Day: September 25, 2023

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Constructed by: Amie Walker
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer(s): Disco Bars

Themed answers are lines (BARS) from the DISCO hit “GET DOWN TONIGHT” by KC and the Sunshine Band:

• 62A With 63-Across, 1970s nightclubs, or, in another sense, what 20-, 36-, and 47-Across are? : DISCO …
• 63A See 62-Across : … BARS

• 20A Conga line? : DO A LITTLE DANCE
• 36A Neck line? : MAKE A LITTLE LOVE
• 47A Party line? : GET DOWN TONIGHT

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

Bill’s time: 6m 23s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10 Wheel of Fortune option : SPIN

Contestants have been spinning the “Wheel of Fortune” since the game show first aired in 1975.

14 Music genre for Jill Scott : SOUL

Jill Scott is a singer, songwriter and actress. Her fourth studio album, 2011’s “The Light of the Sun”, was her first album to top the charts. As an actress, she has had several roles on the small and big screens, including the role of James Brown’s second wife in the 2014 film “Get on Up”.

15 Asian capital whose opera house is modeled on Paris’s Palais Garnier : HANOI

The Hanoi Opera House in the Vietnamese capital was built by the French colonists in the early 1900s. It was modeled on the world-famous Palais Garnier in Paris.

17 Italian dish, familiarly : PARM

Parmigiana (familiarly “parm”) is a dish from southern Italy. The original parmigiana was made with an eggplant filling, with cheese and tomato layers and then baked. Versions originating outside of Italy have replaced the eggplant with breaded cutlets of chicken or veal.

19 Corner chess piece : ROOK

The corner piece in the game of chess is called a “rook”, a word coming from the Persian “rokh” meaning a “chariot”. The rook has also been called, perhaps incorrectly, the castle, tower, marquess and rector.

20 Conga line? : DO A LITTLE DANCE

The conga line is a dance that originated as a Cuban carnival march. It became popular in the US starting in the thirties. The dance is apparently named after the Congo region of Africa, and it was originated by slaves who were brought from there to Cuba.

23 Resource in Catan : ORE

The Settlers of Catan (now just “Catan”) is a board game that was introduced in 1995, in Germany as “Die Siedler von Catan”. The game is very popular in the US and was called “the board game of our time” by the “Washington Post”. My son plays it a lot, and as a lover of board games, I am going to have to check it out …

28 Prepare to advance after a fly ball : TAG UP

That would be baseball.

31 Radio host John : TESH

John Tesh is a pianist and composer, as well as a radio and television presenter. For many years Tesh presented the show “Entertainment Tonight”. For “ET” he once covered the filming of an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. As part of the piece, he volunteered to act as a Klingon warrior. If you see the “Star Trek: TNG” episode called “The Icarus Factor” in reruns, watch out for John Tesh engaging in ritual torture with Mr. Worf as his victim.

32 Cinnamon-scented seasonal decor : PINE CONES

The cones of conifers are the tree’s reproductive structures. There are both male and female cones. We are most familiar with woody cones, and these are the female structures that produce seeds. Male cones are softer and are not woody, and they produce pollen.

36 Neck line? : MAKE A LITTLE LOVE

The term “necking” applies to kissing and caressing. I like what Groucho Marx had to say on the subject:

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

40 MGM co-founder : LOEW

Marcus Loew was a New Yorker born into a poor Jewish family. He started out in a penny arcade business and used its profits to buy into a nickelodeon. He built a whole chain of movie theaters, and then moved into the production of films so that he could guarantee supply of features that he could show in his theaters. Eventually he pulled together the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film production company, and sadly passed away just three years after he inked the deal.

41 Many “Saved by the Bell” characters : TEENS

The sitcom “Saved by the Bell” originally aired from 1989 to 1993. It was based on an earlier sitcom “Good Morning, Miss Bliss”, which was later renamed to “Saved by the Bell: The Junior Years”. There were also two spin-offs: “Saved by the Bell: The college Years” and “Saved by the Bell: The New Class”.

44 Heckling chorus : BOOS

Originally, the verb “to heckle” meant “to question severely”, and for many years was associated with the public questioning of parliamentary candidates in Scotland. In more recent times, the meaning has evolved into questioning that is less polite and that is directed at stand-up comics.

54 Bruno Mars’s birthplace : OAHU

Bruno Mars is a singer-songwriter from Honolulu who has been active in the music business since 2006. “Bruno Mars” is a stage name, as Mars was born “Peter Hernandez”.

60 Froyo topping option : OREO

Frozen yogurt (“froyo” or “fro-yo”)

62 With 63-Across, 1970s nightclubs, or, in another sense, what 20-, 36-, and 47-Across are? : DISCO …
63 See 62-Across : … BARS

Discotheques first appeared during WWII in Occupied France. American-style music (like jazz and jitterbug dances) was banned by the Nazis, so French natives met in underground clubs that they called discotheques where records were often played on just a single turntable. After the war, these clubs came out into the open. One famous Paris discotheque was called “Whiskey a Gogo”. In that Paris disco, non-stop music was played using two turntables next to a dance-floor, and this concept spread around the world.

Down

1 Egyptian cobra : ASP

The Egyptian cobra (Naja haje) is also known as the asp. That said, the term “asp” can apply to several species of snake, including the Egyptian cobra. Legend has it that Cleopatra committed suicide by enticing an asp to bite her. If that’s true, then that asp was probably an Egyptian cobra.

3 Greek currency : EURO

The Greek drachma was in use until it was replaced by the euro in 2002. As well as being Greece’s currency in modern times, the drachma was also used in ancient Greece.

4 __ mater : ALMA

The term “alma mater” is used to describe a school from which one has graduated. It can also describe a school’s song or hymn.

6 Cupful with steamed milk : LATTE

The term “latte” is an abbreviation of the Italian “caffelatte” meaning “coffee (and) milk”. Note that in the correct spelling of “latte”, the Italian word for milk; there is no accent over the “e”. An accent is often added by mistake when we use the word in English, perhaps meaning to suggest that the word is French.

8 Mermaid Barbie, for one : DOLL

The famous Barbie doll was created by businesswoman Ruth Handler and first appeared on store shelves in 1959. Barbie was based on a German fashion doll called Bild Lilli that was introduced in 1955. Lilli had been a German cartoon character before taking on a three-dimensional form. Prior to the introduction of Bild Lilli and Barbie, children’s dolls were primarily representations of infants.

10 Informal surveys : STRAW POLLS

A straw poll is an unofficial vote used to gauge popular opinion. The term “straw poll” may allude to holding up a thin stalk of a plant to determine wind direction, to see where the wind blows.

12 Some Camaros : IROCS

The IROC-Z is a model of Camaro that was introduced by Chevrolet in 1978. The IROC-Z takes its name from a famous stock car race, the International Race of Champions.

13 Heat in a microwave : NUKE

The first microwave oven was invented in 1946 by Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon. While he was standing beside an active radar unit, which used microwaves, he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. Spencer proceeded to expose various foods to microwaves in tests that would lead to the development of the first commercial microwave oven.

22 Low card : DEUCE

A two in a deck of playing cards might be called a “deuce”, from the Middle French “deus” (or Modern French “deux”) meaning “two”.

25 One of 32 in the NHL : TEAM

The National Hockey League (NHL) was formed in 1917 in Montreal as a successor to the defunct National Hockey Association (NHA) that had been founded in 1909.

27 Residue from an orange snack : CHEETO DUST

Cheetos snacks were developed by the same guy who created Fritos, hence the similarity in name. On the market since 1948, up until the turn of the century the name was written as “Chee-tos”. Oh, and Cheetos contain pork enzymes, so vegetarians beware!

28 Welliver of “Bosch” and “Bosch: Legacy” : TITUS

Actor Titus Welliver is probably best known for recurring appearances in TV shows. Perhaps most notably, he played the “Man in Black” in the show “Lost”, and the title character in the excellent Amazon web TV show “Bosch”.

29 Pantry pests : ANTS

The word “pantry” dates back to 1300, when it came into English from the Old French “panetrie” meaning a “bread room”. Bread is “pain” in French, and “panis” in Latin.

31 Brief “Yikes, didn’t need that in my brain” : TMI

Too much information (TMI)

32 Subatomic particle : PION

“Pion” is short for “pi meson”, and is the name given to a subatomic particle.

A meson is an unstable subatomic particle, one made up of a quark and an antiquark.

43 “The Phantom Menace” boy : ANI

“Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” was the fourth film released in the “Star Wars” franchise, and the first in a prequel trilogy (the first three films were Episodes IV, V & VI). “The Phantom Menace” was released in 1999, twenty-two years after the original “Star Wars” movie, and sixteen years after the previous episode, “Return of the Jedi”.

44 Memphis street of blues fame : BEALE

Beale Street in downtown Memphis, Tennessee is a major tourist attraction. In 1977, by act of Congress, the street was officially declared the “Home of the Blues” due to its long association with the musical genre. Apparently “Beale” is the name of some forgotten military hero.

46 Greek column style : DORIC

The Doric was one of the three classical orders of architecture, the others being the Corinthian and the Ionic. The Doric was the earliest of the three orders, and the simplest.

49 Sushi seaweed : NORI

Nori is an edible seaweed that we used to know as “laver” when we were living in Wales. Nori is usually dried into thin sheets. Here in the US, we are most familiar with nori as the seaweed used as a wrap for sushi.

50 Guitar player’s aid : TABS

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

52 Wife of Zeus : HERA

In Greek mythology, Hera was the wife of Zeus and the goddess of women, marriage, family and childbirth. She was noted for her jealous and vengeful nature, particularly against those who vied for the affections of her husband. The equivalent character to Hera in Roman mythology was Juno. Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea.

57 Call for help repeated in the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” : SOS!

“Message in a Bottle” is a great 1979 song released by the Police, and written by the band’s lead singer Sting. There is quite a bit of repetition in the lyrics, with Sting “sending and SOS” a total of 31 times.