Day: July 14, 2025

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Constructed by: Joseph McIntyre

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Eastender

Themed answers all END with -EAST:

• 62A Londoner who may have a Cockney accent, and what can be found in the answer to each starred clue : EASTENDER

• 17A *Sourdough starter : WILD YEAST
• 24A *News website created by Tina Brown : THE DAILY BEAST
• 38A *Words before a grand finale : LAST BUT NOT LEAST
• 50A *Christian observance that’s on a different day every year : MOVEABLE FEAST

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

Bill’s time: 5m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4A Brand of canned meat : SPAM

Spam is a precooked meat product that is sold in cans. It was introduced by Hormel Foods in 1937. The main meat ingredients are pork shoulder meat and ham. The name “Spam” was chosen as the result of a competition at Hormel, with the winner earning himself a hundred dollars. According to the company, the derivation of the name “Spam” is a secret known by only a few former executives, but the speculation is that it stands for “spiced ham” or “shoulders of pork and ham”. Spam is particularly popular in Hawaii, so popular that it is sometimes referred to as “the Hawaiian steak”.

8A “What’s it all about, __”: Dionne Warwick lyric : ALFIE

There have been two versions of the movie “Alfie”. The original, and for my money the best, was made in 1966 with Michael Caine. The remake came out in 2004 and stars Jude Law in the title role. The theme song was performed by Cher in the US version of the 1966 movie, and Cilla Black recorded it for the UK release of the film. But, it was Dionne Warwick’s cover version from 1967 that was the most successful in the charts.

Dionne Warwick is a very, very successful singer, one with more Top 100 hits than any female vocalist other than Aretha Franklin. Warwick had a pretty successful cousin who was a singer as well … named Whitney Houston.

17A *Sourdough starter : WILD YEAST

The active ingredient used to make sourdough bread is found in a pre-ferment (also “starter”). This pre-ferment is a mixture of flour and water that has been allowed to ferment for some time (maybe days) to grow a colony of wild yeast and lactobacilli. The starter is added to the dough used to make the final bread, with the starter accounting for about 20% of the weight of the final mixture. During baking, the wild yeast causes the bread to rise and the lactobacilli produce lactic acid, which gives sourdough its characteristic sour taste.

19A Maine-to-Florida rte. : US-ONE

US Route 1 is the longest north-south road in the US, stretching over 2,370 miles from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida. It largely parallels the Atlantic coast.

24A *News website created by Tina Brown : THE DAILY BEAST

British-American journalist Tina Brown created “The Daily Beast” in 2008, and served as the founding editor. Prior to this, she was well-known for her successful tenures as editor-in-chief of “Tatler”, “Vanity Fair”, and “The New Yorker”. The name “The Daily Beast” comes from a fictional newspaper in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel “Scoop”.

31A Sir __ Guinness : ALEC

Sir Alec Guinness played many great roles over a long and distinguished career, but nowadays is best remembered (sadly, I think) for playing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”. He won his only Best Actor Oscar for playing Colonel Nicholson in the marvelous 1957 WWII movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Guinness himself served during the Second World War, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He commanded a landing craft during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

42A 911 responder: Abbr. : EMT

The first use of a national emergency phone number was in 1937 in the UK, where the number 999 was introduced to call emergency services. If you need emergency services in the UK or Ireland to this day, you have to dial 999. It’s not really clear why 911 became the emergency number in the US. The most credible suggestion (to me) is that when it was introduced by the FCC in 1967, it was a number that “fit” with the numbers already used by AT&T for free services (211-long distance; 411-information; 611-repair service).

45A “This Is __ Tap” : SPINAL

“This Is Spın̈al Tap” is a rock musical mockumentary about the fictional band Spinal Tap, directed by the great Rob Reiner. I love Rob Reiner’s work, but this movie … not so much …

50A *Christian observance that’s on a different day every year : MOVEABLE FEAST

A moveable feast in the Christian calendar is an annual religious holiday the date of which changes each year, determined by the date of Easter. Easter itself is a moveable feast, falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox.

56A Native Czech, e.g. : SLAV

Czechoslovakia existed as a sovereign state in Europe from 1918, at which time it declared itself independent from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The country went through much turmoil through the days of Nazi and Soviet occupation, but democracy was restored in 1989 after the nonviolent Velvet Revolution that overthrew the communist government. Nationalist tendencies did develop over time, leading to a peaceful dissolution of the country in 1993, and the creation of the two independent states of the Czech Republic (aka “Czechia”) and the Slovak Republic (aka “Slovakia”).

59A Whitney Houston’s record label : ARISTA

Arista Records was set up as part of Columbia Pictures by Clive Davis. Davis chose “Arista” as it was the name of the New York City Honor Society to which he belonged.

Whitney Houston was the only singer to have a run of seven consecutive Billboard number-one hits. Houston’s recording of the wonderful Dolly Parton song “I Will Always Love You”, from the soundtrack of 1992’s “The Bodyguard”, is the best-selling single for a female artist in the history of recorded music. Houston died at the age of 48 in 2012, drowning in her bathtub.

62A Londoner who may have a Cockney accent, and what can be found in the answer to each starred clue : EASTENDER

The East End of London was associated with overcrowding, poverty and accompanying social strife. It is also very much associated with Cockney culture and dialect. The traditional definition of a Cockney is someone “born within the sound of Bow Bells”, the bells in the church of St Mary-le-Bow on the thoroughfare Cheapside.

64A Fast train to Boston : ACELA

The Acela Express is the fastest train running routinely in the US, as it gets up to 150 mph at times. The service runs between Boston and Washington D.C. via Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Introduced in 2000, the brand name “Acela” was created to evoke “acceleration” and “excellence”.

65A Worshippers at a gurdwara : SIKHS

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion that originated in the Punjab region of India in the 15th century. Gurdwaras are the Sikh places of worship, open to people of all faiths. The most famous gurdwara is the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India.

66A Granola grain : OAT

The names “Granola” and “Granula” were trademarked back in the late 1800s for whole-grain foods that were crumbled and baked until crisp. Granola was created in Dansville, New York in 1863.

67A Out of fashion : PASSE

“Passé” is a French word, meaning “past, faded”. We’ve imported the term into English, and use it in the same sense.

Down

2D Novelist Wharton : EDITH

Edith Wharton was a novelist and designer from New York City. Wharton was a wealthy woman and built her own estate in Lenox, Massachusetts called the Mount. My wife and I had the privilege of touring the Mount a few years ago, and there we saw evidence of what design meant to Wharton. Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, making her the first woman to be so honored.

3D Nick of “The Prince of Tides” : NOLTE

Actor Nick Nolte got his big break in movies playing opposite Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Shaw in “The Deep”, a film released in 1976. Around the same time, he landed a leading role in the hit TV miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man”. Off the screen, Nolte has always had a “bad-boy” reputation. He is indeed a convicted felon, for selling counterfeit draft cards in the early 1960s. He had to pay a $75,000 fine, and was given a suspended prison sentence.

The 1991 movie “The Prince of Tides” was adapted from a 1986 novel of the same name written by Pat Conroy. Stars of the film are Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte. The title “The Prince of Tides” refers to a book of poetry written by the character Savannah Wingo, which is dedicated to her older brother Luke. Luke is often seen as the “prince” figure within the Wingo family, who live near “tidal” marshlands on the South Carolina coast.

6D Letters on a toothpaste tube : ADA

American Dental Association (ADA)

8D __ Dhabi : ABU

Abu Dhabi is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

25D “Whole __ Red”: Playboi Carti album : LOTTA

Rapper Playboi Carti, whose real name is Jordan Carter, is known for a distinctive “mumble rap” style. He delivers unclear lyrics, which contrasts with the traditional emphasis on meaningful lyrics in rap songs. He co-parents a son named Onyx Kelly with Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, although the couple are no longer together.

26D Cain’s brother : ABEL

In the story of Cain and Abel in the Book of Genesis, Cain murders his brother Abel. Subsequently, God asks Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” Cain replies, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

29D Pink wine : ROSE

Rosé wines get their color from the skins of the grapes, although the intensity of the color is not sufficient to make them red wines. Of the varying type of rosé wines available, we are most familiar with sweet white zinfandels. Personally, I am fond of the dry Provençal rosé wines …

32D “Aladdin” treasure : LAMP

“Aladdin” is a famous tale in “Arabian Nights”, also called “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights”. However, there is no evidence at all that the story was in the original collection. It is generally believed that one Antoine Galland introduced the tale when he translated “Arabian Nights” into French in the early 1700s.

35D “Monsters, __” : INC

The animated feature “Monsters, Inc.” was released in 2001, and was Pixar’s fourth full-length movie. It’s about cute monsters, and that’s all I know other than that the voice cast included the likes of John Goodman, Billy Crystal and Steve Buscemi.

39D Wally Cleaver’s little brother, for short : BEAV

Wally Cleaver and his younger brother Theodore (“the Beaver”) were the children of Ward and June Cleaver on the fifties sitcom “Leave It to Beaver”.

46D Fiction section selections : NOVELS

Our word “novel”, used for a lengthy work of fiction, comes from the Latin “novella” meaning “new things”.

51D Greek war god : ARES

The Greek god Ares is often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, but originally he was regarded as the god of bloodlust and slaughter. He united with Aphrodite to create several gods, including Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Terror) and Eros (Desire). Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, and the Roman equivalent to Ares was Mars.

54D Cook blue crabs, perhaps : STEAM

A live blue crab gets its color from pigments in the shell, which predominantly result in a blue color. When a crab is cooked, all the pigments break down except for astaxanthin, a red pigment, which is why a crab turns up at the dinner table looking very red.

57D Pixar film set in the fictional Italian town of Portorosso : LUCA

“Luca” is a 2021 Pixar animated film. The title character is a sea monster boy who can take the form of a human while on land.

61D Norma __: Sally Field role : RAE

“Norma Rae” is a 1979 movie starring Sally Field as Norma Rae Webster in a tale of union activities in a textile factory in Alabama. The film is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton told in a 1975 book called “Crystal Lee, a Woman of Inheritance”.

Actress Sally Field first came to the public’s attention in the sixties with title roles in the TV shows “Gidget” and “The Flying Nun”. She has two Best Actress Oscars; one for “Norma Rae” (1979) and one for “Places in the Heart” (1984).