“Cape Cod catch” & other clues; Phyllis’s Photobucket etiquette; Have a heylik Hanukka Haiku; “Dondering through the snow...?” Yuletide yen for planes, tomes & automobiles

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Cape Cod catch” and other clues

Solve the following clues: “Cape Cod catch,” “Still-life subject” and “Plea at sea.” Each is a one-word answer.

Rearrange the twelve combined letters of your answers to spell a “word” that describes all three. 

What are the three answers to the clues?

What word describes all three?

Note: Although this “word” does not appear in dictionaries (yet), it is well-known to to puzzle aficionados and purveyors — like Will Shortz, for example.

Appetizer Menu

Percussive Christmas Appetizer:

Yuletide yen for planes, tomes & automobiles

🥁1. Think of a financial firm. Drop the first four letters. 

The result will name an automotive chain.

🥁2. Think of the alma mater of a well-known author. Remove one letter and rearrange. 

The result will name the main character of the author’s best-known work. 

🥁3. Name a condiment. 

Rearrange into two words that might describe the yen. 

🥁4. Name a U.S. city known for its airport. 

Insert a space to name two things you’ll find on a plane.

MENU

Ph-Stop Slice:

Phyllis’s Photobucket etiquette

Phyllis often texts pictures she has taken with her Nikon camera to all her relatives and friends. 

She also posts her pictures on photo-sharing sites such as Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Fotki, Instagram and Pinterest.

A few controversial political-rally pictures she once took weren’t so well received, however, so she now texts and posts only non-controversial images of her toddler... 

“No more ___-______ pictures,” Phyllis vowed to herself, “but _ ___ _____ or two ought to be safe and acceptable.”

Rearrange the combined letters of the first two missing words to form the three missing words that follow.

What are the five missing words?

Hint: The five words, in order, contain 3, 6, 1, 3 and 5 words. 

Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices:

“Dondering through the snow...?”

Will Shortz’s December 13th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Steve Baggish of Arlington, Massachusetts, reads:

Using only the letters in the phrase RIDE ON — repeating them as often as
necessary — you can spell 1) the  one-word proper name of a famous fictional animal, and 2) a word for what kind of animal it is. What’s the name of the animal, and what’s the word? 

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Baggish Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Using only the letters in the a phrase for what a Vietnam war protester with a megaphone may have been wont to do: BASH GI VET —
repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell the first and last names of a puzzle-maker. 

Who is the puzzle-maker?

ENTREE #2

Using only the letters in the word HEPCAT — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell 1) the one-word proper name of a
famous fictional animal, and 2) a word for what kind of animal it is. 

What’s the name of the animal, and what’s the word for it?

ENTREE #3

Using only the letters for you might have done with an unidentified key, TRIED LOCK — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell 1) the one-word hyphenated proper
name of a famous fictional animal, and 2) a word for what kind of animal it is. 

What is the name of the animal, and what is the word for it?

ENTREE #4

Using only the letters in the first name of Mr. Reynolds (a saxophone player in Stan Kenton’s Orchestra) and what he often played often played: ROY and SAX TUNE —

repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell 1) the one-word proper name of a famous fictional animal, and 2) a word for what kind of animal it is. 

What’s the name of the animal, and what’s the word for it?

ENTREE #5

A mediocre tennis player might boast about “MY LOB.” A newspaper read that the kingpin in the MOB PLED nolo contendre to racketeering. 

Using only the letters in MY LOB — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell the two-word proper name of a should-be-more-famous fictional character.

Using only the letters in MOB PLED — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell the two-word proper name of that fictional character’s spouse.

Who are these two fictional characters?

ENTREE #6

According to Ben Weeks, a Colorado-based green building techniques advisor, you can stack sandbags or form a BERM alongside a Quonset HUT, thereby enabling it to be more climate-efficient. 

Another insulation technique is to stack many a hay BALE NIGH the exterior wall of the hut. 

Using only the letters in the words BERM and HUT — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell the two-word proper name of a fictional character. Now use only the letters in the words BALE and NIGH — repeating them as often as necessary — to spell the two-word proper name of that fictional character’s childhood sweetheart, who died of typhoid in her teens.

What are the the names of the character and childhood sweetheart?

ENTREE #7

On November 18, 2009, Robert Byrd of West Virginia became the longest-serving member in United States national congressional history, with 56 years, 320 days of combined service in the House and Senate. He died as a senator in June 28, 2010, of natural causes. 

SEN. BYRD, WHO began his national Congressional career with his 1952 election to the United States House of Representatives for West Virginia’s 6th congressional district, is the only person ever to serve more than 50 years as U.S. senator, from 1959 to 2010. 

Using only the letters in  SEN. BYRD and WHO — repeating them as often as necessary — you can spell 1) the one-word proper name of a famous fictional sports character, and 2) his nickname for one of his tools of his trade.

What’s the name of the character, and what’s the nickname?

Dessert Menu

Holy (הייליק) Dessert:

Have a heylik Hanukkah Haiku

The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah is observed annually during a “baker’s week” of eight days. It begins on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar.

The 2020 obsevation began on December 10 and ends this evening, December 18.

In the haiku below, titled “Hanukkah Haiku,” fill in the missing words.

What are they? 

Hanukkah Haiku

Ignite candles eight straight _____,

Festival of _____: 

Ancient rite of __________.

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.

Tidbits of “Biliteral” symmetry; “Literature, Music, TV & Movies” Make a buck... or a lot of ’em! What is the name of this brusher with fame? Our glass, half full of sandy sundials

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Make a buck... or a lot of ’em!

Name a biblical figure and a word describing that figure. 

Rearrange the combined letters of these words to name two things it takes to make a buck. 

What are these things?

Hint: The biblical figure’s spouse might be described by a four-word phrase Jesus once used to describe worthy and virtuous people. The initial letters of the words in the phrase can be rearranged to spell particular body parts.

Appetizer Menu

A Trio Of Appetizing Word Teasers:

“Literature, Music, TV & Movies”

📚1. The name of a famous person in literature contains the name of an object that they use. 

Replace the object in the character’s name with something that they wear, and you will get another thing that you can wear. 

Who is the person, and what are the articles of clothing?

🎶📺2. Take the two-word title of a famous hymn. 

Remove the first letter of the second word. You will get the name of a TV show. 

What is it?

🎥3. What two-word title of a famous movie is an anagram of a word meaning “pretends to be sick”?

MENU

Chronological Slice:

Our glass, half full of sandy sundials

Name an idiom, in 15 letters, that indicates a span of time. 

Its figurative meaning is usually understood to last longer than its literal meaning. 

What is this phrase?

Hint: The initial letters of the words in the idiom, in order, spell a first name. 

Riffing Off Shortz And Harvey Slices:

Tidbits of “Biliteral” symmetry

Will Shortz’s December 6th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Jared Harvey of Santa Cruz, California, reads:

Think of a common word in six letters. Write it in lowercase. If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show the same word. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Harvey Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first and last names of a puzzle-maker. 

Rearrange their combined letters to spell a hyphenated eight-letter word for what a binge drinker of Ole Smoky Moonshine may do during the morning-after hangover and a three-letter word for the container that the drinker perhaps drank from.

Who is the puzzle-maker?

What may the binge drinker do and what is the container?

ENTREE #2

Think of a proper place-name noun in six letters. Write it in uppercase. Connect the final two letters with a horizontal line. 

Remove a horizontal line from the first letter.

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show the same original uppercase proper noun. 

What is it?

ENTREE #3

“Test-takers’ interpretations of the inky Rorschach image revealed much about their personality characteristics and emotional functioning,” the psychologist said.

Think of two common words of four letters each that are synonymous with “inky Rorschach image” and “revealed.” Write these synonyms next to each other in lowercase. If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show the same two words in the same order.

What are these synonyms?

ENTREE #4

Think of a word for a common salad food in six letters. Write it in uppercase in pencil on a piece of paper. 

Add an uppercase N to the end, forming a seven-letter string of letters that don’t spell a word. Now write an uppercase N on a piece of glass with a felt pen, then flip the piece of glass over and look at what you wrote. Erase the N you wrote on the paper and replace it with what you saw on the flip side of the glass.  

If you hold up a mirror at the side of this pencil-on-paper result, the reflection will show a phrase which, with proper spacing, consists of an English adverb and article and a French noun. 

The bilingual phrase describes the original seven-letter string of letters you wrote in pencil.

Hint: If you restore the original N you added to the end of the salad food and add an A and U to the beginning of that seven-letter string, the result will be a nine-letter synonym of a relatively self-operating mechanism – like a robot, for example. 

What is the salad food?

What is the bilingual phrase?

What is the synonym of “robot?”

ENTREE #5

“Vacuum the living room.”

“Mop the kitchen.”

“Vacuum the bedrooms.”

“Mop the bathroom.”

People who own a Roomba vacuum and Braava mop might make such a list. Think of a common word that indicates what a Roomba or Braava essentially is. Write it in lowercase, then erase the first letter.

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will describe, in two words (sometimes hyphenated), what kind of list the one shown above is. 

What is the common word that indicates what a Roomba or Braava essentially is?

What kind of list is it?

ENTREE #6

Think of a not-so-common word and a common word, each in four letters. 

The not-so-common word is “an area of open country,” one where winds are unfetterd by trees. 

The common word is what winds do. Write the two words side-by-side in lowercase. 

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show the same two words. 

What are they?

ENTREE #7

Note: The following puzzle is fake news.

A district commissioner of a large city (one that collects no sales tax in a state that collects no income tax) posted a five-word all-uppercase tweet in which he took credit for the tax breaks. The words in his tweet were 1, 4, 3, 2 and 5 letters long. 

The 4-letter word beginning with an M means “to impair or make essentially defective or ineffective.” 

The 3-letter word begins with a T.

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection of the tweet will show the same 15 letters in the same order (although you will have to allow that two of the four spaces will be in different places.) 

What did his tweet read?

ENTREE #8

Think of an not-so-common bird in six letters. Write it in uppercase. 

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show a word for a percussion instrument.

What are this bird and percussion-instrument word?

ENTREE #9

Think of a common word in five letters. Examples of this word are “Be prepared,” “Carpe Diem” or “E Pluribus Unum.” 

Write the word in uppercase, putting a space between the first two letters. 

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show first name and initial of the surname of a bus driver in an animated TV series. 

What is this common word and who is this TV character? 

ENTREE #10

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

This “truth universally acknowledged” is the opening sentence in a work of literature. It is also an example of a five-letter word. Write this word in uppercase, putting a space between the second and third letters. 

If you hold up a mirror at its side, the reflection will show the equivalent of 1,009 plus either a short synonym of “morning” or a short designation for radio stations that are more conducive to talk formats than music formats. 

What is this five-letter word? 

What is the equivalent of 1,009? 

What is either a short synonym of morning or a short designation for radio stations that are more conducive to talk formats than music formats?

ENTREE #11

In a crucial hockey match, Alexander Mikhailovich Ovechkin, winger and captain of the Washington Capitals, is able to fake Boston Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask out of position and score an overtime-period goal. As a result, the Capitals barely scratched out a one-goal victory. 

Write a 4-letter synonym for “fake (an opponent) out of position.” Write it in uppercase letters as if you were filling out a DOWN clue in a crossword puzzle. 

If you hold up a mirror at its topside, the reflection will show a synonym for “scratched (out, as a hard-fought victory)”. 

What are these two synonyms?

ENTREE #12

A DOWN crossword puzzle clue reads “Make a choice or selection” in six letters. Write just the first five letters in the grid, in uppercase, leaving the bottom square blank. 

If you hold up a mirror at its topside, the reflection will show a five-letter answer to another clue in the puzzle: “Canned tomato choice, other than stewed, crushed and pureed.”

What are these six-letter and five-letter crossword puzzle answers?

Dessert Menu

Painterly Dessert:

What is the name of this brusher with fame?

A well-known museum once sponsored an exhibition of a relatively unknown painter’s artwork. 

The exhibition coincided with a retrospective of a renowned artist’s works, which drew crowds to the museum, making the two-word nickname of the more obscure painter famous. 

The first two letters of the nickname’s second word and the last two letters of the first word spell the name of the museum, for short.

Who is this artist?

What is the museum?

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.

A nesting turchiduckenkey! Doughboys and Deerstalkers; Awareness of one’s surroundings; A recipe for mobster roles; Granny Smiths, stamps & cinema

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 3(7!) SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Awareness of one’s surroundings

Complete the somewhat familiar phrase “House of ____” with one word. 

Triple one of the two vowels in the word. Add an “s” to the mix.

Rearrange the result to form a word for what surrounds a house... and not just this house but, really, what surrounds almost any house. 

What word in the blank completes the phrase? 

What surrounds most all houses?

Appetizer Menu

Delightfully Puzzley Appetizer:

Granny Smiths, stamps & cinema

🍏🍎1. Name a 4-word, 17-letter exhortation
that Dr. Anthony Fauci and others who are fighting the Covid-19 pandemic might use as a rallying cry. 

Remove an H and rearrange the remaining letters to form a 4-word phrase for something it would be easy to do in an orchard full of Honeycrisps and Jonathans, but would not at all be easy to do in an orchard full of Granny Smiths and Pippins. 

What are these two phrases?

🍈🐀2. Name a tasty but foul-smelling fruit with a prickly rind. Move its first letter 16 places later in the alphabet and rearrange the result to form the name of a one-word rodent known as a nuissance. 

A two-word synonym of the rodent is an anagram of a two-word caption for the stamp image pictured here.

What are the fruit and the rodent?

What are the synonym of the rodent and two-word caption?

🎥3. Name a two-word fictional city where a cabbie and cop named Ernie and Bert ply their trades. Move the first letter of the first word 16 spaces later in alphabet.

A two-word result is what the actor portraying Sundance does when western lawman Joe LeFors and his posse close in on him and his buddy Butch. (The first word of the result is the actor’s surname.)

A three-word result is also what a cinema-goer with deuteranomaly might perceive during the famous chase scene in “Bullitt,” or what a cinema-goer with deuteranomaly might perceive during the climactic Grand Canyon cliff-jumping scene in “Thelma and Louise.”

In what city do Ernie and Bert ply their trades?

What does a title role actor do to evade capture by Joe LeFors?

What do deuteranomaly-impaired cinema-goers perceive during the chase scene in “Bullitt” and the cliff-jumping scene in “Thelma and Louise?”

MENU

Playing Many (Body) Parts Slice:

A recipe for mobster roles

If you say the name of a past actor’s screen name it will sound like three body parts. 

The actor is associated with mobster roles.

Who is this actor?

Hint: A part of the actor’s pre-acting-career life was portrayed in an award-winning biographical drama-comedy. 

Riffing Off Shortz And Davis Slices:

A nesting turchiduckenkey!

Will Shortz’s November 29th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Wesley Davis of Black Mountain, North Carolina, reads: 

When you get the answer to this puzzle it will make you smile. Name an animal and spell it
backward. Now name a variety of meat and insert it inside the animal’s name that you’ve spelled backward. A common word will be revealed. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Davis Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take the first and last names and the hometown of a puzzle-maker. 

Rearrange the letters to form a caption for the image pictured here. The caption contains four words of 4, 4, 8 and 8 letters beginning with N, B, M and S.

What is the caption?

What are the name and hometown of the puzzle-maker?

ENTREE #2

Name a variety of meat. Place it within a pair of identical letters. 

A common word will be revealed for
implements one might employ to eat this variety of meat. 

What are this variety of meat and implements for eating it?

ENTREE #3

Name a 4-letter variety of meat and insert it inside a 4-letter suffix meaning “a person or substance that kills” or “an act of killing.” What will be revealed is not a common word; indeed it is not a word at all... but perhaps it should be. 

The word, which might have a hyphen in its center, would describe the locus  of the figures of Mary, Joseph, the Magi and the shepherds in a creche scene.

What is this non-word that perhaps should be a dictionary-worthy word?

What are the variety of meat and suffix associated with killing?

ENTREE #4

Name a four-letter exclamation one may utter while committing a gaffe. 

Spell it backward. 

Now name a variety of meat and insert it inside the exclamation that you’ve spelled backward. 

A common word will be revealed. What is it?

ENTREE #5

Name a variety of meat and insert it inside what Tahiti Monarchs do. 

A seven-letter word will be revealed that means “an act of subjecting someone to
disgrace, humiliation, or disrepute especially by public exposure or criticism.” 

What is this word?

What is the variety of meat, and what do Tahiti Monarchs do?

ENTREE #6

Name an animal and spell it backward. Switch the second and third letters of the result and remove the first letter. 

The final result is the first name of an athlete who is considered by many to be the best ever to play his or her sport.

What is this animal"

Who is the athlete?

ENTREE #7

Name a variety of meat and insert it inside the 4-letter informal name for an 18-wheel trucker in a 1970s convoy. 

A common word for a bedroom or for a part of a firearm will be revealed. 

What are this variety of meat and informal name for a 1970s trucker?

What is the word for a bedroom or part of a firearm?

Hint: The informal name for the 18-wheel trucker usually contains an apostrophe.

ENTREE #8

Name the profession of Jules Leotard or Charles Blondin, in seven letters. 

Spell its first four letters backward to name an mammal. The remaining letters, in order, spell a much smaller mammal. 

What mammals are these?

What is the profession of Jules Leotard or Charles Blondin?

Dessert Menu

Hunter S. Thompson Machine Gun Dessert:

Doughboys and Deerstalkers

Name two four-letter words for things that both soldiers and hunters use.

The words rhyme. 

What are these rhyming words?

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.