Flip-180, weighty kin, Irish lass, Euro-city, UK slang, Attila in Italy! A food-and-vessel festival; Synonyms expressing themselves; “Cal-i-fornee, the San Francisco state!” “The Quad(ruplet) Cities?” One Dickens of a metro-mystery!

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

One Dickens of a metro-mystery!

A currently trending news story is “a tale of two cities... and one man.”

The last five letters of one of the cities can be rearranged to spell a word that explains how this man became a resident of that city: “He was _____.” 

The remaining letters of that city spell the first name of a second man whose surname is the same as the name of the other city. 

These two men share a rare distinction regarding their past professions. 

What are these two cities?

Who are the two men and what is their shared distinction? 

What is the missing word that describes how the man became a resident of the city? (“He was _____.”) 

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Septet Appetizer:

Flip-180, weighty kin, Irish lass, Euro-city, UK slang, Attila in Italy!

1. Think of a major European city in three syllables. Change the order of the syllables to
phonetically form a two-word slang expression common in the UK. What are this city and slang expression?

2. Think of a common four-word idiomatic phrase, “____ of the ____,” that means the current situation or state of affairs. Switch the first and last words to get another phrase that phonetically describes our fiftieth state. What are these two phrases?

3. Write a five-letter adverb in lower case letters. Change the second letter to the same as the third letter to spell a noun that might be found where the adverb indicates. Now rotate the second and third letters of this noun 180 degrees to spell an adjective that describes the opposite of where the second word will be found. What are these three words?

4. Name what Attila hoped to become by going to Italy, in two words. Spoonerize these words to spell a feat many baseball players hope to accomplish. What did Attila hope to become, and what is this baseball feat?

5. Think of a three-syllable noun that you might use to privately refer to an overweight relative. What is this noun?

6. Spoonerize the name of a well-known film critic. Switch the order of the two words to describe a fair-complexioned Irish girl.

7. Think of a major European city in nine letters. Rearrange them into three words to sarcastically describe someone who constantly frequents cocktail lounges.

MENU

Celebratory Hors d’Oeuvre:

A food-and-vessel festival

Name a multi-day seasonal festival in Europe.

Rearrange the letters in this name to spell two things you would see at this celebration: a food, and a vessel containing a beverage that complements that food.

What is this festival?

What are this vessel and food?

Commonality Of Capitals Slice:

“The Quad(ruplet) Cities?”

Put four U.S. capital cities in alphabetical order, followed by their locations. (“Boise, Idaho,” for instance, because Boise is situated in Idaho.)

In the second city, replace a pronoun with a state postal abbreviation to form a duplicate of the first city.

Change the third city to a duplicate of the first city by adding a consonant to the beginning, replacing a vowel with a different one, and inverting a consonant. 

After these revisions, all four capital cities, along with their locations, share one word in common. 

And two of the four share another word in common. 

What are are these four cities and the two commonly shared words?

Riffing Off Shortz And Sivakumar Slices:

“Cal-i-fornee, the San Francisco state!”

Will Shortz’s September 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Sid Sivakumar, who is one of the top crossword contributors for the New York Times, reads:

Name a major U.S. city in two words. Change the first letter of the first word and the next-to-last letter of the second word. Then rearrange all the letters to name the people who live in this city. What city is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Sivakumar Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker in two words. Change the third and fifth letters of his surname. Then rearrange all the letters in the name to name two Greek mythological figures. One is associated with gold; the other is a god of gardens and fertility. 

Who is this puzzle-maker? 

Who are the two Greek mythological figures?

Note: 

Entree #2 is a riff created by Ecoarchitect, whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Entree #3 is a riff created by Tortitude, whose “Tortie’s Slow but Sure Puzzles” feature also appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

“Pleasing” is perhaps the nicest “typewriter word,” a word that uses each finger once and only once on a standard keyboard.

But there are other nice “typewriter words” also, especially if you know your US
geography: 

🌆🏙 People from two US cities are typewriter words. 

🙎 A single person from one US city is a typewriter word. 

🌎Products named after one US city are a plural  typewriter word. 

What are the cities?

ENTREE #3

Name a two-word major American city that is located in a coastal state. 

Change the first letter to the one that is two letters before it in the alphabet (i.e., ROT24). Rearrange the letters to produce the name of an actor who was born in that city. The actor is known for starring in a twenty-first century sitcom that was set in a city that’s on the opposite coast.

What is the city? Who is the actor?

ENTREE #4

Name a major U.S. city in one word. Two consecutive letters in the city, in reverse, name a member of the U.S. armed forces. Replace these letters with a two-letter reviver of dead chrysanthemums. Rearrange the result to name any person who lives in this city. 

What city is it, and who lives there?

ENTREE #5

Name a major U.S. city in two words. Replace the first letter of the first word and the third and last letters of the second word. Then rearrange all these letters to name the people who live in
this city. What city is it?

Hint: The three replacement letters are the only consonants in the surname of an English poet and clergyman or in a word for any group of nine.

ENTREE #6

Name a major U.S. city (in two words and 11 letters) and a word for people who live in that city (in 12 letters). 

Remove the same seven letters from both words – letters that can be anagrammed to spell the oxymoronic phrase “sad grin.” 

Anagram the five remaining letters in the word for the city people to spell what church bells do. Change the long-i vowel sound in that word to a short-u sound to form a synonym of the dialectal noun that is an anagram of the four remaining letters in the word for the city.

What is the city and word for people in that city? 

What do church bells do? 

What are the dialectal synonym and the anagram of the four letters? 

ENTREE #7

Name a major U.S. city, in two words, that contains ten letters. 

Transpose the words. Remove the space. 

Replace two consecutive letters of this result with a single letter. (The two consecutive letters are the first and third letters of a nearly half-century-old late-night television show abbreviation; the single letter is the second letter in that abbreviation.) 

The result is the name of people who live in this U.S. city. What city is it, and what are its residents called?

ENTREE #8

Name a major U.S. city that is a college town (in two words and 11 letters) and a word for people who live in that city (in 10 letters). Remove the same seven letters from both words. These letters can be rearranged to spell an “auditory crop” and the name of the Roman god that is essential to its growth. 

The three remaining letters in the 10-letter word, spelled forward or backward, are the title of a novel by a Russian author. 

The four remaining letters in the college town can be rearranged to spell the brand name for an insecticide with an advertising campaign for which the future Dr. Seuss (then known as Theodor Seuss Geisel) created artwork.

What are this U.S. city and the word for people who live there?

What are the novel title and name of the insecticide?

What is the “auditory crop” and the name of the Roman god that is essential to its growth?

ENTREE #9

Name a major U.S. city in two words and eight letters. 

Change the first letter of the second word to a new letter that is two places later in the alphabet to spell the name of a rock group. 

Forget the rock group but remember the new letter. Add it to the eight letters of the U.S. city.

Three of these nine letters spell a word for a strong desire or craving. 

Remove them. 

Rearrange the remaining letters to spell the name of any resident of this city.

What are this city and one of its residents?

What are the rock group and the word for the craving? 

ENTREE #10

Name  a U.S. city in two words. The last two letters of each word, if you put a hyphen between them, spell a four-letter hyphenated chiefly British interjection used to express farewell.

Bid “farewell” to this interjection. Replace it with a four-letter word for “intelligence, news, facts and data.” Anagram the result to spell the people who live in this city.

What city is it?

Who are the people who live in this city?

What are the interjection and the word for intelligence and news?

Hint: The city can be anagrammed to spell a two-word term for a subject about which Lilith Starr has written.

ENTREE #11

Name a major U.S. city in one nine-letter word, and the residents of this city, in two words and eight letters. 

Place an apostrophe, an “s” and a three-letter noun after the city, implying that the city is Internet-friendly. This 13-letter result is also the title of a popular literary work. 

Each of the eight letters in the term for the city’s residents also appears in the literary title.

Remove these eight letters from the title, leaving five letters that can be rearranged to spell out, if you place a space someplace, the year twenty-and-a-quarter centuries ago.

What are this city and residents of this city?

What is the title of the literary work?

What is the year twenty-and-a-quarter centuries ago?

Dessert Menu

Scrabble-Legal Sea-Worthy Dessert:

Synonyms expressing themselves

Place two synonymous nouns next to each other to form a nine-letter string made up of five different letters. 

Remove all vowels and two consonants, leaving a Scrabble-legal word for an expression of these synonyms.

What are these synonyms and the expression?

Hint: The letters you removed can be anagrammed to spell the name of a sea.

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.