“Lake Verput? Nein, es ist Kaputt!” Creature comfort? No, necessity! Broadcasting “The Sting”; Behind bathroom doors, under the hood; “Miasma has ‘mushroomed’ my asthma!” What’s My Line?”

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Lake Verput? Nein, es ist Kaputt!”

An American geographer gave a name that sounds vaguely Native American to a geographically significant U.S. lake. 

His second choice for its name might have been “Lake Verput,” which sounds vaguely German. 

But the given name is actually formed from Latin words. 

And so, the name “Lake Verput” now languishes on the “cutting room floor” of U.S. history. 

What is this significant U.S. lake?

Appetizer Menu

Word Search Appetizer:

“What’s My Line?”

Hidden in the following narrative are nineteen terms associated with one particular profession, and those who practice it. 

Your mission, as a puzzle solver, is to find them. Some are more hidden than others.

Here is the breakdown on how many letters each of the nineteen terms contains:

four terms have 9 letters, one has 8 letters, four have 6 letters, two have 5
letters, five have 4 letters, two have 3 letters, and one has 2 letters.

One of the 9-letter terms contains two words.

One of the four-letter terms is a Norse deity associated with the protection of humankind
(which is relevant to the profession).

Both 3-letter terms are uppercase acronyms, like FBI, GOP or GNP, for example. One is a device that renders infrared radiation as visible light; the other is a professional person you might find in a speeding vehicle.

Good searching!

One April day in 2021, a “neat freak” named Larry Granger from Ocala, Florida was up in his attic, doing some spring cleaning. Just
as he was spraying some germicidal-mat-ionizer on some fungi-infested bathroom mats, he got a text on his phone....

Larry, a longtime aficionado of Donny, Marie and their siblings, had just received some great news. After auditioning, he had been chosen to star in the lead role of Jubal A. Clavan in the new community-theater musical, “Liars in paradise.” This honor likely came about due to his song-and-dance chops and charisma (as best Osmond Brothers imitators are wont to exude). 

Larry felt like a college quarterback drafted in the first round of the National Football League Draft! He also felt some trepidation, however, due to a problem that had recently been plaguing him – age-related bladder issues! So he was not sure about taking the role, as he was worried about making frequent “pit stops” to the “comfort station.” Also, there was a rival venue in Hawthorne, 30 miles up the road from Ocala, producing a similar play which would open on the same weekend as his own production.  

Larry pondered these issues on his way to the first rehearsal at the county Fine Artists Center in downtown Ocala. 

His pondering was interrupted by a scraping sound coming from  the front right of his car.  After a tow, and upon further inspection, a mechanic found  a broken axle. Later they determined  a metal spike had kicked up from the road and ruined the axle. 

But the worst part was that after the breakdown Larry learned he had been exposed to the radioactive material Strontium 27, a vestige left over from the cold war that somehow had been stored in his home. Had Larry known, he might have donned a mask... but unfortunately, no. When push came to shove, Larry decided he would need to regroup his approach and hire an attorney to deal with all the fallout. At this point, Larry felt he was  not getting any love from his circumstance, so he called Ethel Methridge, a highly recommended lawyer on the Atlantic Coast who said they could meet over lunch.

So Larry hired Uber to drive him from Ocala 80 miles eastward. There, he and Ms. Methridge (who also “judged” balls and strikes as a top umpire in Florida's Grapefruit League) rendezvoused at a Daytona Beach Shores Ponderosa Steakhouse.

And that is how Larry won the part in the play!

MENU

“Gentlemen, start your Jacuzzis!” Hors d’Oeuvre:

Behind bathroom doors, under the hood

Name something you might have in your laundry room, in two words. 

Remove the last two letters. Spoonerize the
result to get what sounds like something you might have under the hood of your car, also in two words. 

What are these four words? 

Entrepreneurial Slice:

Broadcasting and “the sting”

You have been hired to head a plum project at a prestigious broadcasting corporation, so you have been doing your entrepreneurial homework in preparation.

Take a four-word idiom that means to “begin a task at full speed without missing a beat, primed, prepared, confident, and fearing no failure.” 

Anagram this idiom’s combined letters, though, to spell when you just might get stung! 

What is this idiom? 

When might you get stung?

Riffing Off Shortz And Springhorn Slices:

“Miasma has ‘mushroomed’ my asthma!”

Will Shortz’s September 27th NPR Weekend
Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mary Springhorn of Bellingham, Washington, reads:

Think of a noun in six letters. It sounds like a two-word phrase (2,6). And the thing named by the noun can have a seriously bad effect on what's named by the phrase. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Springhorn Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Think of a puzzle-maker in fourteen letters. Double one of the consonants.

Rearrange these fifteen letters to spell the four missing words below, in three, four, four and four letters:

“The peg-legged pirate captain, with a ___ or two, bounced on over to his crew and barked, ‘Avast, me mateys! ____ me a chantey, not a damn ____! ____!’ ”

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the four missing words?

Note: Entrees #2 and #3 are terrific riffs written by and gifted to Puzzleria! by our gifted friend Greg VanMechelen, whose "Econfusions" feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #2

Think of the last name of a certain politician in seven letters. 

It sounds like a two-word phrase
(4,5). This phrase describes something genuine, which many politicians are not. 

Who is the politician and what is the phrase?

ENTREE #3

Think of the hyphenated last name that a certain artist was best known by (8-7). It sounds like a four-word phrase (3,5,3,4) with which a judge might admonish an attorney who is exploring a sloppy legal theory. 

The phrase is not well-known, a Google search yields only 4 occurrences, but the artist is well-known.  

Who is the artist and what is the phrase?

ENTREE #4

Think of a noun in six letters and three syllables. If you accent the second instead of the first syllable it sounds like a two-word phrase (2,5) consisting of an article and proper noun. 

And the thing named by this two-word phrase is one of thousands of miniature figures (including “lions and horses and elephants, oh my!”) in a collection at an Ohio museum. A local dentist hand-crafted these figures using the “tools of his trade.”

What are this noun and two-word phrase?

ENTREE #5

Think of a noun in six letters that means “a usually prejudiced ill will.” 

Add a space to form a two-word description of a past radio personality and television host. (For example, one might describe Sasha or Malia as “an Obama,” or describe Barron or Tiffany as “a Trump.”) 

Some critics accused the radio/TV personality of occasionally evincing the six-letter noun over the airwaves.

What is this noun?

Who is the personality?  

ENTREE #6

Think of a noun in six letters. 

If you replace each short vowel sound in the noun with a different short vowel sound, the result sounds like a two-word term (4,3). 

Both this noun and the two-word term were items with which infantry soldiers were equipped during the American Civil War.

What are this noun and two-word term?

Hint: Remove one of the double-letters and the space from the two-word term. Switch the first two letters with the fourth and fifth letters to spell a synonym of “destiny.” 

ENTREE #7

Think of an adjective in five letters that clearly sounds like two words (5,2). The first word is a synonym of “unchaste”; the second word is “energy working to satisfy basic human urges, needs,
and desires” that the coiner of this short word characterized as a “cauldron of seething excitations.”

What is this adjective?

What are the synonym of “unchaste” and the “cauldron of seething excitations?”

ENTREE #8

Over the years, Rose, a madam at a popular bordello, had acquired a number of regular male clients. The word among her employees was, “The more of Rose’s johns one titillates, the more money one makes!”

Convert the phrase “Rose’s johns one titillates” into a four-word, five-syllable paraphrase containing 3, 3, 3 and 6 letters.

That paraphrase (if you stress the 1st and 3rd syllables instead of the 2nd and 4th) sounds like a 13-letter synonym of “interpretative.” 

What is the four-word paraphrase?

What is the synonym of “interpretative?”  

ENTREE #9

Think of a plural noun associated with global finance, in five syllables and 14 letters. If you shorten the vowel sound in its final syllable, it sounds like a two-word phrase
(4,11) for, for example, nightmares you’ve had, spelling bees you’ve won or solar eclipses you’ve witnessed. 

What are this plural noun and two-word phrase?

ENTREE #10

Native New Englander Paddy O'Mally owns a pooch named Shamrock, for whom he displays unfettered enthusiasm. The first word of Shamrock’s two-word breed is the city where Paddy and Shamrock live.

Take a possessive pronoun that refers to Paddy, followed by the second word in the breed (as Paddy would pronounce it and as Shamrock might “bahk” it) to form an 8-letter 4-syllable word for what Paddy’s unfettered enthusiasm for Shamrock might border on.
(And no, Shamrock is not a Border Collie!)

Where do Shamrock and Paddy live? 

What  are the pronoun that refers to Paddy and the second word in Shamrock’s two-word breed?

What might Paddy’s unfettered enthusiasm for Shamrock border on? 

ENTREE #11

“Nestled beneath twenty mattresses and twenty eider-down futons atop those mattresses, _____ _ ___ lay, the handiwork of the queen.”

A “sleeping beauty” perched atop this “boudoir-bed-of-biblical-proportions” was a
princess who was being tested.

The good news was that she passed the test.

The bad news was that she subsequently required physical _______!

The words in the first three blanks sound like the word in the fourth blank.

What are the words in the first three blanks (5,1,3) and the word in the fourth blank (7)?

Dessert Menu

Command, Then Performance Dessert:

Creature comfort? No, necessity!

Remove two middle letters from something creatures need. The remaining letters spell creatures that respond to a three-letter command from a human creature. 

Reverse the order of the two letters you removed. This reversed letter-pair, when it appears at the end of words, usually sounds like the three-letter command to which the creatures respond. 

What do living creatures need? 

What are the creatures that respond to a three-letter direction from a human creature?

What is the three-letter direction?   

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.