Arthur, King of the B-B-Britons; Coal, corncob, button, bucks; Capitals get their comeupperance Sally solves, Missy misreads; Please pass more cryptic crossword “cranberry” sauce!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week

Sally solves, Missy misreads

“Name a part of a vegetable and insert a letter to name how a chef may cook the vegetable.” 

Sally and Missy each find an answer to this puzzle. But they are different answers for how the chef may cook the veggie. 

Sally solves the puzzle correctly after reading it carefully. Missy misreads one letter in the puzzle’s text and thus gets a wrong answer. 

What are their answers?

Appetizer Menu

Twenty-Third Helping Appetizer:

Please pass more cryptic crossword “cranberry” sauce!

‘Tis the Thanksgiving Season. ‘Tis time also to be grateful for our great group of guest puzzle-makers who contribute their creativity to Puzzleria! 

One of the most prolific of these puzzle-makers is our master cryptic cruciverbalist
Patrick J. Berry, an Alabaman whose screen name is “cranberry.”

 This week we serve up Patrick’s twenty-third Cryptic Crossword on our “Puzzleria! Platter.” 

Here are links to his 22 previous Cryptic Crossword puzzles on Puzzleria:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

For those of you who may be new to cryptic crossword puzzles, Patrick has compiled a few basic cryptic crossword puzzle instructions regarding the Across and Down clues and their format:

The number in parentheses at the end of each clue tells how many letters are in the answer.

Multiple numbers in parentheses indicate how letters are distributed in multiple-word answers.

For example, (6) simply indicates a six-letter answer like “jalopy,” (5,3) indicates a five-and-three-letter answer like “cargo van,” and (5-5) indicates a five-and-five-letter hyphenated
answer like “Rolls-Royce.”

For further insight about how to decipher these numbered cryptic clues, see Patrick’s “Cryptic Crossword Tutorial” in this link to his November 17, 2017 cryptic crossword. 

The Tutorial appears below the grid that contains the answers in that edition of Puzzleria!

Thank you, Patrick... and thanks to all who contribute and have contributed puzzles to our blog.

So, now it is time to cross swords with our “Zorro of cryptic puzzledom.”

ACROSS

1. Knock media first off in column(8)

5. Hector’s girl back in high school(6)

9. One of Carole King’s records to hear(8)

10. I am so drunk after a little midmorning cocktail(6)

12. Certain viewers said to be savvy(7)

13. Shaky ground providing ultimate earthquake experience(7)

14. Musical act having limited success—about done with ’er, sadly(3-3,6)

17. A nice gift, our new toy(6,6)

22. Keep change put inside bag(7)

23. Money for tart hanging around rock star?(7)

24. Go back in restroom...(6)

25. ...being clean inside? Messy inside, outside of this(8)

26. The silent one who works at a bank?(6)

27. English Leather, sort of subtle(8)

DOWN

1. John looking for something to clean the place, claiming “lost hat”(8)

2. Dicky ate wrap with some tropical drink(3,5)

3. Dancing seniors, short of energy, embracing top Italian composer(7)

4. Western critter shot? No! That heartless
filmmaker!(12)

6. Princess’s death brought up after song(7)

7. A poet with nothing on?(6)

8. Follow suit, captivated by playwright(6)

11. When there’s change, but no tip?(7,5)

15. Eccentric fellow entering true to form(3-5)

16. Change ruse, oddly, to get in show(8)

18. Forget hard time in prison? That’s the spirit!(7)

19. Fancy picture to take home?(7)

20. Geezer scratching head about some animation with cat(6)

21. A friend with class and charm(6)

MENU

Honest Abe Fish Fin Slice:

Coal, corncob, button, bucks

Anagram a two-word term for button, coal or corncob to form a two-word term for five bucks.

What are these two two-word terms?

Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices:

Arthur, King of the B-B-Britons

Will Shortz’s November 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Peter Collins of Ann Arbor, Michigan, reads:

Name a famous TV actress of the past. Double her first name phonetically. You get the first name of a famous musician. If you put the last
names of the musician and the actress together, in that order, you’ll name a great legendary figure. Who is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Collins Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first name of a drummer who appeared in Genesis and the last name of an artist who whose artwork appears on Aretha and Yes album covers. 

Spoken together, these two names sound like two words:

1. something Jack Nicholson ofter appears in, and

2. a weapon he wielded in one of these things.

The first name of the artist and the last name
of the drummer form the name of a puzzle-maker.

Who are this drummer, artist and puzzle-maker?

ENTREE #2

Name a famous movie actress of the past. Her surname is the first name of a singer who once testified at a U.S. Senate hearing. 

The actress is known for playing the title character in a movie which marked the beginning of the entire “beach party film” genre, and which inspired a TV sequel starring a future best-leading-role-actress Oscar winner. 

The two vowels in this Oscar-winner’s
surname appear in the in the same order in the name of the character she portrayed as well as in the surname of the singer. If you remove them from the singer’s surname and insert an “a” within and at the end if the result, you will spell the first name of the famous movie actress of the past.

Who are this actress and singer?

Name the title character. What future Oscar winner portrayed this character on TV?

ENTREE #3

A famous 20th Century stage, movie and TV actress and a famous 19th Century stage actor share a surname.

That name is the middle name of a novelist, playwright and politician who lived during both of those centuries and summered and spent the winter of his years in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Add an “e” to the end of that name to spell the surname at birth of a 20th Century playwright and politician. 

Who are these four Americans?

ENTREE #4

Name an actor who performed  in two 1960s-70s-era TV series that each have a number in the title. The sum of these numbers is 78. Remove the last letter of his surname to spell the surname of an author.  

Now take the hyphenated nickname of a famous retired baseball player. 

Double the letter preceding the hyphen and place punctuation marks after each to form what precedes the surname of the above author on book covers. 

Change the last letter of the letters in the player’s nickname that follow the hyphen to spell the name of a character created by the author. 

The last name of another character this author created is a kind of bird, as is the first name of the actor.

Who are the actor and author? 

What is the baseball player’s nickname?

Who are the two characters? 

ENTREE #5

Name two actress who have the same first name and portrayed each other’s love interest in a 2015 movie. Double that first name and, phonetically, you’ll get the first part of a three-part professional name of a famous rapper and actor.

The second part of ther rapper’s name is associated with the last names of the two actresses.  

Who are these actresses and who is the rapper?

ENTREE #6

Take a mammal you might see on a safari or football field. Its first syllable sounds like a letter of the alphabet. Double it. 

The result, phonetically, is the first part of the
name of the longest-running band with an unchanged lineup in the history of popular music. The second syllable of the mammal is a synonym of the second part of the name of the band.

What are this mammal and band?

What are the synonyms?

ENTREE #7

Take the second word in the name of a well-known body of water. Double it and, phonetically, you’ll get the first two letters of a blues standard written and first recorded by vaudeville star Ma Rainey.

The first word in the name of the body of
water plus the remaining letters of the blues standard spell the two-word name of a character in a syndicated comic strip that ran during the days of FDR to LBJ.

What are this body of water and blues standard?

Who is the character in the syndicated comic strip?

ENTREE #8

Name a child TV actor who was a sitcom title character during the JFK administration.

Double his first name and, phonetically, you’ll
get the nickname of an actor who during the Ford-Carter era portrayed a teenage sitcom character when he was in his late 20s. (His nickname is the name of the character he portrayed.)

Inserting the surnames of the 20-something actor and the child actor, respectively, in the blanks below will result in a true statement.

“A ______ headed _____ from New Mexico will eventually enter Colorado.”

Who are these two actors"

ENTREE #9

Name a famous actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist of the past. Double her surname and, phonetically, you’ll get the first name of an actress who appeared in “Grease,” “Grease 2”  and the “Grease: Live” television special.

If you put the first name of the first actress in front of the last name of the second actress you’ll get, phonetically, what sounds like a river associated with Julius Caesar – a word that Merriam-Webster defines as “a bounding or limiting line, especially one that when crossed commits a person irrevocably.”

Who are these actresses?

What is the name of the river?

ENTREE #10

Name a character played by a TV actress of the past who appeared in a sitcom set in a town where everybody knows your name. 

Double her first name and, phonetically, you’ll get the first name of a second actress who appeared in a sitcom set in a saloon where everybody knows your name. 

The nickname of a politician sounds the same as the first name of this second actress. The surnames of the second actress and politician share the same first, second and eighth letters, and share a fourth letter in common. 

Who is this sitcom character?

Who are the second sitcom actress and politician?

Dessert Menu

edward estlin Dessert:

Capitals get their “comeupperance”

A gripe voiced by “CAPS-hating” typesetters,

That “Shortcomings have CAPITAL letters!”

   e.e.c. did displace

   Just by ________ his ____,

Thus _________ a man of _____ letters.

In the limerick above, fill in the four blanks with words of eight, four, nine, and five letters.

You won’t find the nine-letter word in any dictionary, but you will find its homophone there.

Hint: The initial letters of the four missing
words begin with the consonants in the plural word for one of the suits in a deck of cards. 

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.