LAXCrossword.com

Advertisement

Constructed by: Rich Katz

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: Three’s Company

Themed answers use “celebrity math”: three famous names combine to give a familiar phrase, with the shared name pluralized. Clever …

• 22A Ron + (Kristen + Alexander Graham) : SILVER BELLS (Ron Silver + Kristen Bell + Alexander Graham Bell)
• 24A Clint + (Francis Scott + Keegan-Michael) : BLACK KEYS (Clint Black + Francis Scott Key + Keegan-Michael Key)
• 30A Sally + (Julia + Philip) : FIELD GLASSES (Sally Field + Julia Glass + Philip Glass)
• 48A Barry + (Elliot + Jimmy) : WHITE PAGES (Barry White + Elliot Page + Jimmy Page)
• 51A Nia + (Elton + Tommy) : LONG JOHNS (Nia Long + Elton John + Tommy John)
• 63A Grover + (Alton + Helen Gurley) : CLEVELAND BROWNS (Grover Cleveland + Alton Brown + Helen Gurley Brown)
• 81A (Adam + Minnie) + Helms : DRIVER’S ED (Adam Driver + Minnie Driver + Ed Helms)
• 83A Fiona + (Lemmon + London) : APPLE JACKS (Fiona Apple + Jack Lemmon + Jack London)
• 98A Cleary + (Faith + Jonah) : BEVERLY HILLS (Beverly Cleary + Faith Hill + Jonah Hill)
• 109A Keith + (Garfunkel + Carney) : URBAN ARTS (Keith Urban + Art Garfunkel + Art Carney)
• 111A (Underwood + Fisher) + Johnny : CARRIES CASH (Carrie Underwood + Carrie Fisher + Johnny Cash)

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

Bill’s time: 12m 58s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

21A La Scala solo : ARIA

La Scala Opera House opened in 1778. It was built on the site of the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which gave the theater its Italian name “Teatro alla Scala”. Because of bomb damage in WWII, La Scala had to be rebuilt, and reopened in 1946.

22A Ron + (Kristen + Alexander Graham) : SILVER BELLS (Ron Silver + Kristen Bell + Alexander Graham Bell)

Ron Silver has a long career playing relatively small roles on the big screen and television, with roles in well known films like “Mr. Saturday Night”, “Ali”, and “Garbo Talks”. Notably, Silver was the president of Actors’ Equity from 1991 to 2000.

Actress Kristen Bell’s first major role was playing the title character in the TV show “Veronica Mars”. Her first major film role was also playing a title character, in the 2008 film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. Perhaps Bell’s most famous role is as a voice actor, playing Princess Anna in the 2013 Disney hit “Frozen”.

Alexander Graham Bell was an inventor and scientist from Edinburgh, Scotland who later lived in Canada and the US. Both his wife and his mother were deaf, a fact that led to Bell spending much of life researching hearing and speech. Bell’s work on hearing devices led to the invention of the telephone. Paradoxically, Bell hated the telephone and refused to have one in the study of his home where he worked. I am with him on this one, as I hate the “phone” …

24A Clint + (Francis Scott + Keegan-Michael) : BLACK KEYS (Clint Black + Francis Scott Key + Keegan-Michael Key)

Clint Black is a country music singer who was born in New Jersey, but grew up in Texas. He married actress Lisa Hartman, who played singer Ciji Dunne on the prime time TV drama “Knots Landing”. Black and Hartman recorded a duet together in 1999, “When I Said I Do”, which made it to number one on the “Billboard” Hot Country chart.

29A Peanut butter cup brand : REESE’S

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were invented by Harry Burnett “HB” Reese. They were originally called penny cups, reflecting the price at which they were sold. Then inflation took over, and maybe that’s why they were broken into smaller “Pieces” …

30A Sally + (Julia + Philip) : FIELD GLASSES (Sally Field + Julia Glass + Philip Glass)

Actress Sally Field first came to the public’s attention in the sixties with title roles in the TV shows “Gidget” and “The Flying Nun”. She has two Best Actress Oscars; one for “Norma Rae” (1979) and one for “Places in the Heart” (1984).

Author Julia Glass won the 2002 National Book Award for Fiction for her debut novel, “Three Junes”. Glass had focused primarily on the visual arts for many years, spending her early working life painting and rug hooking before achieving literary recognition in her mid-forties.

Philip Glass is, by far, my favorite composer of contemporary classical music. His Violin Concerto No. 1 is a piece that I listen to at least as often as my favorite works from Beethoven and Mozart. I was lucky enough to attend a very small and intimate piano recital that he gave a few years ago. It was a very, very memorable event …

35A End of term? : ITES

Termites are insects that are somewhat unique in that they can digest cellulose (as can ruminants such as cattle). Because of this diet, they cause a lot of trouble for human populations by feeding on wood in man-made structures.

39A Suzuki who won nine batting titles in two countries : ICHIRO

Ichiro Suzuki holds quite a few batting records, including the single-season record for base hits (262) and a record-breaking streak of 10 consecutive 200-hit seasons. He is a huge celebrity in his native-Japan. His agent says that if you address fan mail to “Ichiro Suzuki, Japan”, he’ll get your letter …

48A Barry + (Elliot + Jimmy) : WHITE PAGES (Barry White + Elliot Page + Jimmy Page)

Barry White was a singer-songwriter from Texas who grew up in South Central Los Angeles. White had a rough start to life and ended up in jail at 17 for stealing Cadillac tires. It was while in prison that White was inspired to begin a musical career, after listening to Elvis Presley on record singing “It’s Now or Never”. White’s greatest chart success was in the mid-seventies, with recordings such as “Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up” and “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything”.

Canadian actor Elliot (formerly “Ellen”) Page came to prominence playing the female lead in the 2007 hit film “Juno”. Page also played the female lead in one of my favorite films of recent time, namely 2010’s “Inception”. Elliot came out as a gay woman in 2014, and then as a trangender man in 2020.

English musician Jimmy Page is best known as a guitarist and founder of the rock group Led Zeppelin. Before performing regularly with bands, he was a favored session guitarist. He made many uncredited contributions on hit recordings, including Dave Berry’s “The Crying Game”, Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger”, and Petula Clark’s “Downtown”.

51A Nia + (Elton + Tommy) : LONG JOHNS (Nia Long + Elton John + Tommy John)

Nia Long is an actress who is probably best known for playing Will Smith’s sometime girlfriend and fiancee Lisa Wilkes on the TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”.

“Elton John” is the stage name of English singer and pianist Reginald Dwight. John is an avid football (soccer) supporter, and is especially enthusiastic about Watford Football Club, which was his local team growing up. After he achieved financial success, John was able to purchase Watford FC, and owned the club from 1976 to 1987, and again from 1997 until 2002.

Tommy John surgery (TGS) is a procedure that reconstructs the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), a thick band of tissue in the elbow, by replacing it with a tendon from elsewhere in the body. The operation is commonly required for athletes, particularly baseball players. The first baseball player to undergo the procedure, in 1974, was Major League pitcher Tommy John, hence the name.

54A Othello’s betrayer : IAGO

Despite being portrayed as a villain in William Shakespeare’s “Othello”, Iago is one of the most complex characters in the play. He is known for his Machiavellian tactics, manipulating the other characters to achieve his selfish goals.

55A Bulgarian, e.g. : SLAV

Bulgaria is a country in Southeastern Europe lying on the west coast of the Black Sea. The nation’s capital city is Sofia.

58A Autonomous vacuum : ROOMBA

The Roomba vacuum cleaner is a cool-looking device that navigates its way around a room by itself, picking up dirt as it goes. Like I said, it’s cool-looking, but I am not sure how effective it is …

63A Grover + (Alton + Helen Gurley) : CLEVELAND BROWNS (Grover Cleveland + Alton Brown + Helen Gurley Brown)

49-year-old President Grover Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom during his first term. This marked the only time that a president has married in the White House. And, that marriage made Frances the youngest wife of any sitting US president.

Alton Brown is a celebrity chef who is behind the Food Network show “Good Eats”, and who is the host of “Iron Chef America”.

Cosmopolitan adopted the motto “fun, fearless, female” back in 1965, when Helen Gurley Brown took over as the magazine’s first female editor.

71A Leveraged __: corporate acquisition : BUYOUT

A leveraged buyout (LBO) is a transaction in which an investor acquires a controlling volume of stock in a company, but buys that stock with borrowed funds (hence “leveraged”). Often the assets of the acquired company are used as collateral for the borrowed money. There is a special form of LBO known as a management buyout (MBO) in which the company’s own management team purchases the controlling interest.

72A “Print to” option : PDF

Portable Document Format (PDF)

78A Actor Epps : OMAR

Actor Omar Epps was originally a rapper and was a member of a group called “Wolfpack” before he pursued acting full-time. His really big break came in the form of a recurring role on the popular medical drama series “ER”, followed by a recurring role in the TV series “House” as Dr. Eric Forman.

80A Island home of the Hana Highway : MAUI

If you visit the island of Maui, a trip to the Haleakala National Park is a must. One section of the park features the spectacular Haleakala Crater, where you would swear you are on the moon. The second part of the park is the Kipahulu section, which features the very picturesque pools accessed along the Hana Highway. When we visited (quite a few years ago), “The Road to Hana” was a tad undeveloped and rental car companies would not allow you to drive their cars there. Funnily enough, the only cars you’d meet on the Road to Hana were rental cars …

81A (Adam + Minnie) + Helms : DRIVER’S ED (Adam Driver + Minnie Driver + Ed Helms)

Adam Driver is an actor perhaps best known to TV audiences for playing Adam Sackler on the show “Girls” that airs on HBO. Driver’s movie career got a huge boost in 2015 when he played villain Kylo Ren in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.

Minnie Driver is an actress from London who has made quite a name for herself in Hollywood. Some of my favorite films in which Driver appears are “Circle of Friends”, “Grosse Pointe Blank”, “Good Will Hunting”, “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Return to Me”.

Comedic actor Ed Helms got his big break in television on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”, after which he joined the cast of “The Office”. Helms is now making a name for himself on the big screen. Notably, he co-stars in “The Hangover” series of films.

83A Fiona + (Lemmon + London) : APPLE JACKS (Fiona Apple + Jack Lemmon + Jack London)

Fiona Apple is a singer-songwriter and pianist from New York City. “Fiona Apple” is the artist’s real name, although “Apple” is a given name. She was born Fiona Apple McAfee-Maggart.

The marvelous actor Jack Lemmon was born in 1925 in a suburb of Boston, in a hospital elevator. The long list of Jack Lemmon movies on my list of favorites includes “Some Like It Hot”, “The Apartment”, “Irma La Douce”, “The Odd Couple” and “Grumpy Old Men”.

Author Jack London is a bit of a local hero in the Bay Area where I live. London was born in San Francisco, and there is a famous Jack London Square in Oakland, California that was named in his honor. London’s most famous works are “The Call of the Wild” and “White Fang”, both of which are set in the Klondike Gold Rush.

85A Speaker brand : BOSE

Bose Corporation specializes in audio equipment, including headphones, speakers, and sound systems. The company was founded in 1964 by Dr. Amar G. Bose, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bose Corp. started as a research project in psychoacoustics, the study of how humans perceive sound.

92A Matinee hrs. : AFTS

“Matinée” is a French word used to describe a musical entertainment held during the daytime. “Matinée” is derived from the word “matin”, meaning “morning”, although here the term is used in the sense of “daylight”.

94A “The Return of the King” king : ARAGORN

“The Lord of the Rings” is a series of three epic fantasy films adapted from the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. The films were produced and directed by Peter Jackson in a project that lasted a full eight years. All three movies were shot simultaneously, and entirely In New Zealand, which is Jackson’s homeland. “The Lord of the Rings” series is the highest-grossing film series of all time. The third of the three movies in the series is “The Return of the King”, which won 11 Oscars. That ties the record for the most Academy Awards won by a movie, alongside “Ben-Hur” and “Titanic”.

98A Cleary + (Faith + Jonah) : BEVERLY HILLS (Beverly Cleary + Faith Hill + Jonah Hill)

The city of Beverly Hills, California was named after Beverly Farms in Beverly, Massachusetts and also after the hills in that part of California.

Beverly Cleary was a remarkably successful author of children’s books. Her first book, “Henry Huggins”, was published in 1950. Cleary passed away in 2021, just before her 105th birthday.

Faith Hill is a country singer from Ridgeland, Mississippi. Hill is married to fellow country singer Tim McGraw.

Aspiring actor Jonah Hill was a friend of the children of Dustin Hoffman. The children introduced Hill to their father and Hoffman asked him to audition for a role in “I Heart Huckabees”. Hill got the part, and his career took off. When I saw Hill in the film “Moneyball”, for my money (pun intended!) I thought he stole the show.

105A Ballerina’s turning point : TOE

“En pointe” is ballet dancing on the tips of the toes, and is a French term. A ballerina wears pointe shoes (sometimes “toe shoes”) to perform this delightful-looking, albeit unhealthy, feat (pun!).

107A Ancient France : GAUL

The Gauls were a Celtic race, with Gaul covering what is now known as France and Belgium. We use the term “Gallic” today, when we refer to something pertaining to France or the French.

108A “So Sick” R&B singer : NE-YO

“Ne-Yo” is the stage name of R&B singer Shaffer Chimere Smith. He began his career as a songwriter, penning hits for artists such as Mario, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. In 2006, he released his debut album “In My Own Words”, which launched Ne-Yo’s career as a solo artist.

109A Keith + (Garfunkel + Carney) : URBAN ARTS (Keith Urban + Art Garfunkel + Art Carney)

Keith Urban is a country singer from Australia who was actually born in New Zealand. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1992, and married Australian actress Nicole Kidman in 2006.

Singer and actor Art Garfunkel is best-known for the years he spent performing with Paul Simon, although Garfunkel had a successful solo career after the duo split up. As well as singing and acting, he is fond of taking long, long walks while composing poetry. Garfunkel walked across Japan in the early 1980s, and across America in increments from 1983 to 1997. He then walked across Europe, also in increments, from 1998 to 2011.

Art Carney was best known as the actor who played Ed Norton on the fifties television show “The Honeymooners”. Carney walked with a limp for much of his life, as one leg was almost an inch shorter than the other due to a wound he received during the Battle of Normandy in WWII.

111A (Underwood + Fisher) + Johnny : CARRIES CASH (Carrie Underwood + Carrie Fisher + Johnny Cash)

Carrie Underwood is a country singer, and the winner of the fourth season of “American Idol”. Underwood is the most successful “Idol” winner to date, in terms of music sales.

Actress Carrie Fisher was best known for playing Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” series of films. Fisher was the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. Fisher fell seriously ill on a transatlantic flight at the end of 2016, and then died of cardiac arrest four days later. Famously, her mother and next-door neighbor in Beverly Hills, passed away following a stroke, just one day after her daughter died.

I must admit that I am not a big country music fan, but who doesn’t love Johnny Cash? The man had such a unique voice, and indeed unique songs. I think that his biopic, “Walk the Line”, is very cool, as is the title song itself. Recorded back in 1956, “I Walk the Line” is relatively creative for “popular” music. The basic rhythm of the song emulates the sound of a freight train, the “boom-chicka-boom” sound. Cash’s guitar has a unique tone to it as it plays this rhythm, achieved by threading a piece of paper between the guitar strings giving the rhythm a bit of a “buzz”. Above the rhythm line, each of the five verses is sung in three unique keys. You can actually hear Cash hum a note signifying the key change at the start of each verse. A remarkable tune …

117A Nikon rival : CANON

The Japanese company Canon is largely known in the US for producing quality cameras. The company started out as Precision Optical Industry Laboratory in 1937 making camera bodies. The name was changed in 1947 to Canon.

The Japanese company Nikon was founded in 1917 with the merger of three manufacturers of various optical devices. After the merger, Nikon’s main output was lenses (including the first lenses for Canon cameras, before Canon made its own). During the war, Nikon sales grew rapidly as the company focused on (pun!) equipment for the military including periscopes and bomb sights.

119A Novelist Émile : ZOLA

The most famous work by French writer Émile Zola is his 1898 open letter “J’Accuse!” written to French president Félix Faure. The letter was published on the front page of a leading Paris newspaper, and accused the government of anti-Semitism in its handling of the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus was a Jewish military officer in the French army, falsely accused and convicted of spying for Germany. Even after the error was discovered, the government refused to back down and let Dreyfus rot away on Devil’s Island rather than admit to the mistake. It wasn’t until 1906, 12 years after the wrongful conviction, that Dreyfus was freed and reinstated, largely due to the advocacy of Emile Zola.

121A Pt. of IMF : INTL

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established at the end of 1945 with 29 major economies supporting and funding an effort to stabilize economies across the globe after WWII. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the IMF now has almost 200 member nations.

Down

3D Many a Seanan McGuire work : NOVEL

Seanan McGuire is a sci-fi author who writes under her real name, as well as the pen names Mira Grant and A. Deborah Baker. She made science fiction history in 2013 by becoming the first author to receive five Hugo Award nominations in a single year. McGuire is also a “filk” musician, someone who writes and performs folk songs themed around sci-fi and fantasy culture.

6D Venues that often have corporate names : ARENAS

A venue is a specified locale used for an event. The term “venue” came into English via French from the Latin “venire” meaning “to come”. So, a “venue” is a place to which people “come” for an event.

9D Start at the beginning? : ESS

The beginning of the word “start” is a letter S (ess).

10D Guitar player’s aid : TABS

Tablature (also “tab”) is a kind of musical notation that indicates instrument fingering, rather than musical notes.

11D Hawaiian dance : HULA

The hula is a native dance of Hawaii that uses arm movements to relate a story. The hula can be performed while sitting (a noho dance) or while standing (a luna dance).

12D Nest egg letters : IRA

A nest egg is an amount of money laid down as a reserve. This is the figurative use of “nest egg” that originally described an artificial egg left in a nest to encourage a hen to lay real eggs in that spot. So our financial nest egg is set aside in anticipation of continued growth, more eggs being laid.

17D Smart-alecky : SASSY

Apparently, the original “smart Alec” (sometimes “Aleck”) was one Alec Hoag, a pimp, thief and confidence trickster who plied his trade in New York City in the 1840s.

25D Lotto game : KENO

The name of the game keno has French or Latin roots, with the French “quine” being a term describing five winning numbers, and the Latin “quini” meaning “five each”. The game originated in China and was introduced into the West by Chinese immigrants who were working on the first Transcontinental Railroad in the 1800s.

33D “ManningCast” brother : ELI

“Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli”, also known as “ManningCast”, is an alternate, live broadcast of Monday Night Football hosted by brothers Peyton and Eli Manning. It is produced by Peyton’s production company Omaha Productions, and airs on ESPN2 and ESPN+. The show premiered in 2021 and in its first season averaged 1.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched program on ESPN+

37D “__ well that ends well” : ALL’S

“All’s Well That Ends Well” is a play by William Shakespeare, one with elements of both tragedy and comedy. As such, “All’s Well That Ends Well” is classified as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”, plays of his that cannot be neatly classified as either tragedy or comedy.

42D Skater Midori : ITO

Midori Ito is a Japanese figure skater. She was the first woman to land a triple/triple jump and a triple axel in competition. In fact, Ito landed her first triple jump in training when she was only 8 years old. Ito won Olympic silver in 1992, and was chosen as the person to light the Olympic cauldron at the commencement of the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.

45D Measures of resistance : OHMS

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied (V=IR), a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

46D Liberty org. : WNBA

The New York Liberty was founded in 1997 and was one of the original eight teams to play in the WNBA. The franchise is based in Brooklyn, and plays at the Barclays Center.

47D Hurdle for a DA-to-be : LSAT

Law School Admission Test (LSAT)

49D Pain relief brand : ALEVE

“Aleve” is a brand name used for the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug naproxen sodium.

56D Williams with five Wimbledon singles titles : VENUS

Venus Williams is the older of the two Williams sisters playing professional tennis. In 2002, she became the first African American woman to earn the World No. 1 ranking by the Women’s Tennis Association in the Open Era.

63D Eggnog spice : CLOVE

Cloves are the flower buds of the tree Syzygium aromaticum. Until a couple of centuries ago, clove trees were only found in the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Because they were a rich source of cloves, mace and nutmeg, the Moluccas were referred to historically as the Spice Islands.

64D Concede a golden goal, say : LOSE

In some sports, a tied game or match is decided in overtime (OT), with the winner being the first team or player to score a point or a goal. That game-winning score might be referred to as the “golden goal”.

68D Site for film fans : IMDB

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website was launched in 1990, and is now owned by Amazon.com. It’s a great site for answering questions one has about movies and actors.

69D Lawnmower brand : TORO

Toro is a manufacturer of lawn mowers and snow removal equipment that is based in Bloomington, Minnesota. The company was founded in 1914 to build tractor engines.

70D Sanskrit honorifics : SRIS

Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language and one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. It has a rich tradition and is the language in which many historical and religious texts are written. There aren’t many speakers of the language today although efforts are underway to revive spoken Sanskrit.

72D Rat or Brat follower : PACK

The original Rat Pack from the fifties was a group of actors that centered on Humphrey Bogart, and included a young Frank Sinatra. Supposedly, Bogart’s wife, Lauren Bacall, christened them the Rat Pack after seeing them all return from one of their nights on the town in Las Vegas. The sixties Rat Pack was a reincarnation of the fifties version, with the core group of actors being Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin (Dino), Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.

The “Brat Pack” moniker is reminiscent of the Rat Pack of the fifties and sixties (Frank Sinatra & co.). To qualify as a “founding” member of the Brat Pack, the actor had to appear in either “The Breakfast Club” or “St. Elmo’s Fire”, or both. So we have Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy.

73D Team led by Mike Krzyzewski for 42 seasons : DUKE

Mike Krzyzewski is a coach and former basketball player from Chicago, Illinois. As a young man, Krzyzewski captained the Army Cadets basketball team, before serving in the Army for five years. After resigning from active duty, Coach K (as he is called) eventually took the head coaching job with the Army Cadets followed by the head coach’s position with Duke, where he has been since 1980. Today, Coach K also coaches the US International team.

76D Munich mister : HERR

Munich is the capital of the German state of Bavaria, and is the third-largest city in the country (after Berlin and Hamburg). The city is called “München” in German, a term that derives from the Old German word for “by the monks’ place”, which is a reference to the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city in 1158.

80D Prefix in many a Scottish surname : MAC-

“Mac” is a Gaelic word meaning “son” and “son of”, and is a common prefix in Irish and Scottish names.

82D Printer function : SCAN

An all-in-one printer is a multifunctional computer peripheral that typically incorporates a photocopier, printer and scanner.

83D Closer at the Globe : ACT V

The Globe Theatre was built in London in 1599, and was used mainly for staging works by William Shakespeare and his theater company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The theater was destroyed by fire in 1613. A second Globe was built on the site a year later, and it remained open until 1642. The original theater was reconstructed on a nearby site by the Thames and opened in 1997. I had the privilege of seeing a fabulous performance of “As You Like It” in Shakespeare’s Globe (as the new theater is called) about a decade ago. Seeing a play in that remarkable theater is tremendous entertainment, much recommended for anyone visiting London.

Shakespeare adopted the five-act structure for his plays, thereby using the same format that was used by Seneca for his Roman tragedies. Given five acts, the plays tend to unfold as follows:

• Act I is used as an introduction
• Act II is used to complicate things
• Act III contains the climax of the tale
• Act IV is used to add some suspense
• Act V is the conclusion

90D Many a “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” character : TOON

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is a clever 1988 film featuring cartoon characters that interact directly with human beings. The most memorable cartoon characters have to be goofy Roger Rabbit, and vampish Jessica Rabbit. The film is based on a novel written by Gary K. Wolf called “Who Censored Roger Rabbit?” There is a prequel floating around that has never been produced, which is titled “Who Discovered Roger Rabbit”.

91D Fake : ERSATZ

Something described as ersatz is a copy, and usually not a good one. “Ersatz” comes from the German verb “ersetzen” meaning “to replace”.

92D Landing spot of Noah’s Ark : ARARAT

Mount Ararat is in Turkey. It is a snow-capped, dormant volcano with two peaks. The higher of the two, Greater Ararat, is the tallest peak in the country. Ararat takes its name from a legendary Armenian hero called Ara the Beautiful (or “Ara the Handsome”). According to the Book of Genesis, Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat as the Great Flood subsided.

99D Everglades wader : EGRET

Egrets are a group of several species of white herons. Many egret species were faced with extinction in the 1800s and early 1900s due to plume hunting, a practice driven by the demand for egret plumes that could be incorporated into hats.

The Everglades are tropical wetlands that cover much of southern Florida. The area was named “River Glades” by a British surveyor in 1773, and it is suggested that poor transcription of the word “river” led to the use of “ever”. The southern 20% of the Everglades is a protected region that we know as Everglades National Park. The park is the third-largest National Park in the lower 48 states, after Death Valley NP (the largest) and Yellowstone NP.

100D Like Machu Picchu : INCAN

Machu Picchu is known as “The Lost City of the Incas”, and it can be visited on a mountain ridge in Peru, 50 miles northwest of the city of Cusco in the southeast of the country. The name Machu Picchu means “old peak”. The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu originates about 50 miles from Cusco on the Urubamba River in Peru. It can take travelers about 5 days to trek the full length of the trail, passing through many Incan ruins before reaching the Sun Gate on Machu Picchu mountain. The trail was becoming greatly overused, forcing the Peruvian government to limit the number of people on the trail each day to 500. Book early …

101D Listed, to a Brit : LEANT

The past tense of the verb “to lean” can be “leaned” or “leant”. The form “leant” is commonly used in British English, whereas “leaned” is favored in American English.

102D Antibacterial brand : LYSOL

Lysol disinfectant gets its name from the Greek word “lysis” (meaning to dissolve or loosen) and the chemical suffix “-ol” (or Latin “oleum” for oil).

103D Kind of Kind, in Köln : SOHN

In German, a “Kind” (child) might be a “Sohn” (son) or a “Tochter” (daughter).

Cologne is the fourth largest city in Germany, and is known as “Köln” in German. It is situated on the Rhine, and has a rich history stretching back to Roman times. Its most iconic landmark is the magnificent medieval Cologne Cathedral, which was the world’s tallest building from 1880 to 1890. The cathedral, though damaged, remarkably survived the bombings of WWII that destroyed 80% of the city center.

105D Texter’s “Bye for now” : TTYL

Talk to you later (TTYL)

106D Peak near Olympus : OSSA

Mount Ossa in Greece is located between Mount Pelion in the south, and the celebrated Mount Olympus in the north. Mount Ossa is also known as Kissavos.

112D Sashimi choice : AHI

Sashimi is thinly sliced raw fish, although it can also be raw meat. The word “sashimi” translates literally as “pierced body”, which may be a reference to the practice of sticking the tail and fin to sliced fish to identify it.