Day: August 7, 2025

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Constructed by: Joe Marangell

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Course Content

Themed answers are all common phrases reinterpreted as COURSE CONTENT specific to the corresponding clues:

• 17A Biology course content? : LIFE LESSON
• 26A Aviation course content? : PILOT STUDY
• 38A Basic training course content? : PRIVATE PRACTICE
• 46A Government course content? : POWER DRILL
• 57A Sports management course content? : COACH CLASS

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

Bill’s time:6m 17s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10A “Pygmalion” playwright : SHAW

“Pygmalion” is a witty and thought-provoking play by George Bernard Shaw that explores social class and transformation in early 20th-century England. Paradoxically perhaps, it premiered in Vienna in 1913, with the first stage production performed in German. The play centers on Professor Henry Higgins, a pompous phonetics expert who wagers that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, into a refined lady simply by changing her speech. Most of us are more likely to have seen the musical adaptation of “Pygmalion” that goes by the title “My Fair Lady”.

15A Waikiki home : OAHU

Waikiki is a neighborhood of Honolulu that is home to the famous Waikiki Beach. The name “Waikiki” means “spouting fresh water” in Hawaiian.

21A Nerdy 1990s sitcom character : URKEL

Steve Urkel is a character on the TV show “Family Matters” that originally aired in the late eighties and nineties. The Urkel character was the archetypal “geek”, played by Jaleel White. Urkel was originally written into the show’s storyline for just one episode, but before long, Urkel was the show’s most popular recurring character.

22A Engineered crops, for short : GMOS

A genetically modified organism (GMO) is one with genetic material that has been altered by genetic engineering. One might argue that the oldest form of genetic engineering is selective breeding, the use of animals or plants with desired traits for the creation of the next generation.

31A Actor Quinn : AIDAN

Aidan Quinn is an Irish American actor. Quinn was born in Chicago but spent some years growing up in Ireland. Mainly known as a movie actor, Quinn is currently playing the role of Captain Tommy Gregson on the excellent TV series “Elementary” that is centered on a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.

32A Candy Land surface : BOARD

The board game Candy Land first went on the market in 1949, and in 2005 was named the most popular “toy” of the whole 1940s decade.

35A Go on the __ : LAM

To be on the lam is to be in flight, to have escaped from prison. “On the lam” is American slang that originated at the end of the 19th century. The word “lam” also means “beat” or “thrash”, as in “lambaste”. So “on the lam” might derive from the phrase “to beat it, scram”.

41A “__ Haw” : HEE

The variety show “Hee Haw” aired on CBS from 1969-1971, and then had a 20-year run in syndication. The show was built around country music, although the format was inspired by “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In”.

42A Arial, Times New Roman, etc. : FONTS

We tend to use the terms typeface and font interchangeably. Technically, a typeface and font are not the same thing. A complete set of characters with a common design is referred to as a typeface (common examples being Helvetica and Arial). That typeface consists of a whole collection of fonts, all varying in weight and size. One set of Helvetica fonts, for example, might be Helvetica 14 point or Helvetica 16 point, i.e. a specific size. Another set might be Helvetica bold, or Helvetica italic. The difference between fonts and typefaces mattered a great deal when printers had collections of individual letters to make up blocks of text. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that these days.

44A Best New Artist Grammy winner Lipa : DUA

Dua Lipa is a singer-songwriter and fashion model from England. She was born in London to Albanian parents, and considers her native language to be Albanian. She also speaks English with a British accent.

45A Josh of the “Dune” films : BROLIN

Actor Josh Brolin got his big break playing Brandon Walsh in the 1985 movie “The Goonies”. One of his more famous roles was playing George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s biopic about the president titled “W”. Josh is the son of actor James Brolin, and hence stepson of singer Barbra Streisand.

2021’s epic film “Dune” is the first of a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel of the same name. The version of “Dune” did a lot better than the 1984 big-screen adaptation of the same novel, which really flopped at the box office. “Dune: Part Two” followed in 2024.

53A “Success is counted sweetest” poet Dickinson : EMILY

Emily Dickinson had fewer than a dozen of her almost 1,800 poems published during her lifetime. Among the few that did see print was “Success is counted sweetest”, which first appeared anonymously in 1864, and again anonymously in an 1878 anthology “A Masque of Poets”. Readers widely attributed it to Ralph Waldo Emerson!

64A Ed of “Lou Grant” : ASNER

“Lou Grant” is a spin-off from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. The title character, played so ably by Ed Asner, had headed up a television newsroom in Minneapolis in the original series. In the spin-off, Grant was the city editor of the fictional “Los Angeles Tribune”. The original show was a sitcom, the spin-off was a drama series.

66A Texter’s “Bye for now” : TTYL

Talk to you later (TTYL)

67A __-frutti : TUTTI

The adjective “tutti-frutti” describes a prepared confection that has a combination of fruit flavors. “Tutti frutti” is Italian for “all fruits”.

Down

1D Chloe Fineman’s show, familiarly : SNL

Chloe Fineman joined “Saturday Night Live” in 2019, although it wasn’t her first TV appearance. While still in high school, she impersonated a peafowl on the “Late Show with David Letterman” after placing second in a bird-calling competition!

2D Luau dish : POI

The Hawaiian party or feast known as a “luau” really dates back to 1819, when King Kamehameha II removed religious laws that governed the eating of meals. These laws called for women and men to eat separately. At the same time as he changed the laws, the king initiated the luau tradition by symbolically eating with the women who moved in his circle.

3D Fuzzy 1980s sitcom character : ALF

“ALF” is a sitcom that first aired in the late eighties. The title character is a hand-puppet, and supposedly an alien named Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac. The alien crash-landed into the house of amateur radio enthusiast Willie Tanner. Tanner renamed the intruder “ALF”, standing for “alien life form”.

5D Actress Ward : SELA

Actress Sela Ward turns up in crosswords a lot. She played Teddy Reed in the TV show “Sisters” in the nineties, and was in “Once and Again” from 1999-2002. I don’t know either show, but I do know Ward from the medical drama “House” in which she played the hospital’s lawyer and Greg House’s ex-partner. That was a fun role, I thought. More recently, Ward played a lead role on “CSI: NY” and was a very welcome and much-needed addition to the cast. And, Ward played Dr. Richard Kimble’s murdered wife in the 1993 film version of “The Fugitive”.

6D Martini partner : ROSSI

The company that is today known as Martini & Rossi was started in the mid-1800s in Italy, by Alessandro Martini and Luigi Rossi (and a third partner who sold out years later). From day one it was focused on bottling the fortified wine known as vermouth. Nowadays, the company is also famous for its sparkling wines, and its sponsorship of Grand Prix racing teams. And yes, the famous cocktail is probably named for Mr. Martini.

9D Phoenix pro : SUN

The Phoenix Suns NBA team are in the Pacific Division, and are the only team in that division not based in California.

11D Japanese poem : HAIKU

A haiku is a very elegant form of Japanese verse. When writing a haiku in English we tend to impose the rule that the verse must contain 17 syllables. This restriction comes from the rule in Japanese that the verse must contain 17 sound units called “moras”, but moras and syllables aren’t the same thing. Sadly, the difference is not so clear to me. Here’s an example of a Haiku:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

18D “Baseball Tonight” airer : ESPN

The initialism “ESPN” stands for Entertainment Sports Programming Network. ESPN is a cable network that broadcasts sports programming 24 hours a day, and was launched back in 1979. ESPN has a lot of ardent fans. Several parents have named their children Espn (usually pronounced “Espen”) in honor of the network.

21D Kelley Blue Book listing : USED CAR

I think we tend to associate the term “blue book” with the Kelley Blue Book that provides valuations for vehicles. The term itself dates back to the 15th century when we started calling an almanac or other publication full of information a “blue book”.

23D Wavy pattern : MOIRE

A moiré pattern is a phenomenon in physics, a so-called interference pattern. If you lay two sheets of mesh over each other for example, slightly offset, then what you see is a moiré pattern. “Moiré” is the French name for a textile that we know simply as “moire”. The rippled pattern of the textile resembles that of the interference pattern.

25D Croat or Serb : SLAV

The Republic of Croatia is a Balkan country. The Croats declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Croatia became a member of NATO in 2009, and a member of the European Union in 2013.

Serbia is a landlocked country in southeast Europe. After WWII, Serbia became one of several states making up the nation called Yugoslavia. Serbia became independent again in 2006 as Yugoslavia broke up after the declaration of independence by Montenegro.

27D Supermodel Banks : TYRA

Tyra Banks is a tremendously successful model and businesswoman. Banks created and hosted the hit show “America’s Next Top Model “, and also had her own talk show. She was also the first African-American woman to make the cover of the “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit issue.

32D London’s Big __ : BEN

“Big Ben” is the name commonly used for the large bell in the Clock Tower (“Elizabeth Tower”, since 2012) of the Palace of Westminster (aka “Houses of Parliament”). Big Ben’s official name is the Great Bell, and there is some debate about the origins of the nickname. It may be named after Sir Benjamin Hall who supervised the bell’s installation, or perhaps the English heavyweight champion of the day Benjamin Caunt. Big Ben fell silent in 2017 to make way for four years of maintenance and repair work to the clock’s mechanism and the tower.

34D Talk Like a Pirate Day sounds : ARS

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is September 19th every year, a “holiday” that was created in 1995. The event started out as an inside joke between John Baur and Mark Summers of Albany, Oregon, but when they shared the notion with columnist Dave Barry, he promoted the idea and it took off.

35D Cotton thread : LISLE

Lisle is a cotton fabric that has been through an extra process at the end of its manufacture that burns off lint and the ends of fibers leaving the fabric very smooth and with a clean edge. Cotton lisle is mainly used in the manufacture of underwear and stockings. The process to make the thread was invented in the French city of Lille (formerly “Lisle”), hence the name.

37D Statistical averages : MEANS

In a set of numbers, the mean is the average value of those numbers. The median is the numeric value at which half the numbers have a lower value, and half the numbers a higher value. The mode is the value that appears most often in the whole set of numbers.

39D Pond hopper : TOAD

Toads are a type of frog. The main difference between them is that toads have dry, warty skin, while frogs have smooth, moist skin.

40D Roof option for a classic Corvette : T-TOP

The Chevrolet Corvette was introduced to the world in 1953, and was named after the small maneuverable warship called a corvette. The “Vette” has legs. It is the only American sports car that has been around for over 50 years.

46D Piano part : PEDAL

Most modern pianos have three pedals. The soft pedal (also “una corda”), sostenuto pedal, and sustaining pedal (also “damper pedal”).

47D Nebraska city with four Fortune 500 companies : OMAHA

Omaha, Nebraska is home to four Fortune 500 companies:

• Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffet’s holding company)
• Union Pacific (the second largest railroad in the US)
• Kiewit (a very large, employee-owned construction company)
• Mutual of Omaha (an insurance company founded back in 1909)

48D “Black __”: Marvel film directed by Cate Shortland : WIDOW

“Black Widow” is a 2021 superhero movie in the Marvel Comics universe. The title character is played by Scarlett Johansson, a role that she played in several earlier films.

Australian director Cate Shortland’s big break in American movies came with 2021’s “Black Widow”, a superhero blockbuster. Before taking on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, she directed several highly praised films, including the romantic drama “Somersault” (2004) and the historical drama “Lore” (2012). Lore was Australia’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2013.

50D Sophia Loren’s birthplace : ITALY

Sophia Loren certainly has earned her exalted position in the world of movies. In 1962 Loren won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the Italian film “Two Women”, marking the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English speaking performance. She received a second nomination for Best Actress for her role in “Marriage Italian-Style”, another Italian-language movie, released in 1964.

57D Op. __: footnote abbr. : CIT

“Op. cit.” is short for “opus citatum”, Latin for “the work cited”. Op. cit. is used in footnotes to refer the reader to an earlier citation. It is similar to ibid, except that ibid refers the reader to the last citation, the one immediately above.

58D Baton Rouge sch. : LSU

LSU’s full name is Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, and is located in Baton Rouge. LSU was founded in 1860 as a military academy, with then-Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman as superintendent.

61D __ Lanka : SRI

The island nation of Sri Lanka lies off the southeast coast of India. The name “Sri Lanka” translates from Sanskrit into English as “venerable island”. Before 1970, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name given to the country during British rule.