It's a dog-eat-dog business world; Dinner Deal; "I'll have my Katherine Anne Porterhouse well-known, please"

  PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e⁵ SERVED

Welcome to the 54^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We are today not quite halfway through May. 

Now, today is not exactly Thanksgiving Day or Christmas, but May 15^th is a “holiday” of sorts that many people still observe.

So, Happy  __ __ __ __     __ __     __ A Y! 

Four anagrams of that nine-letter greeting are embedded in the verse below. Each anagram comprises one pair of eight different words that appear somewhere in the quatrain (not in the underscored title). In two of the pairs the words are adjacent in the verse:

Leander’s Lament... 

And Prayer For Reunion with Hero, Re-imagined

If someday, pray, may I my foe dismay

(Foul Tempest, pulled me drown ’neath foamy sea),

Swells modify, I’ll rise, swim Hero’s way,

Rest at her side, then pull her drown with me.

From “Week 53, What Have You?”… here is an as yet untied loose end:

In last week’s Comments Section we introduced a portmanteau word (or blended word) we coined: “Quizzle,” which we defined as “a quick puzzle.”

We proceeded to present to Puzzlerians! the following pop quizzle:

A judge on a popular TV game/quiz show from the distant past had a monogram that spells out something spring cleaners might use. Who is this judge?

Answer: Reason A. Goodwin, judge on “Password.”

Speaking of people with Reasoning skills A.nd Good, winning judgment (Hey, we are better with a Segue than Paul Blart, Mall Cop!), it is high time we again enjoy sampling a bonus slice baked up by our Master Gourmet French Puzzle Chef “Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme,” as he is known here at Puzzleria! The chef is also known as “skydiveboy” on the blogosphere, and as Mark Scott of Seattle in the non-cyber world.

Bonus Picture Show Slice:

“I’ll have my Katherine Anne Porterhouse well-known, please”

Looking at these pictures might remind you of a well-known author of the past. 

Who is it?

Thank you, Mark. That was refreshing and delicious. But now, for some hot puzzle slices. Do not burn the tip of your brain!

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Capitalism Is Competitive Slice:

It’s a dog-eat-dog business world

Name a business establishment where one can buy a variety of items, in two words. Add a common prefix to the beginning of one of the words. The result is two men that participate together, along with others, in a competitive match.

Who are these two men? What is the business establishment?

European Cuisine Slice:

Dinner deal

Name a German dish in two words of three and eight letters. Remove the last letter from each word. The result when spoken aloud is a near homophone of a card game popularized by German immigrants to America.

A four-letter synonym is sometimes substituted for the first word in the German dish. Insert the last letter of this four-letter synonym between the third and fourth letters of the card game, and replace the card game’s penultimate letter with the penultimate letter of the four-letter synonym. Divide this result to spell two colours.

 

What are this German dish, the card game, and colours?

Hints: The dish’s first word and its four-letter synonym begin with the same letter. A plural “s” is the last letter in the dish’s second word.

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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.

skydiveboy,

How did I bear the lousy room service in London? 

By grinning.

LegJ

Deduction by the dashboard light; A love-hate creationship; CSI: USA

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e⁵ SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Well, completing one year of Puzzleria! has certainly been enjoyable for us, its purveyors. We hope it has been enjoyable also for you, its consumers and contributors. From our perspective, we like to think we all enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Kum Bah Humbug! Kum Bah Yah Sure!

Thank you all for following us, for making wonderfully astute, clever and witty comments, and for spreading the word about this puzzle blog.

For the record, we have had 29,815 “hits” (followers who have accessed our blog site) over the past year. That’s about 573 a week. The quantity of our comments is fine; but the quality of our comments is off the chart! We would love to have more different people commenting. Not sure how to do that though.

Our second year of serving up original puzzle slices begins with this week’s edition, our 53^rd.

Incidentally, 53^rd was the number of the police precinct in a sitcom that included two actors who later appeared together in a more popular and well-known sitcom. What are the sitcoms and who are the actors? Hint: the word “Khrushchev” appears in the earlier sitcom’s theme song. The word “ooky” does not appear in the subsequent sitcom’s theme song.

I was blessed with wonderful parents. They are in heaven now, on the St. Francis Wing, tending to tabby cat Noosie and other dear pets they adopted. Whenever Fathers Day or Mothers Day rolls around I get a tad misty-eyed and wistful, missing my parents.

I tried to create a timely Mothers Day puzzle slice this week but came up dry. I did however pen the following irreverent fable/puzzle. It is not meant to offend, only to entertain.

The Princess and the Peeved Prince

(A Fractured Mothers Day Fable)

The princess of “The Princess and thePea” fame married her prince. The regal newlyweds took up residence in the castle with the king and queen, biding their time until they would ascend to the throne.

Not all was untroubled in this palatial paradise, however.

The princess had borne a grudge against her mother-in-law ever since she tested the princess’s royal worthiness with that lame pea-under-multiple-mattress ploy. The princess harbored bitter memories of suffering a fitfully sleepless night, tossing and turning like a fish that has jumped into a longship.

And so, to exact some measure of vengeance, the princess cast a spell on the queen causing her to feel as if an imaginary pea were permanently lodged in the middle of her mattress, prompting the queen too to toss and turn all night.

Alas, the queen’s spellbound predicament also prompted an annoying nocturnal ritual. Several times every night the queen sought relief by summoning her son into her bedchamber, imploring him to flip her mattress on its other side.

Every morning when the king visited the queen in her bedchamber, she invariably groused about her nocturnal tossing-and-turning. Meanwhile, in the princess’s bedchamber, the prince bellyached about having his sleep interrupted by the queen’s nocturnal summoning.

One morning, after a year of this mysterious insomnia and incessant summoning, the king as was his wont entered the queen’s bedchamber, approached her four-poster canopied bed and pulled back her bed covers. He was greeted, alas, not with their customary good-morning smooch, but with an odd conundrum: No queen. No mattress. Just a box spring!

 

 The king was mystified. The box spring would not be invented until the late 19^th Century. Had he somehow stumbled into a time machine and traveled into the future?...

 

No, no, just kidding, that’s not why the king was mystified. The real mystery was the whereabouts of his wife. So he summoned his son to see if he could shed some light.

The king said to his son, “I come in here this morning and your mother is missing, her mattress is missing. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Well, mother could never decide on which was the comfortable mattress side,” the prince explained. “I could stand it no longer so I decided to mattress-hide.”

“Well, I guess that explains what happened the queen’s mattress,” the king said. “But it does not explain what happened to the queen. So, what did happen to the queen?”

The prince shuffled his feet, fidgeted with his digits, cast his gaze downward, and replied, simply, “_________.”

(Fill in the blank, nine letters.)

The first puzzle slice in our menu (see below) this week is the Darkened Digital Segment Slice (DDSS). It involves my friend Yvette, a volunteer vet at a homeless animal shelter, who recently purchased a white 1988 Corvette.

The new-to-Yvette Vette has a dashboard with digital readouts displaying numerals made up of between two and seven segments. (1 consists of two segments; 2, of six; 3, of five, etc.; see illustration)

 The problem is, some of the segments in Yvette’s Vette no longer light up, thereby making some numerals difficult to decipher. For example, some segments in the miles-per-hour readout are missing. This could be a real issue on roads where the speed limit is 55 mph and you can’t be sure if you’re cruising along in the low fifties or high sixties.

 

But Yvette, who as a veterinarian has a solid mathematics background, tells me she can tell exactly how fast she is going, no matter the speed.

Now, I realize the sight of these segmented digits may provoke in some Puzzlerians! pangs of dread and unpleasant flashbacks of upside-down digital clocks!

Yes, it is true that there is a digital clock on the dashboard of Yvette’s Vette, but it should remain upside-up unless Yvette somehow manages to overturn her new vehicle. And Corvettes are not that easy to roll over.

So, let us begin year #2, shall we, with these two new puzzle slices:

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Darkened Digital Segments Slice:

Deduction by the dashboard light

The dashboard of Yvette’s 1988 Corvette features seven-segment digital displays that display the digits from 0 to 9 with illuminated segments. Alas, some of the segments no longer function and have gone dark in her miles-per-hour speed readout.

In order for Yvette to infer her exact speed without ambiguity, what is the minimum number of segments that must be functional, and where must they be positioned?

(Note: the two segments that make up the numeral 1 appear on the “east” side of the seven-segment display, not the “west” side)

Wolf And Lamb Together Slice:

A love-hate creationship

Name a small object, in one word. In describing the object one might use the perfect number six. Remove the object’s middle letter along with the space created by that removal. 

From this string of letters remove a number of consecutive letters that spell out the name of one of God’s creatures. Push together the remaining letters to form the name of another of God’s creatures.

These two creatures have a predatory relationship but sometimes have a symbiotic relationship also.

What is the object and what are the creatures?

Ever The Twain Shall Meet Slice:

CSI: USA

At the intersection of four states – Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico – lies the Four Corners Monument, where one can stand on a spot and exclaim, “I am standing in four states simultaneously!” This “four-corner” distinction is unique in the U.S., but there are numerous spots where one can stand on a spot and be in three states simultaneously, and of course, every time on stands on a border she/he is in two states simultaneously.

Let us assign a number to each state. We shall call it the CSI (Corner Standing Index). It represents the sum of all states one can stand in by traversing the perimeter of a given state. (In calculating a state’s CSI, some states may be counted more than once, including, necessarily, the state for which the CSI is being calculated. For the purposes of this puzzle, let us pretend the the rivers that form the borders between states are miraculously somehow waterless, Red-Sea-parting-style, and that we could therefore stand in them without drowning!)

For example, to figure Arizona’s CSI one might begin at the four corners monument (4 states) and head west and stand on the junction of UT, NV and AZ (3), go south and hit the NV-CA-AZ junction (3), and complete this counterclockwise trek by traversing thr CA-AZ junction (2) and the AZ-NM junction (2). Arizona’s CSI is the sum of those junctions, 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 14. Not bad.

Other examples: North Dakota’s CSI is 10 (2 + 3 + 3 + 2); Idaho’s is 19 (3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3); Texas’s is 13 (2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2); Hawaii’s and Alaska’s CSIs are both 0. (Only junctions of states are considered in computing a state’s CSI, not bordering countries or bodies of water. By the way, I’m not sure how Michigan’s Upper Peninsula affects the CSIs of Michigan and Wisconsin.)

What state has the greatest CSI? What is it? What state has the smallest CSI? What is it?

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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.

Here is how the ten digits, from zero through nine, would appear on Yvette's Corvette dashboard if the two segments forming the southeast corner stopped functioning. (See the Darkened Digital Segments Slice, above.) Note that each of the ten readouts remains unique.

When jocks become jokes; This one is a "stumper"; Reptilian replication

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e⁵ SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! Happy May Day. And remember, in Hawaii, May Day is Lei Day.

Mayday is also the international radio-telephone signal word used as a distress call. Its etymology is a homophone of the French phrase m’aider, meaning “help me.” That might have been what I yelled the time I nearly drowned in a riptide at Hapuna Beach on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Speaking of the French (and speaking French), a slightly premature Bon anniversaire to Puzzleria! This is our 52^nd weekly edition of Puzzleria! We officially turn one year old next Friday. So May Day doubles as our week-early Happy Birthday. Our birthday (actual date of birth) was Friday, May 9, 2014. We shall be celebrating the anniversary (anniversaire) of our birthday. So those savvy French got it right again.

“Battle of the Sams” or “Sammy Scrimmage”

Speaking of m’aider, ponder this distressing circumstance: If Sam “Mayday” Malone was pitching to Sammy SOSa, who would prevail?

An even more distressing circumstance occurred last week when Will Shortz purveyed a puzzle about politicians that was very similar to one already created by Puzzleria! contributor skydiveboy, aka Mark Scott of Seattle, aka Master French Puzzle Chef Monsieur Garcon du Parachutisme. Mark had given it to us months ago for publication in Puzzleria! We dawdled, dawgawnit, and puzzlemeister Professor Shortz beat us to the puzzle punch.

As summer looms, the 2016 campaign season is beginning to heat up also. On our menu this week is a puzzle slice about a politician. A few weeks ago Liddy Dole was an answer to one of our slices. An excellent recent NPR puzzle involved Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. (See “puzzle” link above.)

The hint to our Uncorking The Campaign Slice is connected homophonically to the setting of the sitcom in our Piece Of Cake Timely Sporty Slice. Enjoy!   

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Piece Of Cake Timely Sporty Slice:

When jocks become jokes

Name a current athlete, first and last names, that everybody seems to be talking about lately, especially certain 11 (or 10) o’clock newscasters. Remove from the athlete’s last name another thing everybody seems to be talking about (but not just lately), especially newscasters who are forecasters.

 Spelling the remainder of the surname backward would result in a food harvested by digging. But don’t do that. Instead spell it forward and add to it a food harvested by picking, thereby forming a city’s name that is the setting of a late great situation comedy. The athlete’s first name is a name of a character on that sitcom.

Who are the athlete, sitcom and character?

Hint: Regal guitarist might cover Leo’s “Regards…”

Uncorking The Campaign Slice:

This one is a “stumper”

Name a current politician, first and last names. The last name might follow the words “belt” or “disk.” The first name, which is a nickname, is a world city, a European capital, that is. The nickname is a world city, a European capital minus 51, that is. (51 as it would be written in an ancient European capital, id est).

Who is this politician?

Hint: The politician shares her/his last name, and four letters of his/her formal first name, with a former great NFL player who spent his entire professional career with one team, a team which was once head-coached by a man who was portrayed in a biographical movie with a cast that featured a notable future politician. The coach’s real-life hometown was the same as Annie Hall’s and Jack Dawson’s.

Creepy Critter Slice:

Reptilian Replication

Name a reptile, in two words.

Replace the second and fifth letters in the first word with two different letters. In the second word, replace the fifth letter with a different vowel, replicate the fourth letter twice, and place one of those letter-triplets at the end of the word.

 

 The result describes what one might witness when a woman dances while wearing a certain garment a size or two too big.

What are the reptile and the (“letter-replicated”) result of wearing a size-too-big garment to the dance?

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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.

Fishy hotdish recipe; Lights, camera, and the pursuit of "That's a wrappiness!" Nation deconstructing

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER e⁵ SERVED

Welcome to Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

This week we are treated to another delectable bonus puzzle slice from the redoubtable Gourmet French puzzle chef, Monsieur Garcon Du Parachutisme. He is known in the blogosphere also by his screen name “skydiveboy.” (He is an expert at both parachutes and puzzles.) Our guest puzzle chef is also known as Mark Scott of Seattle, Washington.

Note that the menu title of Mark’s puzzle is “Global Bonus Slice,” or GBS for short, which is the monogram of another clever fellow, one who wrote a play that might have been subtitled “Clark Kent and His Alter Ego” (or, if you are a Freudian, “Clark Kent and His Super-ego”).

Do you have any confusion about this or other puzzles penned by our gourmet French puzzle chef? Do you have a yen to question Mark? You might try reaching him in our Comments Section. If he is otherwise occupied, then we might be able to shed light on his puzzles (or any other puzzles we purvey).

 

Global Bonus Slice:

Nation Deconstructing

Think of a country. Take all the letters of this country in order and break them down into four parts to name: 1.) a weapon, 2. a title, 3.) a personal pronoun, and 4.) a preposition.

 

What is this country?

Thanks to Mark for that scrumptious cosmopolitan appetizer. The puzzles on our menu this week involve a casserole, an actor’s meaty (hammy?) role and, as usual, a dash of rigmarole to taste. Enjoy: 

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Mouth Watering Slice:

Fishy Hotdish Recipe

In a casserole pan, prepare two sectioned lemons and one pound of chopped perch. Stir gently. Pour in a quarter of a bottle (three ounces) of Coopers Original Australian Pale Ale. 

Mix these three ingredients – lemons, perch and ale – together and place them on a lower rack for a maximum of 25 minutes to create a hot Australian dish. Place onto a serving board to cool. Makes two servings. 

Name the dish.

Questionable Marquee Slice:

Lights, camera and the pursuit of “That’s a Wrappiness!”

Name a currently popular actor, first and last names, in nine letters. In a 2003 action-drama movie in which he starred, this actor’s character was seeking something, in eleven letters. The first five letters of the actor’s name are the same, and in the same order, as the first five letters of what his character sought.

The actor and the thing sought share no other letters in common. But those remaining ten letters can be rearranged into three words which, when followed by one of those things “thou shalt not” do, describe something the actor’s character already has that will help him find what he is seeking.

 Name this actor. What was his 2003 character seeking? What “four-word something” does he have that will help him find it?

Hint: Keep the letters of the three-word title of the 2003 movie in order but make a two-word term out of it. The term might describe a condenser fan motor, a drum support roller, or burner drip bowl, to name just three examples.

Every Friday at Joseph Young’s Puzzle -ria! 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 Tuesdays 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.