Friday, June 26, 2020

“...And a raven in a Poe tree?” Pedro, Ivan, Johann and Ruan; Non-mathematical trinomials; Occupations and Operations; “Every book has a spine, right?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle Of The Week:
Pedro, Ivan, Johann and Ruan

What curious distinction do the lives of each of these four men share?
Chinese scholar Ruan Yuan 
Spanish dramatist and poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov
German composer Johann Mattheson
Hint: My intended answer does not involve the concept of consecutiveness.


Appetizer Menu

Conundrumbeat Appetizer:
Occupations and Operations

🥁1. Name someone at the helm of a vehicle. Remove the fourth letter and move the first letter two places forward. The result will name another person in the vehicle.
🥁2. Name a type of person that might be seen at street intersections. Advance the first letter two places forward in the alphabet, then reverse the order of the letters. The result describes how this person often appears.
🥁3. Name an occupation in six letters. Drop the last letter to name a reason the person might be fired.
🥁4. Name a military operation in four words. Take the last word and reverse two of its letters to name a musical instrument used in the military.


MENU


Ornitholyrical Slice:
“...And a raven in a Poe tree?”

A bird is nesting in the following poetry. 
Name it.
(The poem contains alternating lines of anapestic dimeter and trochaic trimeter.)
Onto Earth we are hurled,
Heaven though is pending.
Blest with best of both worlds,
Happy is the ending.

Riffing Off Shortz Slices:
Non-mathematical trinomials

Will Shortz’s June 21st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Think of a famous person whose name consists of three names. 
The first and last letters of the first name plus the first and last letters of the second name plus the first and last letters of the third name, in order, name a city and lake in Europe. 
Who is it?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Think of a famous person whose name consists of three names. 
The first letter of the first name plus the first and last letters of the second name plus the first two letters and last letter of the third name, in order, name a tenebrous Greek god. 
Who are the person and the god? 
ENTREE #2:
Think of a famous person whose name consists of three names. The first name anagrams to a word that might be an A, B, C, D, or F (but not an E). 
The first two letters of the second name plus the first two letters of the third name, in order, name something most pooches enjoy. 
Who is this famous person?
What are this anagram and thing that pooches enjoy?
ENTREE #3:
Think of a famous author who was also a lawyer. His name consists of three names. 
The last name is a word that precedes “voice,” “thesis” or “tournament.” 
The first and last letters of the first name plus the first and last letters of the second name spell the first name of another famous three-named author was was also a lawyer. 
Who are these two author/attorneys?
ENTREE #4:
Think of a famous person whose name consists of three names. 
Identify three letters in the first name that, in order, spell a word in the U.S. national anthem. Replace them with an A, B and I. 
Delete the last letter of the middle name. 
The result is a creature, followed by two places where you might find the creature. Who is this person? 
ENTREE #5:
In lyrics a Badger singer wrote, he admits he picks and grins, loves and sings, smokes and tokes... although he may just be joking. He admits to being called three names by some people. 
The names consist of  one, two and three words. 
Take six letters: the first and last letters of each name. Use these six letters to fill in the two blanks in the following sentence: 
“A smitten suitor proposes on bended knee to his beloved, presenting her with a diamond or other ___ in hopes that she will say ___.” 
What words fill in the two blanks? What are the three names some people call the singer?
ENTREE #6:
Think of a very rich and somewhat famous person whose name consists of three names. 
The first and last letters of the first name plus the first letter of the second name plus the first two letters and last two letters of the third name, in order, name an eeeeeelongated fish. 
Who are the person and the creature?
Hint: The person is associated with two no-longer-living legends. 
ENTREE #7:
Think of a famous jurist who served as a Supreme Court justice during the administrations of six consecutive presidents. 
The jurist’s name consists of three names. The first and last letters of the first name plus the first two letters and last two letters of the second name, in order, spell the last name of the pen name of a British author. 
Who are the jurist and the author? 
ENTREE #8:
Think of a famous person whose name consists of three names. 
Take the first and last letters of the first name plus the first and last letters of the second name plus the first and last letters of the third name, in order. 
Replace the first and fifth letters of the result with the same consonant. The result is the make of an automobile. 
Who is this famous person?


Dessert Menu


Bibliology Dessert:
“Every book has a spine, right?”

Name a bookstore section, like architecture or fiction, for example. 
Move the last letter of the section into the second position. 
Divide this result in two to name a body part and an adjective relating to that body part. 
What are these words?

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, June 19, 2020

“Your sister wears eskimonos!” Seefood you may sea on menus; The answer is not Au, Ea or Ur; Thinking through puzzles thought-provoking, though not too tough; Time to play ketch-up?

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle Of The Week:
Seefood you may sea on menus 

Name a word for seafood you might see on a menu. 
Change the first letter of this word and spell the result backward to name a different seafood you might see on the same menu. 
What are these two seafoods?
Hint: The letter that is changed and the letter it is changed to are the initials of a noted filmmaker who directed a movie based on a novel by a noted author with the same initials.


Appetizer Menu

Skydiverting Appetizer:
“Your sister wears eskimonos!”

1. Imagine, if an Inuit/Eskimo man of North America were to travel to a distant country on the opposite side of the world, what the inhabitants of that country might call him by simply rearranging the letters of their country?

2. Spoonerize a 2-word phrase describing where your sister may live to get a 2-word phrase meaning “There’s something is wrong with you!” What are they?

3. Spoonerize a 2-word dwelling located in America’s heartland, someplace an adventurous person might enjoy spending the night, to phonetically describe a place where you would not enjoy spending the night because it is “Blank Blank.” What are they? 

4. Think of a country in eight letters. Change the first vowel to an A and then switch the positions of the third and fourth letters with each other to get the name of a well known tree. What are they?


MENU

Municipal Slice:
The answer is not Au, Ea or Ur  

What large city is associated with the value of its third letter?
Hint #1: There are six figures in the city’s population, and more than six characters in its name.
(More obscure) Hint #2: Hood’s Honey.
(Perhaps more helpful) Hint # 3: There are just not that many cities that are associated with the “value of one of its letters.” In this puzzle that “value” is a number.

Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Slices:
Thinking through puzzles thought-provoking, though not too tough

Will Shortz’s June 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg VanMechelen of Berkeley, Calif, reads:
Think of a five-letter word. Change the first letter to the next letter of the alphabet, and you’ll get a new word that doesn’t share any sounds with the first one. Then change its first letter to the next letter of the alphabet, and you’ll get a third word that doesn’t share any sounds with either of the first two. What words are these?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Rearrange the letters of a puzzle-maker to form three words. 
Two of them (a verb and proper noun/name) are what a white plantation landlord and a mob of his neighbors and friends (in a 1935 short story published in Scribner’s Magazine) would do to a black sharecropper had they been “armed” with ropes instead of shotguns. 
The third word is the landlord’s motive for assembling the mob.
What three words are these? 
Who is the puzzle-maker? 
ENTREE #2:
Think of a five-letter word. Move its first letter to the end. 
The first three letters of this result are almost always pronounced as a long “i” as in “pi,” “pie” “pry.” 
Replace those three letters with a single vowel to form a three-letter homophone of the original five-letter word.
What are these two words?
Note to Puzzlerians!: Cana-wedding-like, we are saving the best for last. The following six riff-off puzzles were created by Greg VanMechelen himself. 
He is thus “riffing off” his own NPR puzzle!
ENTREE #3:
Can you name a 4-word sequence of 6-letter words in which you can change the first letter to the next in the alphabet and make the next word in the sequence?
Note: The third word is not very common.
ENTREE #4:
If you change the first two letters of the word “notion” to the next letters in the alphabet you get the word “option.” 
Can you name a 9-letter word that, when you similarly change the first two letters, results in a new word?  
The two words, both adjectives, are near antonyms, and describe what you wouldn’t want and would want in a product or relationship.  
ENTREE #5:
Change the first letter of an 8-letter word to the letter eight places later in the alphabet (for example: a --> i). 
The first five letters of the new word are pronounced completely differently. 
Both are very common words. What are they? 
ENTREE #6:
Can you name three rhyming words that share no letters in common? 
There are at least two answers, one with a total of nine letters and the other with ten total letters.
Hint: The image at the left will be of no help at all to you in solving this puzzle.

ENTREE #7:
Can you name a common English word that contains four alphabetically consecutive letters (for example: __abcd__)? 
ENTREE #8:
A word in a famous musical work by a well-known French composer contains four alphabetically consecutive letters. 
Can you name it?  
Hint: the piece was used in the end credits of a non-musical movie from 1981.  


Dessert Menu

Consumers Of Condiments Dessert:
Time to play ketch-up?

Take  a word in a condiment brand. 
Switch its two syllables. 
Change a letter to the one preceding it in the alphabet and add a letter to the end to spell an adjective customarily believed to characterize those who consume this brand. 
What are these words? 

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, June 12, 2020

Dang good, but also dang bad! What did Noah drink on the Ark? Run for the border, loosen your belts; Four on a match; Mamas & Papas, Marimba? & Grammys

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle Of TheWeek:
Four on a match

Your puzzle assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write a two-word title to the five-stanza anapestic dimeter poem, below.
Hint: Identify 18 words in the poem. These words contain a total of 63 letters (but only 7 different letters!). 
Consider 14 of these 18 words as 7 pairs, consider 3 of them as one triplet, and consider one of them as a single stand-alone 7-letter word. 
Each of the pairs contains 7 different letters, as does the one triplet, as does the single word. 
The words in each of these seven pairs of words are in close proximity within the text of the poem. The three words in the one triplet are consecutive in the poem’s text.


MIXED DOUBLES

On the court, four did joust:
Ed and Deb, Bud and Sue.
Two were skirted and bloused,
Two wore tees from J. Crew.


Sue was bold, Deb had soul,
Young buck Ed had no clue.    
Graybeard Bud had a hole 
In the sole of his shoe.

“Hey Ed, lob us the ball,”
 Yelled Bud, trusting that Sue
(Who had grace like Bacall)
Would smash-volley it true.

Ed indeed used a lob,
But Sue whiffed! What bad news!
Deb cheered, “Ed, Superb job!
We win! Sue and Bud lose!”


And so ends this sob story
Of a duel two-on-two.
On green sod two found glory...
For two, blue was the hue.


Appetizer Menu

Rock Fare by Chad Appetizer:
Mamas & Papas, Marimba? & Grammys

Name a musical instrument in five letters, two syllables. 
Add the name of a famous theatrical award to the first syllable. 
Add what mothers and fathers have in common to the second syllable. 
You will name a very famous pop/rock musical group in two words, 14 letters. 
What is the instrument and who is the group?


MENU

Southern Creature Comfort Slice:
What did Noah drink on the Ark?

Say the names of two creatures aloud, in alphabetical order. Both creatures begin with an S. 
What you say will sound like something non-alcoholic from which you drink when you are outdoors, in one word, followed by something alcoholic you drink, in two words.
What are these two creatures? 
Hint: Add a letter to the beginning of a word associated with the biblical Jacob to spell a word associated with this alcoholic “something” (and also with its consumer).


Riffing Off Shortz And Graham Slices:
Run for the border, loosen your belts

Will Shortz’s June 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Chad Graham of St. Louis, Missouri, reads:
Name a well-known restaurant chain. Rearrange its letters to name a large area in the United States. This area has a two-word name. What is it?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Graham Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Interchange the first and last names of a puzzle-maker. Rotate the last letter of this result 180 degrees to form a new letter. 
After this new letter write the three-letter word that belongs in the following blank: “Wise ___ #2,” the name of a character in “Life of Brian.” 
The result is the name of the actor who portrayed “Wise ___ #2.”
Who are this puzzle-maker and actor?
ENTREE #2:
Name the two-word generic female subject of an 1860’s-era oil painting by an American artist. Rearrange the 11 letters in the words to name a large area in North America. 
This area has a two-word name. What is it?
Hint: The artist’s first name is the same as that of a Nobel prize-winner who served in the cabinets of two presidents. The artist’s surname is the same as that of the lead singer of of a rock band formed 30 years ago on the West Coast.
ENTREE #3:
Give a description of this stuffed animal using two adjectives beginning with an F and C and a noun beginning with T. 
Rearrange the letters of this description to name a large area in the United States. This area has a two-word name. 
What are this name and this description?
ENTREE #4:
Name a well-known restaurant chain. Rearrange its letters to spell two words:
1. a type of carriage, and 
2. an adjective for the animal that the carriage is drawn by (like “feline” or “canine,” for example)
What is this chain? 
What are this carriage and creature-adjective?
ENTREE #5:
Name a somewhat well-known restaurant chain that was founded in Florida. Rearrange its 13 letters to spell three words: 
1. one that follows “kobe” on a menu, 
2. a cool seafood on a menu that is often served with soy sauce, and 
3. a word on the drink menu that follows “whiskey.” 
This restaurant chain has a two-word name. 
What is it?
ENTREE #6:
Name a reasonably well-known restaurant chain. 
Rearrange its letters to spell a two-word caption for the image pictured here. 
What are this caption and restaurant chain?
Hint: Lopping of the final two letters of the caption will produce an alternative caption for the image.
ENTREE #7:
Chad Graham, the creator of this week’s NPR puzzle, also created this week’s Appetizer (under his screen name, Chuck). 
The title of his “Conundrumbstruck by Chuck!” feature this week is titled “Rock Fare by Chad Appetizer.”
Rearrange the combined letters in “Rock,” “Fare” and “Chad” to name a well-known restaurant chain. 
What is it?
ENTREE #8:
Name a very large two-word area in the United States that is also the brand name of a beverage produced in Minnesota.
Rearrange its letters to form two words:
1. how certain native Europeans say the word “day” and
2. a city where such a European might reside.
What are the beverage/area and the European’s hometown?


Dessert Menu

Dangling Dessert:
Dang good, but also dang bad!

Name two words: something good that is dangled and something that is bad when it is dangling. 
Both begin with the same syllable. 
What are these two words?


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.