Day: December 1, 2023

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Constructed by: Katie Hale
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Textbook Example

Themed answers are titles of BOOKS, clued as TEXT messages:

• 38A Classic demonstration, and a way to describe the relationship between each starred clue and its answer : TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE

• 16A *LOL OMG : THE DIVINE COMEDY (Laugh out loud, oh my God)
• 22A *CU soon : ON THE ROAD (See you soon)
• 51A *SRY : ATONEMENT (Sorry)
• 62A *TMI : NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Too much information)

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

Bill’s time: 7m 03s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Welcome gifts at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel : LEIS

The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel sits on Kauna’oa Bay on the western side of the island of Hawaii. It was built by Laurance Rockefeller, a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. The hotel first opened for business in 1965.

13 Mount near Taormina : ETNA

Taormina is a village on the coast of Sicily that is a popular tourist destination. The village sits perched on a cliff, and overlooks the Ionian Sea. It is also about a 45-minute drive from Mount Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano.

15 Nike rival : AVIA

The Avia brand name for athletic shoes was chosen as “avia” is the Latin word for “to fly”, and suggests the concept of aviation. Avia was founded in Oregon in 1979.

16 *LOL OMG : THE DIVINE COMEDY (Laugh out loud, oh my God)

Dante’s epic narrative poem “Divina Commedia” (Divine Comedy) is divided into three parts: “Inferno”, “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso” (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise).

20 Actress Collette : TONI

Toni Collette is a marvelous actress from Australia who really started to garner the public’s attention playing the title role in the 1994 film “Muriel’s Wedding”. She went on to take major roles in films like “Emma” (1996), “The Sixth Sense” (1999), “About a Boy” (2002), all of which are favorites of mine. Collette also played the lead in the excellent Showtime comedy-drama “United States of Tara”.

21 Fatal flaw of some Greek heroes : HUBRIS

Hubris is arrogance or overbearing pride.

22 *CU soon : ON THE ROAD (See you soon)

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road” is largely autobiographical, telling the story of Sal Paradise (Jack K.) and the road trips that he and his friends took across the country in the fifties.

26 Youngest March sister : AMY

The “Little Women” in Louisa May Alcott’s classic (1868) novel are all sisters. The names of the five main characters in the book are a mother and her four daughters:

• Margaret “Marmee” (the mother)
• Margaret “Meg”
• Josephine “Jo”
• Elizabeth “Beth”
• Amy Curtis

29 Young chap : LAD

“Chap” is an informal term meaning “lad, fellow” that is used especially in England. The term derives from “chapman”, an obsolete word meaning “purchaser” or “trader”.

32 Tesfaye whose stage name is the Weeknd : ABEL

“The Weeknd” is the stage name of Canadian singer Abel Tesfaye. One thing that sets him apart from other performers is his preference for using the falsetto register when singing.

43 Queues : LINES

Our word “queue”, meaning “waiting line”, comes from French. “Queue” is the French word for “tail”, and the phrase “queue à queue” translates as “one after another” (literally “tail to tail”).

44 Fission target : ATOM

By some definitions, New Zealand-born physicist and chemist Ernest Rutherford was the first person to “split the atom”. Rutherford bombarded nitrogen with alpha particles and thereby forced neutrons out of the nucleus of the nitrogen atom. The first intentional nuclear “fission” came decades later in the 1930s, with experiments in which larger nuclei were split into smaller nuclei.

49 __ choy : BOK

Bok choy is a variety of Chinese cabbage. “Bok choy” translates as “white vegetable”.

51 *SRY : ATONEMENT (Sorry)

“Atonement” is a 2001 novel by English author Ian McEwan. Briony Tallis is the main character and narrator in the story, and someone whom we see grow from a child to a woman. In her youth, she falsely accuses a man of rape, resulting in him serving time in prison. We discover at the end of the story that Briony “wrote” the novel “Atonement” to atone for her terrible lie.

61 “Narcos” org. : DEA

“Narcos” is a Netflix show that deals with the Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA’s) battles against drug cartels. The first two seasons focus on the rise and fall of drug lord Pablo Escobar of the Medellín Cartel, and is set and filmed in Colombia.

62 *TMI : NOTES ON A SCANDAL (Too much information)

“Notes on a Scandal” (Also “What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal”) is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher in London who has an affair with an underage pupil. The story was inspired by the real-life case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a middle school teacher who was convicted of raping her student when he was 12 years old, a student she eventually married after serving time in prison. “Notes on a Scandal” was adapted into an excellent 2006 film starring Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench and Bill Nighy.

66 Actor Rami : MALEK

Actor Rami Malek’s big break came with the leading role in the television series “Mr. Robot”. In 2018, Malik gave an Oscar-winning performance playing Freddie Mercury in the hit biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody”. That marked the first time that an actor of Egyptian descent won an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Down

2 Hawke of “The Northman” : ETHAN

Ethan Hawke is a Hollywood actor who made his breakthrough in a supporting role in “Dead Poet’s Society”, playing opposite Robin Williams. Hawke used to be married to Uma Thurman, with whom he has two children.

“The Northman” is a 2022 historical action movie about the legend of Amleth from Norse mythology. Amleth was a Viking prince, and is played by Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård. This one was filmed in Ireland and Iceland.

5 __ acid : AMINO

There are 20 different types of amino acids that make up proteins. However, only 11 of them can be synthesized by the human body, while the remaining nine essential amino acids must be obtained from food sources.

6 Ancient Aegean region : IONIA

The geographic region called Ionia is located in present-day Turkey. Ionia was prominent in the days of ancient Greece, although it wasn’t a unified state and rather a collection of tribes. The tribal confederacy was more based on religious and cultural similarities than a political or military alliance. Nowadays we often refer to this arrangement as the Ionian League.

9 Green arboreal snake : MAMBA

Mambas, most famously black mambas, are highly venomous snakes that used to be responsible for a great number of fatalities before anti-venoms became available. Mamba venom is a deadly mix of neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and cardiotoxins that attack the heart. A bite, if left untreated, causes the lungs and the heart to shut down.

24 Palm fruits : DATES

Date palms can be either male or female. Only the female tree bears fruit (called “dates”).

28 Number of suspects in Clue : SIX

Clue is a board game that we knew under a different name growing up in Ireland. Outside of North America, Clue is marketed as “Cluedo”. Cluedo was the original name of the game, introduced in 1949 by the famous British board game manufacturer Waddingtons. There are cute differences between the US and UK versions. For example, the man who is murdered is called Dr. Black (Mr. Boddy in the US), one of the suspects is the Reverend Green (Mr. Green in the US), and the suspect weapons include a dagger (a knife in the US), and a spanner (a wrench in the US). I think it’s a fabulous game, a must during the holidays …

30 “Alligator Boy” in a 2021 Netflix animated film : ARLO

“Arlo the Alligator Boy” is a 2021 animated musical movie about a half-human and half-alligator boy named Arlo Beauregard. The film spawned a TV series “I Heart Arlo”.

35 Accord maker : HONDA

Honda started manufacturing the Accord model in Marysville, Ohio in 1982, making the Accord the first Japanese car to be produced in the US. The Accord was the best-selling Japanese car in America from 1982 to 1997, and 1989 was the first import to become the best-selling car in the US.

36 Barinholtz of “History of the World, Part II” : IKE

Ike Barinholtz is an actor and comedian who appeared on MADtv from 2002 until 2007. More recently, Barinholtz became a writer on the TV show “The Mindy Project”, and was then cast as Nurse Morgan Tookers.

“History of the World, Part II” is a sketch comedy series created by Mel Brooks. It is positioned as a sequel to the 1981 film “History of the World, Part I”, also written by Brooks. The TV show features a variety of sketches that parody events from different periods of human history and legend. It stars a number of well-known actors, including Mel Brooks himself and co-writer Wanda Sykes.

39 Chaps : BLOKES

“Bloke” is British slang for “fellow”. The etymology of “bloke” seems to have been lost in the mists of time.

40 Safflower __ : OIL

Safflower looks pretty much like a yellow-flowered thistle, with sharp spines on the leaves. For the past five decades the safflower has been cultivated for its seeds, which yield an oil that is similar to sunflower oil.

47 Former weekend programming block that featured “Clarissa Explains It All” : SNICK

Nickelodeon used to air a two-hour block of programming each week aimed at older audiences. It ran on Saturdays from 1992 to 2005 under the name “SNICK”, standing for Saturday Night Nickelodeon.

48 Anti-fur gp. : PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is a large animal rights organization, with about 300 employees and two million members and supporters worldwide. Although the group campaigns for animal rights across a broad spectrum of issues, it has a stated focus in opposition of four practices:

• Factory farming
• Fur farming
• Animal testing
• Use of animals in entertainment

54 __ Bauer : EDDIE

The Eddie Bauer clothing chain was established in Seattle in 1920 by an outdoorsman named Eddie Bauer (unsurprisingly!). Bauer was the man who patented the first quilted down jacket, in 1940.

56 Chaucer works : TALES

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author. He is often referred to as the father of English literature because he established vernacular English as a legitimate language for artistic works, as up to that point authors used French or Latin. Chaucer’s most famous work is actually unfinished, a collection of stories called “The Canterbury Tales” that were all written at the end of the 14th century.

59 Oblong tomato : ROMA

The Roma tomato isn’t considered an heirloom variety but it is very popular with home gardeners, especially those gardeners that don’t have a lot of space. It is a bush type (as opposed to vine type) and needs very little room to provide a lot of tomatoes.

64 Bruins’ org. : NHL

The Boston Bruins professional ice hockey team goes way back, and has been in existence since 1924. The National Hockey League back then was a Canadian-only league, but was expanded to include the US in 1923. The Bruins were the first US-team in the expanded league.