Day: October 26, 2023

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Constructed by: Emily Biegas & Sala Wanetick
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Youth Group

Themed answers are all musical GROUP names, with each including a synonym of “YOUTHS”:

• 63A Ministry community for religious teens, and what the answer to each starred clue can be called : YOUTH GROUP

• 17A *Posh quintet? : SPICE GIRLS
• 29A *”Robbers & Cowards” indie rock band : COLD WAR KIDS
• 48A *Musical duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe : PET SHOP BOYS

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

Bill’s time: 6m 42s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Danish shoe brand : ECCO

I have to say, after owning several pairs, that ECCO shoes are the most comfortable in the world. The company is headquartered in Denmark.

5 __ Sketch : ETCH A

Etch A Sketch was introduced in 1960. The toy was developed in France by inventor André Cassagnes, who initially named it “L’Écran Magique” (The Magic Screen).

15 Croc kin : GATOR

Crocodiles and alligators do indeed bear a resemblance to each other, although they belong to distinct biological families. One of the main ways used to distinguish them is by their teeth and jaws. Both the upper and lower sets of teeth of a crocodile are visible when its mouth is closed, whereas only the upper teeth of an alligator are visible with the mouth shut.

16 Subway fare? : HERO

The SUBWAY chain of fast food restaurants is the largest single-brand restaurant in the world. I’m a big fan of SUBWAY sandwiches, especially the toasted ones …

17 *Posh quintet? : SPICE GIRLS

Victoria Beckham (nee Adams) became famous as a member of the Spice Girls girl group, using the stage name Posh Spice. She married football legend David Beckham in 1999, not long after the celebrity couple had earned the nickname “Posh and Becks”. Their main home for several years was a large mansion on 24 acres of Hertfordshire countryside called Rowneybury House. After a multimillion-dollar renovation, the media dubbed the home “Beckingham Palace”. Oh, when she was a young girl, Victoria used to have her father drop her off at school each day in his Rolls Royce. All very posh …

29 *”Robbers & Cowards” indie rock band : COLD WAR KIDS

Cold War Kids are an indie rock band that formed in Long Beach in 2004. Bass guitarist Matt Maust came up with the band’s name several years earlier while traveling in Eastern Europe. It popped into his mind while visiting a park in Budapest that had empty plinths where Communist statues had once stood. Born in 1979, Maust realized that he was a “Cold War kid”.

38 “__ Break”: Kathryn Bigelow surfing film : POINT

“Point Break” is a 1991 film about an FBI agent investigating a series of robberies, with suspicion falling on a group of surfer dudes. Famously, Patrick Swayze plays the leader of the surfers, and Keanu Reeves the rookie FBI agent. A “point break” is a location where waves hit a point of land jutting out from a coastline. The film was remade in 2015 under the same title.

Kathryn Bigelow is a movie director and writer. Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, for 2009’s “The Hurt Locker”. James Cameron was also nominated as Best Director that year, for “Avatar”. Bigelow and Cameron were a married couple from 1989 to 1991.

48 *Musical duo of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe : PET SHOP BOYS

Pet Shop Boys are a pop duo from England consisting of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. The pair originally performed in the West End in the early 1980s, because they loved London’s West End. When they decided to rename their act, they chose Pet Shop Boys simply because they had good friends working in a nearby pet shop.

51 Ra or Odin : GOD

Ra (sometimes “Re”) was the ancient Egyptian sun god. He was associated with the falcon, and was often depicted as a man with a falcon’s head.

In Norse mythology, Odin was the chief of the gods. He is usually depicted as having one eye, reflecting the story of how he gave one of his eyes in exchange for wisdom.

52 Business casual top : POLO

René Lacoste was a French tennis player who went into the clothing business, and came up with a more comfortable shirt that players could use. This became known as a “tennis shirt”. When it was adopted for use in the sport of polo, the shirts also became known as “polo shirts”. The “golf shirt” is basically the same thing. The Lacoste line of clothing features a crocodile logo, because René was nicknamed “The Crocodile”.

58 Spa rooms with heated stones : SAUNAS

As my Finnish-American wife will tell you, “sauna” is a Finnish word. It is pronounced more correctly as “sow-nah” (“sow”, as in the female pig).

66 Avocado app : GUAC

Guacamole is one of my favorite dishes. It is prepared by mashing avocados and perhaps adding the likes of tomato, onion and lime juice. The guacamole recipe dates back as early as the 16th century, to the time of the Aztecs. “Guacamole” translates as “avocado sauce”.

67 Closing section of music : OUTRO

In the world of pop music, an outro is the opposite to an intro. An outro might perhaps be the concluding track of an album, for example.

Down

2 Means of emphasis : CAPS

An uppercase (also “capital”) letter is more formally known as a majuscule letter. A letter written in lowercase is referred to as minuscule.

4 Muppet who sings “I Love Trash” : OSCAR

Oscar the Grouch is the Muppet who lives in a garbage can. Oscar’s persona comes from various sources. He is named after Oscar Brand who was one of the board members of the Children’s Television Workshop, the backers for “Sesame Street” as the Muppets were being developed in the sixties. Oscar’s personality was inspired by an angry waiter that once served Jim Henson (father of the Muppets). The voice was modeled on a grumpy New York cab driver encountered one day by Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who brings Oscar to life.

5 Stirred up : EGGED ON

The verb “to edge” has been used to mean to incite, to urge on, from the 16th century. Somewhere along the way “edge” was mistakenly replaced with “egg”, giving us our term “to egg on” meaning “to goad”.

6 Mai __ : TAI

The mai tai cocktail is strongly associated with the Polynesian islands, but the drink was supposedly invented in 1944 in Trader Vic’s restaurant in Oakland, California. One recipe is 6 parts white rum, 3 parts orange curaçao, 3 parts orgeat syrup, 1 part rock candy syrup, 2 parts fresh lime juice, all mixed with ice and then a float added of 6 parts dark rum. “Maita’i” is the Tahitian word for “good”.

7 NFL snapper : CTR

The quarterback (QB) starts each play in football with a snap (also called a “hike”). He announces to his teammates the exact moment of the snap by calling out signals, usually including the word “hut” one or more times in a prearranged sequence.

9 Premier League powerhouse : ARSENAL

Arsenal Football Club (nicknamed “the Gunners”) is an English soccer team based in the Holloway district of London. The club was founded in 1886 as Dial Square by workers at the Royal Arsenal munitions factory. Dial Square was the name given to the workshops at the center of the Royal Arsenal complex. After just a few weeks in existence, the club changed its name to Royal Arsenal, which was eventually shortened to just Arsenal.

10 Gesture of approval : CHEF’S KISS

A chef’s kiss is a gesture used by a chef to indicate that a dish has achieved perfection. The gesture involves kissing the tips of the gathered fingers.

12 Museu Picasso pieces : ARTE

The Museu Picasso (“Picasso Museum) in Barcelona, Spain opened its doors in 1963, as the first museum dedicated to the art of Pablo Picasso. The facility’s collection is huge, numbering over 4,000 works.

28 Apple Watch spot : WRIST

The Apple Watch was announced in 2014 and started shipping in 2015. The device works as an extension to a user’s smartphone, although it also has capabilities of its own. I’m not a big fan of smartwatches; I really don’t see the point …

33 Word with dating or skating : SPEED …

Speed dating is a matchmaking process in which single people meet a relatively large number of potential partners in a short period of time. The first speed-dating event took place in Beverly Hills in 1998 at a Peet’s Café.

The competitive sport of speed skating has been enjoyed for a long, long time. When the International Skating Union was formed in 1892 to govern speed skating, it was the world’s first international governing body for a winter sport.

35 Column to the left of a decimal : ONES PLACE

The decimal separator in a number written in decimal form is the symbol that separates the integer part of the number from the fractional part. Here in the US, we tend to use a decimal point for that separation. In Central Europe, a decimal comma is the norm.

39 Lake in the Sierra Nevadas : TAHOE

The American Sierra Nevada range lies in California and Nevada. The Spanish Sierra Nevada range is in Andalusia, with the name meaning “snowy range” in Spanish.

49 Allowing for osmosis : POROUS

Osmosis is the movement of a solvent (often water) across a semipermeable membrane. In the process of osmosis, the solvent tends to flow from an area of less concentration to an area of higher concentration. This sense of absorbing water effortlessly gives rise to the expression “learning by osmosis”.

50 Party favors : SWAG

Swag is loot, stolen property, and a term that started out as criminal slang in England in the 1830s. “Swag” is also the name given to the promotional freebies available at some events. That said, there’s an urban myth that the promotional version of “swag” is an acronym standing for “stuff we all get”.

54 Glamping options : YURTS

A yurt is a wood-framed dwelling that is used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. Although a yurt is a substantial structure, it is also extremely portable.

“Glamping” is “glamorous camping”, camping with comforts and amenities.

56 “So You Want To Talk About Race” writer Ijeoma : OLUO

Author Ijeoma Oluo is known for her writings about racism, misogyny, and social justice. Three of her more famous titles are:

1. “The Badass Feminist Coloring Book” (2015)
2. “So You Want to Talk about Race” (2018)
3. “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America”

57 Actor Neeson : LIAM

Irish actor Liam Neeson’s big break came with the role of Oskar Schindler in the Spielberg epic, “Schindler’s List”. Neeson was in the news some years later when he lost his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, in a tragic skiing accident in 2009. Earlier in his life, in the 1980s, Neeson lived for several years with Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren.

59 Biblical ark builder : NOAH

The term “ark”, when used with reference to Noah, is a translation of the Hebrew word “tebah”. The word “tebah” is also used in the Bible for the basket in which Moses was placed by his mother when she floated him down the Nile. It seems that the word “tebah” doesn’t mean “boat” and nor does it mean “basket”. Rather, a more appropriate translation is “life-preserver” or “life-saver”. So, Noah’s ark was Noah’s life-preserver during the flood.

60 German automaker : AUDI

In most countries around the world, Audi uses its corporate tagline in advertising, namely “Vorsprung durch Technik” (which translates as “Advancement through Technology”). However, the literal translation from the German was dropped for the US market, in favor of “Truth in Engineering”.

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