Day: July 15, 2025

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Constructed by: Dan Kammann & Zhouqin Burnikel

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Picnic Areas

Themed answers all start with something found in PICNIC AREAS:

• 61A Outside eating spots, and where to find the starts of 17-, 27-, and 47-Across : PICNIC AREAS

17A Vague catchall expression : BLANKET TERM

• 27A Folks who hopefully prevail in a tense situation : COOLER HEADS
• 47A Outfield grab perfected by Willie Mays : BASKET CATCH

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

Bill’s time: 5m 06s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Network with pledge drives : PBS

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) was founded in 1970, and is my favorite of the broadcast networks. I love PBS’s drama and science shows in particular, and always watch election results coming in with the NewsHour team.

12A Perky agent in Progressive ads : FLO

The character Flo, portrayed by actress Stephanie Courtney, has a last name that’s rarely used in the Progressive insurance company’s commercials: Flo Progressive. Courtney improvised the character’s signature perky attitude during her audition.

19A Angle symbol in geometry : THETA

The Greek letter theta is commonly used in geometry to represent the angle between two lines (say at a corner of a triangle).

23A Seated yoga pose : LOTUS

“Asana” is a Sanskrit word that translates as “sitting down”. The asanas are the poses that a practitioner of yoga assumes. The most famous is the lotus position, the cross-legged pose called “padmasana”.

41A Singer McEntire : REBA

Reba McEntire is a country music singer and television actress. McEntire starred in her own sitcom “Reba” that aired on the WB and the CW cable channels from 2001 to 2007. She is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of Country”.

47A Outfield grab perfected by Willie Mays : BASKET CATCH

Willie Mays’s iconic basket catch, where he would catch the ball with his glove held in front of his body around waist level, was developed partly due to the poor outfield conditions he often played on early in his career. This technique allowed him to keep his eyes on the ball while running.

51A Rights advocacy org. : ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has its roots in the First World War. It grew out of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB) that was founded to provide legal advice and support to conscientious objectors. The ACLU’s motto is “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself”. The ACLU also hosts a blog on the ACLU.org website called “Speak Freely”.

53A Move like a dreidel : SPIN

A dreidel is a spinning top with four sides that is often associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Each of the four sides on a dreidel bears a letter from the Hebrew alphabet (nun, gimel, hei and shin). The four letters are the initials of the Hebrew phrase “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham” meaning “a great miracle happened there”. According to tradition, children would be taught Torah while hiding in caves away from the Greeks. When Greek soldiers approached, the children would hide their torah scrolls and play with their dreidels instead.

61A Outside eating spots, and where to find the starts of 17-, 27-, and 47-Across : PICNIC AREAS

Our term “picnic” comes from the French word “pique-nique”, which now has the same meaning. The original “pique-nique” was a fashionable potluck affair, and not necessarily held outdoors.

66A Some Instagram videos : REELS

Reels is a facility introduced by Instagram in 2020. Essentially, it is a feature that competes with TikTok.

68A The Wizard of __ Park: Edison nickname : MENLO

Thomas Alva Edison (TAE) was nicknamed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” by a newspaper reporter, a name that stuck. He was indeed a wizard, in the sense that he was such a prolific inventor. The Menlo Park part of the moniker recognizes the location of his first research lab, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

69A Unicorn’s horn count : ONE

A unicorn is a mythical creature that resembles a horse with a horn projecting from its forehead. The term “unicorn” comes from the Latin “uni-” (one) and “cornus” (horn).

Down

4D Delta HQ : ATL

Delta was the world’s largest airline for a while (after merging with Northwest Airlines in 2008) and is the oldest airline still operating in the US. Delta’s roots go back to 1924 before it started carrying passengers when it was Huff Daland Dusters, a crop-dusting company based in Macon, Georgia. The name “Delta Air Service” was introduced in 1928.

5D Event with diva impersonators : DRAG SHOW

The etymology of the term “drag”, as used in the transvestite world, seems to be unclear. It perhaps relates to the tendency of a transvestite’s skirts to drag along the ground in days of old (although why they just didn’t hitch up their skirts is beyond me!).

6D Flintstone pet : DINO

In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon “The Flintstones”, Dino the pet dinosaur was voiced by the famous Mel Blanc, until Blanc passed away in 1989.

7D Ctrl-__-Del : ALT

Ctrl-Alt-Delete is a keyboard command on IBM PC compatible systems used for a soft reboot, or more recently to bring up the task manager in the Windows operating system. Bill Gates tells us that the command was originally just a device to be used during development and was never meant to “go live”. He once said that “Ctrl+Alt+Delete” was a mistake, and that he would have preferred a dedicated key on the keyboard that carried out the same function.

8D Rituals such as wudu and baptism : RITES

Wudu is the Islamic procedure for washing parts of the body using water, a ritual purification performed in preparation for prayer (salat) and other acts of worship.

13D Taper off : ABATE

I used to think that the word “taper” was used for a slender candle because said candle was “tapered” in shape, but it’s exactly the opposite. It turns out that our word “tapered” comes from the candle. “Taper” and “tapur” are Old English words meaning “candle”. From these nouns arose the verb “to taper” meaning “shoot up like flame”. This meaning evolved into “become slender” from the idea that a candle’s flame has such a shape.

14D Muscular Japanese dog : AKITA

The Akita breed of dog is named for its point of origin, Akita Prefecture in Japan. When Helen Keller visited Japan in 1937, she asked for and was given an Akita breed of dog, with the name of Kamikaze-go. Sadly, the dog died within a year from distemper. The following year the Japanese government officially presented Keller with a replacement dog. Supposedly Keller’s dogs were the first members of the breed to be introduced into the US.

18D City west of Tulsa : ENID

Enid, Oklahoma takes its name from the old railroad station around which the city developed. Back in 1889, that train stop was called Skeleton Station. An official who didn’t like the name changed it to Enid Station, using a character from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”. Maybe if he hadn’t changed the name, the city of Enid would now be called Skeleton, Oklahoma! Enid has the nickname “Queen Wheat City” because it has a huge capacity for storing grain, the third largest grain storage capacity in the world.

Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma (after Oklahoma City). Tulsa started out as a settlement established by the Loachapoka and Creek Native American tribes in 1836. These early settlers called their new home “Tallasi” meaning “old town”, and this name morphed into “Tulsa” that we use today.

20D Lake Erie port : TOLEDO

Toledo, Ohio lies in the northwest of the state, at the western end of Lake Erie. Toledo was founded as a result of the prosperity that hit the area when the Miami and Erie Canal was constructed in the 19th century connecting Cincinnati to the Great Lakes. Toledo is known as the Glass City as several glass companies originated there, including Owens Corning and Pilkington North America. There is a large exhibition of glass art at the Toledo Museum of Art.

24D Bookmarked links : URLS

Uniform resource locator (URL)

29D Kindle purchase : E-BOOK

Amazon’s Kindle line of e-book readers was introduced in 2007. The name “kindle” was chosen to evoke images of “lighting a fire” through reading and intellectual stimulation. I bought myself a Kindle Fire HD several years ago. I started reading e-books for the first time in my life, as well as enjoying other computing options available with the tablet device …

40D Hors d’oeuvres spread : PATE

An hors d’oeuvre is a first course in a meal. “Hors d’oeuvre” translates from French as “apart from the work”, which really means “not the main course”.

43D U.K. TV network : BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the world’s oldest national broadcasting organization and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It was founded in 1922 and initially broadcast radio only, with television broadcasting beginning in 1932.

48D Actor 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.

57D Cookie that created the Dunk Club : OREO

There is an “official” competition involving Oreo cookies, in case anyone is interested in participating. A competitor has to take several steps to finish an OREO Lick Race:

1. Twist open the cookie.
2. Lick each half clean of creme.
3. Show the clean cookie halves to the fellow competitors.
4. Dunk the cookie halves in a glass of milk.
5. Eat the cookie halves.
6. Drink the milk.
7. Ready, set, go …

59D Pub projectile : DART

Darts is a game that’s often played in English and Irish pubs, even over here in America. The scoring in a traditional game of darts is difficult to describe in a sentence or two, but the game of darts called “Round the Clock” is simply hitting the numbers 1 through 20 on the dartboard in sequence.

60D Online auction giant : EBAY

There have been some notable things sold on eBay over the years. For example:

• Ad space on a guy’s forehead, in the form of a temporary tattoo – $37,375
• William Shatner’s kidney stone – $25,000
• A cornflake shaped like Illinois – $1,350
• A single corn flake – $1.63
• A box of 10 Twinkies – $59.99
• The original Hollywood sign – $450,400
• The meaning of life – $3.26

63D Foamy drink in a stein : ALE

A stein is a type of beer glass. The term “stein” is German in origin, and is short for “Steinkrug” meaning “stone jug”. “Stein” is German for “stone”.