A Chain Gang Challenge; Christmas Carols & Looney Tunes; Gold, Frankincense & Myrrhacles! Santa and his fey elfin toysmiths; Old World marriage generates a New World municipality

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Christmas Carols & Looney Tunes

Name a holiday food, in two words. 

Switch their initial letters and remove two letters from the end of one and three letters from the end of the other. What remains are the second words in the names of two Looney Tunes characters. What are this food and these characters?

Hint: The holiday food appears in the lyrics of a Christmas carol.

Appetizer Menu

Abraham-“Linkin’”-Chafee Appetizer:

A Chain Gang Challenge:

We can chain together the names of people when one person’s last name is the same as the next person’s first name.  

For example: 

Rich Little -

Little Richard - 

Richard Benjamin - 

Benjamin Franklin - 

Franklin Pierce - 

Pierce Brosnan.  

Can you find such a chain using the names of 10 different well-known persons?  

Hint: Jack Daniel, Daniel Pearl, and Taylor Swift.

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Global Slice:

Old World marriage generates a New World municipality

An Asian country “wedded” to what some big-city Europeans call their city, followed by a single letter, results in a New World city. 

What are this county, name that Europeans call their city, and New World city?

Riffing Off Shortz And Shteyman Slices:

Santa and his fey elfin toysmiths

Will Shortz’s December 12th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Michael Shteyman of Freeland, Maryland, reads:

Think of a major U.S. city in two words. Insert an L in the exact middle of the second word. Now read the first word forward and the second word backward, and you’ll name two things associated with this time of year. What are they?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Shteyman Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Remove two different vowels from the name of a puzzle-maker. 

Rearrange the remaining letters to spell a person who steers a sailing ship and what kind of ship it might be. 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are this sailing ship and sailor?

ENTREE #2

A number of royal Roman camel riders visited a Bethlehem manger at the dawn of the first millennium A.D. Using Roman numerals, double that number and place it before the five-letter word for those royal riders. 

The result is a seven-letter plural word for seafaring Scandinavian people who – at the dawn of the second millennium A.D. – raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe. 

About 40 years before the dawn of the third millennium A.D., that plural word became the name of a professional sports team in a state with a rich Scandinavian heritage.

Now think of a major U.S. city in two words. Place an L at the beginning the second word, then delete the middle letter of the result. Now read the first word forward and the second word backward, and you’ll name a synonym of “millennium” and a rallying cry shouted and sung by fans of the sports team.

What are the name of the sports team, the synonym of “millennium” and the rallying cry shouted and sung by fans of the sports team?

ENTREE #3

Think of a major U.S. city in one 10-letter word. Remove its last letter. Spell the result backward. ROT-2 the eighth letter. Interchange the seventh and ninth letters and ROT-11 both of them.

The result is defined as “supplies or funds furnished to a mining prospector on promise of a share in his discoveries” – a miner, for example, based in the above-mentioned major U.S. city. 

What city is this? 

What is the word for supplies or funds a miner might get?

ENTREE #4

Think of a major U.S. city in two words. Interchange the middle two letters of the second word. 

Remove the space and read the 11-letter result backward, and you’ll name a 5-letter creature that would not make a good ___ because it would be hard to ___. (The same 3-letter word belongs in both blanks.) 

Finally, ROT-7 the last three letters to spell the end of what the creature is loosely classified as: a shelled gastro___.

What city is this? 

What are the creature, the 3-letter word in the first two blanks, and the three-letter ending of the word that begins with “gastro-”?

ENTREE #5

Think of a major U.S. city in one word. Interchange the second and third letters. Replace the new third letter with an L. 

Now read the last three letters backward and the first four letters forward to name an energy drink brand. 

What are this city and energy drink brand?

ENTREE #6

Write a major one-word U.S. city in uppercase. 

Switch the order of the two letters in the exact middle. 

Rotate the  third letter in the result 90 degrees clockwise.

The result is a title of a 1970s disco ditty sung by people wearing costumes. 

What are the this city and disco title?

ENTREE #7

Think of a major U.S. city in two words. 

Place the last three letters of the first word after the first three letters of the second word to spell any one of four members of a rock group whose “Little Drummer Boy’s” surname sounds like what the Magi followed to reach Bethlehem. 

Take the remaining five letters, and replace the fourth letter with a duplicate of the third letter to spell one of the gifts of the Magi. 

What are this city, the member of the rock group, the surname of the drummer boy, and the gift of the Magi?

Dessert Menu

Evergreen Dessert:

Gold, Frankincense & Myrrhacles!

Name something – in seven letters beginning with a P – that a young child finds beneath the evergreen tree on Christmas. Then name someone – in five letters beginning with an S –who places it there.  

Place the S-word before the P-word and anagram each to spell – in words of five and seven letters beginning with S and R –what would have to be described as a Christmas miracle!

What does the child find under the tree, and who puts it there?

What is the Christmas miracle?

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.