of truth sera sera, OQue DohQue? Or whatever...

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Spoonerisms On Fashion Plates Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Sartor Resportus”

A person with not a shred of sartorial taste and sense would never perform certain adjustments (in two words) on a particular piece of bling. This jewelry is often sported by fashion plates who frequently don dressy apparel. Reverse the initial consonant sounds of those two words (a specific type of “spoonerism”) to name the title of a cult television series that has recently been revived.

What are these certain adjustments? What is the title of the television series?

Hint: A good example of a person with not a shred of sartorial taste and sense just received a piece of the bling in the mail. A good example of a person with shreds galore of sartorial taste and sense will any day now receive a piece of the bling in the mail.

Appetizer Menu

Declaration Of Candid-acy Appetizer:

“Que sera, sera… the truth is now ours to see”

Take the last name of a person who very recently made news headlines. Rearrange the 9 letters to form a 3-word declaration the person might mouth after downing drams of truth sera.

Who is the person in the news? What is the declaration?

Hint: All three words in the declaration begin with a vowel. Only one ends with a vowel.

MENU

Ripping Off Shortz Slices:

U R outta here!

Will Shortz’s May 21^st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, reads:

Name a creature in 9 letters? It has 2 words in its name. Drop the consecutive letters, UR, and the result will name a major U.S. city in 7 letters. What is it?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz Slices read:

ONE:

Name an exclamation in 6 letters, supposedly spoken by a guy who had just found something in his bathtub. Add a term for a certain rodent to the end, drop the consecutive letters, UR, and add a few spaces. The result will name another exclamation. What are these two exclamations?

TWO:

Name an 8-letter general term for a sea turtle, zebra, giraffe or other occupant of Noah’s Ark. Drop the consecutive letters, UR, and the result will name what God had to do to, earlier on in the Book of Genesis, so that those occupants could board the Ark.

What is the general term? What did God have to do?

THREE:

Name a 5-letter creature in one word that is associated with inversion. Drop the consecutive letters, UR, and the result will name a well-publicized vehicle from 1969 that at times seems to be inverted in some photos and videos.

What are this creature and vehicle?

FOUR:

Name a creature in 5 letters that shares the screen with a movie character named Percy. During the scene Percy says, “Nobody is going to ___ us going down the mountain.” Drop the consecutive letters, UR, in the creature and the resulting three letters, if put in reverse alphabetical order, will fill in the blank in Percy’s sentence.

What is the creature? What is the word?

FIVE:

Name an American-based record label in 7 letters. Drop the consecutive letters, UR, and the result will name a 5-letter title of a single by recorded on that label a decade ago by a Welsh artist. What are the label and record title?

Hint: The 5-letter title word also appears in the 4-word title of a gospel song released 58 years ago on the 7-letter label, and sung by a country music legend.

SIX:

Name a 14-letter alliterative plural name for certain class of creatures, such as burros, donkeys, oxen, workhorses or other pack animals of that ilk. It has 3 words in its name.

Delete the first two words. Drop the consecutive letters, UR, from the third word and rearrange the remaining letters to form the visual effect the heavy loads borne by such creatures often causes on their midsections or backs.

Dessert Menu

Baked Alaska Chinook Salmon Dessert:

On our menu: Rank Seafood!

Name a television character that was addressed by a titular rank and last name. The first few letters of the character’s last name form an abbreviation of a different titular rank.

Replace those first few letters with a single letter, forming a new word. Form another new word by replacing the first few letters with a different single letter.

Place one of these words in front of a noun to form a two-word item you might see on a seafood menu. Place the other word in back of the same noun to form a different two-word item you might see on a seafood menu.

Who is this television character? What are the two seafood menu items?

Hint: The first letter of the new word placed in back of the noun is sometimes pronounced (in some other words) like the first letter of the new word placed in front of the noun.

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.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Mixed Baggish; The pit and the Phnom Penh Dublin; Raiders of the “lost” parked; Big Apple Panhandle;

P! SLICES: OVER (76 +543) SERVED

Welcome to our May 19^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving up eleven puzzles this week, including eight Rip/Riff-offs of Will Shortz’s “Cheerios in the morning/soiree in the evening” NPR puzzle created by Steve Baggish.

Also on our menus are:

A world capital Hors d’Oeuvre that is really “the pits,”

An Appetizer that is a bit shady, and

A Dessert that takes place right here in Ben Bailey’s taxi.

Note: I am scheduled to play the on-air puzzle with Puzzlemaster Will Shortz and Lourdes “Lulu” Garcia-Navarro this May 21 on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday program.

I pray that I will be able to relax and enjoy Will’s on-air puzzles as I tax my brain to achieve “decipheration.”

In the meantime, please relax and enjoy our puzzles as you taxi toward your destination.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Lug Nuts? Dire Wolf Bones? Butterflies? Hors d’Oeuvre:

The pit and the Phnom Penh Dublin

An English translation of a world capital rhymes with a two-syllable plural word for what you might find in a pit.

What is the capital and what might you find in the pit?

Hint: The capital is a city, not “capital” in the monetary sense. The capital, therefore, is not yen, euro, franc or kroner, for example.

Appetizer Menu

Remade In The Shade Appetizer:

Raiders of the “lost” parked

Name an 8-letter 2-word slang term for a shady location where hot cars are often parked.

Remove one letter to form a 7-letter 2-word slang term for the location that is the base for public employees who are often in hot pursuit of those hot cars, and who sometimes raid and shut down such shady locations.

What are these two slang terms?

MENU

Ripping Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:

Mixed Baggish

Will Shortz’s May 14^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Steve Baggish, reads:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Drop the first two letters and read the remaining letters backward. You’ll get a word associated with the evening. What is the brand, and what’s the word?

Puzzleria’s Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ONE:

Take the brand name of a product (not a breakfast cereal) that’s usually consumed in the morning. Replace the first four letters with a prefix meaning “anew” or “again” and read the resulting letters backward. You’ll get a word associated with geometry. What is the brand, and what’s the word?

TWO:

Take the brand name of a product that’s sometimes consumed in the morning (after an evening of binge beer drinking) as a “hair-of-the-dog” hangover cure. Replace the first letter with a letter possessing a much higher Scrabble value and read the resulting letters backward. You’ll get a name associated with puzzles and with a sport that is a competition in the Olympic games.

What is the brand, and what’s the name associated with puzzles?

THREE:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Interchange the first and fourth letters. You’ll get a word for athletes whose performance may be enhanced by consuming the product, according to a 2015 Auburn University study.

What is the brand, and who are these athletes?

FOUR:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning – and presumably consumed during the past year-or-so by Penguins, Cavs, Cubs, Pats, Tar Heels….

Replace the third letter with an “s” and drop the first two letters. Rearrange the six letters of this result to get a word associated with the afternoon.

What is the brand, and what’s the word?

FIVE:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Drop the last four letters and read the remaining letters backward.

You’ll get:

Willie Horton’s main position on defense, for short;

The city he and Al Kaline most often played in, for short;

What Willie and Al did 2,333 times, for short;

Al’s main position on defense, for short.

What is the brand? What are the short forms of Horton’s position, the city, what Willie and Al did 2,333 times, and Al’s position?

SIX:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning, usually by kids. Spell it out, replacing the Roman numeral in the name with its spelled-out number to form a six-letter string.

Spell the brand name backward, replacing the Roman numeral in the result with its spelled-out number to form an eight-letter string.

Rearrange the 14 letters in the two letter-strings to form the three words to complete the following paragraph:

“For about 320 days out of the year, Elsie, a lapsed Catholic, skips Mass, blows off confession, and performs no corporal works of mercy whatsoever. However, every year, sometime after Groundhog Day, Elsie becomes a model Catholic – volunteering at the soup kitchen, teaching Sunday school and basically “camping out” in church. Elsie is a virtual and unvirtuous heathen most of the year, but at least she is ________ __ ____.”

SEVEN:

Take the brand name of a product that’s usually consumed in the morning. Place a duplicate of its last letter at the beginning of the name and read the resulting letters backward, adding a hyphen between the first and second letters. You’ll get a word for what many people do annually, usually sometime around Groundhog Day, give or take a month or two.

What is the brand, and what’s the word?

EIGHT:

Rearrange the letters in the first two words of the four-word brand name of a breakfast cereal to form three words, of 5, 4 and 3 letters. Replace the 3-letter plural word with a synonym and place it on the end of the 5-letter word to form an 8-letter compound word not found in dictionaries but occasionally found on record album charts…

A rock group was formed in Liverpool almost two decades after that “other group” was formed in Liverpool. The name of the second group consists of the 4-letter word, the words “and the” and the 8-letter compound word, thus forming the name of the group: “____ and the ________.”

What is the cereal brand, and what’s the name of the rock group?

Dessert Menu

Brother, Can You Spare A Quarter Dessert

Big Apple Panhandle

Logan and Masa hail a taxi in New York City’s South Village. Their destination is 23^rd St. and 9^th Ave., the Chelsea Bistro and Bar, so they can treat themselves to chef Phillippe Rousell’s fabulous mussel and clam soup.

After giving their cabbie the address, however, a fanfare of music blasts forth and the taxi’s ceiling cascades with colorful lights. They are passengers in Ben Bailey’s “Cash Cab,” the rolling game show that takes place right there in his taxi!

Masa and Logan do well during their trek Chelsea-ward, answering most of Bailey’s quiz questions correctly and racking up a whole cabload of cash.

As the passengers depart the cab, joyously brandishing their wad of eight Benjamins for the benefit of the Cash Cab cameras, a nearby panhandler approaches them and asks if they can spare a quarter. Logan and Masa comply, handing the man two bits from their winnings.

One day later, Lego and Smitten, his kitten, also hail a taxi in South Village, also seeking a lift to the Chelsea Bistro and Bar.
(Smitten loves chef Phillippe Rousell’s fabulous mussel and clam soup more than she loves Meow Mix or Fancy Feast! Lego will likely just order something from the bar.)

After the usual flourish of music and cascades of colorful lights greet the astounded new occupants, Bailey begins retracing his taxi’s tire-tracks northwestward toward the Chelsea Bistro.

Smitten and Lego do not fare as well as Masa and Logan, but they do at least manage to make it all the way to the Chelsea Bistro without getting kicked out of Bailey’s taxi.

The passengers depart the cab somewhat sheepishly (and cattily) brandishing their wad of four sawbucks and four fins for the benefit of the Cash Cab cameras. Not surprisingly, the same panhandler approaches them and asks if they can spare a quarter. Lego and Smitten also comply, handing the man two bits.

The weight of two bits Logan and Masa handed the panhandler is roughly one-third the weight of the two bits Lego and Smitten now hand (or paw?) the panhandler.

Exactly how much total cash did the panhandler receive from Logan, Masa, Lego and Smitten?

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.

Friday, May 12, 2017

A confederacy of parliamentary dunces; String bean sproutings; Kicking butts and taking orders; Mother Nurtures Son; Car model pedicure

P! SLICES: OVER (65 +432) SERVED

Welcome to our May 12^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We are serving up seven puzzles this week, three of which are Rip/Riff-offs of Will Shortz’s “medical procedure” NPR puzzle.

Also on our menus are:

1. A Mother’s Day Decree Hors d’Oeuvre,

2. A “Civil Butt-kicking” Appetizer (but not in the Union/Confederacy sense),

3. An Owlish Slice, and

4. A “We’ve-just-bean-stringing-you-along” Dessert.

Please enjoy our puzzles.

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Anapestic Hors d’Oeuvre:

Mother Nurtures Son

Consider the doggerelish decree pictured here in blue (and also reprinted in the burgundy-colored text, below).

Now consider the final word of each of the four lines in the quatrain. Take the letters in just two of these four words and rearrange them to form a three-word headline from this past week’s news.

What is this headline?

You’re as soothing and healing

As spas, chicken soup or balm.

This Decree thus doth certify:

Thou art my Supermom!

(dedicated to my mother, Helen, who would have turned 100 this year)

Appetizer Menu

Civil Service Appetizer:

Kicking butts and taking orders

Name a two-syllable term (sometimes written as two words or hyphenated) for an assignment to which certain civil servants might be assigned. Remove one letter to form a two-syllable term (sometimes hyphenated) for an order these civil servants might make during this assignment.

What are these two terms?

Hint: An order the civil servants might make during their assignment might include a homophone of one of the words in the term for the assignment.

MENU

Dixie Owlet Chicks Slice:

A confederacy of parliamentary dunces

Name a two-syllable American business associated with vehicles.

Swapping the initial sounds of the syllables and pronouncing the result aloud sounds like a greeting you might hear from anthropomorphic owls south of the Mason-Dixon line.

What are the business and the greeting?

Ripping Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices:

Car model pedicure

Will Shortz’s May 7^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, composed by Warren Bergmann, reads:

Name a familiar medical procedure in nine letters. You can rearrange these letters to name two people who might get this procedure. The answer consists of informal names for these people. Who are they?

Puzzleria’s three Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz And Bergmann Slices read:

ONE:

Name a familiar medical procedure in eleven letters. You can rearrange these letters to form two words:

1. People who proverbially might need this procedure (if a certain fairy tale actually would come true), in five letters, and

2. A member of a comedy troupe (not his name, but rather what every member of this troupe was sometimes called) who seems to need this procedure in his role as a character whose hyphenated surname sounds like one of those “really fabulous prizes” they dole out to winning contestants on TV quiz shows.

What is the procedure? What are the words for these people and for the member of the comedy troupe?

TWO:

Name a familiar medical procedure in two words and nine letters. Remove two consecutive letters. Rearrange the remaining letters to spell out what might have been the root cause necessitating the procedure, in two words of four and three letters.

What is this procedure and what might have been its root cause?

THREE:

Name a nursery rhyme title in three words. Change one of its vowels to a different vowel.

The second and third words of the result describe one who executes a particular medical procedure. The first and second words of the result describe the desired result of the procedure.

What is this nursery rhyme title?

Dessert Menu

Cash Crop Capitalism Dessert

String bean sproutings

Name a country and a crop grown in that country. The result is a string of letters in which every other letter is a vowel.

Place the capital of the country between the country and crop. The result is still a string of letters in which every other letter is a vowel.

Removing the two beginning letters from this longer string results in a still-pretty-darn-long string of 14 letters in which every other letter is the same vowel.

What are this country, capital and crop?

Hint: The country and a piece of the crop’s produce have a somewhat similar shape.

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.

Friday, May 26, 2017

On our menu: Rank Seafood! “Sartor Resportus” U R outta here! “Que sera, sera… the truth is now ours to see”

Friday, May 19, 2017

Mixed Baggish; The pit and the Phnom Penh Dublin; Raiders of the “lost” parked; Big Apple Panhandle;

Friday, May 12, 2017

A confederacy of parliamentary dunces; String bean sproutings; Kicking butts and taking orders; Mother Nurtures Son; Car model pedicure

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