“What politicians da-doo-ron-ron” Pursuing parallel parking spots; Kaleidoscopic “chamelons”; Chickens in the kitchen? Fred Flintstone meets Boris Godunov; Loop, flicklob and chop! Transporting comestibles across state lines; Chapel choppers; Odium takes the podium;

P! SLICES: OVER e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹ SERVED

Welcome to our June 3^rd edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria! We feature another excellent patjberry puzzle this week, one that manages to marry popular music with politics.

Patrick’s puzzle, titled “Billboard Chart Slice: ‘What politicians da-doo-ron-ron,’ ” appears under our main MENU.

All nine (count ’em, nine) hors d’oeuvres, morsels, appetizers, slices and desserts on this week’s menu are guaranteed to be gluten-free, MSG-free, BHA-free, BHT-free, trans-fat-free, sulfur-dioxide-free, potassium-bromate-free, high-fructose-corn-syrup-free, sucralose/saccharin/aspartame-free and sugar-free (well, except for maybe the dessert, that is).

Oh yes, we almost forgot. All nine of this week’s menu items are also 100% anagram-free!

As always, you may want to take a few of our puzzles with a grain – but only one grain – of sodium chloride.

So, get shakin’… and enjoy a guilt-free puzzling experience:

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

A Night At The Opera Hors d’Oeuvre

Fred Flintstone meets Boris Godunov

A radio announcer – best known for introducing operatic performers – regularly introduced a particular non-operatic performer as one “who starts a fire by rubbing” together, not sticks or flint stones (like Fred Flintstone might), but other, more intangible things. The entertainer’s full name sounds similar to a creature that would probably not make a good household pet.

Who is this entertainer? 
Extra credit: What are the intangible things that might be rubbed together?

Archdioceasy Rider Hors d’Oeuvre:

Chapel choppers

(Note: I’m dedicating this this puzzle to my brother, Michael Peter. No, he’s not dead. He’s just a motorcycle guy.)

Divide into two unequal parts an 8-letter word that appears in the names of many Christian churches. Duplicate the final letter of the first part, take its mirror image, uppercase that mirror image and place it at the beginning of the second part. Change into lowercase the first letter of the first part.

 

The 9-letter result – an adjective and slang noun – names what a motorcycle aficionado may harbor in her, or his, garage.

What is in the garage?   

Morsel Menu

Media Jackal Morsel:

Chickens in the kitchen?

Name a person who works in the television news broadcasting profession. The person’s full name, first and last names, rhymes with a word coined about three centuries ago.

 

The word has become associated with both a common kitchen item and a common barnyard creature.

Who is this person and what is this word? 

Arrayed Radii Morsel:

Pursuing parallel parking spots

In the diagram pictured here, F is a focus of an ellipse, C is the center of an ellipse, and J and D are centers of circles.

Name the line that is parallel to a radius.

Appetizer Menu

Voluntary Guidelines Appetizer:

Odium takes the podium

The following “doggeriddle” was inspired by recent national health and wellness news story:

When there’s ice over-copious, I preserve life.

It is food I preserve, though, when ice is not rife.

Use reserve, though, with me in food, be a custodian

Of your health… overuse me and my name is Odium.

... What am I?

One Of Those “Bevvies” Appetizer

Kaleidoscopic “chamelons”

Name a creature, in nine letters. Duplicate the fifth letter and place it at the end of the word. Change the sixth letter to an E and place a space after it, resulting in a brand name beverage preceded by an adjective that often describes it.

Name the same creature. Change the sixth letter to an E and place a space after it, resulting in two colors.

Duplicate the fifth letter in the first color and place it at the end of the second color. To the end of the second color also add a girl’s name, plus a duplicate of the first letter in the girl’s name. The result is two fruits which are similar in color.

What is the creature? What are the brand name beverage and its color? What are the pair of colors and pair of fruits?

MENU

Billboard Chart Slice:

“What politicians da-doo-ron-ron”

Name the title of a Billboard # 1 hit by a duo, the title of a Billboard # 2 hit by a group, and the title of a song by a “progressive rock” group that did not make it onto the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. All three titles contain exactly two words, and all three titles share the same second word.

The #1 hit title sounds like what some politicians want to do to certain government-run services.

The #2 hit title sounds like what some “political groupies” do to politicians they rally around.

The non-charting song title sounds like what politicians do to budgets, policy packages and peace treaties.

What are these three song titles?

Hint: The name of the group that performed the song that did not chart on Billboard appears intact in the second word of the song’s title.

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Loop, flick/lob and chop!

Will Shortz’s May 29^th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

What are the most consecutive points a tennis player can lose and still win a best-of-five-sets match? There’s no trick. It’s a straightforward question. The modern tennis tiebreaker rule does not come into play.

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Shortz Slice reads:

What are the most consecutive points Will Shortz can lose and still win a best-of-five-sets tennis match? 

There is a trick. It’s a crookedbackward question. The modern tennis tiebreaker rule may or may not come into play… but remember, ’tis now June, and no longer May.

Hint: In the 20^th Century, the answer to this puzzle would have been 30 points greater.

Dessert Menu

Eddyble Dessert:

Transporting comestibles across state lines

Name a specialized profession – in two words of twelve total letters – in which an edible product is produced. The first word is the name of the product.

Remove an R from the left side and an L from the right side of the first word. Place this result to the left of and adjacent to the second word, without a space, to form the name of a past U.S. automobile manufacturer.

 

A major appliance manufacturer is situated across the state line, less than 50 miles, from what had been the auto manufacturer’s base of operations. The name of the appliance manufacturer is an English word that translates into the name of the edible product in its language of origin.

What is the specialized profession? What are the neighboring manufacturers?  

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.

No Isle of Man is an island nation; Free admission, drinks cost extra; Dancin’ n’ drinkin’ n’ detectin’; Number is missing in sequence, whence seeking is a must; Professional “pliers”; Ranting raving politics; Bon-mot-filled eclairs; Antiwar song = military slang; Names become games

P! SLICES: OVER e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹ SERVED

Welcome to our May 27^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

Our main puzzle event this week is a missing-number enigma created by ron – master of the mysterious, creative contributor and valued Puzzlerian! extraordinaire.

 

ron’s puzzle appears immediately beneath our main MENU under the title “Seek And Ye Shall Achieve Success Slice: Number is missing in sequence, whence seeking is a must.” It a clever and tough, but fair, challenge.

Also appearing on our menus this week are these realtively “easy-as-pie-ce-of-cake” posers:

3 “Ripping/Riffing Off Shortz” puzzles – an Hors d’Oeuvre, Appetizer and Slice;

1 pictorial Hors d’Oeuvre;

2 Morsels – one naming games, and the other remembering all who have served and those who still serve;

1 “stumper” of an Appetizer; and to top it all off,

1 Dessert that asks you to fill in a dozen “pastries,” and then try baking up one of your own from scratch.

Got the puzzling itch yet? We’ll wager you do. So scratch ’n’ sniff our menus and enjoy the wonderfully bewildering aromas that waft their way up through your olfactory and on into your gray matter…

What matters most, of course, is that you enjoy:

 

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Every Picture Tells A Story Hors d’Oeuvre

Free admission, drinks cost extra

 

Write a two-word, ten-letter caption for the image pictured here. Rearrange the letters to form two words – in 3 and 7 letters – naming what an entertainer recently freely admitted he/she once “took to.”

What is your caption? What did the entertainer admit to doing, or “taking to”?

Hint: One of the words in the caption consists entirely of uppercase letters.

Ripping Off Shortz Hors d’Oeuvre:

Professional “pliers”

Will Shortz’s May 22^nd NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle reads:

Name a common household item in 6 letters. Change the middle two letters to a P, and you’ll get the 5-letter last name of a famous person who professionally used that item. What’s the item, and who’s the person?

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

Name a common agricultural profession item in 6 letters. Change the middle two letters to a P, and you’ll get the 5-letter last name of a fictional person who plied that profession. What’s the profession, and who’s the person?

Morsel Menu

News Output Morsel:

Names become games

Take the surnames of two persons who have very recently been in the news – surnames of 5 and 7 letters.

Replace one of the letters in the 5-letter surname with the letter four places deeper in the alphabet to spell out a well-known low-tech game. 

Replace one of the letters in the 7-letter surname with the letter five places deeper in the alphabet to spell out a not-so-well-known higher-tech computer game.

 

Who are these persons and what are these games?

Hint: Children who play these games can improve certain skills:

The 5-letter game can improve _ _ _ _ _ skills.

The 7-letter game can improve _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ skills.

The words that fill in the blanks begin with the same letter, and the 16 letters that belong in the blanks can be rearranged to form the phrase:

“A most theatric mom.”

Observing Those Serving America Morsel:

Antiwar song = military slang

An antiwar song title is also a two-word slang title of a military occupation (“military occupation” in the sense of “doing one’s duty,” that is, not in the sense of  “invade, capture and settle in”).

Replace the song title’s middle vowel with two different vowels, shift the existing space elsewhere, and insert an additional space to form a three-word phrase that describes what persons serving abroad in the U.S. military might do to keep in touch with their families back home.

What is this song title? What might military personnel do to keep in touch?

Appetizer Menu

Name In The News Appetizer

Ranting, raving politics

Over the course of the past year, a headline that could well have run in U.S. newspapers pretty much every day was:

“Debased ranters stump.”

Rearrange the 19 letters in those three words to spell out another 3-word headline that might well appear in newspapers within the next week or so.

What is this potential headline?

Riffing Off Shortz Appetizer:

No Isle of Man is an island nation

Place two 3-letter common household kitchen items next to each other without a space. Remove the third letter of the result, and you’ll get the 5-letter name of an island nation.

Place, again without a space, something often contained within the first household item in front of the surname of a personality who professionally used the second household item. Replace a first-person pronoun from the middle of the result with a P and you’ll get the same 5-letter nation.

 

Place, again without a space, the same something often contained within the first household item in front of another 3-letter household container. Insert two vowels in the middle of this result to form the name of a resident of another island nation.

What are these two island nations?

MENU

Seek And Ye Shall Achieve Success Slice:

Number is missing in sequence, whence seeking is a must

What is the missing number in the following sequence?

9, 22, 24, 12, __, 4, 13

Ripping Off Shortz Slice:

Dancin’ n’ drinkin’ n’ detectin’

Name the plural form of a Latin line dance, in 6 letters. Change the middle two letters to a P, and you’ll get the 5-letter last name of a musician who made music that might accompany line dancing, and who used a compound-word stage name as his first name.

 

Replace the middle two letters of that compound stage name with two others to form the title of a 1970’s C&W novelty song sung by a performer with the initials C and W in her/his name. 

Remove the P in the 5-letter last name of the musician who made music that might accompany line dancing. In its place insert a 3-letter word to spell out the second word (in 7 letters) of two-word-named drinks mentioned in lyrics of a song sung by a singer whose last name is the same as that of a fictional detective. The 3-letter word you inserted is a synonym of the second half of the musician’s compound-word stage name.

What is the Latin line dance? Who is the musician with the stage name? What is the 1970’s C&W novelty song? What were the drinks mentioned in the song by the singer with the fictional-detective last name?

Dessert Menu

Patissiere Rempli Dessert:

Bon-mot-filled eclairs

There are a dozen incomplete paragraphs below, each which can be completed by filling in the two blanks at the end of each paragraph with two words. (If you can solve just one of the paragraphs, the others are sure to also topple like dominoes.)

After you have filled in the 24 blanks, can you add a paragraph of your own with two blanks at the end that need filling in, thereby producing an “oddly even” baker’s-dozen of “double-jelly-filled” eclairs/cannolis/cream puffs?

 

1. Get thee to a nunnery? Conventional wisdom suggests that a convent (nunnery) is a dwelling that a religious community inhabits __ _____.

2. I did a spring-cleaning in my utility room and den, loading my pick-up truck full of metal recyclables: a fireplace grate, wire coat hangers, a discarded dryer drum, fireplace screens, ironing boards, shovels, pokers, andirons __ _____.

3. Whenever I toss together a big Waldorf salad for my dinner guests, the main ingredient I feature may be raisins, celery, walnuts, bok choi, apples from my orchard, __ _____.

4. The Republican National Committee ordered not just kilograms or pounds of Donald Trump banners, placards, and campaign buttons, ___ ____.

5. In the historical struggle to attain civil rights, the names Douglas, Lincoln, Parks, Mandela and Meredith all deserve great credit, but perhaps no one is more worthy of our thanking ____  _____.

6. In civil lawsuits, it is decided whether a plaintiff be awarded compensation for injuries __ _____.

7. After I totally blanked on my history exam, my history teacher told me to see her as soon as possible to discuss the possibility that I may flunk her course; but, since I have a calculus final exam the very next period, I will have to deal with that ominous aftermath ____ _____.

8. Public Broadcasting Service NewsHour anchor Hari Sreenivasan substitutes for either of the regular co-anchors Judy Woodruff or Gwen Ifill __ ___.

9. Payton, Sanders, Simpson, Dorsett, Dickerson, Brown – all could elude linebackers, break tackles, set up their blockers, cut on a dime and survey the entire field, but none were as gifted as open-field assayers __ _____.

10. As the other Chicago prohibition agents attending the May 1957 wake in Pennsylvania strolled past the open casket, it was obvious to each one of them that their fellow Untouchable was, even in death’s stillness, _____ ____.

 

11. On “Leave it to Beaver,” Theodore seemed to be kind of a “mama’s boy,” doing whatever he could to please his mother, June, while Wally seemed instead to put his best foot forward ___ _____.

12. A Wall Street stockbroker who is bullish on three-piece suits invests __ _____.

(Here is my own “baker’s-dozenth” paragraph. It is a “rip-off/riff-off” paragraph “piggybacking” off of Paragraph # 8, above:

13. Public Broadcasting Service NewsHour anchor Hari Sreenivasan (who is syntactically challenged... for the purposes of this paragraph anyway), when he substitutes for regular NewsHour co-anchor Gwen Ifill, announces to the PBS viewers, “Tonight, in for Gwen Ifill __ ____.”

Your effort, of course, need not “piggyback” off one of the 12 paragraphs above.)

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.

That’s a horse of a certain color; Summer in the sultry city; Capturing creatures with captions; Call-out Shelter; What’s with Achilles’ tendentious ‘tude, Dude? Demons and Cherubs; A cast of four thous… and thespians all; Regaining full sail-ient; A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou;

P! SLICES: OVER e⁴ + pi⁴ + (pi^.e)² + phi¹¹ SERVED

Welcome to our May 20^th edition of Joseph Young’s Puzzleria!

This week our marquee feature is a gold medal puzzle about dramatic bronzed gods (and a goddess) playing parts up on the silver screen. The creator of this “mysterious cinematic mythology” is our friend Mark Scott of Seattle, also known by his cyber-screen name, skydiveboy.

 

Mark’s puzzle appears immediately beneath our main MENU under the title, “Silver Screen Slice: A cast of four thous… and thespians all.”

Also appearing on our menus this week are:

4 “Ripping/Riffing Off Mike” puzzles. (These four challenges “piggyback” off Blainesvillian Mike Hinterberg’s excellent NPR puzzle from this past Sunday.)

1 Grammytical Hors d’Oeuvre

1 Miraculous Morsel

1 Name-in-the-news Appetizer

1 Eat-no-lean Dessert

So, set your sights skyward, dive into our puzzle pool and, boy oh boy, please enjoy!

Hors d’Oeuvre Menu

Grammy Hors d’Oeuvre (Tasty Indulgence):

Demons and Cherubs

Name a Grammy-worthy and Grammy-honored artist. Alter the artist’s full name by replacing its middle letter (a consonant) with a vowel, and by inserting an “R” somewhere in the beginning of the name and an “I” somewhere in the end of the name.

The first two-thirds of the altered name now spell out a member of an organization of youths. The final third of the altered name now spells out one of the artist’s demons.

 

Now add an “E” to the end of the final third of the altered name, forming a word that a member of the youth organization might well aspire to be.

What is the artist’s name? What is the artist’s demon? What is the organization of youths? What might a member of that organization aspire to be?

Ripping Off Mike Hinterberg’s d’Oeuvre:

Summer in the sultry city

Will Shortz’s May15th NPR Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle was submitted by Mike Hinterberg (whose screen name is “mike_hinterberg”), a regular poster on the excellent Blainesville puzzle blog. Mike’s puzzle reads:

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a T. Drop the T, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two related modes of transportation. What are they? 

Puzzleria!’s “Ripping Off Mike Hinterberg’s d’Oeuvre” reads:

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a R. Drop the R, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two welcome words on a sultry summer’s day. 

What are they?

Morsel Menu

Medical Miracle Morsel:

Regaining full sail-ient

“No salient part in pants.”

Rearrange the twenty letters in that five-word phrase – a phrase which describes an unfortunate physical predicament – to form a two-word solution to the predicament.

The solution has made news lately in “Health and Medical” sections of newspapers and websites.

What is this two-word solution?

Riffing Off Mike Morsel:

What’s with Achilles’ tendentious ‘tude, Dude?

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains exactly one T. Drop the T, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell two words related to “The Iliad.” 

What are they? 

Appetizer Menu

Name In The News Appetizer

Call-out Shelter

Name a word that means better-sheltered. Name a two-word phrase that might describe a place providing better shelter.

Call out the two-word phrase and the single word, in that order, so that everyone may hear the name of a person who has recently been in the news.

 

Who is this person? What are the word and phrase related to “shelter”?

Hint: the two-word phrase is spelled differently from the person’s first name. The single word and person’s surname are spelled identically.

Ripping Off Mike Appetizer:

Capturing creatures with captions

Name a creature in ten letters. The name contains a J. Drop the J, and the remaining letters can be rearranged to spell a two-word caption referring to the image shown here. 

What is this caption? 

MENU

Silver Screen Slice:

A cast of four thous… and thespians all

Take the first names of two actors, past and present, who share the same six-letter last name. Add an E and rearrange the result to get the last names of an actress of the past and an actor of the present.

Who are these four famous movie stars?

Flying Fish Riffing Off Mike Slice:

That’s a horse of a certain color

 

Name a creature in nine letters. The name contains a G. Drop the G, and the remaining eight letters can be rearranged to spell two different creatures: a fish and a horse of a certain color. What are they?

Name the same nine-letter creature, restoring its G. The name also contains a U. Drop the U, and the remaining eight letters can be rearranged to spell two different creatures: a flying insect and the same horse of a certain color as before (in the first half of this puzzle slice). 

What are they?

Dessert Menu

Mrs. Sprat’s Dietary Dessert:

A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou

Ron, Agnes, Ruth and Eric are slim, so dine on a plum, corn on the cob, oxen, possum in a pot, sea brine (ick!), gin or rum in a stein, and thou. Mercy, my God!

All 35 words in the paragraph above share something somewhat unusual in common.

What is it?

Hint: Exactly three words in the puzzle’s title, “A stein of rum, a cob of corn, a pot of possum, and thou,” do not share the “something unusual in common.”

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.