Twenty Gritty Homony(m) Riffs; “There’s still life in this palette!” “You too can be a toucan mascot!” From “Superman” to “Uperman?” Deafening Forestry fireworks! Holy wedlocked wholly headlocked

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED 

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“There’s still life in this palette!”

The artist was just a tad dissatisfied with the still-life scene she was painting, so she decided to (blank) a (blank). 

The first blank contains a hyphenated word. The second blank contains two words. 

Both blanks contain the same letters in the same order. 

Fill in the blanks.

Appetizer Menu

Blankety-Blank Appetizer:

Twenty Gritty Homony(m) Riffs

I’ll give you a sentence with two different missing words, but the two missing words are
spelled the same.

1) When Jeff gets too tired to finish, he ____ some of the _____ to be raked for another day.

2) The jeweler likes to set out ____ of ____ in his display cases.

3) As the end of her shift at the Goodyear
Store approaches, Mary ____ of mounting _____.

4) The clumsy sailor dropped a ___ of cards on the ____.

5) Staring out over the water, Mary loved the ____ of rain falling into the ____.

6) Afraid he’d miss his ride, Sam kept a close
___ on his _____.

7) Accepting responsibility, Paula was ____ with having to pay her parking _____.

8) While _____ up in the county jail, Bill ____ a letter to his sweetheart every day .

9) To ____ his dog’s illness, Mike placed Spot’s pill in a _____.

10) The sound of the ____ was mesmerizing, causing Diane to lose her _____ of thought.

11) After taking a woodworking class, Jan ___ he’d been using his ____ improperly.

12) It took Sally 15 minutes to find a place to ____ near the dog _____.

13) When the ____ broke the string to his kite, Paul had to _____ the string up for another day.

14) In a good year, Jack’s farm can _____ enough ______ to feed hundreds.

15) To start a job search, Jill had to _____ working on her _____.

16) Because of a war _____ Sam _____ up
collecting a disability pension.

17) The old prospector ____ the way to the _____ mine.

18) When he heard a storm was _____, Larry made a point to ______all the windows.

19) The milliner loved her work and the way
_____ ______.

20) The editor was ____ with the ____ of Stephanie’s article.

MENU

Matrimony & Acrimony Hors d’Oeuvre:

Holy wedlocked, wholly headlocked

“You reap what you sow, you cheap ape!” yelled an upset and exasperated wife at her “worse half.”  

What five words in that red-lettered paragraph are associated obliquely with an anagram of “Thinner Sumo?” 

What is that anagram of “Thinner Sumo?”

Cacophonous Quatrain Slice:

Deafening Forestry fireworks

Tack a consonant onto the end of a tree,

Place a space someplace forming two words (but not three!)

The result will a raucous cacophony be! 

What's the name of this tree and its cacophony?

Riffing Off Shortz And Guy Slices:

“You too can be a toucan mascot!”

This week’s challenge comes from listener Curtis Guy, of Buffalo, N.Y. 

Will Shortz’s October 11th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Curtis Guy of Buffalo, New York, reads:

Name a certain breakfast cereal character. Remove the third, fifth, and sixth letters and read the result backward. You’ll get a word that describes this breakfast cereal character. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Guy Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a certain puzzle-maker, first and last names. Remove the fifth and sixth letters and read the result backward. Place the first letter of a short synonym of “all right” after the third letter of this result and last letter of the short synonym after the last letter of the result. 

The final result is a caption for either of the images pictured here.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the caption?

Note: Entree-Riffs #2-through-#7 were created by Nodd, author of “Nodd Ready for prime time.”

ENTREE #2

Name two breakfast cereal characters, in reverse alphabetical order. Change the third letter to an “i” and remove the first letter. 

Read the result backward to get the first word in the name of a third character, one associated with food products that are often used in preparing breakfast but are not cereals. 

What are these three characters?

ENTREE #3

Remove three letters from the name of a breakfast cereal character. 

Rearrange the remaining letters to get the first word in the name of a fast food company. Who is the character, and what is the fast food company?

ENTREE #4

Divide the name of a breakfast cereal character into two parts without rearranging. 

The first part is the last name of a well-known comedian. The second part is a food you might put on your breakfast cereal. 

What are the cereal character, the comedian, and the food you might put on your cereal?

ENTREE #5

Name a breakfast cereal character. Remove the next-to-last letter and add a copy of the second letter to the end of the name. Follow this with the name of a fast food character. You’ll get the brand name of a snack food. 

What are the cereal character, the fast food character, and the snack food?

ENTREE #6

Name a character featured in ads for a brand of snack foods. 

The letters in the second half of the character’s name can be rearranged to get two verbs that are synonyms. 

Who is the character, and what are the verbs?

ENTREE #7

Name a character featured in the ads for a brand of food products. Remove one letter and rearrange the others to get a produce item. 

The first part of the produce item contains, in order, the name of a different brand-name food. 

What are the character, the produce item, and the brand-name food?

ENTREE #8

Spell the name of a certain breakfast cereal character backward. 

Remove “a rag” from the result. What remains
is a kind of puzzle. 

Who is this character? What is the puzzle?

ENTREE #9

Place side-by-side in reverse alphabetical order the names of a pair of breakfast cereal
characters who pitch the same brand. 

Replace the “a” with an “i”. Spell the result backwards (for example, “puzzle” would become “elzzup”).

The final result is the surname of a fictional English nanny.

Who are this pair of breakfast cereal characters. 

Who is the fictional English nanny?

ENTREE #10

Spell the name of a certain breakfast cereal character in reverse. 

The first three letters of the result spell a creature likely never seen in the vehicle spelled by the next three letters of the result. 

The last three letters of the result, however, spell a homophone of a vehicle where this creature was very likely seen in during diluvian days.

Who is this character?

What is the creature? 

What are the two vehicles?

ENTREE #11

Spell the name of a certain breakfast cereal character in reverse order. Replace the last letter of the result with a duplicate of the  second letter of the result. 

Remove the third, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth letters of the result (which can be rearranged to spell a word that means “not abridged, curtailed, or expurgated.” The remaining letters spell a synonym of aqua vitae or John Barleycorn.

Who is this character?

What is the word that means “not abridged, curtailed, or expurgated?”

What is the synonym of “aqua vitae” or “John Barleycorn?”

ENTREE #12

Name a certain breakfast cereal character. Remove the third, sixth, ninth and tenth letters. You’ll get a vacation destination and spring-break haven in Mexico. 

What are this breakfast cereal character and Mexican vacation destination?

Hint: The four letters you removed are the only consonants in a six-letter word for what pastors do or a five-letter word for what birds do.

Dessert Menu

“Look, Up In The Sky!” Dessert:

 From “Superman” to  “uperman?”

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeves. 

Superman is famous for wearing an “S” on his chest. 

But explain how Superman, in his flight from the 1950s into the latter decades, lost his “S”.

Every Thursday 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.