“Love Tennyson, Anyone?” Leave Casino, see no cash! “Funnin’” turns to Fumin’?” “Great puzzle, Gratefully...?” Diana’s Dresser Drawers; Equine herds, caseous curds and other “spoony” words

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Love Tennyson, Anyone?”

Rearrange the combined letters of two numbers associated with tennis to spell a description of Margaret Thatcher. 

What are these numbers and description?

Appetizer Menu

Skydiversionary Appetizer:

Equine herds, caseous curds & other “spoony” words

“Horse Play”

1. 🐎Think of a famous American playwright. Spoonerize his name to indicate where one
might go in order to obtain something equestrian. 

“Adamant Edam?”

2. 🎥🧀Think of a famous movie actor who dominated a genre.

Spoonerize his name to describe a cheese that might be difficult to manage.

“Smiley Spoonerizing”

3. Think of a famous British actress who recently passed. 

Spoonerize her name to get a description of
her that in no way applies, but may make you smile a bit.

“Lascivious Spooning?”

4. Spoonerize the name of a famous British actor to describe someone who has a lascivious face....

Oh, and say the name of another famous male British actor to describe a group of male prostitutes.

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 Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Funnin’” turns to Fumin’?”

Name a two-word term for “make fun of.” Change an “o” to an “e”. 

Rearrange these five letters to name a possible reaction to being made fun of. Delete a letter from that reaction and rearrange to spell an even more intense reaction to being made fun of. 

What are these four words?

Rolling The Merchan“dice” Slice:

Diana’s Dresser Drawers

Purchases from a merchant are stored in Diana’s dresser drawers. 

Double a letter in the name of this merchant to name any resident of one particular U.S. state. 

Who are this merchant and resident? 

Riffing Off Shortz And Gori Entrees:

Leave Casino, see no cash!

Will Shortz’s November 30th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Al Gori ofCozy Lake, New Jersey, reads:

 Name a place where games are played. Move the last two letters to the beginning. Change the new last letter to an “h”. The result, sadly, is what you might have when you leave this place. 

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Gori Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first name of a wealthy “Fiddler on the Roof” butcher surnamed Wolf; the first name of a “Yankee” who became the namesake of a bear; and the surname of an “Enlightened father of liberalism.”

Rearrange these 14 letters to name a puzzle-maker and his hometown.

Who are this butcher, “Yankee” and “Enlightened father of liberalism?”

Who is the puzzle-maker? 

(Note: Entrees #2 through #7 are riffs created by Nodd, author of “Nodd ready for prime time.”)

ENTREE #2

Name a place where games, including baseball, are played. 

Remove the first letter and change the new second letter to an “E”. 

The result is a word some people associate with baseball. 

What are the place and the word?

ENTREE #3

Name a place where games are played. It may be inside or outside. 

Remove the first letter and read the result
backwards to get something you might hear at the place when games are being played there. 

What is the place and what might you hear?

ENTREE #4

Name a famous two-word place where games are played. 

Rearrange the first word to get what a participant might be after a game at this place.
Rearrange the second word to get what might cause the participant to be this way. 

What is the place, and what are the two words?

ENTREE #5

Name a past venue for games and other events. 

Consecutive letters in the name spell a career-ending event that might occur at this place. Remove those letters and replace one of the remaining letters with an “S”. 

Rearrange to spell something you might use to play games at home. 

What are the place, the event, and the thing you might use at home?

ENTREE #6

Name a place where various games are played. 

The word for this place is also the last name of
a competitor who won a record number of major titles in a sport played in this place. 

What is the place and who is the competitor?

ENTREE #7

Name some places where games and other competitions are held. 

Change the first letter and rearrange to spell the name of a team that plays at these places. What are the places and the team?

(Note: Entree #8 is a riff created by Plantsmith, author of “Garden of Puzzley Delights.”)

ENTREE #8

Take a place where games are played. Replace the last three letters with an adjective describing a fermented milk product. 

The result sounds like a game that might be played in this place.

What are this gaming place, game that might be played there, and adjective describing the fermented milk product?

ENTREE #9

Delete the first two letters of a place where games were played, beginning in the mid
1960s. Move the new first two letters to the end, with a duplicate of the original last letter between them. 

The result is a “mile-measurer.”

What are this place and this “mile-measurer?”

ENTREE #10

Name a two-word place where games are played. Rearrange its dozen letters to spell one of many a crackling roaring pregame bonfire pitched by sports fans in the parking lot of this place. 

What is this place?

What is one of many a crackling roaring pregame bonfire?

Dessert Menu

What The Puzzle Answer Might’ve Said Dessert:

“Great puzzle, Gratefully...?”

The name of the poet who is the answer to this puzzle can be anagrammed to spell what he might say to the author of this puzzle. Who is this poet and what might he say to the author of the puzzle?

Hint: The poet, alas, is deceased. So, he would not be able to say anything to the puzzle’s author. But what might the poet say if  he were still living? 

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 Thursday.

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.

3-Factorial Gordian-Knotty Enigmas; Cardiac Stress Fracture! “Was Millie a Meeter of Senta?” "Stir up some soup on the spur of the moment" “Gamboling, in love?”... or “Gambling on love?” Diplomas, degrees & deep pockets

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Cardiac Stress-fracture?

“Sal’s dear sister’s heart, alas, is rather stressed.”

What somewhat unusual property does that sentence (above, in red and blue) possess?

Note: This week’s Appetizers are the creative contributions of a valued friend of Puzzleria! who doubles as a justifiably vaunted puzzle-maker. 

Appetizer Menu

Appealing Pleasant Appetizers:

3-Factorial Gordian-Knotty Enigmas

A Substantial Subject Matter

1. 🧠Take a word for substance or subject. 

Change one letter to get a word for the environment in which a substance or subject can be evaluated and understood. 

What are those two words? 

An All-thumbs Author?

2. 👍👎In the novella “The Misadventure of the Keys,” the protagonist was to embark on an “ambitious” quest. 

However, a drafting error made the quest sound cryptic and mysterious. 

The author erred by striking adjacent keys for two consecutive letters on a standard keyboard, changing a “key” descriptive word for the adventure. 

What word did the author inadvertently substitute for “ambitious,” and how did that occur? 

Interjection Rejection

3. 🗺Name a country. Remove an interjection
and the space created by the removal. 

The result is the name of another country. 

What are the two countries? 

“Two’s company, three’s too LOUD!”

4. 🗽name a well known American company. The first three letters of the name, reversed, equal the last letter of the name. 

What is the company name?

(Note: The following is a riff of the October 12, 2025, NPR Challenge.)  

Messing with Endings of “Leading” Maintains its Sense

5. 👦Think of a word that means leading. 

Remove two letters at the end to make a term that means leading. 

Then change the letter at the end of the term to make a word that means leading. 

What words and term are these? 

Unsportsmanlike Conduct Penalty Puzzle

6. 👙Think of a two-word term (sometimes hyphenated, sometimes not) for an unsportsmanlike activity that is related to current sports news. 

Take the 12 letters in that term, and arrange them to describe a loss of part of the beachwear which is the subject of the October 23, 2025, Puzzleria! Schpuzzle. 

Then arrange those letters to get an unpleasant loss that could be associated with the unsportsmanlike activity or a pleasant loss experienced by a successful dieter). 

What are the activity, the description, and the losses? 

MENU

How Our Body Parts Measure Up Hors d’Oeuvre:

“Was Millie a Meeter of Senta?”

Name a four-letter body part with its letters in alphabetical order (like the three-letter body part “hip,” for example). 

Arrange the letters in this four-letter body part to spell a unit of length. 

Name another four-letter “alphabetically ordered” body part that can be arranged to spell a unit of length.

Wooing Or Wagering Slice:

Gamboling, in love... or gambling on love?

Madison Avenue envisions young couples – hand-in-hand, heart-and-heart – gamboling across glistening groomed grass, embracing within the embrace of a bracing breeze, and setting sail upon a lifelong journey together.

What plural two-word synonym of  “glistening groomed grass” – if you change an “a” to an “e” – is a one-word anagram of such couples?

Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Entrees:

“Stir up some soup in the spur of the moment”

Will Shortz’s November 23rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Greg VanMechelen of Berkeley, California, reads:

Name some equipment an equestrian might use. Remove the second, third and fourth letters, and reverse those that remain. The result will be some more equipment an equestrian might use. What things are these?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And VanMechelen Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Write down the name of a puzzle-maker in 4 blanks  _ _ _ _, followed by 11 blanks _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . Number them 1 through 15.

~ Blanks 6, 7, 4, 12 and 13 spell the second word in the nickname (“Wisconsin _ _ _ _ _”) of a Civil War-era nurse who organized relief for Wisconsin soldiers and their children during and after the Civil War.

~ Blanks 1, 9, 2, 8, 6 and 15 spell the ethnic heritage of many Wisconsinites, especially ofearly settlers in Milwaukee. 

~ Blanks 6, 7, 4, 13, 3 and 2 spell a common Wisconsin summertime sight along the shores of lakes and rivers.

~ Blanks 4, 6, 15, and 1 followed by 4, 2, 14, 12 and 15 spell a collective name for Green Bay Packer fans.

~ Blanks 10, 11, 9, 14, 5, 12 and 2 spell the surname of an American author who made a brief cameo appearance in the 1968 film adaptation of his short story “The Swimmer,” which is set in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the nickname, ethnic heritage, summertime sight, collective name for Green Bay Packer fans, and American author?

(Note: Appetizers #2 through #7 were created by Nodd, riffmeister-extraordinaire and author of “Nodd ready for prime time” on Puzzleria!)

ENTREE #2

Name something an equestrian might wear. 

Remove four letters and rearrange the
remaining letters to get something else an equestrian might wear. 

What things are these?

ENTREE #3

Name some equipment an equestrian might use. Between the first and second letters, insert the singular form of a brand of sneakers. The result will be something a horse might do unexpectedly because of perceived danger. What things are these?

ENTREE #4

Name some equipment an equestrian might use and remove the next-to-last  letter. 

Add, without a space, someone associated
with equestrianism. The result will name someone who might, in a while, be feeling “reined in.” 

What is the equipment and who are the two persons?

ENTREE #5

Think of a word for an event at which you might see a person referred to in the preceding Entree, #4. 

Change one letter of this word to name a piece of equipment you might use with horses. What are the event and the equipment?

ENTREE #6

Take the combined letters of two types of a piece of equestrian equipment. 

Remove one letter and change another to the letter two places later in the alphabet. Rearrange the resulting letters to spell a word for what you might hear around horses and the name of a horse ridden in the movies by actors such as John Wayne and Gregory Peck. 

What are the two types of equipment, the word for what you might hear around horses, and the name of the movie horse?

ENTREE #7

Think of a word for a kind of horse, a word for something racehorse breeders are concerned with, and a word for a piece of equipment that
may be attached to a horse collar, with the last letter removed. 

The resulting letters, in order and with one space inserted, spell the stage name of an actress who rode a horse in several movies. 

What are the three words and who is the actress?

ENTREE #8

Name two tools mountain climbers use, in seven and five letters. Add a pair of “e’s” into the mix. 

Rearrange the result to spell an afternoon snack you might enjoy and a musical, dramatic or cinematic performance where you might  enjoy it.

What are these tools?

What are the snack and where you might  enjoy it?

ENTREE #9

Name an eight-letter piece of equipment a lumberjack might use. 

Rearrange the letters to name the site of miracle that involved a mother’s hope and her son’s compliance. 

What is this equipment?

What is the miracle site?

What was the mother’s hope?

How did her son comply?

ENTREE #10

Take a two-word term for an “albacore, yellowfin, bluefin, bigeye and skipjack fanatic.” 

Move the space between the two words one place to the left. Spell the result backwards to
get a two-word term for an “albacore, yellowfin, bluefin, bigeye and skipjack fanatic.”

What are these two two-word terms for an “albacore, yellowfin, bluefin, bigeye and skipjack fanatic”?

Dessert Menu

Well-To-Do Dessert:

Diplomas, degrees & deep pockets

Spell in reverse a word for folks with diplomas and degrees. Insert a space someplace. The result sounds like a two-word description of rich people... many who are rich solely because they possess diplomas or degrees. What is this word for folks who have diplomas or degrees?

What are the two words that describe these folks?

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 Thursday.

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.

Classic Juvenile Lit I & II; Animation in an Amemone; Mangoes and Melons in the Mail? Two-Tool-Toodle-Loo! Alpaca, Arabian, Bactrian, Guanaco... Vicuna! Amateurs versus Prose; "Puzzley fuzzy but was he buzzy?" "Kalamari Hari Kiri Arms Mars! Knives slice, forks stab, spoons stir! "Hail Morpheus, King of Things Amorphous "

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe² SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Amateurs versus Prose?

Remove the space between words perhaps seen on a banner in the bleachers of an American Conference college football game. 

The result is the name that two literary characters share in common – one in the works of Shakespeare, the other in the works of Dante. 

What are the words on the banner? 

What is the common name of the two characters that Shakespeare and Dante wrote about? 

Appetizer Menu

Slow But EspeSHELLy Sure Appetizer:

Classic Juvenile Lit I & II; Mangoes and Melons in the Mail? Two-Tool-Toodle-Loo! Animation in an Anemone; Alpaca, Arabian, Bactrian, Guanaco... Vicuna!

Classic Juvenile Lit I

1. 📖Name a character mentioned in a title of a classic children’s book. 

Duplicate three of the letters and rearrange the letters to produce the first and last names of a famous children’s book author. 

Who are the character and the author?

Classic Juvenile Lit II

2. 🎥Name a writer who wrote a children’s book that was later made into a famous movie.

Remove the first two letters of the first name and the last two letters of the last name. 

Place what remains of the last name before what remains of the first name. Phonetically, you’ll have things that the book’s title character might use for nourishment. 

Who is the writer? Who is the character? What might the character use for nourishment? 

Melons, Mangoes in the Mail?

3. 🍈🍈🥭🥭📬Name a nine-letter fruit name that starts with four consecutive two-letter U.S. postal code abbreviations and also ends with one. 

Now name an eight-letter fruit variant that also
consists of four consecutive two-letter U.S. postal code abbreviations. 

What are the fruit and fruit variant?

Two-Tool-Toodle-Loo!

4. 🧰🔨🪚Name two six-letter tools that basically serve the same purpose, although one tends to be larger. 

Three letters are in the same position in both words. Two of the other letters share the same position, but differ by one place in the alphabet.

What are the tools?

Animation in an Anemone

5. 📽Name the classic animated film
encapsulated by a sea anemone.

Alpaca, Arabian, Bactrian, Guanaco... Vicuna!

6. ♭♯🎜🎝🐪🐫What classic 1950s song is implied by the first 60% of a relative of a camel?

MENU

Two Creatures Great And Small Hors d’Oeuvre:

Puzzley, fuzzy, but was he buzzy?

Name a large 13-letter creature that ends with
letters that spell a much smaller creature.

Both creatures are a bit fuzzy. What are they?

“Putting A Price on A Puzzle” Slice:

“Hail Morpheus, King of Things Amorphous!”

Name a shapeless substance. 

Replace the first third of that word with a synonym of that first third, followed by a space. The result is worth, roughly, 66 dollars. What are this substance and synonym? Why is the result worth about $66?

Riffing Off Shortz And Shukan Entrees:

Kalamari Hari Kiri Arms Mars

Will Shortz’s November 16th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Dave Shukan of San Marino, California. reads:

Take the name of a famous person in American politics (6,6). Hidden in this name reading from left to right, but not in consecutive letters, is the name of a well-known place that's very dry, in 4 letters. Remove these letters. The remaining 8 letters in order from left to right will name another well-known, very dry place. What politician is this?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Shukan Entrees read:

ENTREE #1

Take the name of a puzzle-maker (4,6). 

Hidden in this name reading from left to right, but not in consecutive letters, is the name of a piece of furniture where this puzzle-maker may compose his puzzles. The remaining six letters – if you replace one off them with an “a” and then rearrange the result – is the name of a world capital city.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the world capital city?

Note: Riffs #2 through #7 are cryptic creations composed by our friend Nodd.

ENTREE #2

Take the first name of a former U.S. government official who became a controversial political figure during the Cold War. 

Add to the end of the name the postal
abbreviation of a U.S. state that was dry for 12 years in the 1800s. The result will name a very dry place in the world. 

Who is the figure and what are the state and the dry place?

ENTREE #3

Take the first name of a major American political figure who rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Add to the end of the name a copy of the fifth letter to get something that is often dry. Alternatively, insert a copy of the second letter of the name just before the last letter to name a fictional inhabitant of a dry place. 

Who is this figure and what are the dry thing and the fictional inhabitant?

ENTREE #4

Take the first name of an American political figure who rose to national prominence in the early 21st Century. Double the first and second letters. Rearrange to name one of the driest places on earth and an area of the U.S. that is comparatively dry, especially in its Western portion. 

Who is this figure, and what are the two dry places?

ENTREE #5

Take the name of a famous American political figure who was also a prominent general in the Revolutionary War (7,6). 

The first and last names have four letters in common. 

These four letters can be arranged to name a place that’s often in the news and is very dry. Who is the figure and what is the place?

ENTREE #6

Take the last name of a former U.S. president. Remove a word meaning dry and a liquid that may be dry. 

The remaining two letters, in reverse order, are the postal abbreviation of a state in which a city once known as the Dry Capital of the World is located. 

Who is the president and what are the word, the liquid, and the abbreviation?

ENTREE #7

Take the middle and last names of a famous person in American politics. 

Replace the third letter of the middle name with the letter that is four places earlier in the alphabet. 

Replace the fourth letter of the last name with a copy of the second letter of that name. 

Rearrange the letters to spell a word meaning dry and the name of a dry place in the U.S. 

Who is the politician and what are the word and the place?

ENTREE #8

Spell the screen name of a riff-master in reverse. (For example “LegoLambda” (who is more of a “riff-gifter”) would become “adbmaLogeL”.) 

Divide this reversal into three equal parts: 

~  an academic website domain,

~ a fine-feathered tweeter, and

~ decay.

What is the riff-master’s screen name?

ENTREE #9

Spell the screen name of a riff-master in which a letter appears twice. Remove the duplicate letter that appears first in the name.

Five nearly consecutive letters of the result
spell a suffix that means “formative or formed material (as of a cell or tissue).” The remaining letters can be rearranged to spell an adjective that describes this “formative or formed material” that encapsulates this cell or tissue.

Who is this riff-master?

What are the suffix and adjective?

ENTREE #10

Take the name of a puzzle-maker (4,6). Read this name in reverse order, from right to left.

Letters 1, 2, 3, 7 and 10 of this reversal, in order, spell an adjective that describes this
puzzle-maker during the first minute (more-or-less) of his life. 

Replace Letter #4, a vowel, with a different vowel. 

Rearrange these five revised remaining letters to spell a verb for something this puzzle-maker might do, periodically, to retain his newborn appearance.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What adjective describes this puzzle-maker during the first minute of his life?

What might this puzzle-maker might do, periodically, to retain his newborn appearance?

Dessert Menu

Kick-In-The-Pants Dessert:

Knives slice, forks stab, spoons stir!

What beverage, if you stir it with a “spoon,” is likely the most “kick-in-the-pants” drink there is?

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 Thursday.