Acting School, hot spot, silent strolling, Billboard board game; Choo choos and chew toys? Transatlantic translation toughie; Side-by-side-by-homicide? McMuffins, McGriddles, Synonym Rolls; Dan “the Mandarin Orange” Marino

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

McMuffins, McGriddles, Synonym Rolls

You’re taking a road trip with family or friends. You and your passengers get a bit peckish. 

You stop by at a roadside purveyor of fast food and order entrees and side orders.

Take these two words – the entrees and side orders. Let A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. 

Replace the first two letters of the side orders with the letter that is half their sum to form a new word. 

This word and the entrees are synonyms.

What are these entrees, side orders and synonyms?

Appetizer Menu

Four Bolts Of Befuddlement Appetizer:

Acting school, hot spot, silent strolling, Billboard board game

“Acting school”

1. 🎥Name a famous actor, first and last names, each with five letters. 

Remove three letters from the first name. Rearrange everything else and you’ll name something many people study in school. 

Who’s the actor? 

What’s the subject?

Hot Spot + Surname = Song

2. 🌍Name a European hot spot in six letters, followed by the first name of an actor whose surname is a legendary creature. 

If you say these words aloud, it will sound like
the title of a famous mid-20th century song that’s an American standard.

What are the hot spot and the surname?

What is the song title?

Hint: The singer who made the song popular had a world capital as a last name.

Walking amidst silence

3. 👢🥾Think of a word for an area where you sometimes walk, consisting mostly of silent letters. 

Rearrange only these silent letters to form a second word. 

Then take only the non-silent letters. Double the last one to form a third word. 

What are these three words?

Board Game becomes Billboard hit!

4. 🎜🎝Name a popular board game in nine letters. 

Drop the last letter. Then push the first letter forward five places in the alphabet (A = F, B = G, etc.) and push the sixth letter forward one place. You’ve named a 1960 Top-40 hit song. 

What’s the game? 

What’s the song?

MENU

Iron Horse Hors d’Oeuvre:

Choo choos and chew toys?

Name a part of a train. 

Switch two consecutive letters with two other consecutive letters. 

The result sounds like a household pet and a noun that often describes it. 

What are this train part, pet and noun?

Organisation Internationale Slice:

Transatlantic translation toughie

Name a two-word international organization. 

The first syllable of its first word is a French noun. The second syllable of the first word sounds like its English translation. 

The second word in the international organization is associated with that translated word. 

What is this organization?

Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:

Dan “the Mandarin Orange” Marino

Will Shortz’s October 15th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Reiss, who’s been a showrunner, writer, and producer for “The Simpsons,” reads:

Name a famous athlete, first and last names.
Interchange the initials of those names. Then add an appliance. The result, reading left to right, will name a fruit. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker, first and last names. Rearrange the combined letters to spell two words: an athlete and a vehicle, both which might be going downhill. 

The vehicle is a “big
rig.” If the athlete is an irresponsible stoner he is a “slope dope.” 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the words for the athlete and the vehicle?

ENTREE #2

Note: This riff, Entree #2, was composed by Plantsmith, whose “Garden of Puzzley Delights” appears regularly on Puzzleria!

Take the name of a famous athlete whose name contains an appliance. 

Change two consecutive consonants to one
different consonant to get a fruit.

Who is this athlete?

What is the fruit?

Hint: If  you instead change one consonant in the athlete’s surname to an “O”, the result is a two-word oxymoron. But you might argue that the result is also an alternative two-word name for a two-word fruit, the first word of which is the nickname of an athlete surnamed McNally.  

ENTREE #3

The first names of three singers – a crooner, a diva and a slide guitarist – reading left to right, will name a fruit. 

Five of the seven vowels in their collective surnames are the letter “o”. (For the diva, it was a temporary surname.)

Who are these three singers?

What is the fruit? 

ENTREE #4

Name a famous athlete, first and last names, and an adjective that descibes this athlete.

Anagram these combined 13 letters to spell...

* a pronoun for this athlete,

* a sport similar to the athlete’s sport, in which
non-human creatures participate, and

* the position this athlete played.

... or to spell...

* a below-par golf-hole score,

* synonym of “brownball,” and

* slippery substance used at the “Brickyard.”

Who is this athlete and what is  the adjective?

What are the pronoun, similar sport, and athlete’s position?

What are the golf-hole score, synonym of “brownball,” and slippery substance?

ENTREE #5

Take the full name of a famous composer.

Take the first 14 letters of the name. Rearrange them to spell:

* any item of food, especially a tasty dish,

* a corn-snack morsel that resembles a miniature cornucopia, and

* a verb whose object is often the word “appetite,” which means to “sharpen” one’s desire for food.

The 10th-through-13th letters of the composer spell a purple root vegetable eaten by humans.

The 15th-through-18th letters of the composer
spell an appliance.  

Who is this composer?

What are the tasty dish, corn-snack morsel, and verb meaning to “sharpen” one’s desire for food?

What are the purple root vegetable and appliance?

ENTREE #6

Take the surname of a long-serving U.S. senator from a state with the same number of letters in the surname – two of which are vowels that are in the same places as in the state (like Iowa and [Tom] Gola, for example).

Add to this surname the two letters in a pronoun that usually refers to an “inanimate object.” Rearrange the result to spell a fruit.

Add the same two letters to the fruit and rearrange to name an adjective with which all U.S. senators wish to be associated. 

 Who is this senator and what is the state?

What are the pronoun, fruit and adjective?

ENTREE #7

Name a seven-letter fruit. The middle five letters spell a word that appears about 100 times in a book that is often abbreviated using just two letters: the seventh letter of the fruit followed by its first letter. This five-letter word also appears about 170 times in a book that is often abbreviated by using the third letter of the fruit followed by its first letter.

The first four letters of the fruit spell a brand name product in powder-form that becomes a drink when you add water.

The last four letters of the fruit sound like a brand name product in powder-form that becomes a dessert when you add water and put it in the fridge.

The fruit can also be anagrammed into two words related to sports:

* an object toward which players in various games attempt to advance a ball or puck into

which it must go to score points, and

* the fabric that often encloses the sides and back of that object in games (such as soccer or hockey).

What are the fruit and the word that appears about 270 times in two abbreviated book titles?

What are the two brand names?

What are the two words related to sports?

ENTREE #8

The name of a past groundbreaking golfer, in three and five letters, contains four vowels, all “e’s”. 

Place the five-letter surname in front of the first name of a present-day but late-blooming Uber-driving driver-and-putter who played in the 2023 U.S. Open. The result spells a black or red drupe of the honeysuckle family.

Who are these two U.S. Open golfers?

What is the black or red drupe?

ENTREE #9

Say aloud the first and last names of a past Hall of Fame home-run slugger. The result sounds like two things that improper storage, over-aging, or contamination of beer might do.

Who is this slugger?

What might  improper storage, over-aging, or contamination of beer do?

ENTREE #10

A priest (ritualist) raises the chalice (cup) during the sacrament of Eucharist. Anagram the combined letters of the words in parentheses to spell a professional person, in 12 letters, who deals with hives and honey. 

Find a nine-letter synonym of this professional person that contains five “e’s”.

Remove what sounds like a piano part from
the middle of the synonym, leaving a six-letter noun that describes the cartoon Road Runner bird. The first four letters of the synonym sound like a part of that bird. 

What are the professional person and its synonym?

What are the six-letter noun that describes the cartoon Road Runner bird and the part of that bird?

ENTREE #11

Take a four-letter shorter word for a bushy ringed-tailed “black-masked” nocturnal carnivore and a four-letter word for the short erect tail of a hare. Rearrange these eight letters to spell a word for drupaceous fruits that sounds like the title of a Marx Brothers movie.

Replace the first letter of this plural word with an “L” and divide the result in half to form two synonyms of “cuckoo” or “loony.” 

What are this “black-masked” nocturnal carnivore and word for the short erect tail of a hare?

What are the drupaceous fruits?

What are the two synonyms of “cuckoo” or “loony?” 

ENTREE #12

Name a popular past radio personality and political commentator, in 12 letters and three syllables. 

Change an R to a B and an A to an O.

The first four letters spell a “miniature version” of a tree.

The next four letters spell a branch of a tree.

The last five letters spell another word for a branch of a tree. 

Who is this radio personality?

What are the three tree words?

ENTREE #13

Take the eight-letter surname of a past Hall of Fame baseball player from Puerto Rico. 

Insert a common preposition within the name to spell a “darling” nearly seedless citrus fruit.

Who is this Hall of Famer?

What is this citrus fruit?

Dessert Menu

Double-Letter-Score Dessert:

Side-by-side-by-homicide?

Place two violently hostile activities side-by-side, forming a double-letter where they meet (like the two “t’s” in “butter”). 

Replace the last letter of the result with a third copy of that double-letter to get a participant in the first activity.

What are these three words?

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.