Double-Billboards/All aboard the Mystery Train! Baseball, hot dogs, and Mama’s apple pie; Cast your “baited-bread” upon the waters; Spoonerism River Enigmatology; Brickbats and mortarboards; Two fruits of one’s Herculean labors

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Baseball, hot dogs, and Mama’s apple pie

Mike Mussina was a Yankee.

Charlie Hustle wore a Reds uniform.

Victor McLaglen won an Oscar.

Papa Denny Doherty was born in November.

What do eight words in those four sentences have in common?

Appetizer Menu

Record Tracks & Railroad Tracks Appetizer:

Double-Billboards/All aboard the Mystery Train!

Building a Billboard Top 5 Hit

1. 🏛🏠Name a singer who had a Billboard Top 5 hit in the 1960s. 

The first four letters of the singer’s first name spell the name of a type of building. 

The last four letters of the singer’s last name spell the name of a different type of building. 

Who is the singer? 

What are the two building types?

British subject, full of tea; British object, full of A,B,C... 

2. 🎸🥁Name a band from the 1960s who had one Billboard #1 hit, as well as some other hits. 

Anagram the second word in the band’s name, put the result before the first word in the band’s name, and eliminate the space. 

You’ll have a certain kind of British object that could contain the item mentioned in the band’s #1 hit. 

Who is the band? 

What is the British object? 

What is the band’s #1 song? 

Coupling the cars on a Mystery Train 

3. 🚅🚆🚄Name a well-known fictional television character in two words. 

#1.Take the second, third, and fifth letters of his last name and reverse the results. You’ll get MYSTERY ITEM #1. 

#2. Take the last letter of his first name and the first three letters of this last name. Anagram them. You’ll get MYSTERY ITEM #2. 

#3. Take the first three letters of his last name and anagram them. You’ll find an item that can be placed in MYSTERY ITEM #3. 

#4. Take the second, fourth, and sixth letters of his last name and anagram them. You’ll get a description of this character’s personality. This description is the opposite of a main property of MYSTERY ITEM #4.  Take the first two letters of the character’s first name and reverse them. You’ll have a common abbreviation for an item that belongs to the same category as MYSTERY ITEM #4.

COUPLING THE MYSTERIES: Think of an uncommon eleven-letter word signifying the act of forcing an asylum seeker to return to a country where he or she may be facing prosecution. Add an “S” and rearrange the letters to form a two-word phrase describing the mystery items. 

Who is the character? What is MYSTERY ITEM #1? What is MYSTERY ITEM #2? What is the anagram of the first three letters of his last name? What is MYSTERY ITEM #3? What is the description of the character’s personality? What is the item that belongs to the same category as MYSTERY ITEM #4? What is MYSTERY ITEM #4? What is the uncommon eleven letter word? What is the two word phrase describing the mystery items?

MENU

Bated-Breadth Slice:

Cast your “baited-bread” upon the waters

Replace four consecutive letters of a seven-letter verb with one letter to form a synonym of that verb. The replacement letter does not appear in the original verb.

Hint: The verbs are related to casting.

Riffing Off Shortz And Newnan Slices:

Brickbats and mortarboards

Will Shortz’s October 9th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Melissa DePaola of Newnan, Georgia, reads: 

Name two things that many houses are built with: “[blank] and [blank].” Drop the first letter of the first thing. Change the last two letters ofthe second thing to a “Y.” And you’ll name a popular TV show, “[blank] and [blank].” What show is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Newnan Slices read:

ENTREE #1

The combined 14 letters in each of the three trios of clues – I, II, and III, below – can be anagrammed to spell the name of a puzzle-maker. Who is it?

I. 

A memorable 18th-century Franciscan mission that means “Cottonwood (5 letters),” 

“Yon Italian city that has a lean, but not hungry, look” (4), and

The venue of a live 1970 album – Who was the artist? (5);

II. 

In the United Kingdom, the title given to a woman equivalent to the rank of knight (4), 

A Rough Collie loved by Jeff Miller (6), and

Straightman’s girlfriend on “Miss Stephon” (4);

(“Miss Stephon” is an anagram of the real title.) 

III. 

A fabulous fabulist (5), 

A fictional king tormented by his ambivalent tactile talent (5), and

A title character in a novel penned by Uri (4).

ENTREE #2:

Name two singular nouns that lazy little pigs use to build their houses. Write them in alphabetical order. Write the second noun twice: “[blank] [blank] [blank].” 

Replace the first two letters of the first blank with
two letters that rhyme with each other. Replace the first two letters of the second blank with a Roman numeral. Replace the first two letters of the third blank with two letters that equal 1,100 followed by one letter that equals $1,000. The result will be an anthropomorphic cartoon horse: “[blank] [blank] [blank].”

What two things do lazy little pigs use to build their houses?

Who is the anthropomorphic cartoon horse?

ENTREE #3

Name a seven-letter word for land redevelopment that addresses urban decay. Also name a eight-letter word for a package designed to reinvigorate the economy by boosting employment and spending. 

Put these two words in the following blanks: “[blank] and [blank].” 

Drop the last four letters of the first word. Change the last four letters of the second word to a the first two letters of a word for a serial arsonist. You’ll name a 1990s American animated television series, “[blank] and [blank],” starring a chihuahua dog and manx cat.

What is this television series?

What is the word for land redevelopment that addresses urban decay?

What is the word for a package designed to reinvigorate the economy?

Hints: The last four letters of the first word are an anagram of a word for a “sound, healthy, or prosperous state.”

The original last four letters of the second word, spelled in reverse, are: 

1) an anagram of a province of the Philippines, or 2) a garment similar to the lavalava which is worn especially by Melanesians, or 3) Hikaru Kato’s surname.

ENTREE #4

Rearrange the combined letters of a U.S. state and the Portugese spelling of a South American country to spell the name of the best director who never won a Best Director Oscar.

The first three letters of this director’s surname sound like a solid geometic figure. 

An elongated version of this geometric solid is called a “rectangular prism.” The last five letters of the director’s surname spell a concrete version of such a rectangular prism – one that is used in house-building.

What are the state and country?

Who is this director?

What is the solid geometic figure?

ENTREE #5

Name a steel reinforcer of concrete used in house construction, and a tool one might use to transport this steel material from place to place on the construction site. 

Drop the last
letter of the steel reinforcer, but do not touch the tool (unless you are willing to help out on the construction site!). The result will be the first names of two female country music icons.

What are this steel material and the transporting tool?

Who are the two country music icons?

Hint: Anagram the combined letters of the two female country music icon’s surnames to spell two words: 1) a tool used to monitor children’s well-being and behavior while they are alone in their room, 2) and the singular form of who might purchase such a tool.

ENTREE #6

Name words for two seven-letter materials used in house-building. Put them in alphabetical order. The third and fourth letters of each word form the first half of a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women and girls.

The first three letters of one the first material appear at the beginning of the surname of an
English poet. The first three letters of the second material appear at the beginning of the name of a landmark that the poet’s countrymen landed upon about 10 years before he was born.

The last four letters of the first material, followed by its third letter, spell the first name of ballplayers surnamed Moon and Bunker. The last four letters of the second material, followed by its third letter, spell the first name of famous people surnamed Allen and Hayes.

What are these two seven-letter materials?

What is the nonprofit organization?

What are the names of the English poet and landmark?

Who are the ballplayers surnamed Moon and Bunker and the famous people surnamed Allen and Hayes?

ENTREE #7

Name words for two materials that may be applied to houses at the end of the building process.

Insert one “L” somewhere within each word to form 1.) a word for a mournful expression or sorrowful song of regret, and 2.) the surname of a Russian who attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary where he read the “gospel” of Marx rather than of the “Gospel of Mark” and other Scriptures.

What are these two materials applied to houses?

What are the mournful expression and the  Russian surname?

ENTREE #8

Name an adjective that a Scottish native might use to describe either a polychromatic sunset, a prismatically dazzling rainbow, or kaleidoscopic autumnal trees. Then, name a river in Scotland.  

Insert these two words in the following blanks: “[blank] and [blank].” 

The result is the title of a film about two people whose middle names are “Elizabeth” and “Champion.”

What are this adjective and river?

ENTREE #9

Name a six-letter alternative to granite, equally durable, that may be used in building homes or multi-story urban structures. 

Name also a type of steel girder – with a cross-
section that resembles a capital letter – that often forms the framework of the larger urban structures.

Place that capital letter, followed by a hyphen, in front of the 4th, 6th, 2nd and 1st letters of the alternative to granite to form the name of the steel girder.

What are this alternative to granite and the steel girder?

Dessert Menu

Our Miss Brooks Robinson Dessert:

Spoonerism River Enigmatology

Take a word related to rivers. 

Put it in front of the name of a particular river. 

Spoonerize these two words – that is, switch their initial sounds – to spell a word for water in a form that is different from liquid river water. 

What is the word related to rivers?

What is the name of the particular river?

What is the word for water in a different form?

Forbidden Fruitcake Dessert:

Two fruits of one’s Herculean labors

Name a profession. 

Divide it in two to spell two words: 

🍎 a fruit, and 

🍍 a word for a variety of a second fruit that is closely related to that first fruit.

What is this profession?

What are the fruit and the variety of closely related fruit?

Hint: Both fruits are classified as an anagram of “people who are excessively or priggishly attentive to propriety or decorum.”

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.