PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: “Fishy side-by-side synonyms” Write side-by-side words for two things that lure or attract fish. Remove a spelled-out letter(like “dee” or “em,” for example).  The remaining letters spell a noun that has a synonym that begins with that now-absent letter.  What are these two lures, noun and synonym?      Appetizer Menu “Mirror, Mirror” Appetizer Vertically Symmetrical Vexations (Reflections from “Tim Axoy”) (Note: “Timothy Axoy is a pseudonym Bobby Jacobs occasionally ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: Voodoo, vampire, clover, verse Translate the following blank verse into a five-words-longer verse that rhymes: Play with that voodoo doll, Hold that black vampire bat, Plant some greens, clover, You are weary of all, you feel sore, So paint your poser’s rosy-face grin. (Note: You will need to change an “o” to an “a” and delete two commas in your translation.) Appetizer Menu Appellate Court Appetizer: Trials, Convictions and Sentences...                    You be the Judge! W ..read more

  PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: Punishment for the “punnish” Name a form of capital punishment.  Remove from it the letters in the first name of a man executed in a more modern form of capital punishment. The remaining letters, in order, sound like an adjective describing the man.  What are these two forms of capital punishment?  Who is the man? What is the adjective? Appetizer Menu “A Nodd Is As Shrewd As A Sphinx...” Appetizer: Politics A to Z, Best S[up]porting Actors, Common Usage, Anagrammatic Actresses ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Note #1: With this week’s edition of Puzzleria! we celebrate ten years of puzzling. Our inaugural edition was uploaded on May 9, 2014. This tenth-anniversary edition is now uploaded, on May 9, 2024. So, it’s our tenth anniversary!  Note #2: Our friend Word Woman generously helped me launch our Puzzleria! blog, using Blogger. In 2013 she had launched her own excellent blog: Partial Ellipsis of the Sun: A Blog for Scientists who like Words and Writers who like Science. We thank her! Schpuzzle of the Week: The Renaissance san ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: “Onward Dominican soldiers?” Women and men “of the cloth” are not normally associated with warfare and the military.  However, there is a “wordplayful,” or lexical, link between any Dominican padre – whom one would presume to be peaceful  – and the military display of force known as “shock and awe.” What is this link? Appetizer Menu Worldplay USA  Appetizer: State subtraction, Work & Play, Two X’s, Add an R and watch out!  State Subtraction One&n ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: “Where do you put a potable?” Take a word for something penned by a Beatle. It is some indeterminate or unspecified thing. But it is also some person, event or other thing of consequence. It is something that is not a wall fan. Spell this word backward. Insert an “r” someplace. Transpose the second and third letters. Transpose the fourth and fifth letters. Insert a space someplace. The result is a potable and where you might keep it. What is this something? What is this potable?  Where might you keep this potabl ..read more

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: Games people & musicians play Name a word for things musicians play.  Five interior letters spell how some musicians play.  The remaining letters can be rearranged to spell one of the games people play.  What do musicians play? How do some musicians play? What is one of the games people play? Hint: Take the first five letters and the last letter of the things musicians play. Add a “g”. Rearrange these seven letters to spell a plural word for parts of what “some musicians play” which are a ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: Oxymoronic anagramatic exercise Spell out the letters of either one of two alphabets: the English alphabet, with which most Americans are most familiar, or the Greek alphabet: a, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, aitch, i, jay, kay, el, em, en, o, pee, cue, ar, ess, tee, u, vee, double-u, ex, wye, zee. alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega.   You can select and rearrange the combined letters of any number ..read more

 PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: In search of a mystery verb Subtract from a verb four consecutive letters of the “circular alphabet,” one of them twice, leaving three consecutive letters that appear elsewhere the alphabet.  Neither group of consecutive letters is in alphabetical order in the verb.  What is this mystery verb? Note: The “Monopoly Man & Mr. Peanut” illustration gives an example of an adjective (“monocled”) that can be formed by using strings of three and four consecutive letters of the alphabet. Appetizer Menu&nb ..read more

PUZZLERIA! SLICES: OVER 5πe2 SERVED Schpuzzle of the Week: Gophers & badgers & deer, oh my! Take just the second halves of two creatures with the same even number of letters in their names – like badger and gopher, for example.  Rearrange these combined letters to spell words that are synonyms of the two-word subject and one-word predicate in “The female deer bounded.”  These two creatures begin with the same four letters in the same order. These four letters spell a prefix. The first three of these four letters spell still another creature. What are these two crea ..read more