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Constructed by: Zachary Edward-Brown & Shannon Rapp

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Cheeseheads

Themed answers are all HEADED by a type of CHEESE:

• 60A Green Bay Packers fans, or what 17-, 26-, 38-, and 52-Across have : CHEESEHEADS

• 17A Seth MacFarlane cartoon series : AMERICAN DAD
• 26A Conversation that might involve Jordan and LeBron : GOAT DEBATE
• 38A Big lottery win : JACKPOT
• 52A “Room” Best Actress Oscar winner : BRIE LARSON

Read on, or jump to …
… a complete list of answers

Bill’s time: 8m 28s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11A Bread with caraway seeds : RYE

Caraway is a plant in the carrot family that is prized for its fruits. The caraway “seeds” that we use in cooking are actually caraway “fruits” that contain two seeds each.

15A Civic-minded brand? : HONDA

Introduced in 1972, the Honda Civic is the second-oldest brand of Japanese car made for the US today (only the Toyota Corolla has been around longer). Today’s Civic is a compact car, but the original was smaller, and classed as a sub-compact. The first design had a transverse-mounted engine and front-wheel drive to save on space, copying the configuration introduced with the British Mini.

17A Seth MacFarlane cartoon series : AMERICAN DAD

Seth MacFarlane is best known for creating the very successful (although they don’t get my vote!) animated TV shows “Family Guy” and “American Dad!”. My kids love ’em …

19A Language in which “Baw pen nyang” means “It’s nothing” : LAO

Lao is the official language of Laos. It is also spoken in the northeast of Thailand, but there the language is known as Isan.

20A Ballpark snack : FRANK

The Ball Park Franks brand of hot dogs was introduced in the 1950s, with popularity of the product in the early days very much associated with the Detroit Tigers baseball team. The management of Tiger Stadium, then “Briggs Stadium”, were unhappy with the supplier of hot dogs in the stadium in 1958, and so held a competition to find a new supplier. A meat packer called Hygrade came up with a new recipe for the contest, and was awarded the contract. Hygrade held a competition within the company to come up with a name for the new product, which resulted in the brand name “Ball Park Franks”.

23A Lane of “Superman” : LOIS

Lois Lane has been the love interest of Superman/Clark Kent since the comic series was first published in 1938. Lois and Clark both work for the big newspaper in the city of Metropolis called “The Daily Planet”. The couple finally got hitched in the comics (and on television’s “Lois and Clark”) in 1996. One has to wonder how challenging the crossword is in “The Daily Planet” …

26A Conversation that might involve Jordan and LeBron : GOAT DEBATE

Greatest of all time (GOAT)

Michael Jordan is considered by some to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Not only is he a talented sportsman, but he is also very successful in the business world. He became the majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets NBA team in 2010. Fans refer to Jordan as “His Airness”.

Basketball player LeBron James (nicknamed “King James”) seems to be in demand for the covers of magazines. James became the first African-American man to adorn the front cover of “Vogue” in March 2008. That made him only the third male to make the “Vogue” cover, following Richard Gere and George Clooney.

32A Letter before lambda : KAPPA

Kappa is the 10th letter of the Greek alphabet, and the equivalent of our letter K.

38A Big lottery win : JACKPOT

The term “jackpot” dates back to the 1800s and comes from the game of poker. In some variants there are progressive antes. This means that players have to ante up, add to the “pot”, when no player has a pair of “jacks” or better. They build a “jackpot”.

42A __ sum: bite-sized Chinese fare : DIM

Dim sum is a Chinese cuisine made up of small portions of various dishes. The tradition of serving dim sum is associated with the serving of tea, when small delicacies were offered to travelers and guests along with tea as a refreshment. The name “dim sum” translates as “touch the heart” implying that dim sum is not a main meal, just a snack “that touches the heart”.

45A Quaker possessive : THY

Members of the Religious Society of Friends are known as Friends or Quakers. The Christian sect started in England in the 1640s, led by George Fox. The principal tenet at that point was that Christians could have direct experience of Jesus Christ without the mediation of clergy, a reflection of the increasing dissatisfaction with the established church at that time. The term “Quaker” is thought to have been used earlier in reference to foreign religious sects whose followers were given to fits of shaking during religious fervor. Somehow that term became used for members of the Religious Society of Friends.

50A Sea cow : MANATEE

Manatees, types of “sea cows”, are very large marine mammals that can grow to 12 feet in length. The manatee is believed to have evolved from four-legged land mammals and probably shares a common ancestor with the elephant.

52A “Room” Best Actress Oscar winner : BRIE LARSON

I mainly recognize actress Brie Larson from playing the daughter of Toni Collette’s character on the excellent TV show “United States of Tara”. Larson is from Sacramento, and trained at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she was the youngest person ever admitted.

Emma Donoghue is an Irish-born Canadian author and historian. Her 2010 novel “Room” was a big success, and one that she adapted herself into a 2015 film of the same name (earning an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay).

57A __-frutti : TUTTI

The adjective “tutti-frutti” describes a prepared confection that has a combination of fruit flavors. “Tutti frutti” is Italian for “all fruits”.

60A Green Bay Packers fans, or what 17-, 26-, 38-, and 52-Across have : CHEESEHEADS

The state of Wisconsin is a leading producer of dairy products, and is particularly known for its cheese. It is sometimes referred to as the Dairy State, and the state’s license plates have borne the motto “America’s Dairyland” since 1940. The link to the dairy industry led to a person from Wisconsin being nicknamed “cheesehead”, a moniker also applied to a supporter of the Packers, the NFL team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

When Curly Lambeau founded his small-town football team in Green Bay in 1919, he was working for the Indian Packing Company. Lambeau went to his employers looking for sponsorship and was given $500 provided that the team was named for the company. And so, the team was originally referred to as the Green Bay Indians, but by the time they took to the field for their first game it had changed to the Packers, and Lambeau was $250 richer. Curly Lambeau passed away in 1965, and two months later the Packers renamed their City Stadium to Lambeau Field in his memory.

66A Carry-on screeners: Abbr. : TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

67A Bridgestone products : TIRES

Bridgestone tires are manufactured around the world by the Shojiro Ishibashi company which is headquartered in Fukuoka, Japan. The company name “Ishibashi” means “stone bridge”, giving rise to the brand name “Bridgestone”.

68A Bright courtyards : ATRIA

In modern architecture, an atrium (plural “atria” or “atriums”) is a large open space usually in the center of a building and extending upwards to the roof. The original atrium was an open court in the center of an Ancient Roman house. One could access most of the enclosed rooms of the house from the atrium.

69A “Charlotte’s Web” enclosure : STY

“Charlotte’s Web” is a children’s novel by author E. B. White. Charlotte is a barn spider, who manages to save the life of a pig named Wilbur. Wilbur is a pet pig, owned by the farmer’s daughter, Fern Arable. The story also includes a gluttonous rat named Templeton who provides some light and comical moments.

70A Bowling score indicated by a slash : SPARE

In bowling, a spare is recorded on a score sheet with a forward slash mark. A strike is recorded with a large letter X.

Down

1D “Hacks” comedy writer Daniels : AVA

“Hacks” is a comedy-drama TV series featuring Jean Smart as legendary stand-up Deborah Vance, and Hannah Einbender as young comedy writer Ava Daniels. The show premiered on HBO Max in 2021.

3D The “A” of A/S/L : AGE

Back in the early days of dial-up Internet, “A/S/L” was a standard question in chat rooms. The acronym stands for Age, Sex, and Location, and was used as a demographic check between anonymous users. As modern social media platforms began requiring detailed user profiles and real identities in the late 2000s, the need for this introductory shorthand largely vanished from online etiquette.

6D Marvel villain played by Josh Brolin : THANOS

Thanos is a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. He was portrayed by Damion Poitier in the 2012 movie “The Avengers”, and by Josh Brolin in several subsequent movies including 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy”.

Actor Josh Brolin got his big break playing Brandon Walsh in the 1985 movie “The Goonies”. One of his more famous roles was playing George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s biopic about the president titled “W.”. Josh is the son of actor James Brolin, and hence stepson of singer Barbra Streisand.

7D Fictional chocolatier : WONKA

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a 1964 novel for children penned by British author Roald Dahl. The two main characters in the story are young schoolboy Charlie Bucket, and chocolate manufacturer Willy Wonka. Dahl was inspired to write the novel by his exposure to the rivalry between Britain’s two major chocolatiers: Cadbury and Rowntree.

9D Secrecy doc : NDA

Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)

10D Gizmo : GADGET

The word “gizmo” (also “gismo”), meaning something the name of which is unknown or forgotten, was originally slang used by both the US Navy and the Marine Corps. The exact origin seems unknown.

13D Mexican corn dish : ELOTE

Corn in a cup (“elote en vaso”, or simply “elote”) is a Mexican street food. It is made with fresh corn kernels mixed with mayonnaise, cheese, lime and chile.

22D App with a Women Drivers option : UBER

Ride-hailing company Uber introduced a “Women Rider Preference” option to their app to address safety concerns, and recruit more female contractors. The feature allows female and non-binary drivers to opt out of picking up male passengers.

23D L.A. NBAer : LAKER

The Los Angeles Lakers (LAL) basketball team started out in 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The team chose the Lakers name in honor of the nickname of Minnesota, “Land of 10,000 Lakes”. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

24D Honshu port city : OSAKA

The Japanese city of Osaka used to be called Naniwa, with the name changing to Osaka sometime before 1500. “Osaka” can be translated either as “large hill” or “large slope”. Osaka is sometimes referred to as “the Chicago of Japan” as it is a major center of commerce and industry. The city has also been named the “nation’s kitchen”, and was a center for Japan’s rice trade for centuries.

28D T. rex, for one : DINO

The Tyrannosaurus rex (usually written “T-rex”) was a spectacular looking dinosaur. “Tyrannosaurus” comes from the Greek words “tyrannos” (tyrant) and “sauros” (lizard) and “rex” the Latin for “king”. They were big beasts, measuring 42 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hips, and weighing 7.5 tons.

30D TV friend of Sheldon and Howard : RAJ

Raj Koothrappali is a character on the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” who is played by British-Indian actor Kunal Nayyar. Nayyar is married to Neha Kapur, a former Miss India.

39D Flour for chapati and roti : ATTA

Atta is a whole-wheat flour used to make flatbreads in South Asian cuisine, such as chapati and roti. “Atta” is the Hindi or Urdu word for “dough”.

40D “Believe” diva : CHER

When Cher recorded the 1998 song “Believe”, the audio engineers routinely corrected the sound of Cher’s voice to ensure that all notes were sung with perfect pitch (all singers “cheat”, it seems!). The software that does this pitch correction is called “Auto-Tune”. Then, for a bit of fun, the same engineers played with the Auto-Tune software and created a special effect in her voice that she liked so much, it was left in the final release. You can easily detect the strange effect if you listen to the song. The process is now called the “Cher Effect” and is used by other artists in their recordings.

50D Styling foam : MOUSSE

Our word “mousse” is an Old French term meaning “froth”.

52D Rorschach test shapes : BLOTS

The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which a subject is asked to interpret a series of inkblots. The test was created by Swiss Freudian psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in the 1920s.

63D Dada artist Jean : ARP

Jean Arp was a prominent artist and sculptor who played a crucial role in the development of the Dada and Surrealist movements at the beginning of the 20th century. In the early years of his career, Arp experimented with a range of styles, including Expressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. In 1916, he co-founded the Zurich Dada movement with artists such as Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball. After the Dada movement began to decline in the 1920s, Arp became associated with the Surrealist movement and continued to explore the possibilities of abstraction in his art.

64D Monopoly cube : DIE

The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman named Lizzie Magie. Magie used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

65D Melancholy : SAD

Melancholy is a dejection, depression of spirits. Melancholia was one of the body’s four basic substances of medieval science, the so-called four humors. All diseases were caused by these four substances getting out of balance. The four humors were:

• Black bile (melancholia)
• Yellow bile (choler)
• Phlegm (phlegma)
• Blood (sanguis)