Left with a right or wrong choice; Fidgeting with double digits; Compound periodic tableware; Rakes & brooms in break rooms; Moji, Dapo, Jane, Marcel & 13 A’s; Edward Bear, George Geef, Sidney

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Fidgeting with double digits

The numbers 8,191 and 32,810 share two digits in common, 8 and 1. 

What two names that are associated with two other common – and yet somewhat famous – digits do the numbers 8,191 and 32,810 suggest?

Hint

Appetizer Menu

UnConunDrumBeatable Appetizer:

Compound periodic tableware

1.🥁Name a six letter compound word of two and four letters. Swap the components to get
another compound word that changes the pronunciation and definition of the four-letter component.

2.🥁Name an element on the periodic table. Add a letter at the beginning. 

The result will describe a difficulty that scientists may have in communicating with the public.

3.🥁 To “table” an item is to save it for later. 

There is another word with a similar meaning, in nine letters, that can be arranged into two words — one, another piece of furniture, and the other, a part of the body.

What is this nine-letter word?

What are the piece of furniture and part of the body?

MENU

Horns Of A Moral Dilemma Hors d’Oeuvre:

Left with a right or wrong choice

A _____ did hard ____ after, given the choice between right and wrong, he ____ the path of a life of _____.

Spoonerize the words in the first two blanks to spell the words in the  last two blanks. 

What are these four words?

Fictitious Slice:

Moji, Dapo, Jane, Marcel & 13 A’s

Take five names associated with fiction and literature:

1. The informal name of an inmate in the television series “Orange Is the New Black” (3 letters),

2. Moji and Dapo’s sister (4 letters),

3. The surname of a character named Jane (4 letters),

4. The “cygnine-sounding” surname of a Marcel Proust character (5 letters), and...

5. The surname of an American satirist and author whose siblings were named Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia (6 letters).

Rearrange these 22 letters to spell, in four words, what many people worldwide will be engaged in late this coming Sunday.

What are these five names?

What will people be engaged in late this coming Sunday?

Riffing Off Shortz And Fogarty Slices:

Rakes & brooms in the break room

Will Shortz’s December 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Neville Fogarty of Newport News, Virgina, reads:

Think of an area found in many workplaces, in two words. Move the first letter of the first word to the start of the second word. Phonetically you’ll name two items that have a similar use — one of which might be used in the workplace. What place is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Fogarty Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Think of a puzzle-maker, in two words. 

From the surname, remove  two consecutive letters that spell a state postal abbreviation, leaving a number.

From the first name, remove three consecutive letters that spell a postal abbreviation and two non-consecutive letters that spell a state postal abbreviation. Multiply the values of the remaining letters. Round up the answer to the nearest tenth, forming a second number.

Divide the first number by the second number and round to the nearest tenth. Subtract that quotient from the divisor to get a whole number. 

What is this number?

Note: The following Christmas/New Year’s/Holiday riff was conjured up, composed and contributed by a quite clever friend and P&P&P! Fan (that is to say, a Packer&Panther&Puzzleria! Fan). This “terriffic” riff is intended to acknowledge the recent P-versus-P Christmas Eve game, both as a tip of the hat to “The Conductor” as well as a Greeting and Well-Wish to Puzzleria!ns everywhere: 

ENTREE #2 

Take the name of the two-word U.S. city known as “Titletown.” Remove “an abbreviated billion bytes.” The result sounds like:

a. Mr. Ed callin’ again

b. Someone The Left Banke would tell to just walk away

c. A subsequent anti vote

d. A Scot once again saying, “Don’t do it!”

e. Ms. Zellweger

f. The surname of the singer of “Navy Blue”

g. A cranberry kin whose activities are recounted in many a Friday chronicle

h. The first name of a philosopher whose surname sounds like a diurnal wain

What is this city known as Titletown?

What is “an abbreviated billion bytes?”

What are the eight sound-alike leftovers?

Note: Entrees #3 and #4 are the brainchildren of our friend Greg VanMechelen (aka “Ecoarchitect”), whose “Econfusions” feature appears regularly on Puzzleria!

ENTREE #3

Think of a well-known area found in very few workplaces, in two words. Move the first letter of the first word to replace the first letter of the second word. The result will be a famous construction, and what the builders were hoping to avoid. 

What place is this, what is the construction and what was trying to be avoided?

ENTREE #4 

Name a one-word place where people often work together.  

Remove a letter near the middle of the word and the result will be, in order, two groups of
people who often don't work together.  

What is the place, and who are the groups of people?

ENTREE #5

Think of a two-word area found in many workplaces, in ten letters. Replace the space with a hyphen. Invert the third letter. 

Delete the ninth letter. Replace the seventh and eighth letters with one of the two letters they straddle in the alphabet. Move the fourth, fifth and sixth letters to the beginning, reverse their order and place a space after them.

The result is a handheld brightly colored fluffy
ball flourished by cheerleaders for the Wisconsin Badgers, Arizona Cardinals, Alabama Crimson Tide and Stanford Cardinal.

What is this two-word area found in many workplaces?

What is the fluffy ball flourished by cheerleaders at Wisconsin, Arizona, Alabama and Stanford?

ENTREE #6

The college economics professor with a free third period retreated to the communal ________ ______. He was coming from a classroom where a ________ or two — or three or even four — opted to ______ back into their desks and daydream during his lecture. 

The weary and discouraged prof poured himself a mug of steaming, soothing _____ ___ from the pot,
then he himself opted to ______ down into one of the many available Barcaloungers in the room.

The words in the first two blanks name an area in the college. 

Rearrange the 14 letters in this area to spell the two words in the third and fourth blanks. And also rearrange these 14 letters to spell the three words in the fifth, sixth and seventh blanks.

What are these seven words in the blanks?

ENTREE #7

“During the bimonthly shareholders conference, held on December 15, 2023 in the _______ ____ of Puzzleria! Industries Inc., chairman of the board Lego Lambda made a motion to merge all corporate assets, activities and liabilities (especially liabilities!) with NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Inc., thereby, in effect, divesting all said assets, et cetera, of Puzzleria! Industries Inc. into the surviving corporation — namely, NPR Weekend Edition Sunday Inc. — by operation of law.”

Rearrange the combined eleven letters of two words in the above decree to spell the words that belong in the two blanks. 

What are the two words that you anagram?

What are the words in the two blanks?

Hint: The two words that you anagram begin with the same letter.

ENTREE #8

Think of an area found in many workplaces, in one word. Rearrange its letters to spell a caption for any one of the three images pictured here. 

What is this workplace area?

What is the caption?

ENTREE #9

Think of an area found in many workplaces, a place where employees meet, in two words.

Rearrange the combined fourteen letters in these words to spell the surname of a crooner, the surname of a pops conductor and pianist, and a noun for what 17th-Century French opera singer Julie d’Aubigny had once been due to an avocation she once pursued.

What is this workplace area?

Who are the crooner and pops conductor/pianist?

What is the avocation of opera singer Julie d’Aubigny? 

ENTREE #10

Think of areas found in many workplaces, in one plural word. 

Rearrange its letters to spell a three-letter acronym for a type of non-volatile memory used in computers, and a six-letter word for what that memory does to data.

What are these areas found in workplaces?

What is the three-letter acronym?

What is the six-letter word?

Dessert Menu

Minding Your P’s & Q’s Dessert:

Edward Bear, George Geef, Sidney

Place a hyphen between two adjacent letters of the alphabet, spelled-out. (P AND Q, for example, would be PEE-CUE.) 

Replace an interior letter of this result with the second adjacent letter, but not spelled out. The result is the birth name of a fictional character. Who is it?

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.