3 stars in the “rom-com cosmos” No lunching on poetasty lotuses! U.S.M.C. = U.S. Marine Critters; Throwing stones at glass stadia; Non-landbound crafts & Texas branding

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

No lunching on poetasty lotuses!

(Note: I hope this puzzle is just “As You Like it.”)

After a poet’s name place the word “thou” followed by the poet’s name spelled backward. 

The result, in bygone poetic language, suggests that this poet is no lotus-eater. 

Who is this poet?

Appetizer Menu

Crafty Appetizer:

Non-landbound crafts & Texas branding

1. Find a five-letter adjective and three-letter noun for something produced in Texas. 

Change the noun to an adjective that sounds like the way that  many Texans pronounce the noun. 

Rearrange the combined letters of these two adjectives to name a familiar brand in eight letters.

What is this brand?

2. Name two crafts made to travel above the surface, twelve letters total. 

One needs air, the other doesn’t. 

Put them together and rearrange all the letters to name someone very well-known. 

What crafts are these and who is the person?

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Eponymous Slice:

Throwing stones at glass stadia

Take a stadium named for a sports figure. Move the first letter of the surname to the end to spell the surname of a man for which a now-demolished stadium was named. 

The stadiums were almost within a stone’s-throw of one another. 

Can you name these stadia?

Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Slices:

U.S.M.C. = U.S. Marine Critters

Will Shortz’s November 22nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Alan Hochbaum of Duluth, Georgia, reads:

Name a marine animal in two words. Remove two consecutive letters in the name and read the resulting string of letters in order from left to right. You’ll name a major American city. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Hochbaum Slices read:

Note: We will lead-off this week’s riff-offs with three contributions (Entrees #1, #2 and #3) created by our friend ecoachitect whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #1

Name a sea creature in two words. Remove two consecutive letters and the result will be the end. What is the creature and what is the end?

Hint: The beginning word of the sea creature can be found at the end of the sea creature’s body.

ENTREE #2

Name a small, though well-known city in the United States.  

Change 2 consecutive letters (the last 2) and the result will be a U.S. state.  

Hint: Both sets of changed letters are postal
code abbreviations for U.S. states. 

ENTREE #3

Take a common, uncapitalized 9-letter word. Replace the first 2 letters with a single letter, and the result will be a two-word phrase, in 9 and 8 letters, for something we hope to see very soon. 

ENTREE #4

Take the hometown and state of a puzzle-maker. Rearrange the combined letters to spell two words:

* The surname of an acclaimed actor, and

* Another word (besides “actor”) beginning with an “a” that applies to the actor by dint of productions titled “Early Stages,” “Distinguished Company” and “Backward Glances.” 

Who is this puzzle-maker and what is the hometown?

Who is the actor and what other “a-word” applies to him

Hint: You can also rearrange the combined letters in the puzzle-maker’s hometown and state to name a city about 400 miles northeast of that hometown (via Interstate-85) and a place at Cardinal Gibbons High School Baseball Field in that city where you might relax after the six-hour drive.

ENTREE #5

Name two-word a marine mammal with large paddle-like forelimbs, no hind limbs and a flat fin-like tail. Its plural form contains three and four letters. A “whimsical” alternative plural form contains three and six letters. 

From this alternative plural form remove either the third and fourth letters or fourth and fifth letters. 

Read the resulting string of letters in order from left to right. You’ll name a major American city. 

What is it?

ENTREE #6

Name a large marine creature in two words of five and three letters. 

Remove two consecutive letters in the name and read the resulting string of letters in order from left to right to form the first and last names of an artistic American in Paris. 

Who is it?

ENTREE #7

Name one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals, in two words of four letters each. 

Remove two consecutive letters in the name that are the postal abbreviation of a U.S. breadbasket state. Replace them with two the two initials of a U.S. president whose mug is on a mountain. 

Read the resulting string of letters in order from left to right. You’ll name a major North American city. 

What are the marine mammal and North American city?

ENTREE #8

🐰 Remove a state postal abbreviation from a state capital to spell a 4-letter woodland creature. 

The state with the postal abbreviation is geographically one state removed from the state that is home of the capital.

📱 Remove the abbreviation for “retweet” from a large western U.S. city to spell a 6-letter country. 

🥈 Remove a symbolic two-letter bit of silver from a large midwestern U.S. city to spell a California city with about one-twenty-seventh the population of the midwestern city. 

🐖🐖🐖🐺 Remove 501 (as the ancient Romans wrote it) from a midwestern U.S. state capital to spell a 5-letter constructor of houses (not made of straw or sticks) that cannot be blown down merely by huffing and puffing. 

🏃 Remove a prefix for “two” from a large southern U.S. port city to spell a 4-letter critter. Now remove two letters that precede “/GYN” from the same large southern U.S. port city to spell a 4-letter word for roughly one-twenty-sixth of a marathon. 

🐦 Rearrange four consecutive letters in an 8-letter U.S. state capital to spell the name of a bird that is also the name of a simpleton or nut-job. The remaining letters, in order, spell the name of a subscription video-on-demand streaming service. 

Dessert Menu

Stellar Dessert:

3 stars in the “rom-com cosmos”

Take the first names of two stars who acted in a 1970s romantic comedy. 

Change a short vowel sound to a different
short vowel sound to name what sounds like a legendary musical star. 

Who are these three stars?

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.