Day: October 31, 2025

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Constructed by: Wendy L. Brandes

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Gained an Hour

Themed answers are all common phrases that have GAINED AN “HR”:

• 48A Benefited from the end of daylight saving time, or a hint to 20-, 28-, and 42-Across : GAINED AN HOUR

• 20A Tees off closer to the hole in mini golf? : SHRINKS A PUTT (“sinks a putt” + HR)
• 28A Place to get rid of broken furniture and pictures of exes? : THROWAWAY ZONE (“tow-away zone” + HR)
• 42A Cars used to transport boxwoods and hydrangeas? : SHRUB COMPACTS (“subcompacts” + HR)

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

Bill’s time: 6m 52s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Oscar winner Sorvino : MIRA

Mira Sorvino is an American actress, and a winner of an Oscar for her supporting role in the 1995 Woody Allen movie “Mighty Aphrodite”. Sorvino also played a title role opposite Lisa Kudrow in the very forgettable “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion”.

5A Tanqueray, Bombay, et al. : GINS

Tanqueray is a popular brand of gin here in the US, although it is less popular over in the UK, where it originated. It was first produced in the 1830s by Charles Tanqueray, hence the name. The list of added botanicals in Tanqueray includes juniper (necessary to be called “gin”), coriander, angelica root and liquorice.

The Star of Bombay is a huge sapphire that was mined in Sri Lanka, with a weight of 182 carats. The gemstone was given as a gift to actress Mary Pickford by her husband Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford left the Star of Bombay in her will to the Smithsonian Institute, where it can be seen today. The British gin called Bombay Sapphire is named for the stone.

9A Rugby formation : SCRUM

If you’ve ever seen a rugby match, you’ll recognize the scrum, in which the players designated as forwards bind together and push against the forwards on the opposing team. It’s a way of restarting the game after various types of stoppages. “Scrum” is short for “scrummage”, which in itself is a variation of “scrimmage”. And “scrimmage” has its roots in the word “skirmish”. If you get the chance, take a look at the Matt Damon-Morgan Freeman movie called “Invictus”, directed by Clint Eastwood. It’s all about rugby in South Africa after Nelson Mandela came to power. A powerful film …

14A Scott Turow work : ONE L

Scott Turow is an author and lawyer from Chicago. Turow has had several bestselling novels including “Presumed Innocent”, “The Burden of Proof” and “Reversible Errors”, all three of which were made into films. He also wrote the autobiographical book “One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School”.

17A Phishing line? : SCAM

Phishing is the online practice of stealing usernames, passwords and credit card details by creating a site that deceptively looks reliable and trustworthy. Phishers often send out safe-looking emails or instant messages that direct someone to an equally safe-looking website where the person might inadvertently enter sensitive information. “Phishing” is a play on the word “fishing”, as in “fishing for passwords, PINs, etc.”

18A “99 Luftballons” singer : NENA

Nena is a German singer (“Nena” became the name of her band as well) who had a big hit in 1984 with one of my favorite songs of the eighties “99 Luftballons”. The English translation of the German title (“99 Red Balloons”) isn’t literal, with the color “red” added just so that the title had the right number of syllables for the tune. “Luftballon” is the name given to a child’s toy balloon in German.

19A Country singer Keith : URBAN

Keith Urban is a country singer from Australia who was actually born in New Zealand. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 1992, and married Australian actress Nicole Kidman in 2006.

20A Tees off closer to the hole in mini golf? : SHRINKS A PUTT (“sinks a putt” + HR)

Apparently, the first minigolf course in the world was built in St. Andrews in Scotland, and you can still play that course today. Back in 1867, about 100 years after the Royal and Ancient Golf Club was founded, the Ladies’ Putting Club was constructed by some of the golf clubs members so that the ladies could “have a go” at the sport. Back then it was believed that the energetic swing required to hit a ball on a full-size course was far from ladylike, so a small, 18-hole course of putting greens was deemed to be more acceptable. Different times …

23A “Bad Romance” singer Lady __ : GAGA

The music video released with Lady Gaga’s 2009 hit “Bad Romance” involves drugs, supermodels, the Russian Mafia and sexual slavery. All a little out of my league …

36A Food for finches : SEEDS

True finches are relatively small, colorful birds known for their robust conical bills that have evolved for eating nuts and seeds. Back in the day, finches were used (along with canaries) in coal mines to detect the presence of carbon monoxide.

38A Cohort of cows : HERD

“Cohort” can be used as a collective noun, meaning “group, company”. The term can also apply to an individual supporter or companion, although usually in a derogatory sense. “Cohort” comes from the Latin “cohors”, which was an infantry company in the Roman army, one tenth of a legion.

40A Actress Chaplin : OONA

Oona Chaplin is an actress from Madrid in Spain. Chaplin is getting a lot of airtime these days as she plays Talisa Maegyr on HBO’s hit fantasy series “Game of Thrones”. Oona is the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, and is named for her maternal grandmother Oona O’Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill.

42A Cars used to transport boxwoods and hydrangeas? : SHRUB COMPACTS (“subcompacts” + HR)

We come across boxwood hedges in many formal gardens. The dense wood of the boxwood has also been used for centuries to make high-end chess pieces.

Hydrangeas have been described as the garden’s mood ring. If the soil is more alkaline, the flowers blush pink. More acidic soil causes the flowers to turn a cool blue.

48A Benefited from the end of daylight saving time, or a hint to 20-, 28-, and 42-Across : GAINED AN HOUR

On the other side of the Atlantic, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is known as “summer time”. The idea behind summer/daylight-savings is to move clocks forward an hour in spring and backwards in the fall so that afternoons have more daylight. DST was first observed in the US in 1918, and is observed in all states other than Hawaii and Arizona. Hawaii doesn’t really “need” DST as the length of daylight doesn’t vary much due to the state’s tropical latitude. Arizona’s climate dictates that extra afternoon daylight is an economic burden due to increased use of air conditioning systems.

59A Sue Bird’s alma mater, for short : UCONN

WNBA player Sue Bird is one of only two basketball players, male or female, to have won five Olympic gold medals. The other is fellow WNBA star Diana Taurasi. Bird became engaged to US soccer phenom Megan Rapinoe in 2020.

63A Ice queen with more than 400,000 computer-generated strands of hair : ELSA

Apparently, animating hair is incredibly difficult. Each strand needs to be able to move independently while also interacting with thousands of other strands, the character’s body, their clothes, and environmental factors like wind and snow. For the Disney movie “Frozen”, there was a need to handle Elsa’s 420,000 hair strands. New animation software had to be developed to handle that level of complexity and detail. That’s not something you’d know off the top of your head (pun!) …

Down

1D Rootless plant used in some street art : MOSS

Moss can be used as a medium for street art, which is often called “moss graffiti” or “eco-graffiti”. It involves creating a paint-like mixture that includes moss, and buttermilk or yogurt. The mixture is then painted onto a surface, and with proper care, the moss grows, creating a living piece of art.

2D Approximate diameter of a quarter : INCH

The American quarter is a little unusual in the world of decimal currency, if you think about it. Most currencies have a “20-cent” coin, which is easier to work with mathematically. The US went for the quarter in deference to the practice of dividing Spanish Milled Dollars into eight wedge-shaped “bits”. That’s also why the quarter is sometimes referred to as “two bits”. We’ve been using the adjective “two-bit” to mean “cheap, tawdry” at least since 1929. State quarters were introduced in 1999.

3D __ admiral : REAR

The rank of rear admiral is usually the lowest of the admiral ranks. The term originated with the Royal Navy. In days gone by, an admiral would head up the activities of a naval squadron from the central vessel. He (and they were always male back then) would be assisted by a vice admiral who acted from the lead vessel. There would also be a lower-ranking admiral to command the ships at the rear of the squadron, and this was the “rear” admiral.

5D Tree with fan-shaped leaves : GINKGO

The ginkgo tree is quite remarkable in that it is regarded as a living fossil. This means that it has not evolved as a living organism and, based on fossil evidence, is the same species today as it was millions of years ago. It is a remarkably successful species, having survived many extinction events that wiped out so much of life on the planet.

10D Nevada senator Catherine __ Masto : CORTEZ

In 2017, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto became the first Latina ever elected to the US Senate. She was elected by the good people of Nevada to replace former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

12D Letters on Katie Ledecky’s suit : USA

Katie Ledecky is a swimmer who won her first Olympic gold medal at just 15 years of age, in the 800-meter freestyle. In 2016, Ledecky also became the youngest person to make “Time” magazine’s “Time 100” annual list of most influential people in the American world. Katie’s uncle is Jon Ledecky, an owner of the New York Islanders hockey team.

13D R&B’s Boyz II __ : MEN

Boyz II Men are an R&B vocal trio from Philadelphia who started out in 1988. The original BOYZ II Men lineup included a fourth member, Michael McCary. McCary left the group in 2003 due to chronic back pain. The Boyz II Men 1992 hit “End of the Road” stayed at number-one in the Billboard charts for an amazing thirteen weeks, shattering the 11-week record that had been held by Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” since 1956.

21D Luxury cosmetics brand : NARS

NARS Cosmetics is a French cosmetics company that started doing business in 1994, and is named for the founder François Nars. Nars used to be able to market itself as a cruelty-free brand, until it was decided to enter the Chinese market. The issue is that Chinese law requires that all foreign cosmetics be tested on animals before they can be sold to the public. That is something I did not know …

22D Eurasian mountain range : URALS

The eastern side of the Ural Mountains in Russia and Kazakhstan is generally regarded as the natural divide between the continents of Europe and Asia.

26D Like helium and xenon : INERT

The noble gases (also “rare gases”) are those elements on the extreme right of the Periodic Table. Because of their “full” complement of electrons, noble gases are very unreactive. The six noble gases that occur naturally are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon.

Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and the element symbol “He”. It is a gas, lighter than air, and is the second-most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen). Helium was first detected in 1868 as an unknown yellow spectral line during a solar eclipse. As such, the gas was named for “Helios”, the Greek god of the Sun.

The element xenon was the first of the noble gases to be made into a compound, which was somewhat remarkable in that the noble gases were thought by many to be completely inert, unreactive.

28D Arctic expanse : TUNDRA

Tundra is an ecosystem that is treeless, or very nearly so. There are three types of tundra. Arctic and Antarctic tundra can’t support the growth of trees as the ground is pretty much frozen. Alpine tundra cannot support tree-growth due to high altitude.

31D Pennsylvania sect that embraces simple living : AMISH

The rules of the Amish Church are known as the “Ordnung”. It is the Ordnung that defines the rules related to everyday aspects of Amish life, such as limitations in clothing that can be worn, and in the use of technology. “Ordnung” is a German word meaning “order, rule”.

36D 2014 Winter Olympics city : SOCHI

Sochi is a city in the west of Russia on the Black Sea coast. It is the largest resort city in the whole country. Sochi is going through a busy phase in its life. It hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, the Russian Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2014, and served as host for some games of the 2018 World Cup in soccer.

37D Ambient musician Brian : ENO

Brian Eno was one of the pioneers of the genre of ambient music. He composed an album in 1978 called “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, which was the first in a series of four albums with an ambient theme. Eno named the tracks, somewhat inventively, 1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2.

44D San Diego squad : PADRES

The San Diego Padres baseball team was founded in 1969, and immediately joined the ranks of Major League Baseball as an expansion team. The Padres took their name from a Minor League team that had been in the city since 1936. The name is Spanish for “fathers” and is a reference to the Franciscan Friars from Spain who founded San Diego in 1769.

45D State with no native snakes or lizards : ALASKA

The frozen ground in Alaska makes it impossible for reptiles to hibernate and survive the winter. However, the state is home to the wood frog, an amphibian that can survive being frozen solid by producing a natural antifreeze in its blood.

50D __ Grey tea : EARL

Earl Grey tea is a black tea flavored with oil of bergamot, a citrus fruit. The tea is named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, who was British Prime Minister in the 1830s. The popular story is that he received a gift of tea flavored with bergamot from a Chinese mandarin, which he liked and asked for it to be blended specifically for him, though the exact origins are a bit murky.

53D City on the Tiber : ROME

The Tiber is the principal river in Italy in that it runs through the capital, Rome. It is the third longest river in the country. It is from the name of the river that “Tiberius” evolved, which was the name of the second Roman Emperor.

55D Good draw in blackjack : ACE

In the card game blackjack, an ace has the point value of one or eleven. When one of the two cards dealt to a player is an ace, the hand is called “soft”. This means that the player cannot go bust by taking another card, as the ace can be revalued at “one” if necessary in order to stay under 21.

56D Pitcher Guidry who won a Cy Young in 1978 : RON

Ron Guidry is a former pitcher for the New York Yankees. Nicknamed “Louisiana Lightning”, Guidry’s number 49 was retired by the Yankees in 2003.