Day: September 16, 2024

Advertisement

Constructed by: Laura Dershewitz
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Entails

Themed answers each comprise two words, the TAILS of which are -EN:

• 38A Involves, or a phonetic feature of the answers to the starred clues? : ENTAILS or EN-TAILS

• 17A *Background for a scene using CGI : GREEN SCREEN
• 24A *Meditation area with raked sand : ZEN GARDEN
• 49A *Broadway star who won a Tony for “Pippin” : BEN VEREEN
• 60A *Circle K competitor : SEVEN-ELEVEN

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

Bill’s time: 5m 57s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11 Like some Pride Month celebrants : GAY

The police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn on June 29th, 1969. That raid triggered a spate of violent demonstrations led by the LGBT community. Now known as the Stonewall riots, those demonstrations are viewed by many as a significant event leading to the modern-day fight for LGBT rights in the US. Since then, June has been chosen as LGBT Pride Month in recognition of the Stonewall riots.

17 *Background for a scene using CGI : GREEN SCREEN

Chroma keying is a post-production technique used to layer two video streams together based on color. Usually, a green background (“green screen”) is dropped from one stream, and replaced with another. Because the technique removes a specific green color from the whole frame, that color green cannot be included in the foreground that is to be retained.

20 Moray trap : EEL POT

Morays are a large group of about 200 species of eels found across the world’s oceans. They are carnivorous and look pretty scary but they’re quite shy when confronted and present no threat to humans. One interesting thing about morays is that they will sometimes work in cooperation with the grouper fish found in reefs, the two helping each other hunt for food.

21 PBS “Science Kid” : SID

“Sid the Science Kid” is a children’s show aired by PBS. “Sid the Science Kid” is made using CGI technology, and is a production of the Jim Henson Company that was founded on the success of “The Muppets”.

23 Like watermelon : SWEET

The watermelon that we find in the grocery store is actually a berry produced by the flowering, vine-like watermelon plant. Seedless watermelons were developed by Japanese scientists in 1939, and now seedless varieties account for over 80% of watermelon sales in the US.

24 *Meditation area with raked sand : ZEN GARDEN

Japanese Zen gardens are inspired by the meditation gardens of Zen Buddhist temples. Zen gardens have no water in them, but often there is gravel and sand that is raked in patterns designed to create the impression of water in waves and ripples.

26 Hip-hop group A __ Called Quest : TRIBE

A Tribe Called Quest was a hip hop group from Queens in New York City that was founded originally as a trio comprising rappers Q-Tip, Jarobi White and Phife Dawg, and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad. A Tribe Called Quest were in a collective of hip-hop artists in the nineties known as the Native Tongues.

28 Hindu spiritual adviser : GURU

“Guru” is a Hindi word meaning “teacher” or “priest”.

33 Val Kilmer’s “Top Gun” role : ICEMAN

Here are some of the more notable characters in the 1986 movie “Top Gun”:

• Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise)
• Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis)
• Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards)
• Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer)
• Mike “Viper” Metcalf (Tom Skerritt)
• Rick “Jester” Heatherly (Michael Ironside)

37 1990 civil rights law, briefly : ADA

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)

40 Pop singer Rita : ORA

Rita Ora is a British singer who was born Rita Sahatçiu in Pristina, Yugoslavia to Albanian parents. The family name “Sahatçiu” comes from a Turkish word meaning “watchmaker”. Rita’s parents changed their name to make it easier to pronounce. So, the family name morphed from “watchmaker” to “time”, which is “ora” in Albanian.

41 Pointy-nosed fish : MARLIN

The fish called a marlin takes its name from the sailor’s took called a marlinspike. The long nose of the marlin might indeed be described as a “spike”. A marlinspike is used by sailors when working with rope, untying knots or perhaps splicing. The name of the tool comes from the practice of “marling”, which is the winding of twine around the ends of a larger piece of rope to prevent it from unraveling.

44 __ pump : SUMP

The term “sump” has been used for a “pit to collect water” since the middle of the 17th century. Prior to that, “sump” meant “marsh, morass”.

47 Lew of “Dr. Kildare” films : AYRES

Hollywood actor Lew Ayres got his big break in “All Quiet On the Western Front”. Famously, he also played Dr. Kildare in several movies. Ayres’ private life wasn’t too dull. He was married three times, Lola Lane and Ginger Rogers being wives one and two. Ayres was also the man for whom actress Jane Wyman left her husband Ronald Reagan, although the Ayres-Wyman relationship didn’t last very long.

Dr. Kildare started out as the main character in a series of films in the thirties and forties. He then became the central persona in a fifties radio show, and a very successful sixties television drama starring Richard Chamberlain in the title role.

49 *Broadway star who won a Tony for “Pippin” : BEN VEREEN

Ben Vereen is an American actor and dancer who is probably best known for playing Chicken George in the magnificent television miniseries “Roots”. When he was applying for a passport in the sixties, Vereen discovered that he was adopted. He then went looking for his birth parents and identified his birth mother (who had passed away by this time). She went away on a trip when Ben was very young, only to return and find that her child and the person minding him had disappeared. She never saw her son again.

“Pippin” is a stage musical by Stephen Schwartz that was first produced in 1972, on Broadway. The original Broadway production was directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse, for which work Fosse won two Tony Awards in 1973. The title character’s father in “Pippin” is named Charlemagne. The father-son characters are inspired by the Holy Roman Emperors Charlemagne and Pepin.

56 Great Lake near Detroit : ERIE

The city of Detroit was founded in 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French explorer. The original settlement was named for the Detroit River, which in turn takes its name from the French word “détroit” meaning “strait”. Detroit became inextricably linked with the automotive business from the very early 20th century when Henry Ford and others set up manufacturing in the area. This link to transportation led to Detroit’s nicknames “Motor City” and “Motown”. The city’s economic strength declined at the beginning of the 21st century, resulting in a 25% drop in population between 2000 and 2010. Detroit filed for the country’s largest municipal bankruptcy in history in 2013, facing a debt of $18.8 billion. The city exited bankruptcy at the end of 2014.

57 Actor Brynner : YUL

Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor. Brynner was well known for his great performances, but also for his shaved head and his deep rich voice. He first adopted the “hairstyle” while playing the King of Siam in the stage version of “The King and I”, and he stuck with it.

58 Champagne cocktail : MIMOSA

Where I come from, the cocktail known in North America as a mimosa is called a buck’s fizz, with the latter named for Buck’s Club in London where it was introduced in 1921. The mimosa came along a few years later, apparently first being served in the Paris Ritz. If you want to make a mimosa, it’s a 50-50 mix of champagne and orange juice, and it is very tasty …

60 *Circle K competitor : SEVEN-ELEVEN

The first precursor to the 7-Eleven store opened in Dallas, Texas in 1927. The stores were so named (much later, in 1946) because they were open longer than other stores, from 7am to 11pm.

62 Bon __: witticism : MOT

“Bon mot” translates from French as “good word”. We use “bon mot” (and sometimes just “mot”) to mean “quip, witticism”.

65 Texter’s “Whoops” : SRY

Sorry (SRY)

Down

3 Breakfast buffet station : OMELET BAR

Our word “buffet” comes from the French “bufet” meaning “bench, sideboard”. So, a buffet is a meal served from a “bufet”.

4 Leaf __: fall tourists : PEEPERS

“Leaf-peeping” is the name given to the activity of viewing and photographing the change in the colors of foliage during the fall. Leaf-peepers usually head for New England and the American Midwest in order to enjoy the rich colors exhibited by deciduous trees and shrubs in the autumn months.

10 Author Rand : AYN

Russian-born American author Ayn Rand considered 1957’s “Atlas Shrugged” her magnum opus. It is a dystopian novel set in a US without a Congress or president, and instead a National Legislature and Head of State.

13 Arabian Peninsula country : YEMEN

Yemen is a country located in the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the east, the Red Sea to the west, and the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea to the south. Yemen has a population of over 30 million people and its capital and largest city is Sana’a.

24 Citrus shavings : ZEST

Most of our citrus fruits are hybrids of four original fruits: the pomelo, mandarin, papeda and citron.

25 NBA “logo 3” paths : ARCS

In an NBA game, a Logo 3 is a 3-point shot taken from mid-court, right by the logo painted onto the floor.

30 Journalist Tarbell : IDA

Ida Tarbell was a teacher and what we would call today an “investigative journalist”, although back in her day she was known as a “muckraker”. Her most famous work is her 1904 book “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. It is an exposé that is credited with hastening the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911. She also wrote several books about President Abraham Lincoln.

32 Level for the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp : AAA

The Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp are a Triple-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins that play their home games at 121 Financial Ballpark in Jacksonville, Florida. The team is named for the shrimp that are caught in the area.

38 Limerick setting : EIRE

Limerick is the fourth-most populous city in Ireland, after Dublin, Belfast and Cork. It is located on the Shannon Estuary, in the west of the country.

39 Turkey neighbor : IRAN

The Iran-Turkey border runs for just over 330 miles, in a roughly north-south direction. It extends from a tripoint with Azerbaijan in the north to a tripoint with Iraq in the south.

48 Commuter option : RAIL

Our verb “to commute”, meaning “to go back and forth to work”, ultimately derives from the Latin “commutare”, meaning “to often change”. Back in the late 1800s, a “commutation ticket” was a season pass, so named because it allowed one to “change” one kind of payment into another. Quite interesting …

52 Ketanji’s colleague : ELENA

Elena Kagan was the Solicitor General of the United States who replaced Justice John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court. That made Justice Kagan the first female US Solicitor General and the fourth female US Supreme Court justice. I hear she is a fan of Jane Austen, and used to reread “Pride and Prejudice” once a year. Not a bad thing to do, I’d say …

Nominated by President Joe Biden, Ketanji Brown Jackson succeeded Associate Justice Stephen Breyer on the US Supreme Court in 2022. In doing so, she became the first Black woman to serve on the court. Jackson clerked for Justice Breyer, from 1999 to 2000.

55 Bamboo-loving bear : PANDA

The giant panda is a bear, and so has the digestive system of a carnivore. However, the panda lives exclusively on bamboo, even though its gut is relatively poorly adapted to extract nutrients from plants per se. The panda relies on microbes in its gut to digest cellulose, and consumes 20-30 pounds of bamboo each day to gain enough nourishment.

58 Paltry : MERE

The contemporary adjective “paltry”, meaning “inferior, trashy”, comes from an older use of “paltry” as a noun meaning a “worthless thing”.

61 Pickleball barrier : NET

Pickleball is a sport invented in the 1960s that combines elements of tennis, table tennis and badminton. Originally marketed as a game for children to play in backyards, pickleball is now played on purpose-built courts by many, many adults, but mainly in North and South America.