Constructed by: C.C. Burnikel
Edited by: Rich Norris
Quicklink to a complete list of today’s clues and answers
Quicklink to comments
Theme: Breaking Story
Today’s themed answers include the letters of the word “STORY” BROKEN, with part at the start of the answer and part at the end:
- 56A. Reporter’s delivery … and what 20-, 34- and 41-Across are literally doing? : BREAKING STORY
- 20A. Come out on top : SCORE A VICTORY
- 34A. Retail showcase : STORE DISPLAY
- 41A. Particle physics concept : STRING THEORY
Bill’s time: 5m 52s
Bill’s errors: 0
Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Sporty British cars, for short : JAGS
Auto manufacturer Jaguar started out as a manufacturer of sidecars for motorcycles back in 1922, when the company was known as the Swallow Sidecar Company (SS for short). The company changed its name to Jaguar after WWII, because of the unfortunate connotations of the letters “SS” in that era (i.e. the Nazi paramilitary organization).
8. Reef material : CORAL
Polyps are tiny sea creatures that are found attached to underwater structures or to other polyps. Polyps have a mouth at one end of a cylindrical “body” that is surrounded by tentacles. Some polyps cluster into groups called stony corals, with stony corals being the building blocks of coral reefs. The structure of the reef comprises calcium carbonate exoskeletons secreted by the coral polyps.
14. Shaped like an avocado : OVAL
The wonderful avocado comes from a tree that is native to Mexico and Central America. The avocado fruit is sometime called an avocado pear, because of its shape, even though it is not related to the pear at all. The fruit might also be referred to as an alligator pear, due to the roughness of the green skin of some avocado cultivars.
17. Fey with many Emmys : TINA
Comic actress Tina Fey has a scar on her face a few inches long on her left cheek, which I was shocked to learn was caused by a childhood “slashing” incident. When she was just five years old and playing in the front yard of her house, someone just came up to her and slashed her with a knife. How despicable!
18. Baltic port : RIGA
Riga is the capital city of Latvia. The historical center of Riga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, declared as such because of the city’s magnificent examples of Art Nouveau architecture.
19. “Unbroken” director Angelina : JOLIE
Angelina Jolie is a remarkably successful Hollywood actress from Los Angeles, California. Jolie has acting in her blood as her father is actor Jon Voight. Her godparents are actors Jacqueline Bisset and Maximilian Schell. Jolie’s first marriage was to British actor Jonny Lee Miller, who plays Sherlock Holmes on the TV show “Elementary”. Her second marriage was to actor Billy Bob Thornton, and the third to actor Brad Pitt.
“Unbroken” is a 2010 biography of WWII hero and US olympic athlete Louis Zamperini. The book was written by Laura Hillenbrand, who also topped the bestseller lists with her 2001 title “Seabiscuit”. “Unbroken” was adapted into a 2014 film of the same name that was directed by Angelina Jolie.
25. “NewsHour” channel : PBS
“NewsHour” is the evening news program broadcast daily by PBS. The show started out as “The MacNeil/Lehrer Report” in 1975, and transitioned into the hour-long program “The NewsHour” in 1983. That transition made “NewsHour” the nation’s first hour=long nightly news broadcast.
28. Novelist Rita __ Brown : MAE
Rita Mae Brown is an American author who is best known for her 1973 novel “Rubyfruit Jungle”.
39. Area for critical patients, briefly : ICU
Many a hospital (hosp.) includes an intensive care unit (ICU).
40. Diamond great Sandberg : RYNE
Ryne “Ryno” Sandberg is a former second baseman who played most of his career for the Chicago Cubs. Sandberg holds the major league fielding percentage record at second base.
41. Particle physics concept : STRING THEORY
There has always been a conflict between the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Basically, the theory of relativity works for “big stuff” but breaks down when applied to minute things like subatomic particles. On the other hand, quantum theory was developed to explain behavior at the subatomic level, and just doesn’t work on the larger scale. One of the reasons physicists are so excited about string theory is that it works at both the macro and micro levels. According to string theory, all particles in the universe are really little “strings”, as opposed to the points or ball-shaped entities assumed by the other theories.
46. Pub quiz fodder : TRIVIA
Trivia are things of little consequence. “Trivia” is the plural of the Latin word “trivium” which means “a place where three roads meet”. Now that’s what I call a trivial fact …
47. Red Muppet who refers to himself in the third person : ELMO
The “Sesame Street” character named Elmo has a birthday every February 3rd, and on that birthday he always turns 3½ years old. The man behind/under Elmo on “Sesame Street” is Kevin Clash. If you want to learn more about Elmo and Clash, you can watch the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey”.
48. Bit of toy “ammo” : CAP
Cap guns are toy guns that use as ammunition a small quantity of explosive that is shock-sensitive. The small disks of ammunition come as individual pellets or perhaps in plastic rings. The cap guns that I used as a child came with about 50 pellets of ammunition on a roll of paper. As a kid, I used to think that cap guns were so cool. Now, not so much …
60. Humdinger : BEAUT
A humdinger or a pip is someone or something outstanding. “Humdinger” is American slang dating back to the early 1900s, and was originally used to describe a particularly attractive woman.
62. Kitchenware brand : EKCO
The EKCO name dates back to 1888 when Edward Katzinger founded his company in Chicago, to make baking pans. The acronym EKCO stands for “Edward Katzinger Co”.
63. Blueprint detail : SPEC
Blueprints are reproductions of technical or architectural drawings that are contact prints made on light-sensitive sheets. Blueprints were introduced in the 1800s and the technology available dictated that the drawings were reproduced with white lines on a blue background, hence the name “blue-print”.
69. Art Deco luminary : ERTE
“Erté” was the pseudonym of French (Russian born) artist and designer Romain de Tirtoff. Erté is the French pronunciation of his initials “R.T.” Erté’s diverse portfolio of work included costumes and sets for the “Ziegfeld Follies” of 1923, productions of the Parisian cabaret show “Folies Bergère”, as well as the 1925 epic movie “Ben-Hur”. Erté’s most famous work by far is an image titled “Symphony in Black”. It depicts a tall and slender woman dressed in black, holding a black dog on a leash.
Down
1. Goods thrown overboard : JETSAM
“Flotsam” and “jetsam” are both terms used to describe garbage in the ocean. Flotsam is floating wreckage from a ship or its cargo. Jetsam is similar to flotsam, except that it is part of a ship or cargo that is deliberately cast overboard, perhaps to lighten a vessel.
2. “Girl on Fire” singer Keys : ALICIA
Alicia Keys is the stage name of Alicia Cook, an R&B and soul singer from Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.
3. Biological mapping subject : GENOME
The genome is all the hereditary information needed to reproduce an organism, in other words, all of its chromosomes. When scientists unravel the human genome it takes up an awful lot of computer storage space, and yet all of this information is in almost every cell in our bodies. Each and every cell “knows” how to make a whole human being.
5. Fictional captain Hornblower : HORATIO
The “Horatio Hornblower” series of novels were written by English author C. S. Forester. Hornblower is an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
6. Tel __, Israel : AVIV
The full name of Israel’s second largest city is Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tel Aviv translates into “Spring Mound”, a name chosen in 1910.
7. Christmas trio : MAGI
“Magi” is the plural of the Latin word “magus”, a term applied to someone who was able to read the stars. Hence, magi is commonly used with reference to the “wise men from the East” who followed the star and visited Jesus soon after he was born.
9. Air Wick target : ODOR
The first Air Wick air freshener was introduced in the United States, in 1943.
11. D-backs, on scoreboards : ARI
The Arizona Diamondbacks joined Major League Baseball’s National League in 1998. By winning the World Series in 2001, the Diamondbacks became the fastest expansion team to do so in Major League history.
12. Jack Reacher creator __ Child : LEE
Lee Child is the pen name of British thriller writer Jim Grant. The hero of Child’s stories is an American ex-military policeman called Jack Reacher. The novel “One Shot” was adapted for the big screen as “Jack Reacher”, which was released in 2012 with Tom Cruise in the title role.
15. Doily fabric : LACE
There was a draper in London in the seventeenth century called Doiley, and he gave his name to the lace fabric that he sold, which in turn gave its name to the ornamental mat that we call a “doily”. I can’t stand doilies …
21. __ Los Angeles : EAST
East Los Angeles (usually “East LA”) is the most populous “census-designated place” in California, and is home to over 125,000 people.
22. Actress Polo : TERI
Teri Polo’s most prominent role on the big screen was Pam Focker in “Meet the Fockers” and its sequel. Pam is the wife of the character played by Ben Stiller. Polo also played the wife of Presidential candidate Matt Santos in “The West Wing”.
27. Eye problem : STYE
A stye is a bacterial infection of the sebaceous glands at the base of the eyelashes, and is also known as a hordeolum.
31. Anne of “Wag the Dog” : HECHE
My favorite movie starring the actress Anne Heche is “Six Days Seven Nights”, a romantic comedy in which she plays opposite Harrison Ford. Heche is noted for her difficult private life. She wrote that her father had molested her as a child and gave her a sexually transmitted disease (he later revealed that he was homosexual, and died of AIDS). Heche dated comedian Steve Martin for two years, and then lived with comedian Ellen DeGeneres for three. Soon after breaking up with DeGeneres, she started exhibiting eccentric behavior for a while, claiming that she was the daughter of God, and that she would take everyone back to heaven in her spaceship. Happily, I think things have calmed down for her in recent years.
The 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” is a black comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. It tells the story of a fake war that is manufactured by a Washington spin doctor in order to distract the American electorate. It is based on the novel “American Hero” by Larry Beinhart. In the movie the war is fictitious and the president goes unnamed. In the novel, Beinhart uses Desert Storm as the war in his storyline, and George H. W. Bush as the President.
34. Improvised blade : SHIV
“Shiv” is a slang term for a weapon crudely fashioned to resemble a knife. Mostly we hear of shivs that have been fashioned by prison inmates to do harm to others.
37. Gillette brand : ATRA
Fortunately for crossword constructors, the Atra was introduced by Gillette in 1977, as the first razor with a pivoting head. The Atra was sold as the Contour in some markets and its derivative products are still around today.
38. Pegboard game : CRIBBAGE
Cribbage is a great card game that originated in 17th-century England, a creation of the poet Sir John Suckling. One of the unique features of the game is that a cribbage board with pegs is used to keep score. Here in the US, cribbage is very much associated with the submarine service, as it is a favorite game of submariners of all ranks.
43. Mother Earth, in Greek mythology : GAEA
The Greek goddess personifying the earth was Gaea (meaning “land” or “earth” in Greek). The Roman equivalent goddess was Terra Mater, “Mother Earth”.
48. Writer for whose father the National Baseball Hall of Fame city was named : COOPER
Cooperstown is a village in New York that is famous as the home to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The village was named for Judge William Cooper, Cooperstown’s founder, and the father of the noted writer James Fenimore Cooper.
50. Freudian analyst’s concern : PSYCHE
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist, and founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. One of Freud’s tenets was that our dreams are a necessary part of sleep as they prevent the dreamer from awakening due to desire for unfulfilled wishes. The dream’s content represents those unfulfilled wishes and satisfies the desire.
58. Furniture chain popular in dorms : IKEA
The furniture chain IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, when he was just 17-years-old. IKEA is an acronym standing for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd (don’t forget now!). Elmtaryd was the name of the farm where Ingvar Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd is his home parish in Sweden.
59. Sweet Sixteen org. : NCAA
In the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship, the teams remaining at various stages of the tournament are known as:
- The “Sweet Sixteen” (the regional semi-finalists)
- The “Elite Eight” (the regional finalists)
- The “Final Four” (the national semi-finalists)
61. Suffix with ethyl : -ENE
Ethylene (also called “ethene”) has a gazillion uses, including as an anesthetic and an aid to hastening the ripening of fruit. Ethylene’s most common use is as a major raw material in the manufacture of plastics (like polyethylene).
Complete List of Clues and Answers
Across
1. Sporty British cars, for short : JAGS
5. Omelet option : HAM
8. Reef material : CORAL
13. Power co. output : ELEC
14. Shaped like an avocado : OVAL
16. Dig deeply? : ADORE
17. Fey with many Emmys : TINA
18. Baltic port : RIGA
19. “Unbroken” director Angelina : JOLIE
20. Come out on top : SCORE A VICTORY
23. Intends to hit : AIMS AT
24. Sushi roll fish : EEL
25. “NewsHour” channel : PBS
28. Novelist Rita __ Brown : MAE
29. [I give up!] : SIGH
32. Vacation location : RESORT
34. Retail showcase : STORE DISPLAY
36. Per item : EACH
39. Area for critical patients, briefly : ICU
40. Diamond great Sandberg : RYNE
41. Particle physics concept : STRING THEORY
46. Pub quiz fodder : TRIVIA
47. Red Muppet who refers to himself in the third person : ELMO
48. Bit of toy “ammo” : CAP
51. Gentle touch : DAB
52. Okay mark : CEE
54. Knuckleheads : IDIOTS
56. Reporter’s delivery … and what 20-, 34- and 41-Across are literally doing? : BREAKING STORY
60. Humdinger : BEAUT
62. Kitchenware brand : EKCO
63. Blueprint detail : SPEC
64. Subject of a certain management class : ANGER
65. They may be choppy : SEAS
66. Fit together nicely : MESH
67. High-maintenance : NEEDY
68. “That’s the spot” : AAH
69. Art Deco luminary : ERTE
Down
1. Goods thrown overboard : JETSAM
2. “Girl on Fire” singer Keys : ALICIA
3. Biological mapping subject : GENOME
4. Permanent marks : SCARS
5. Fictional captain Hornblower : HORATIO
6. Tel __, Israel : AVIV
7. Christmas trio : MAGI
8. Persuades with flattery : CAJOLES
9. Air Wick target : ODOR
10. Short and chubby : ROLY-POLY
11. D-backs, on scoreboards : ARI
12. Jack Reacher creator __ Child : LEE
15. Doily fabric : LACE
21. __ Los Angeles : EAST
22. Actress Polo : TERI
26. Dietary fiber : BRAN
27. Eye problem : STYE
30. Determination : GRIT
31. Anne of “Wag the Dog” : HECHE
33. Nimble : SPRY
34. Improvised blade : SHIV
35. Fight that may involve drawing : DUEL
36. Started, as a co. : ESTD
37. Gillette brand : ATRA
38. Pegboard game : CRIBBAGE
42. “So close, yet so far” : NICE TRY
43. Mother Earth, in Greek mythology : GAEA
44. “Holy cow!” : OMIGOSH!
45. Curtain supports : RODS
48. Writer for whose father the National Baseball Hall of Fame city was named : COOPER
49. Idle : AT REST
50. Freudian analyst’s concern : PSYCHE
53. __ out: barely makes : EKES
55. “Who’s there?” answer : IT’S ME
57. Was sorry about : RUED
58. Furniture chain popular in dorms : IKEA
59. Sweet Sixteen org. : NCAA
60. Prohibit : BAN
61. Suffix with ethyl : -ENE
10 minutes, 1 dumb error.
David Kennison, may I thank you for all those wise words and pointers, you were kind enough to write about yesterday. I am flabbergasted at the number of polymaths on our blog, including our maestro, of course. I just wonder why it took me so much of my stage in life to learn what I should have been taught in high school …. or maybe, I was just not paying attention. It will take me some time to digest the information that you put forth, and many re-readings ,,, but it will be a pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you, Carrie for Accent, which is all MSG. Btw, Accent is still very much on the shelves and still being sold, but why buy the overpriced product, when you can buy MSG by the pound, at any chinese store, at less than 25% the price. I use it sometimes, but I’m not so sure whether it adds to the taste, or that the effect is most psychological or psychosomatic …. MSG is very common in nature … mushrooms, peas, broccoli, most cheeses and other savories. Soy sauce is loaded with it, your own body produces it. That said, many people are highly allergic to it.
8:01, no errors. Pretty easy for a Wednesday.
@Vidwan … You’re welcome! The existence of that YouTube video demonstrates that you are not the only one to have wondered why the shadow of the eclipse moved as it did.
I have seen four solar eclipses now (only one of them total) and each has given me the feeling of a mouse trapped inside a giant machine: It’s difficult to imagine how the whole thing appears from the outside when you’re viewing it from the inside.
10:46. Pretty easy Wednesday grid. I used to equate Wednesdays with the start of the tougher end of the week puzzles. Now I equate them with Mon or Tue puzzles. Either they are or I am changing…
I loved Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books. I read the first 750 of them (exaggeration..) but after reading about 17 of them I did get a little tired of them. Child does an awful lot of interesting research on a ton of subjects for those books. I think he would do well at crosswords. Reacher in the novels is about 6’5″ 250 lbs which is why Tom Cruise was such a curious choice to play him. Cruise does capture the persona of Reacher pretty well, however.
Long story as to how this happened, but Lee Child’s books were first recommended to me personally from my favorite fiction author, the late Vince Flynn at a book signing in (of all places) Cincinnati. If you haven’t read Vince Flynn’s books, I highly recommend all of them.
I’ve rambled on and on about string theory here in the past. I personally believe it will someday be proven as true. It explains too many things that are intuitive to anyone and the math is remarkably consistent at this point. That said, no string has ever been seen or detected as yet….
Lastly, my favorite theoretical physicist (has that phrase ever been uttered before?) Matt Strassler has some interesting observations about the eclipse and how unique it is – and not just for us earthlings. It is unique cosmically as well –
Cut and pasted from Matt Strassler’s article on the eclipse:
It has been said that if the Earth were a member of a federation of a million planets, it would be a famous tourist attraction, because this home of ours would be the only one in the republic with such beautiful eclipses. For our skies are witness to a coincidence truly of cosmic proportions. It is a stunning accident that although the Sun is so immense that it could hold a million Earths, and the Moon so small that dozens could fit inside our planet, these two spheres, the brightest bodies in Earth’s skies, appear the same size. A faraway giant may seem no larger than a nearby child. And this perfect match of their sizes and distances makes our planet’s eclipses truly spectacular, visually and scientifically. They are described by witnesses as a sight of weird and unique beauty, a visual treasure completely unlike anything else a person will ever see, or even imagine.
Best –
Thank you Jeff, for that comment – which resembles poetry. Let us never forget that we have all this wonder around us.
The puzzle was easier than yesterdays. I even got the theme.
Re: Blueprints …. Way back in 1966-67, I was a trainee engineer apprentice in a chemical bubble cap distillation column manufacturing plant … wow, thats a mouthful – for a glorified pageboy. Anyway, I made copies of drawings, which were then made into blueprints. The way was, to draw the engg diagram on tracing paper, with a soft pencil, then expose the completed diagram through a “light box” ( for UV light ? )
for 15 minutes or more, onto a special ammonia sensitized paper (amm.sens.paper), then the am sens paper was put into a sealed box, with a container of liquid and gaseous ammonia. The parts of the paper which had been covered with the lines in the drawing remained white, but the rest of the exposed paper, that is the majority – the background turned blue. So you had white lines with a blue background – hence “blue print”. The resultant copy was very stable, and clear for many years.
Here is a wiki article, on one of the processes.
Have a nice day, all.
We do seem to take that part of a solar eclipse for granted – that the sun and moon appear the exact same size from the earth. A pretty amazing coincidence.
Incidentally Einstein proved his theory of general relativity and proved Newtonian physics wrong via a solar eclipse. I believe he predicted the ability to see a star directly behind the sun during an eclipse – which they were able to do. He proved that light bends due to gravitational forces (in this case the gravitation of the sun) that way thus redefining what gravity is…
I promise – this is the last day of the eclipse talk. Next time I mention a total eclipse, I’ll be referring to a small Japanese car after a bad accident… 🙂
Best –
Hiya folks! ⚾
Funny story: I started this puzzle in the morning, as I sometimes do on Thursdays, just to make a dent in the thing. Seemed pretty easy; put it aside. Wasn’t till an hour later that I realized today was WEDNESDAY….!!! Hello! ?
Well done grid; no errors.
@Vidwan, reading that passage really makes me wish I had managed to wake up in time for the eclipse! Oh well….2024.
I am amazed that Accent! is still sold! Seems like such a throwback item.
Be well~~™?
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