A Pair of Puzzles, Oceangoing and Orchestral; “Global brainstorming” “Do do that voodoo, Doll, that you do so well” Retail, rental & records; Hash browns and Has#tags;

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

“Global brainstorming”

Name two large cities – one in Asia, the other in Africa. 

Their combined letters can be anagrammed to spell either of two other geographical pairs:

🌎 a country and a capital, both in South America, or

🌍 two European languages.

What are these large cities, South American county and capital, and European languages? 

Hint: The two large cities, if uncapitalized (and, in one case, also if pronounced differently), spell English language adjectives. 

Appetizer Menu:

Note: The two puzzles in this week’s Appetizer were composed by our friend, “A Fan of Puzzleria!” Our deepest gratitude to our friend and fan. Enjoy!

Fantabulously Fantastic Appetizer:

A Pair of Puzzles, Oceangoing and Orchestral

Grub or Garb at Sea

1.🚢 Think of the names of two famous oceangoing vessels of the 20th Century. One was rigged for sail, the other not. 

Take the combined letters of the two names and remove two each of all duplicate consonants and all of the duplicate vowels. The remaining letters can be arranged to spell an article of apparel or can be differently arranged to spell a food item.

Choose either the article of apparel or the food item. 

If you choose the article of apparel, change its last letter to the preceding letter in the alphabet. 

If you choose the food item, change its first letter to the preceding letter in the alphabet.

In either case, add to the resulting letters another word for a layer. 

After that addition, the resulting letters can be arranged to spell the name of a third famous oceangoing vessel of the 20th Century. 

What are the names of the vessels, the article of apparel, and the food item?

Hint: The three vessels all have the same number of letters in their respective names. 

“The World’s Most Dangerous... Orchestra!”

2.🎷🎻 Before a European concert trip, in order that performances be family-friendly, a slightly eccentric orchestra conductor took out all the sax and violins.

However, the conductor left all other woodwinds and strings in his orchestra, a decision he would perhaps later second-guess.

Why? Well, the conductor failed to notice that among the rearranged letters of two remaining woodwinds and one string lurked the identification of a heretofore unheard of group whose very title suggested termination of low-ranking nobility. 

What are those three instruments? 

What is the title of the (hopefully fictional) lethal group?

MENU

Grabbing Megabytes Of Breakfast Slice:

Hash browns and Has#tags

Name a two-word item you might select from a breakfast menu. 

Delete the last letter of the first word. Move the middle two letters of this result to the end of the first word. The result is a two-word item you might select from a computer menu. 

What are these two menu items?

Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices:

“Do do that voodoo, Doll, that you do so well”

Will Shortz’s March 5th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by the screenwriter and comedian Mike Reiss, reads: 

Name something scary in two words. Five of the letters are vowels, which are all the same. And the consonants are all Roman numerals. What scary thing is this? 

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Reiss Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker in two words. Four of the letters are two pairs of vowels. There are five consonants, two of them the same. 

One of those vowels, along with the four different consonants in the name, are all you need to spell a five-letter word for “a smug, conceited, or silly smile” – a word one might associate with this puzzle-maker. 

Or, you can use these four consonants (one of them, twice), the other vowel in the name, and a pair of “a’s” to spell an eight-letter word for “provisions in Congressional legislation that allocate a specified amount of money for a specific project, program or organization.”

Now, take just this puzzle-maker’s surname. Double the second letter and anagram the result to spell the missing word in: 

This puzzlemaker “served as executive producer, head writer, script editor and story editor of the longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television ______.” 

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What is the word in the blank?

What are the five-letter and eight-letter words?

ENTREE #2

Name somebody scary, in two words, a cartoon character that appeared first in a periodical and later appeared on TV and the movies. 

Five of the letters in the character’s name are vowels, which are all the same. Six of the ten consonants are Roman numerals; the first three consonants and final consonant are not Roman numerals. 

The first four letters of the character’s name are an anagram of the second word in a catchphrase spoken by a somewhat inarticulate scary character in the same cartoon.

An anagram of the name of that somewhat inarticulate scary character is a noun that describes him.

Who are these two scary characters?

What is the catchphrase? What noun describes the somewhat inarticulate character?

ENTREE #3

Name a strange scary storied Scandinavian
giant-squid-like sea monster, in one six-letter word, about which a 19th-century English poet wrote, noting that it possessed “enormous polypi!”

ROT13 the first half of the monster to spell a prefix meaning “stranger.” This prefix, followed by an “o,” is often paired with a root that means “of, relating to, or affected by fear.”

What is this scary sea monster?

What are the prefix meaning “stranger” and the root that means “of, relating to, or affected by fear?”

Hint: The first half of the monster, spelled backward, is a seafaring vessel.

ENTREE #4

Name a scary agrarian figure, in two words. Rearrange the combined letters in the words to spell two other scary things – one a biological weapon, the other a more conventional weapon. 

Who is this scary agrarian figure?

What are the biological weapon and more conventional weapon?

ENTREE #5

Name a scary creature associated with Hades, in one word. ROT10 the first six letters of this word. 

The first three of these six letters spell a scary group.

The final four of these six letters spell the second word in a scary carnivorous amoeboidal alien motion picture starring a youthful Steve McQueen.

What scary creature is this?

What are the scary group and the scary movie?

ENTREE #6

Name something scary that you might experience after ingesting mass quantities of candy bars, ice cream, cheeses, booze, spicy hot sauce, chips, pasta and soda pop.

Rearrange the letters to spell a five-letter noun that might describe a certain scary 380-pound, 7-foot-six-inch fictional household patriarch (as seen on TV), and what his friends might call him for short.

What scary thing might you experience?

What word describes the head-of-household patriarch?

What might his friends call him?

ENTREE #7

Take the surname of a scary authoritarian East Asian dictator who used the forces of torture and fatal violence to bring forth his authority and who ordered police to “socially cleanse” the streets of citizens who were sent to camps where they were subjected to forced labour, torture and rape. 

Take also the first and last words in the title of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a Middle Eastern leader who was less scary.

Anagram the combined letters of these creatures to spell two very scary sea creatures. 

What is the scary dictator’s surname?

What is Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s title?

What are the scary sea creatures?

ENTREE #8

Think of a scary monster, associated with electricity, whose name consists of a feminine first name, a masculine first name, and an anagram of a surname of an author known as “the Stephen King of children’s literature.” 

Now take a unit measure associated with electricity (like, for example, “watt”). Interchange its third and fourth letters. ROT11 the result to spell the surname of a “human monster” who was arguably even more scary.

What are the scary monster and the unit measure associated with electricity?

Who was the “human monster?”

Hint: The human monster died, shockingly, not in the electric chair but of natural causes.

ENTREE #9

Name something scary in three syllables, two of which rhyme. 

Rearrange the letters to spell the one-syllable surname of a historical captain who, in a 1962
film, was portrayed as “scary crazy,” and the two-syllable stage name of a “scary talented” and “scary rich” singer/songwriter in a rock band.

What is the “something scary?”

What are the surname and stage name?

ENTREE #10

Name a five-syllable 16-letter adjective that, in the late 1980s, describes what George H.W. Bush said the national debt would become if his main rival for the presidency were elected and instituted his proposed economic policy. 

From this 16-letter adjective remove six letters that can be arranged to spell a scary two-syllable 6-letter adjective that candidate Bush used to describe these economics of his opponent.

The 10 remaining letters can be anagrammed to spell:

1. a two-word term for a Xerox or Canon employee who is showing you options for making hard copies, or

2. the name of a domestic creature whose image became one of the world’s best-known trademarks, and the first four letters of the seven-letter breed of this creature.

What is the adjective George Bush used to describe the national debt if his opponent were elected?

What is the scary adjective Bush used to describe the economics of his opponent?

What is the two-word term for a Xerox or Canon employee?

What is the name of the creature on the trademark and its breed?

Hint: The five-syllable 16-letter adjective is really just a “five-dollar word” for “scary rich”

Dessert Menu

Grammophone Dessert:

Retail, rental & records

Take a rental company and a retail company. 

Both are headquartered in the Northeast Region of the United States. 

Lowercase one letter. 

Add an M someplace to name a Grammy-winning recording artist. 

Who is this Grammy-winner?

What are the rental and retail companies.

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.

American history and herstory and English nursery rhymes; Astronomy Biology “Chemystery!” Did Jesus enjoy cheeses? “Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick!” Politics, performers, presidents and prose

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

American history and herstory and English nursery rhymes

The first seven words of a traditional English nursery rhyme seem to describe two historical American events that happened 60 years apart. What are these seven words and two events?

Appetizer Menu

Note: We at Puzzleria! are proud to welcome our friend Nodd, the latest member of our sterling legion of guest puzzle-makers. His puzzles will appear under the title “Nodd ready for prime time.” Enjoy Nodd’s debut – there will be scores more such scrumptious stumpers to come.

Nodd Ready For Prime Time Appetizer:

Politics, performers, presidents & prose

“Political Connections”

1.🐫🐘 Take the first name of a prominent
U.S. politician.  

Add a letter in the middle to name a world capital city.  

Replace the first two letters of the name of the city with a single letter to name an animal that is found in the country in which the city is located.  

Can you name the politician, the city, and the animal?

“Performers, Past and Present”

2.🎥 Two well-known American actresses have the same last name.  Both were born in the 20th Century and one is now deceased.  

Rearrange the letters of the name to form the last name of a male American actor born in the 21st Century. The male actor made his film
debut in a movie that starred an actress with the same first name as one of the first two actresses.  

Who are these four performers?

“Presidential Branding”

3.📰One U.S. president’s last name has a characteristic that is not found in the last name of any other president.  

Switch the middle letter of the name to a different letter to form the brand name of a product you would expect to see at this president’s public appearances.  What is it?

“American Novelties”

4.📖 Take the two-word title of a well-known early 20th Century American novel. Delete the last two letters.  

Move the first two letters to the end, in reverse order. The result is a word that is familiar to
NPR Sunday Puzzle solvers.  

Now insert a copy of the first letter of the novel author’s last name in the middle of the name.  

The result is a word that appears in the title of another well-known American novel, this one from the mid-20th Century.

What are these two novels? 

What is the familiar word?

MENU

Scientific Slice:

Astronomy Biology “Chemystery!”

Remove the last two letters from a term used in chemistry and biology. Reverse the order of those letters to spell a word that sounds like a letter. Place that letter at the beginning of the term.

The result spells an astronomical term.

What are these two terms?

Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices:

“Elementary, my dear Watson... and Crick!”

Will Shortz’s February 26th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Jim Francis of Kirkland, Washington, reads:

Take this equation: 14 + 116 + 68 = 47. Clearly this doesn’t work mathematically. But it does work in a nonmathematical way. Please explain.

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Francis Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Take this equation: 9 + 88 + 7 + 6 + 53 + 16 = the first name of a saintly Italian animal-lover.

Then take this equation: 19 + 77 + 19 + 57 + 60 = a Scottish church and where it sits, in two words.

The first equation also equals the surname of a puzzle-maker. The second equation also equals the name of this puzzle-maker’s hometown.

Who are this saintly Italian animal-lover and this puzzle-maker?

What are this Scottish church and where it sits, and this puzzle-maker’s hometown?

Please explain (if you indeed want to take a piece of your valuable time to do so).

ENTREE #2

Consider the equation illustrated in the accompanying image.

It reads: 

“The parenthetical mathematical expression (iPhones plus Networks) squared, equals (Phoniness)”

Is the expression true or false? 

Please explain your reasoning.

Hint: Some “selective ignorance” may be necessary to solve this puzzle.

ENTREE #3

A lifelong “over-consumer” of pastries wrote in his memoirs, confessionally, about his addiction: 

“I ate pie; pie ate at me.”

The first clause is the cause of the second clause, the effect.

Place five plus signs between the seven words in the two clauses. 

Do not place a plus sign between the two “pies”... (There is, after all, already a “Molson Ice” seMIcolon there!)

Do the math. Roughly how many times worse was the effect than the cause?

Hint: No selective ignorance is required, or even allowed, in solving this puzzle. Discard nothing in the clauses!

ENTREE #4

Spell out a number. 

Lop off two letters from the end. 

Divide what’s left into three numbers. 

Their product is more than 2.5 times the value of the original number. It is actually 2.55255 times the value of the original number.

What is this original number? 

What are the three factors whose product
exceeds that number?

Hint #1: The two letters you “lop off” from the number spell an antonym of one of the words in the “lopping-off” instructions. 

Hint #2: The “original number” in the intended answer is quite a bit larger than “seven.”

ENTREE #5

The sum of some of the parts of five consecutive one-digit integers is one-ninth the product of those same parts. 

Two of those five integers are prime, and are also the prime factors of the sum of the five integers themselves. The sum of the digits in the number for that sum is another one of the five integers.

What are these five consecutive integers?

What are the sum and the product of their “parts”?

What is the sum of the five whole-number integers?

Hint #1: For an example of what  a “part” of an integer might be, “went” is a part of “twenty.”)

Hint #2: Rearrange the “unused and ‘unsummed’ parts” of the five integers to spell a city in Belgium, a bog and a member of a monastic brotherhood of Jews in ancient Palestine.

Hint 3: As in Entree #2, some selective ignorance may be necessary in determining what parts to keep or discard.

ENTREE #6

Let A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. Find the sum of the values in a six-letter word associated with beads.

Replace the first letter with a different letter of the alphabet that, when spelled out, begins with the letter you are replacing. 

Do likewise for the remaining letters. 

The sum of your six replacement letters will be
as low as 3.8 times the sum of the values of the six original letters in the word associated with beads, or as high as 5.9 times the sum of the values of the six original letters in the word associated with beads.

What is this word associated with beads?

Note: Entrees #7and #8 were created and submitted by our friend Tom Rymsza, who is both a playwright and a “puzzlewright.” You may know Tom from his occasional comments on Blaine’s Blog, or from his debut puzzle appearance last July 8 here on Puzzleria! in which he contributed Entree #9, an elegant anagram puzzle.

Now, enjoy our “resident puzzlewright’s” latest pair of masterful “dramysteries”:

ENTREE #7

Using just four different letters of the alphabet – two consecutive consonants and two sequential vowels – form a seven-letter word for “settled.”

What are the four letters and the seven-letter word?

ENTREE #8 

Note: Will Shortz presents an “on-air puzzle” each week during his National Public Radio “Weekend Edition Sunday” broadcast. Tom Rymsza submitted the following “on-air puzzle” titled “Ways to Move Around” to Will Shortz a few weeks ago. Will, who creates all on-air challenges himself, politely declined, and presented his fruit-themed “Orange You Glad You Played The Puzzle?” as the February 26 on-air puzzle. Tom sent us his puzzle, and NPR’s loss became Puzzleria!’s gain.

Oranges and other fruits are fine, of course, but we couldn’t enjoy them if we didn’t have vehicles to transport them! Tom’s “not-on-air” but “now-on-Puzzleria!” puzzle provides that transportation! 

So, pretend you just got the phone call from Will Shortz. Then settle back, relax... and don't embarrass yourself! You are now on the air!

(discordant piano riff plays) 

Ayesha Rascoe: It’s time to play The Puzzle! Joining us as always is Will Shortz... he’s puzzle editor of the New York Times and Puzzle MASTER of Weekend Edition. Hi there, Will!

Will Shortz: Good morning, Ayesha!

Ayesha: Welcome to the show, Puzzleria! followers. Are you ready to play The Puzzle?

Puzzlerian!s: As ready as we’ll ever be...

Ayesha: All right, take it away, Will.

Will: All right, Puzzleria! followers and Ayesha, in this week’s challenge, every sentence contains a form of transportation, split between two or more words.  

For example: “If you want to be covered, get extra insurance.” You would answer TRAIN, because the phrase “extra insurance” contains the consecutive letters “TRA+IN” connecting the two words “exTRA” and “INsurance.” Got it?  Okay, let’s play the puzzle:

1. The banjo guy is always in a rush.

2. That maniac artist took us for a ride.

3. The tax increase makes the fares go up.

4. That gumbo at Emeril's was the best of all time.

5. The news anchor seems to know about equines.

6. For Halloween, the witches club room is booked.

7. It was dumb using fake IDs.

8. Can you be ready by nine?

9. That sushi place on the bay was great

10. Ask a teacher how to dance on ice.

11. Your undershirt bled in the wash.

12. Are you for real?

Will: You got em all; that was impressive!

Ayesha: That was Amazing! You did a great job. How  do you feel?

Puzzlerian!s: Relieved!

Editor’s note from LegoLambda:

And then, before Will Shortz can announce what next week’s challenge will be, the on-air contestant fulfills what has probably been every vengeful on-air contestant’s fantasy going all the way back to the “postcard days” – putting the Puzzle Master himself on the hot seat! The contestant blurts out: “Okay, Mr. Puzzle Master, here’s one for you: Always use studded tires to climb icy Cleveland hills.”

Dessert Menu

Holiness and homophonics Dessert:

Did Jesus enjoy cheeses?

A name associated with sainthood is a near homophone of a word associated with spiritual redemption. 

What are these words?

Hint: The name associated with sainthood belonged to a college roommate of a fellow named Favre. The saintly fellow, however, excelled not on the gridiron but as a high jumper in the field events.

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.

Five first-name’s-the-same fellas; Is YewTwo popUlar on YewTube? Rx this conjunctive eye test; Diviners, Dawdlers, Stockpilers, Publicans and other Mixed Fruits; Donovan Leitch & the Beach Boys wrote rhyming and chart-climbing hits

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 6!π SERVED

Schpuzzle of the Week:

Five first-name’s-the-same fellas

Name five fellas who share the same first name: a boxer, fictional character, architect, lead singer and movie actor. 

As for their last names, one is a homophone of a class of vertebrates; the four others are examples of those vertebrates – one of which is a female creature.

Who are these five fellas? 

Appetizer Menu

“Jefferiffic” Appetizers:

Diviners, Dawdlers, Stockpilers, Publicans and other Mixed Fruits

Diviners vs. Dawdlers

1. 🔮Change four letters in a word for one who predicts the future to form a word for one who postpones the future. 

Who are this predictor and this postponer?

Stockpilers & Publicans

2. 🍻Name something commonly stockpiled in modern American homes.

Rearrange its letters to get what you might call someone working in a pub.

Mixed fruits

3. 🍌🍇🍎🍍Take the name of a popular fruit. 

Switch the locations of two letters to get a very different fruit.  

What are these fruits?

MENU

Rhyme Eradication! Slice:

Donovan Leitch & the Beach Boys wrote rhyming and chart-climbing hits 

Take two parts of speech – a verb and noun – that rhyme with one another. 

Connect them to form an eight-letter adjective with three syllables, none of which rhyme with the verb or noun, or with one another.

What are this verb, noun and adjective?

Riffing Off Shortz And Elinson Slices:

Is YewTwo popUlar on YewTube?

Will Shortz’s February 19th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Elaine Elinson of San Francisco, California, reads:

Name a tree. In the very middle of the word insert a homophone of another tree. The result will be a new word describing what everyone wants to be. What is it?

Puzzleria!s Riffing Off Shortz And Elinson Slices read:

ENTREE #1

Name a puzzle-maker, first and last names. 

Take the last name. Remove three letters –two of them adjacent – that, in order, form a prefix followed by -bar, -tropic or -metric. Scrunch two of the remaining lowercase letters together to form a new letter. The result is the name of a tree.

Combine the letters you removed from the last name with all the letters of the first name. From this group of letters remove two that appear twice – for instance, “together” would become “togehr.” 

Rearrange the letters that remain to name a creature that is related to a fur seal but is larger and lacks a thick underfur.

Who is this puzzle-maker?

What are the prefix and tree?

What is the creature?

Note: Entree #2 this week was composed by our good friend “Tortitude,” whose “Tortie’s Slow But Sure Puzzles” is featured regularly on Puzzleria! We thank her greatly:

ENTREE #2

Name a part of the body. 

In the very middle of the word insert a homophone of another part of the body. The result will be a new word that might offend a third part of the body.

What are the three parts of the body? What might be offensive?

ENTREE #3

Name a tree. Letters 1, 8, 4, 7 and 1 of the tree spell the surname of one of the two founders of a chain of department stores that opened more than a century ago. 

Letters 7, 6 and 8 spell the beginning of the other founder’s surname, which ends with a four-letter word for what the founders hoped to make – a word usually preceded by a one-letter word.

What is the tree? Who are the two department store chain founders, and what did they hope to make?

ENTREE #4

Name a tree with three vowels, all the same. Replace one of them with a different vowel. The last two syllables of the result are a brand name food product associated with Lorne Greene, Ed McMahon and, during the 1990s, a cartoon “spokes___.” The word in the blank is the first syllable in the tree. 

What is this tree?

What are the word in the blank and the brand name?

ENTREE #5

Name a tree. Near the middle of the word insert another tree. 

The first six letters of the result will be a new word that sometimes describes human sleepers or ____ when they ___. The last
seven letters of the result can be rearranged to spell the words that belong in those two blanks.

What are these two trees?

What word sometimes describes human sleepers?

What words belong in the two blanks?

Hint: The words in the blanks, in order, rhyme with “ice cap.”

ENTREE #6

Insert a non-English word for “friend” within the English word for “fliege.” 

The result is a kind of tree. 

What are these words for “friend” and “fliege”?

What kind of tree is this?

ENTREE #7

Name a word for particular birds that may perch in a tree. 

Anagram its second, third, fourth and seventh letters to name a kind of tree. ROT13 the remaining letters, in reverse order, to spell a mythical bird.  

What are these birds?

What kind of tree is it?

What is the mythical bird?

ENTREE #8

The people of Samaria couldn’t even afford to buy “doves’ dung,” according to the Hebrew scriptures of the Bible. 

But an alternative reading of the Hebrew text suggests that it is not “doves’ dung” but “seed pods” of a certain tree that the Samarians could not afford. Remove one letter from the name of this tree and switch the order of two others  to spell a word that is paired with the word “apple” to form a compound word that often precedes “tree.”

What is the tree with seed pods?

What is the word with “apple” that often precedes “tree”?

ENTREE #9

Name a lead actor in a past TV sitcom who has lately been in the news. There is a double-letter in his surname (like the “bb” in “gobble”). Remove one of the letters.

Place the name of a tree after this result, without a space. 

Place a space someplace within the tree. 

The result is the name, not of a publisher of fiction but of a fictional publishing company appearing in Network MCI commercials in the mid-1990s.

Who is the actor? 

Name the tree. 

What is the fictional publishing company?

Hint: The “stingray-shaped island” in the image has a homophonic connection to the tree.

ENTREE #10 

Name a tree. Remove its fourth letter. The result sounds like:

⚽ what a mom driving her kids to soccer practice might yell at a driver who just sideswiped her at an intersection, or

🏈 what outside linebackers might yell at pulling guards, before complaining to a referee, or

💇 a compliment that tonsorial or beauty shop patrons might give their hairdresser or barber, or a complaint they might make to one who
overcharged them. 

What is this tree, and what does it sound like after its fourth letter is cut off?

ENTREE #11

Take a name of a tree that is accented on its last syllable. 

Place the accent on the syllable preceding it. 

Replace the vowel sound in that last syllable with the short vowel sound of one of the letters in that syllable. The result sounds like something hungry campers and soldiers may use.

If you instead take the tree name and add to its end a syllable that is nothing but a long vowel sound, the result sounds like a bane that bothers both campers and soldiers.

What is this tree?

What are the “useful boon” and “bothersome bane” to both campers and soldiers?

ENTREE #12

Let a=1, B=2, C=3, etc. 

Name a tree. The first two letters of this tree each correspond to a number that is evenly divisible by 5. Replace these letters with one different letter that corresponds to a number that is also divisible by 5. 

The result is a different tree.

What are these two trees? 

ENTREE #13

Change the second letters of three trees to spell three fictional characters:

1. The surname of a  large, lumbering folk hero,

2. the first name of “Boopadoop-courter,”

3. a butler that Butler Bulldog coach Thad
Matta would likely like to recruit.

Add a letter to a tree to spell:

4. the surname of a fictional elderly amateur sleuth. 

Who are these characters?

What are the trees?

Dessert Menu

Linkin’ Logoi at Loggerheads Dessert:

Rx this conjunctive eye test

Place a conjunction between two nouns that are antonyms. The letters in the first half of this phrase, if you switch the order of two adjacent letters, are identical to, and in the same order as, the letters in the second half. 

What are these antonyms?

Hint: The first four letters of your answer form a third noun. If you replace the conjunction with the adverb “up,” that third noun and adverb form a two-word verbal phrase associated with the first of the two nouns that are antonyms.

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.