PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED
Schpuzzle of the Week:
Se♢en of Diamonds sticks out from the pack
In a standard 52-card deck of playing cards, the seven of diamonds has a special geometric property that makes it unique from any other card in the deck.
What is this property?
Note: This week’s Schpuzzle Of The Week is another excellent offering created by Mathew Huffman, a valued friend of Puzzleria!
Appetizer Menu
Enos “Country” Slaughter Appetizer:
Sports? Schmorts! But the answer is...
Replace an article embedded within the name of a country with one letter to form a name familiar even to some non-sports-fans.
What is this country?
What is the familiar name?
“There She Is, Your Ordeal” Appetizer:
Sweethearts of Phi Mu
Pamela Long was a member of the Phi Mu sorority at the University of North Alabama when she was crowned Miss Alabama in 1974 and competed for the title of Miss America 1975.
The following text is an excerpt from a pep talk that Pamela, as an alumna, might have given during an orientation of more recent Phi Mu pledges at UNA:
We at Phi Mu aim to practice love, honor and truth. Ours is a sorority of noble women; we set our rules rigidly so as to guard the purity of our thoughts and deeds. For instance, during a musical performance by the Family Stone featuring Sly at the 1975 Miss America Pageant, a fellow Phi Mu sister, who like me was a contestant, suspected the emcee Mr. Parks of flirting with her, so she promptly hissed at him, “Stop it, Bert!”
In the fictional pep talk excerpt (above) there are four pairs of consecutive words with letters that can be rearranged to form four words that are related to one another. The letters of a stand-alone word in the text can be rearranged to form a fifth word related to the first four words.
Note: The final sentence, involving Sly and the Family Stone and Bert Parks, has no basis in truth; it is pure speculation on Puzzleria!s part. It is, in fact, fake news.
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Homonymical Slice:
Now we’re cookin’ with GAS!
Homonyms are words that sound the same and are spelled the same but have different meanings.
An example of a pair of 4-letter homonyms is a dog’s bark and a tree’s bark. Another 4-letter example is a river bank and piggy bank.
Name a pair of 7-letter homonyms.
One of the 7-letter homonyms is an example
of a G_ _ _ AS_ .
The other homonym is an example of a G_AS_ .
What are these homonyms?
Of what two words (each beginning with a “g”) are these homonyms examples?
Riffing Off Shortz Slices:
Title IX
Will Shortz’s July 1st NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Name a woman’s title. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to get another woman’s title. Both titles are common English-language spellings. What titles are these?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Name a woman’s title. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward.
Change the second letter to a different vowel to get the identical first name of a great-grandfather, grandfather, father and son – all four who reportedly set a-flutter the hearts of women of all nationalities (titled or otherwise) who watched them perform on stage and screen.
What is the woman’s title? What is the common first name of the four actors?
ENTREE #2:
Name a woman’s title from around 1960. Drop the “The” from the title along with the first and last letters. Read the result backward to get a plural pronoun followed by a 4-letter word that can be a noun, verb, adverb or adjective... but that is anything but plural.
What title, pronoun, and 4-letter word are these?
ENTREE #3:
Name a woman’s title from the mid-1990s. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward.
Switch the third and fourth letters of this result to get a the first name of a positive legendary figure.
Switch the fourth and fifth letters of the same result to get a the name of a negative legendary figure.
What title is this?
Who are these two legendary figures?
ENTREE #4:
Name a title (starring a woman) from the mid-1980s that involved space travel. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to get the first name of another person associated with space travel.
What title is this? Who is the other person?
ENTREE #5:
Name a title from classic literature circa 1600. Drop the first and last letters and read the result backward to form what might be a good name for the female twin of a falsetto-voiced furry monster.
What title and possible twin’s name are these?
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.
PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER (1110 + 98) SERVED
Schpuzzle of the Week:
Tiffs versus Jolts
“Tiffs among Jodi, Bea, Jo and Eve may be discouraged, but it’s fine if Judi peps up fans by cheerleading as Bob tries to jolt and pin his foe Jeff during a wrestling bout.”
Exactly half of the 34 words in the sentence above share a very unusual property.
What are these 17 words and what is the property they share?
Hint: Other words with this property include: tubs, bee, jut, dibs.
Also, Puzzleria’s Closed-Loop Circular Seamless Alphabet might prove to be helpful.
Note: This puzzle involves a French word that nevertheless appears in many English dictionaries.
Schpuzzle of the Week Second Helping:
Name a 5-letter hyphenated word that shares this property.
Appetizer Menu
The Body Is Roughly Seventy Percent Water Appetizer:
Watercraftiness
Name a pretty large body of water and name a craft you might see on a smaller body of water, both in two words.
Their names share the same first words, both modifiers, and their second words are nouns that are anagrams of one another.
What are these names?
Slam-Dunking On Ceremony Appetizer:
Saint Paul sports... basketball?
Name a two-syllable noun rooted in Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) with a specific ceremonial meaning. The noun has become a staple of our modern lexicon, but with a less ceremonial meaning.
Split the noun into its two syllables.
Add a letter to the beginning of the first syllable, and the same letter to the end, to form a noun characterizing Saint Paul because of something he was able to do in the Book of Acts. A basket was involved.
Add two of that same letter to the end of the second syllable to name, in one noun, something Saint Paul sported, according to early Chistian iconography.
What is this two-syllable noun? What are the two nouns formed from its syllables?
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Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices:
And now, a word from our sponsor, Brand XX
Will Shortz’s June 24th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle was created by Joseph Young of St. Cloud, Minnesota, who conducts the weekly Puzzleria! blog. It reads:
Think of a well-known commercial name in 9 letters. Change both the fourth and ninth letters to X’s and you’ll get two other familiar commercial names, one after the other. What names are these?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Young Slices read:
ENTREE #1:
Think of a past well-known commercial name in 10 letters. Change the second letter to a “p”, change the tenth letter to a “d”, and delete the fifth letter. What you’ll get is a food and how it is often prepared, one after the other. What name, food and method of preparation are these?
ENTREE #2:
Think of a somewhat well-known commercial name in 8 letters. Change the first letter to a “b” and add an “o” after the eighth letter and you’ll get two terms used in mathematics, one after the other. What is this commecial name and what terms are these?
ENTREE #3:
Think of a somewhat well-known commercial name in 10 letters.
Change the fourth and fifth letters to and “e” and “r” and replace the final letter with an “o” and “p” and you’ll get an article of apparel and the profession of a person who wears it, one after the other.
What names are these?
ENTREE #4:
Think of a well-known commercial name in 9 letters.
Change the second, fifth and ninth letters to an “i”, “l” and “i” and you’ll get an over-the-counter brand name drug and a global supermarket chain name, one after the other. What names are these?
ENTREE #5:
Think of the name of a commercial manufacturer in 7 letters that is well known abroad, but not so much in the United States. Insert one “y” between its third and fourth letters and one “u” between its fifth and sixth letters.
The result, one after the other, will be an English word for something you see on a map and an uppercase word that is an example of that “something” in the country where the commercial manufacturer is based.
What is the name of this manufacturer?
What are the English word and uppercase word?
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.
Schpuzzle Of The Week:
The Wright stuff
Name a word associated with flying, circa 1900.
Change a vowel to a different vowel to form a 7-letter expression that became associated with flying about half a century later.
This latter expression is often spelled with only 4 letters.
What are this word and expression?
Appetizer Menu
Words, Wheels And Perhaps Tar Heels Appetizer:
2, 4, 6, 8... Who’s a dweller in this state?
The subject of a rural painting by an American artist contains two words and four wheels. Remove the last letter of the first word. In the second word, place duplicates of the second and and third letters in its fourth and fifth positions, but in reverse order.
Remove the space to spell what any resident of a certain U.S. state is called.
What is a resident of this state called?
Consumed By Drama Appetizer:
Hairpins, hailstones hit Seneca!
What consumable product is the following sentence subliminally advertising?
Hint: There are seven separate instances of the advertising in the text:
A mechanic begins engineering a format change on the Minnie Pearl Greyhound tour bus’s gyroscopic stabilization system after a roadie loses her balance during a dramatic hairpin turn as the bus, in a hailstorm intensifying, logs Joplin-to-Seneca, Mo. mileage.
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Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:
Fortune 500 mortar-and-brickyard
Will Shortz’s June 18th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Mike Reiss, reads:
Think of a familiar hyphenated 7-letter word. The first 4 letters name a prominent American company, and the last 4 letters name a different prominent American company. What word is it?
Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:
ONE:
Think of a Fortune 500 food company/corporation with a fun-to-say name that is also an informal interjection. When spelled backward this name is a Spanish adverb that intensifies what it modifies. What is this company?
TWO:
Remove the initial letter from a prominent Fortune 500 company/corporation to form a short-form nickname of a U.S. president. Remove the initial letter from a less-prominent Fortune 500 company/corporation to form the first name of a more recent U.S. president’s sibling. What are these two companies?
THREE:
Remove four vowels from the name of a somewhat prominent Fortune 500 company/corporation, leaving four consonants that are all the same. What is this company?
FOUR:
Name two prominent Fortune 500 companies/corporations that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. Replace the fifth letter of one of them to name what Mildred Wattigny opted to do in October of 1930... something that involved someone now enshrined in Cooperstown. Replace the first letter of the other to name a Chicago Cub who is enshrined in Cooperstown.
FIVE:
Name a somewhat prominent Fortune 500 corporation that promotes health and hygiene.
Replace its second letter with its final letter to form a deadly virus.
Name the same health-and-hygiene-promoting corporation. Replace its last two letters with a vowel and add some punctuation to form bacteria that can cause sickness.
What are this company, deadly virus and bacteria?
SIX:
Name a one-syllable shorthand expression for a car brand with a cross logo, followed by the screen name of a very-valued contributor to Puzzleria! The result is a prominent and “energetic” Fortune 500 corporation.
What is this corporation?
SEVEN:
Remove one letter from somewhat prominent Fortune 500 corporation to name something that is unbearably light, according to Milan Kundera.
What is unbearably light?
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.
Schpuzzle Of The Week:
Competing gets tougher when services suffer
Think of a term in two words for a service whose business model is suffering, five and four letters.
The last three letters of each word are the same as each other, and spell a word that is a type of suffering.
Remove these common letters and rearrange the remaining three letters to name a competing service.
What are the term and the competing service?
(Note: This week’s Schpuzzle Of The Week was created by Mathew Huffman, a valued friend of Puzzleria!)
Appetizer Menu
Car Branding Appetizer:
Finding some kind of sign-off the beaten path
Name a synonym of “road” followed by a 2-word car brand.
Reversing the order of the three words and saying the result without pronouncing the initial consonant sounds will sound like a sign-off.
What is this sign-off?
John Aston-Martin Balsam Brand Appetizer:
Doc, Martin, Joe and a pair of Buddys
Doc, Martin, Joe, and a pair of guys named Buddy...
Find a two-word phrase that pertains to the list of names above.
Interchange those words to name what sounds a lot like a two-word automobile brand name.
What is that brand name?
Hint: The key to solving this puzzle is to find the first name of an actor who portrayed characters with the first names Doc, Martin, Joe, Buddy and Buddy.
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Riffing Off Shortz Slice:
More TVVisted titles
Will Shortz’s June 3rd/June10 NPR Weekend Edition Sunday two-week creative challenge puzzle reads:
Television today can be so derivative – and so is this two-week creative challenge. The object is to pitch an idea to one of the networks, either broadcast or cable, in which your show’s title is just one letter different from an existing show’s title, past or present. Name your TV show and summarize it in 15 words or less.
Examples:
American I Do’s – Hilarious misadventures of a bumbling wedding planner
You Bet Your Wife – Trivia contest, with wagering, to determine who knows more, husband or spouse
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz Slice reads:
The title of each of the following 14 potential TV shows differs by just one letter from an actual past or present show’s title. Name these new titles based on the summaries given for each.
To aid you, we are providing the genres and time frames of the actual TV show from which each of their titles is taken, along with the number of words in the title:
1. A man bases all his life-decisions on a musty Magic 8 Ball he purchased at a rummage sale.
(Soap opera, 1952-2009; 3 words in the title)
2. This remake focuses on Boss Hogg and Rosco who are repeatedly hornswoggled by those doggone Duke boys Bo and Luke.
(Action comedy, 1979-85; 4 words in the title)
3. The Enterprise crew is stranded after crash-landing on a heavenly sphere inhabited by prehistoric creatures.
(Science fiction, 1966-69; 2 words in the title)
4. How commuters pass the time while stuck in bumper-to-bumper freeway traffic.
(Science fiction, 1959-64; 3 words in the title)
Note: This proposed TV show title is not exactly kosher vis-a-vis Will Shortz’s rules for this two-week challenge; not only does it change one letter of the original title, but it also doubles a second letter in that title.
5. Candid interviews with people who confess an infatuation with Kentucky Senator Paul or late fan-dancer Sally.
(Adventure drama comedy, 1977-84; 2 words in the title)
6. During an embargo, Idaho laundry owners hoard potatoes in order to continue guaranteeing crispness in their customers’ collars.
(Soap opera, 1951-86; 3 words in the title)
7. A bald lollypop-popping cop solves crimes by using his photographic memory. (Crime drama, 1973-78; 1 word in the title)
8. Documentary illuminating the Big Apple’s attitude toward Tom Terrific.
(Sitcom, 1957-63; 4 words in the title)
9. Operatic diva alters her surname to reflect her newfound infatuation with jazz.
(Sitcom, 1962-71; 3 words in the title)
10. Millionaire opera queen loads up the limo and moves westward to a “Californy” zip code.
(Teen drama, 1990-2000; 3 words in the title)
11. Steve Martin reprises his role as sadistic dentist Orin Schrivello, but on the small screen.
(Sitcom, 1959-63; 3 words in the title)
12. Scientist transforms his family members into midge-human hybrids, similar to “The Fly” films.
(Musical sitcom, 1970-74; 3 words in the title)
13. Documentary about big-time Hollywood actors who have stepped up into military service to their country.
(Talent competition, 1983-2004; 2 words in the title)
14. Ferdinand the Bull bucks cowboys off his back then rescues them, ironically, from homicidal rodeo clowns.
(Sitcom, 1989-93; 4 words in the title)
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.
Blue Plate Special Of The Week:
Plurutensils
Divide a word for plural body parts in half. The second half is a word for plural utensil parts. The first half can be rearranged to spell a word for plural utensil parts. What are these body parts?
Appetizer Menu
Transportation Appetizer:
Subway? Superway?
Name a means of transportation in which vehicles travel largely above ground level (although its passengers usually maintain contact with the ground).
Move the first letter to the end to name a means of transportation in which vehicles travel both above and below ground level.
What are these two means of transportation?
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Riffing Off Shortz Slice:
Twisted TV titles
Will Shortz’s June 3rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:
Television today can be so derivative — and so is this two-week creative challenge. The object is to pitch an idea to one of the networks, either broadcast or cable, in which your show’s title is just one letter different from an existing show’s title, past or present. Name your TV show and summarize it in 15 words or less.
Examples:
N.Y.P.D. CLUE — Manhattan crime investigation in which each case hinges on a single, unexpected piece of evidence
HAVE GUT, WILL TRAVEL — Portly host tours the best all-you-can-eat restaurants in America
Puzzleria!’s Riffing Off Shortz Slice reads:
Name the titles of the following potential TV shows, based on their summaries. To aid you, we are providing the genres and time frames of the actual TV shows from which each of their titles is taken, along with the number of words in the title:
1. (Sitcom; 1980s-90s, 2 words)
Dr. Drew Pinsky encourages wimps to begin behaving more confidently and courageously.
2. (Sitcom; 1990s-2000s, 3 words)
A serial documentary chronicling the cocaine epidemic in post-Watergate-era America.
3. (Sitcom; 2000s, 4 words)
A fantasy about Forbes, a billionaire whose extravagant lifestyle ends after he is shrunken and confined to the inside of his Stradivarius violin.
4. (Sitcom; 1900s, 2 words, but written together as one)
A media executive convinces former House Speaker Gingrich, who plays himself, to compete with Limbaugh and Dr. Laura over the airwaves.
5. (Crime drama; 1980s, 2 words)
Mickey, Minnie and company pull up their Orlando stakes and move south to South Beach.
6. (Sitcom; 1970s-70s, 3 words)
All-American dad Steve Douglas admits he fathered Mike, Robbie and Chip all out-of-wedlock.
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.
Schpuzzle of the Week:
Note: This week’s Schpuzzle Of The Week is another excellent offering created by Mathew Huffman, a valued friend of Puzzleria!
In the fictional pep talk excerpt (above) there are four pairs of consecutive words with letters that can be rearranged to form four words that are related to one another. The letters of a stand-alone word in the text can be rearranged to form a fifth word related to the first four words.
Homonyms are words that sound the same and are spelled the same but have different meanings. 
Of what two words (each beginning with a “g”) are these homonyms examples?
What is the woman’s title? What is the common first name of the four actors? 
ENTREE #4:
