Day: January 7, 2025

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Constructed by: Gary Cee
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer(s): Pick It Up!

Themed answers each end with something that one can PICK UP:

• 37A With 39-Across, “Move faster!,” or what one can do with the end of the answer to each starred clue : PICK …
• 39A See 37-Across : … IT UP

• 17A *Teen magazine launched in 1965 : TIGER BEAT
• 25A *Nail-biting moment : CLOSE CALL
• 55A *British tabloid : DAILY MAIL
• 64A *Notation for a fretted instrument : GUITAR TAB

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

Bill’s time: 6m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9 Smidgen : SKOSH

“Skosh” is a slang term meaning “a little bit”. It was originally military slang that came out of the Korean War. “Skosh” derives from the Japanese word “sukoshi” which translates as “few, little, some”.

Our word “smidgen” (sometimes shortened to “smidge”) is used to describe a small amount. The term might come from the Scots word “smitch” that means the same thing or “a small insignificant person”.

17 *Teen magazine launched in 1965 : TIGER BEAT

“Teen Beat” was a fan magazine geared towards teenagers that was published from 1967 to 2007. It was a follow-on publication to “16 Magazine” that was launched in 1956, and “Tiger Beat” launched in 1965.

20 Film festival city on the French Riviera : CANNES

Cannes is a city on the French Riviera that is noted as host of the Cannes Film Festival. The decision to host an annual film festival was adopted by the city just before WWII. However, the festival had to wait for the end of the war for its launch in 1946.

24 Basketball giant Shaquille : O’NEAL

Retired basketball player Shaquille O’Neal now appears regularly as an analyst on the NBA TV show “Inside the NBA”. Shaq has quite a career in the entertainment world. His first rap album, called “Shaq Diesel”, went platinum. He also starred in two of his own reality shows: “Shaq’s Big Challenge” and “Shaq Vs.”

28 Toronto’s prov. : ONT

The Canadian province of Ontario takes its name from the Great Lake. In turn, Lake Ontario’s name is thought to be derived from “Ontari:io”, a Huron word meaning “great lake”. Ontario is home to the nation’s capital of Ottawa as well as Toronto, Canada’s most populous city (and the capital of the province).

31 Yiddish put-down : SCHLUB

A schlub is a clumsy, stupid person. The term “schlub” comes into English possibly via Yiddish from the Polish “żłób“ meaning “blockhead”.

44 “The Sweetest Taboo” singer : SADE

“The Sweetest Taboo” is a smooth jazz song recorded by the English band Sade for their 1985 album “Promise”. Released as the album’s lead single, it became their second consecutive number one single on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, after 1984’s “Smooth Operator”.

55 *British tabloid : DAILY MAIL

“The Daily Mail” is a tabloid newspaper published in the UK. It wouldn’t be my personal way to get the news, mind you, but it is the first or second highest-selling paper in the country.

61 E.B. White’s “__ Little” : STUART

“Stuart Little” is a children’s novel published in 1945. Penned by E. B. White, it was his first book for children. The title character is a human boy from New York City who is just two inches tall and who looks like a mouse.

64 *Notation for a fretted instrument : GUITAR TAB

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

66 Liquid measure, in Britain : LITRE

On the other side of the Atlantic, we use the French spelling for measurements that originated in French, so “metre” for “meter” and “litre” for “liter”.

68 Sonic the Hedgehog creator : SEGA

Sonic the Hedgehog is a title character in a videogame and the mascot of Sega, the computer game developer. Sonic was set up as a rival to Nintendo’s mascot Mario.

69 Navy prisons : BRIGS

A brig is a two-masted sailing vessel, with the name “brig” coming from the related vessel known as a brigantine. Brigs and brigantines are both two-masted, but there is a difference in the sails used. It was the use of retired brigs as prison ships that led to the use of “brig” as the word for a jail or prison cell on a seagoing vessel.

Down

2 Media magnate Huffington : ARIANNA

“The Huffington Post” (now “HuffPost”) is a news website founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington. It is a very active site, with 3,000 people contributing blog posts (including many celebrities and politicians), and readers leaving over one million comments every month. “The Huffington Post” was sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million, with Arianna Huffington staying on as editor-in-chief.

4 Supreme Court justice Kagan : 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 …

5 Autos with meters : CABS

We call cabs “taxis”, a word derived from “taximeter cabs” that were introduced in London in 1907. A taximeter was an automated meter designed to record distance traveled and fare to be charged. The term “taximeter” evolved from “taxameter”, with “taxa” being Latin for “tax, charge”.

7 Fortunetellers : ORACLES

In ancient Greece and Rome, an oracle was someone believed to be inspired by the gods to give wise counsel. The word “oracle” derives from the Latin “orare” meaning “to speak”, which is the same root for our word “orator”. One of the most important oracles of ancient Greece was Pythia, the high priestess to Apollo at Delphi.

9 Utah’s capital, briefly : SLC

Salt Lake City (SLC) was founded by Brigham Young, in 1847. The city takes its name from the Great Salt Lake on which it sits, and indeed was known as “Great Salt Lake City” up until 1868.

11 Solid yellow on a pool table : ONE-BALL

In a game of eight-ball pool, the solid-colored balls are numbered 1 through 7, and the striped balls are numbered 9 through 15. The “eight-ball” is solid black in color.

12 Aquamarine : SEA BLUE

The mineral beryl is a source of a number of different semi-precious stones, depending on the nature of the impurities present. Pure beryl is colorless; blue beryl is called aquamarine, and green beryl is emerald. Traces of iron cause the blue color, and traces of chromium give the green hue.

13 QVC alternative : HSN

The Home Shopping Network (HSN) was the first national shopping network, and was launched locally as the Home Shopping Club in Florida in 1982. Its first product was a can opener.

22 Burro : ASS

Our word “burro”, meaning “donkey”, comes from the Spanish word for the same animal, namely “burrico”.

25 Hash slingers : COOKS

To sling hash (also “to sling plates”) is to serve food in a diner.

26 Very light brown : ECRU

The color ecru is a grayish, yellowish brown. The word “ecru” comes from French and means “raw, unbleached”. “Ecru” has the same roots as our word “crude”.

27 Nt. wt. units : LBS

Net weight (nt. wt.)

30 Secretly include on an email : BCC

A blind carbon copy (bcc) is a copy of a document or message that is sent to someone without other recipients of the message knowing about that extra copy.

33 Steven who said, “When I grow up, I still want to be a director” : SPIELBERG

Director Steven Spielberg has had so many hit movies. Spielberg won two Best Director Oscars, one being “Schindler’s List” from 1993 and “Saving Private Ryan” from 1998. Three Spielberg films broke box office records: “Jaws” (1975), “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) and “Jurassic Park” (1993). That’s quite a portfolio of movies …

35 __ pool : TIDAL

A tidal pool (also “rock pool”) is a pool of seawater that is left along a rocky coastline after an ebb tide.

41 Mind-altering drug : LSD

LSD (known colloquially as “acid”) is lysergic acid diethylamide. A Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 in a research project looking for medically efficacious ergot alkaloids. It wasn’t until some five years later when Hofmann ingested some of the drug accidentally that its psychedelic properties were discovered. Trippy, man …

42 Lightweight Apple tablet : IPAD AIR

The iPad Air is Apple’s 5th-generation tablet computer. The Air is just 7.5 mm thick, and is 22% lighter than the iPad 2.

43 Wine served at a trattoria : CHIANTI

Chianti is a red wine from the Chianti region of central Tuscany in Italy. Historically, Chianti was stored in a characteristically bulbous bottle wrapped in a straw basket. However, the pragmatists have won the day and regular wine bottles tend to be used nowadays.

53 Analytics input : DATA

Our word “data” (singular “datum”) comes from the Latin “datum” meaning “given”. The idea is that data are “things given”.

56 Foretell : AUGUR

The verb “to augur” means “to bode, serve as an omen”. The term comes from the name of religious officials in ancient Rome called augurs whose job it was to interpret signs and omens.

58 Put a whammy on : CURSE

“Whammy” is a slang term meaning “hex, supernatural spell”.

62 Org. with Angels and Dodgers : MLB

The Anaheim Angels baseball team is today more correctly called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (LAA). The “Angels” name dates back to 1961 when the team was founded in the “City of Angels”, Los Angeles. When the franchise moved to Anaheim in 1965 they were known as the California Angels, then the Anaheim Angels, and most recently the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Angels are also known as “the Halos”.

The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team was known as the Brooklyn Dodgers before the franchise moved to California. Before being called the Dodgers, the team was known in Brooklyn as the Robins, the Superbas, the Trolley Dodgers, the Bridegrooms/Grooms, the Grays and the Atlantics.

63 __ Moines, Iowa : DES

The city of Des Moines is the capital of Iowa, and takes its name from the Des Moines River. The river in turn takes its name from the French “Riviere des Moines” meaning “River of the Monks”. It looks like there isn’t any “monkish” connection to the city’s name per se. “Des Moines” was just the name given by French traders who corrupted “Moingona”, the name of a group of Illinois Native Americans who lived by the river. However, others contend that French Trappist monks, who lived a full 200 miles from the river, somehow influenced the name.

65 TSA checkpoint needs : IDS

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the agency that employs the good folks who check passengers and baggage at airports.