New vowel, same old dead end; Can you bank on who’s your caddy? Identical triplets on Tripoli’s shores; Condensed plot summary; Doobie doobie double refer madness; 20,000 major leagues under the C-notes; Snippet in the bud; Name’s the same? No, name’s the “synoname”

P! SLICES: OVER (pe)³ – (e⁴ + p³) SERVED

Welcome to our July 15^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Along with a trio of Ripping Off Shortz puzzles, we feature also this week:

1 Hors d’Oeuvre involving bogus internet chatter;

1 Morsel involving, paradoxically, de-hyphenation;

1 Slice featuring a short story James Thurber ought to have written; and

2 Desserts, – one presenting a triple-linked chain (smoking) of “reeference,” and the other dealing with people on radio talk shows, and TV reality and game shows like “Let’s Make a Deal!”

Enjoy, please, this week’s Ripping, Riffing and Reefering!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Internet Chatter Hors (Inside, Really) d’Oeuvre:

Snippet in the bud

The following snippet of bogus internet “chatter” was obtained by hacking into international email accounts. Were it real, the snippet might well have been monitored and analyzed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS): 

“Marine airmen remain in Iran. Me? I, an emir, re-arm. Marine airmen are mine, man.”

The DHS analysts would have noted that the words of the snippet possess a quality that is somewhat unusual. What is this quality?

Ripping Off Shortz And Martin Eiger Hors d’Oeuvre:

“20,000 major leagues under the C-notes”

Will Shortz’s July 10^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Martin Eiger, reads:

Think of a phrase that denotes a particular major-league sports team in 12 letters. The first 6 letters are the same as the second 6 letters rearranged. What team is it?

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz And Martin Eiger Hors d’Oeuvre” reads:

Think of a particular major-league sports team in 12 letters. The first 5 letters form an approximate rhyme of a word that is somewhat synonymous with the word spelled by the last 6 letters. What team is it?

Morsel Menu

Half-Backwards Associations Morsel:

New vowel, same old dead end

Name a word associated with dead ends and closure. Replace its first vowel with a different vowel, then de-hyphenate the word… oops, that should be dehyphenate the word.

Split the result into two equal parts and spell the second part backward to form a two-word phrase associated with apparent dead ends that might lead to welcome closure pending discovery of further information.

What are this word and phrase?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Shortz And Martin Appetizer:

Name’s the same? No, name’s the “synoname”

Think of the original nicknames of two major-league sports franchises, 6 letters each. (The franchise associated with one of nicknames, changed the nickname to a different one, which it currently uses.) The teams are based in the same metro area and play the same sport, and the original nicknames are synonyms of each other. The second and sixth letters of one nickname are identical to the second and sixth letters of the other nickname. The third, fourth and fifth letters of one nickname are the same as the corresponding letters of the other nickname, but rearranged.

The nicknames’ initial letters have alphanumeric values (see chart) that add to 27. That is, the two letters are equidistant from the ends of the alphabet, or from the midpoint of the alphabet.

(For example, A (1) + Z (26) = 27, B (2) + Y (25) = 27, …M (13) + N (14) = 27.)

What are these two professional teams?

Hint: The beginning sounds of both teams’ current nicknames are the same.

MENU

Iceboxing Lord Kelvinator Slice:

Condensed plot summary

Didn’t James Thurber write a story about a statuesque, wed-newly honeymooning fashion model who tried daubing dry (using her sundress while in a state of undress!) her hubby’s limited-edition Piet Mondrian print which became saturated with condensation after she taped it to the Kelvinator fridge at their fleabag motel?

Exactly one-seventh of the words in the above plot synopsis share a somewhat unusual quality in common.

(As you count the words, note well that hyphenated words, such as “limited-edition,” count as one.)

Hint: Two of the “one-seventh of the words” are slightly different from – and more “elegant” than – the others worthy of being included in the elite “one-seventh” of the total words.

Hint: Thirty letters are involved in the solution of this puzzle.

Riffing Off Shortz And Martin Slice:

Identical triplets on Tripoli’s shores

Think of a particular major-league sports team. Name one player – not one particular player but rather a generic player – on the team, in 13 letters. Remove four letters – all but the first three, middle three and last three letters – from this name. This leaves three identical “triplets” – three 3-letter segments – which, taken together, smack of a historical war movie released during the Vietnam era.

Name the generic team player and the movie.   

Dessert Menu

 

Chain Of Reference Dessert:

Doobie doobie double refer madness

Bruce Springsteen’s song “Thunder Road” contains the lyric, “Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely.”

In “RunningDown a Dream” Tom Petty sings, “Me and Del were singing a little ‘Runaway’…”

The Traveling Wilburys (which, coincidentally, included Roy Orbison and Tom Petty as bandmates), in “The End of the Line,” sing, “Maybe somewhere down the road a ways you’ll think of me and wonder where I am these days, maybe somewhere down the road when someone plays ‘Purple Haze.’”

 

Songs such as these – those that refer to other songs and/or artists in their lyrics – are rather uncommon. But even more uncommon is a song with lyrics that refer to a second song that has lyrics that refer to a third song, thereby forming a kind of “triple-song-link chain of reference”?

What are these three songs?

Wed-Newlies Dessert:
Can you bank on who’s your caddy?

 Find a two-word caption for the image presented here – a four-letter word followed by a five-letter word.

Rearrange the letters to a form a name of a person (first and last names) who has very recently been making news headlines.

What is the caption, and who is the news maker?

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.

ABC’s Wide World of Exports; Double yolks in the cracked “shall”; GobsMacked Sennettors; Lettermen not named David; Underdogs shall overcome! Rotating dervishes; All God’s creatures, 5 and 3 letters long

P! SLICES: OVER e⁶ + pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to our July 8^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Along with a pair of Ripping Off Shortz puzzles, we feature also this week one Riffing Off Skydiveboy puzzle! 

Last August we ran a typically excellent puzzle created by Mark Scott of Seattle (also known by his screen name “skydiveboy”) titled “Fruit Of The Looming Solution Dessert: Picking the Miranda right fruit.”  

This week’s “Riff-Off” is one Lego Lambda came up with while trying to solve Mark’s puzzle.

Also on this week’s menus are:

1 Creature Feature Hors d’Oeuvre;

1 Morsel melding senators and cinema;

1 Sporty Slice having nothing to do with Mel Chisholm; and

1 “Timekeepers in the news” Dessert.

Enjoy the Ripping, the Riffing, The Riddling!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Noah’s Ark Cargo Hors d’Oeuvre:

All God’s creatures, 5 and 3 letters long

Name one of God’s creatures, great or small, in five letters. Remove the fifth letter, move the first letter to its vacated spot, and add a homophone of an integer to the end to form a seven-letter verb.

The first three letters of this verb spell out another of God’s creatures. The last three letters of the verb – if you replace its middle letter with a different consonant – spell out a synonym of the entire seven-letter verb. This three-letter synonym, when construed as a noun, is another of God’s creatures that is closely related to the five-letter creature.

What are these three creatures?

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

Double yolks in the cracked shall

Will Shortz’s July 3^rd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Take the word FALSE. Divide it between the L and the S. The start of the word is the start of FALL, and the end of the word is the end of RISE. And, of course, “fall” and “rise” are opposites. Do the same thing for the word SHALL. Divide it into two parts so that the start of it starts one word and the end of it ends another word – and those two words are opposites. The dividing point is for you to discover. There are three different solutions. I want you to find all three.

 

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre” reads:

Take the word FALSE. Divide it between the L and the S. The start of the word is the start of FALTER, and the end of the word is the end of PAUSE. And, of course, “falter” and “pause” are somewhat synonymous.

Do the same thing for the word SHALL. Divide it into two parts so that the start of it starts one word and the end of it ends another word – and those two words are somewhat synonymous.

The dividing point is for you to discover. Or you can use multiple dividing points – whichever ones you choose… it’s up to you.

There are four different solutions. I want you to find all four. You are free, of course, to find more, or fewer.

Morsel Menu

Unequal Measures Morsel:

Gobsmacked Sennettors

Name a unit of measurement. Divide it into two unequal parts that are both first names. The first part belongs to a current movie director; the second part belongs to a former U.S. senator.

What is the unit of measurement? Who are the director and senator?

Appetizer Menu

Riffing Off Skydiveboy Appetizer:

ABC’s Wide World of Exports

A bit less than a year ago, in the August 28, 2015 Puzzleria!, we published the following original puzzle created by “skydiveboy,” also known as Mark Scott of Seattle:

People and products from France are described as French. If from Italy they are described as Italian.

Think of another country and replace its last letter with a different letter to get the word commonly used to refer to their people or products. Now rearrange those letters and you will name a fruit this country produces and exports.

What is this country and what is the fruit?

LegoLambda’s Riffing Off Skydiveboy Appetizer reads:

People and products from France are described as French. If from Italy they are described as Italian.

Take the word commonly used to describe people and products from another country. Change that word’s second letter to a different vowel and slide its first letter to the third-last position to name a fruit that this country produces and exports.

What is this country and what is the fruit?

MENU

Sporty Unspicy Slice:

Lettermen not named David

Name two athletes – one who played about 92.5 percent of his professional career with one franchise, and the other who played about 98 percent of his professional career with the same franchise for which the first athlete mainly played. 

The first name of the first athlete and the last name of the second athlete share a very unusual property pertaining to the letters in their names, and how those letters are ordered.

Who are these two athletes, and what is the unusual property their names share?

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Underdogs shall overcome!

Take the word FALL. Divide it between the A and the L. The start of the word is the start of FAULTILY, and the end of the word is the end of WELL. “Faultily” and “well” are opposites, of course, but other related pairs of words are also possible, such as: FABRIC/TWILL, FANTASY/FOOTBALL AND FARM/BILL.

Now do the same thing for the word SHALL. Divide it into two parts so that the start of it starts one word and the end of it ends another word. Do this for four pairs of words. You can choose any “dividing points” you want to obtain these four pairs.

The eight blanks embedded in the following story ought to help you find the four pairs:

In the waning minutes of a college basketball game played in 1984 – before the NCAA instituted a rule that the offensive team had but 35 seconds to attempt a field goal that either “swishes” or hits the rim – the coach of the underdog team tried to keep the score close by choosing not to _____ but instead to _____. 

After the game, each of the victorious underdogs retreated to a ______ _____ in the locker room, and all applied to their scalps _______ with the brand name _____ purchased earlier that day by the team manager at a local ________ ____.

What are these four word-pairs?

Hint: The number of letters in the eight blanks are, in order: (5,5), (6,5), (7,5), and (8,4).    

Dessert Menu

 

As The Terrain Whirled Dessert:

Rotating dervishes

A global pas de dervish deux, not devilish but holy,

The North, the South, Earth’s axis tips, the pair of _____ _____ slowly…

Too slowly though, as it turns out, and so timekeepers reckoned,

“To keep atomic clocks in sync let’s add just one ___ ______!”

The “quaterrain” above pertains to a recent announcement reported in the news. The letters that belong in the second line’s two blanks can be rearranged to form the words in the last line’s two blanks.

What are these four 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.

Bilingual bugle call; Statesided Journey; Pigskin veggie boys; Making model cars in shop class; The United Shapes of America; Nine pyrotechnic page-turners; (TH)inking outside the pushed envelope; Reading a postal pattern; The Mailer’s Tale... of Two Cities

P! SLICES: OVER e⁶ + pi⁴ SERVED

Welcome to our July 1^st edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

We feature another fine puzzle this week from patjberry. It involves a singer, a song, and a soldier who lingered in his bunk too long! Patrick’s puzzle is titled “Snoozy Sleepyhead Soldier Slice: Bilingual bugle call.”

It appears directly beneath this week’s main MENU.  Our gratitude, patjberry.

Also on this week’s menus are:

5 “Riffing/Ripping Off Shortz” puzzles (all involving – fittingly for Independence Day weekend – our 50 United States of America);

1 Hors d’Oeuvre featuring Elvis at a Fourth of July clambake;

1 Morsel suitable for both carnivores and herbivores; and

1 Appetizer involving high school classes and high-performance cars (“high-performance,” perhaps).

Note: This week’s Dessert ought to appeal especially to very young Puzzlerians!, and our “Riffing Off Shortz Morsel: United Shapes of America” should be solvable by teens and tweens.

So, start working on grilling up some puzzleburgers, slap them onto buns slathered and stacked with the works, ruminate while oohing and aahing at the befuddling fireworks… but then, get to work!

And, as always, enjoy:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Elvis’ Clambake Hors d’Oeuvre:

Nine pyrotechnic page-turners

Fourth of July’s Sestet

A July drab bit run-of-the-pepper-mill clambake: 

Scads of shish kebab bitten, then grape/berry-jam cake.

Meanwhile beachside, Dad helped them make castles, his brood…

One kid napped in Mom’s arms as, on sand, lovers wooed.

Speakers boom a lone Diesel song, disco beat churning,

Then the “legend from Tupelo” lit a hunk burning.

Sunset looms, bats their sonar chirps echo-ward send,

July’s sestet (plus couplet) has come to its end.

Nine titles from literature are hidden within the text of the above sestet-plus-couplet. Can you find all nine?

Ripping Off Shortz And Collins Hors d’Oeuvre:

The Mailer’s Tale... of Two Cities

Will Shortz’s June 26^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle, created by Peter Collins of Ann Arbor, Michigan, reads:

Think of two well-known American cities, each five letters long. The first two letters of the first city are the state postal abbreviation of the second city. And the first two letters of the second city are the state postal abbreviation of the first city. What two cities are these? 

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz And Collins Hors d’Oeuvre” reads:

Think of two cities with populations greater than half-a-million. The first city is one letter shorter than the second one, and has a population roughly one-third of the second.

The first two letters of the first city are the state postal abbreviation of the Second City. 

What two cities are these?

Morsel Menu

Giving It The Ol’ College Trio Morsel:

Pigskin veggie boys

Slice up a vegetable into three sections:

The rightmost section is the first name of an All-American college football player and College Football Hall of Fame coach. He also coached in the NFL.

The middle section is the first name of a College Football Hall of Fame coach who led his team to multiple national collegiate championships.

The leftmost section consists of three consecutive interior letters in the surname of a member of both the College Football and Pro Football Halls of Fame as a player.

Take the remaining letters of the player’s surname and spell them in reverse order to form a common abbreviation for a general term encompassing sporting activities such as football. 

All three men had great success and are closely associated with one particular university – two as players and one as a coach. All three played professional football and were born in “traditional Big Ten” states.

What is this vegetable? Who are the three men, and with which university are they closely associated?

Riffing Off Shortz Morsel:

The United Shapes of America

Identify the shapes pictured below, #1 through # 8.

Appetizer Menu

Ripping Off Shortz Appetizer:

Reading a postal pattern

It has been said that American football – as compared to international futbol (also known as “soccer”) – is a violent sport. But which position player on a football team is least likely to, as they say, “go postal.”

Hint: The answer is not “Defensive End.”

High (On Glue) School Appetizer:

Making model cars in shop class

Name the make and model of an automobile you still see occasionally on the roads. 

Replace a vowel in the model’s name with a different vowel.

The result is a subject usually taught in high school.

What is this automobile make and model? What is the high school subject?

MENU

Snoozy Sleepyhead Soldier Slice:

Bilingual bugle call

Think of a well-known bilingual singer. Now think of a military rank. The singer’s name contains every letter of this rank, rearranged. Remove the letters in the rank from the singer’s name, leaving letters that can be rearranged to spell a two-word phrase that a soldier of a lower rank might say to explain why he still may be in his bunk long after reveille.

In order to rouse the sleeping-in soldier, the officer outranking him might need to yell out the title of one of the bilingual singer’s hit songs. The first two letters of this song’s title spell the initials of the singer’s name. The letters of the final word in the title can be found in the singer’s last name, rearranged.

Who is the singer, and what is the title of the hit song? What is the military rank, and what does the soldier say to explain why he is still in bed after reveille?

Riffing Off Shortz Slice:

(TH)inking outside the pushed envelope

The following list of 12 state postal abbreviations is only 75 percent complete. The states they represent share something in common that is related to state postal abbreviations:

AL, __, CT, GA, IA, KY, __, MD, MO, NM, __, PA, RI, __, WV, WI

Can you complete the list of 16 total abbreviations by adding the four other postal abbreviations that share the same quality in common?

Hint: Two similar lists – both that would likely be easier to solve – contain 20 state postal abbreviations and 34 state postal abbreviations.

Dessert Menu

 

Ripping Off Shortz Easy As Pie-ce Of Name-calling Dessert:

Statesided Journey

Can you name what each of the four shapes pictured in the diagram at the left is called?

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.