A, E, I, nO U (and somehow Y!); Buzzard, moonbeam, boink! Visigoths and Versifiers; Expressions verbal & non-verbal; Name that tune, watch this space, eat raw meat

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!p SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Buzzard, moonbeam, boink!

Take a polysyllabic word associated with words like  “buzz,” “moo,” “meow” and “oink.”

Move its first letter to the end to spell a one-syllable synonym of “high quality.” 

What two words are these?

Appetizer Menu

Mighty Village Plantsmithy Appetizer:

Name that tune, watch this space, eat raw meat

Name that tune  

🎶1. Think of a 1965 hit song title that contains what sounds like the first name of a famous philosopher. 

The name of the group that recorded the song contains the name of a place probably frequented by this philosopher and his followers. 

The 18-year-old lead singer of the song originally used just his first and middle names as his stage name. But he eventually began using his full name – first, middle and last names. 

That middle name, coincidentally, was the first name of a second famous philosopher. But that was not the reason the singer wanted to use his full name as a stage name; he did so to avoid confusion with an emerging comedic performer. 

What is the hit song, and what group sang it?  

What is the first name of the philosopher in the song. What is the place where this philosopher and his followers probably hung out?

What was the full name of the lead singer? 

And what is the name of the other philosopher whose first name was the middle name of the singer? 

Bonus Question: The emergence of what comedic performer prompted the singer to opt to use his full name (instead of just his first and middle names)?

“Watch this space for news”

📺2. Name a newly appointed official in the 2021 news. Place the official’s first-name initial in front of the last name. 

Add a space. The result sounds like a beloved TV series in the mid-1960s.  

Who is the official?

What is the TV series?    

Raw meat for the critics

🥩3. Take a word used to describe someone who is “under the influence.” 

Replace the first letter with a kind of meat to get a word for what many critics did to quarterback Carson Wentze in the wake of his press conferences during the past NFL season.

What are these two words?

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Roman-Gothic Slice:

Visigoths and Versifiers

Take the full name of a well-known historical person. 

Rearrange the combined letters of the name to form names of a Visigoth and an ancient Roman poet, and the surname of a more recent English poet. 

Who is the historical person?

What are the names of the two poets and the Visigoth?

Riffing Off Shortz And Pegg Slices:

A, E, I, nO U (and somehow Y!)

Will Shortz’s March 21st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Ed Pegg Jr. of Champaign, Illinois, reads:

Take the phrase ZANY BOX KEPT HIM. Write it in capital letters. Something is special about the 14 letters in this sentence that sets them apart from all the other 12 letters of the
alphabet. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Pegg Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a puzzle-maker and the city where he lives. 

Rearrange these combined 17 letters to spell a three-word caption for the image pictured here. 

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What is the caption?

Hint: In the caption, the vehicle on the left is a short-bed pickup truck manufactured in the early 1960s by a South Bend-based company. The vehicle being towed (on the right) “might give you the Willys!”

ENTREE #2

Take the phrase A HANK & NAZZ FAN, alluding to a eclectic aficionado of both the country music legend Hank Williams and the psychedelic-era rock group fronted by Todd Rundgren. 

Write it in capital letters. 

Something is special about the six different letters in this phrase (ignore the ampersand) that sets them apart from the other twenty letters of the alphabet. 

What is it?

ENTREE #3

A politician in hot water texted a memo to his press secretary regarding an upcoming press conference at which he hoped to avoid embarrassing questions. 

It read tersely: DROP Q&A. Write that memo in capital letters. 

Something is special about the six letters in this memo that sets them apart from the other twenty letters of the alphabet. 

What is it?

ENTREE #4

Take the seven total letters in:

1. The name of a late-Eighteenth Century diplomatic affair that involved the United States and France and led to an undeclared war at sea,

2. a present-day anonymous conspiracy theory, and

3. The first name of a man who is brother and son of two U.S. presidents.

Write them all in capital letters. Something is special about these seven letters that sets them apart from all the other 19 letters of the alphabet. What is it?

ENTREE #5

Take the eight total letters in:

1. The first name of the person who came up with the name “Pink Floyd,”

2. a letter that “marks the spot,” and

3. a word for an “eccentric person” or “a practical joke.”

Write them all in capital letters. 

Something is special about these eight letters that sets them apart from all the other 18 letters of the alphabet. 

What is it?

ENTREE #6

Grateful Dead fans and folks in the Jam and Jelly of the Month Club are FOND OF JAMS. 

Commuters in cars who experience heavy traffic to and from work are not FOND OF JAMS.

There is something special about the eight different letters in the phrase FOND OF JAMS (written in UPPERCASE for a good reason) that sets them apart from all the other 18 letters of the alphabet. 

What is it?

ENTREE #7

In 1958, Major League Baseball began recognizing star players by giving them a Player of the Month Award. The honor was, in essence, a monthly Most Valuable Player Award. 

Some of the JUNE MVP’S over the years have been Sandy Koufax, Hank Aaron, Buzz Capra, Gaylord Perry, Mark Fidrych, Kent Hrbek,
Wade Boggs, Kirby Puckett, Prince Fielder and Mike Trout. 

Write JUNE MVP’S in capital letters. Something is special about the eight letters in this term that sets them apart from all the other 18 letters of the alphabet. What is it?

ENTREE #8

Write in uppercase all five letters in the surname of an author who wrote poems titled “Helter Skelter,” “The Beasts’ Confession to the Priest” and “The Puppet Show.” 

Something is special about the four consonants in that surname that sets them apart from 21 of the other letters of the alphabet. 

That “something special” involves a single-digit number of words (with something in common) that each begin with one of those four consonants. 

Take a Somali word that begins with the only vowel in the author’s surname. Translate it into English. 

The first letter in that translated-into-English word (which is a consonant), along with the four other consonants of the surname, all share that same “something special” that sets them apart from all 21 other letters of the alphabet.

Who is the author? 

What is the Somali word that begins with a vowel, and what is its English translation?

What are the five consonants that share that “something special,” and what is it?

Dessert Menu

Sweetly Sorrowful Dessert:

Expressions verbal & non-verbal

The initial letters of a verbal parting expression spell a noun associated with a nonverbal
parting expression. 

What is this verbal expression.

What is the noun associated with the nonverbal parting expression?

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.

Four more saints go Marching in; “Render unto Caesars... Palace?” Bumper-to-bumper “(guit)cars” Taking temperatures, getting relief; Siege city, (a)&(b), Split opinion, Two woods

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!p SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Taking temperatures, getting relief

Take a temperature scale and a reading on that scale. 

Rearrange the combined letters of those two words to spell three new words: 

1: a place providing relief from that
temperature reading, and 

2 and 3: a two-word description of that place. 

What three words are these?

What are the temperature scale and a reading on that scale?

Appetizer Menu

Worldplayfulness Appetizer:

Siege city, (a)&(b), Split opinion, Two woods

Siege city

🔫1. Think of an antique gun, in eight letters. Substitute a single L for the last two letters. Duplicate the middle three letters of this result, as a set. Add a U to the start of the result.

Rearrange to give a city in a US state that once might have had such a gun in its arsenal, in a crate marked “obsolete firearms.” What are the the weapon and city?

Hint: When rearranging, preserve the original “block of three letters” and its duplicate as two immutable blocks of three letters. The rearranging is for two blocks of three letters and five “independent” letters. 

(a) and (b) 

⭐🐟2. Think of a word that describes either (a) the process by which some animals (such as starfish) grow new limbs for lost ones, or (b) an application of positive feedback in electronics. 

Remove from this word a word related to (a) heredity, or (b) Autry. Split the remainder into (a) an abbreviation for Paris suburban railways, and (b) what sounds like a designation for one of many people. 

What are (a) the original word and (b) its three parts?

Split opinion

🍌3. Think of a product of the service economy. Drop the penultimate letter. Remove the second syllable, which sounds like how this product makes some customers feel. 

Merge the remaining letters, in order, to express how others might describe this same product.

Two woods

🌳4. Take the name of a tree and wood known throughout much of the world. 

Rearrange its letters to give the name of another tree and wood, well-known in a particular part of the USA.

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It’s a Limerical Miracle Slice:

Four more saints go Marching in

Today, March 19th, is the the feast day of St. Joseph, carpenter and foster father of Jesus of Nazareth. March 17th was the feast day of St. Patrick.

Four years ago I published on Puzzleria! three “limerick-puzzles”: one for each of those two saints, plus an introductory limerick. (See this link.)

That introductory limerick is reprinted below along with three new limerick-puzzles about other saints who celebrate feast days in March. A new concluding limerick follows these three limericks.

These four new limericks contain seven blanks for you to fill in. The number of letters in each of the seven answers appears in parentheses after each blank. 

As was the case four years ago, perhaps you can improve my verses by filling in the blanks with words different from what I used!

Introductory Verse:

Marching in go the saints all this month

From March 1st through to March 31th.

Were we all, Lord, so numbered –

Holy souls unencumbered

By holes – we’d with grace overrun’th. ...

St. Felicity and St. Perpetua, March 6:

Being martyred won’t warrant a statue o’

You in church, nor will it get you a

Pope’s ____________(12)...

Just trust God’s revelation

As Felicity did, and Perpetua.

St. Gregory, March 12:

If a “Great” man weren’t given to “braggary,”

And “a servant of servants of God” were he,

Were he pope, monk, historian

And a chanter _________(9),

He could only be christened St. Gregory.

St. Benedict, March 21:

While some abbots make rules “nigh-Gehenna-strict,”

“Work and worship” urged gently St. Benedict.

His Rule, firm yet elastic,

Set the standard ________(8)...

Thus few monks disobeyed, broke or ______(6) __(2).

Saintly Conclusion:

... At month’s end, though, March saints shall march out,

Martyred lambs, lionized yet ______(6).

Life’s parade alas ends,

Yet to heaven it _____(5)...

“Lord, we’ll be in that number!” let’s shout.

Riffing Off Shortz And Render Slices:

“Render unto Caesars... Palace?”

Will Shortz’s March 14th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Robert Render of Skokie, Illinois, reads:

Name a well-known tourist locale that attracts millions of visitors a year. It has a two-word name. The first word is a number. And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the name. What’s the tourist site?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Render Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take a homophone of a synonym of “scuttlebutt.” Name two synonyms of this homophone, in seven and six letters. 

Replace the seven-letter synonym with a six-letter homophone. Rearrange the combined letters of the six-letter synonym and six-letter homophone to spell the first and last names of a puzzle-maker.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the synonym of “scuttlebutt” and its homophone? What are the two synonyms of this homophone, in seven and six letters?

What is the six-letter homophone of that seven-letter synonym?  

ENTREE #2

Take a five-word line from a nursery rhyme found in “Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-Book,” an anthology published in London in 1744. The first three words in the line form a number. And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the line.

What is this nursery rhyme, and what is the line?

Hint #1: In a later more-familiar version of the nursery rhyme the last two words of the line are replaced with a single compound word.

Hint #2: The origin of the line may be something Sir Toby Belch said.

ENTREE #3

Take a two-word song title. The first word is a number. And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the title. 

The second word in the title is also a number. And that number equals two-and-a-half times the total number of letters in the title. 

What’s this song title?

Hint: The title refers to a time of day, one that (according to the lyrics) appeared on the face of a broken clock on a church steeple. The hands on the clock form a quite obtuse 165-degree angle.

ENTREE #4

Name a literary work that involves a shipwreck. It has a two-word title. 

The first word is a number, but not a cardinal one. And that number is an adjective that describes the last letter in the title. 

What’s the title?

Hint: “First” and “sixth” are two other non-cardinal numbers that describe this letter in the title.

ENTREE #5

Name a three-word song title. Its first word is a number. 

And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the title. What’s the title?

Hint #1: The singer of the song was a country
singer who had been a rock ’n’ roll rival of Elvis Presley in the 1950s. 

Hint #2: The name of  the title character in a Broadway musical was a word play on the country singer’s name.

ENTREE #6

Name a six-word song title from the 1970s with a first word that is a number. And that number (when spelled out instead of written as a numeral, as it usually is) equals twice the total number of letters in the title. 

What’s this title?

Hint: The person who wrote and sang the song specializes in the folk-rock musical genre.

ENTREE #7

Name a two-word country song title from the 1970s with a first word that is a number. And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the title. 

What’s the song title?

Hints: The singer is the offspring of a person who is
regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century.

The song was recorded also by Faron Young.

ENTREE #8

Name a well known two-word idiom with which one is said to be blessed after having survived a near encounter with death or disaster. 

The idiom’s first word is a number. 

And that number is the same as the total number of letters in the idiom. 

What’s the idiom?

Hint: The two-word idiom is also the brand name of a food product.

Dessert Menu

Automotive Dessert:

Bumper-to-bumper “(guit)cars”

Write the name of a current car model.

After it, without a space, write the name of a past car model. 

The result spells a musical instrument. 

What is it?

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.

TV Guise: Comedies of Error! Stoneware bowls and rolling balls; Great Scott! A “Skydiversion!” Telecommunication & Mini-critters; Percuss, paradiddle, pick, pluck, plink (or otherwise play)

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!p SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Stoneware bowls and rolling balls

Name something you may see at a ceramics shop, in two words. 

Spoonerize these words to name something you may see if the numbers on your ticket match those on the rolling balls. 

What two things may you see?

Appetizer Menu

Misguided Appetizer:

TV Guise: Comedies of Error!

TV GUISE

Through an unfortunate miscommunication in outsourcing, the titles of a series of television programs accidentally had one (and only one) letter changed. 

Due to imperfect artificial intelligence, the guide automatically generated descriptions of the shows that are just not quite right.  

Below are thirteen generated descriptions, sometimes with an (artificial) acclamation.  

Can you name the mistaken and the original titles of these shows? All shows are well known, either having run for at least five years or having a lasting impact on popular culture.  

Note that while only one letter is changed,
occasionally punctuation, capitalization and spacing between letters are changed to create new words.

Here is an example in which all that changes is just one letter:

A wise and mild-mannered patriarch strings his family along.  

“A prelude to Family Ties?”  

Answer: Father Knots Best (Father Knows Best).

Comedies:

 The conservative patriarch of a working class family finds conflict when a stuffy alien moves in.  

“That ain’t meat in your head!”

An oddball group of city detectives attempt to make a cloying dinosaur go extinct.  

“You’ll sing NY isn’t the only thing to love!”

 A daughter in a newly formed large family displays her lesbianism by taking on her brothers.

The crew and five passengers on a 3 hour bus tour are stranded in Bakersfield.

Blue collar worker tries to have a winning streak with a flashy new scheme each week. 

“It’s a real crack up when you get to the bottom of things, so don’t be left behind!”

Lothario American leader in a German POW camp combats the SS and the STD’s.

“I feel something! Could put you in the Klink.”

A Cuban-American entertainer washes his wife.  

“It’s a real ball!”

A boy in the 1950’s decides to have gender reassignment surgery.  

“Don't use a cleaver to chop that wood!”

With three different stories and adventures, each week presents tales of amour on Noah’s Ark.  

“They’re really cruising!”  [Three answers]

Presents the work of the most popular economists offering an alternative to capitalism.  Case studies include Richard Wolff, Rosa Luxembourg, Vladimir Lenin, and Friedrich Engels.  

“An out of this world concept!”

As told by their father, the grifting adventures of of Don Jr, Eric, and Ivanka.  

“There’s more than one hoax!”

Comedy ensues when Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are forced to live together.  

“Two versus verses!”

A musical family is sometimes on the fly after an experiment in teleportation has an unfortunate mishap.  

“What a combo band! They’ll make you happy...”

Sheepish Editor’s note from LegoLambda:

The parenthetical note, “(Alice didn’t go through the looking glass, more like a telescope)” (that appeared as a part of TV Guise description #6) was actually a hint to one of the other twelve TV Guise comedy descriptions. 

It was my mistake.

But, can you figure out which of the twelve other comedies that parenthetical note is a hint for?

My apologies to Ecoarchitect and to all Puzzlerian!s for my blunder.

MENU

Verbal Vibrato At A Venue Slice:

Percuss, paradiddle, pick, pluck, plink (or otherwise play)

Name a verb for what some performers at a famous music venue do to their instruments. 

Rearrange the letters of this verb to spell a German word you might know.

Rearrange the letters of the first word in the name of the venue to spell a German word associated with the first German word. 

What are this verb, venue and two associated German words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Scott Slices:

Great Scott! A “Skydiversion!”

Will Shortz’s March 7th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mark Scott, of Seattle, Washington, reads:

Think of a country with a one-word name. You can rearrange its letters to identify a member of one of our country’s armed forces. Who is that, and what’s the country?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Scott Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first name of an actor surnamed Williams and the surname of a singer named Kitty. 

Rearrange these ten combined letters to spell one of our country’s famous thoroughfares. 

Now take a two-word term for an “aggregation of buyers and sellers of shares,” in five and six letters, that is associated with that thoroughfare. Change the second word in that term to a four-letter synonym if itself. Rearrange these nine combined letters to spell the first name and surname of a puzzle-maker. 

Who is this puzzlemaker?

What is the country?

ENTREE #2

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can add an “i” and rearrange the resulting nine letters to name a petty officer on a merchant ship having charge of hull
maintenance and related work.

What is the county? 

Who is the officer?

Bonus Hint: An abbreviated version of the officer is an anagram of “bonus.”

ENTREE #3

Take a word for American infantrymen especially during World War I which were also advertising mascots for a Minneapolis-based company that was one of the world’s largest producers of grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought by General Mills in 2001. 

This company might ___ many a ___ from local pork-producing farmers who might also “bust” ___ with a plow to cultivate grain the company may also purchase. The letters in those blanks (three letters in each blank) can be rearranged to spell the word for the infantrymen/mascots.

What is this word?

What are the three words in the blanks?

What is the Minneapolis-based company?

ENTREE #4

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its eight letters to identify a member of one of our country’s armed forces. 

If instead you remove one letter from the country’s name you will spell a common surname – that is, a common-noun surname as opposed to a proper-noun surname.

What’s the country?

Who’s the member of the armed forces?

What is the common-noun surname?

ENTREE #5

Think of a country with a one-word name. You can rearrange its letters to spell two nouns that apply to men:

1. a 3-letter synonym of  “rake,” and

2. a 4-letter synonym of  “snake.”

What’s the country?

What are the two synonyms?

ENTREE #6

Think of a country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its final three letters to spell a body part.

You can spell its first four letters backward to get an automobile part.

Take a five-letter synonym of  “delicacy, kickshaw, tidbit
and treat.” Place it in front of the body part (without a space), followed by the auto part.

The result is a brand name of the auto part.

What’s this country?

What are the body part and auto part?

What is the five-letter synonym and auto-part brand name?

Hint: The five-letter synonym, if repeated, is the title of a song associated with Frankie Lymon. 

ENTREE #7

Think of the new name of a recently renamed African country with a one-word name. 

You can rearrange its letters to spell a kind of 4-letter alcoholic beverage and a 4-word Italian city that is home to a 2-word sweet sparkling white variety of this beverage. 

What’s the country?

What are the beverage and the city that is home to a variety of the beverage?

Hint: The eight letters in the second word of the variety of the beverage can be rearranged to form the two words that describe either this song or that song.

ENTREE #8

Think of a celestial body that orbits the sun, the name of an Earth orbiter since 1962, and the name of a card game played with 32 cards. 

Rearrange the combined letters to name a puzzle-maker and the city where this puzzle-maker lives.  

Who is it? 

Dessert Menu 

No Phone No Lights No Motor Car Dessert:

Telecommunication & Mini-critters

Name a man associated with telecommunications whose first name is a small creature and surname sounds like a similar small creature. 

Who is this man?

Hint: The man is also associated with “Gilligan's Island.”

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.