Category: Catherine Cetta

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Constructed by: Catherine Cetta
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Put a Pin in It

Themed answers each start with a type of PIN:

• 57A “Come back to that later,” and an apt title for this puzzle : PUT A PIN IN IT

• 18A Cautious person’s motto : SAFETY FIRST (giving “safety pin”)
• 24A Like many ignition switches : PUSH BUTTON (giving “pushpin”)
• 36A Trios of goals : HAT TRICKS (giving “hatpin”)
• 51A Anklets worn with a poodle skirt : BOBBY SOCKS (giving “bobby pin”)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 08s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9 Bedouin’s beast : CAMEL

Camels are well adapted to the desert, most notably perhaps having a fatty hump that acts as a reservoir of water. They also have long eyelashes and ear hairs, as well as nostrils that can close, all of which act as barriers to blown sand. They even have a third eyelid, which dislodges any sand that gets lodged in the eye.

Bedouin tribes are Arab ethnic groups that predominantly live in the Middle East, in desert areas. Bedouin tribes tend to be nomadic, not settling permanently in one location.

14 Forensic series with the theme song “Who Are You” : CSI

The “CSI” TV show franchise uses hits from the Who as theme music:

• “Who Are You” … “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”
• “Baba O’Riley” … “CSI: New York”
• “Won’t Get Fooled Again” … “CSI: Miami”
• “I Can See for Miles” … “CSI: Cyber”

15 Trumpet sound : BLARE

We get our word “trumpet”, describing the brass instrument, from the Old French word “trompe”. A “trompe” was a long, tube-like instrument, and a “trompette” was a smaller version.

16 Dress with a flared skirt : A-LINE

An A-line skirt is one that fits snugly at the hips and flares towards the hem. The term “A-line” was first used in fashion by French designer Christian Dior in his 1955 spring collection.

18 Cautious person’s motto : SAFETY FIRST (giving “safety pin”)

The safety pin was invented by American mechanical engineer Walter Hunt, for which he was awarded a patent in 1849.

20 Neck of the woods : AREA

In the phrase “this neck of the woods”, the term “neck” is used in the sense “strip of land”.

22 Indigenous Canadians : CREE

The Cree are one of the largest groups of Native Americans on the continent. In the US, Montana is home to most of the Cree nation. They live on a reservation shared with the Ojibwe people. In Canada, most of the Cree live in Manitoba.

24 Like many ignition switches : PUSH BUTTON (giving “pushpin”)

What we know as a thumb tack or pushpin here in North America is called a drawing pin in British English. Thumb tacks made from brass might be referred to as “brass tacks”, giving us the expression “getting down to brass tacks” meaning “getting down to the finer details”.

30 Food court pizzeria : SBARRO

The Sbarro chain of pizza restaurants was founded by Italian immigrants, Gennaro and Carmela Sbarro.

36 Trios of goals : HAT TRICKS (giving “hatpin”)

A hat trick is the scoring of three goals by the same player in a game of perhaps soccer or hockey.

Hatpins are usually 6-8 inches in length, with a decorated head. They are used, often in pairs, to secure a hat to the hair on the head.

39 Early anesthetic : ETHER

Ethers are a whole class of organic compounds, but in the vernacular “ether” is specifically diethyl ether. Diethyl ether was once very popular as a general anesthetic.

42 The Bulldogs of the Ivy League : YALE

The Yale Bulldogs are the athletic teams of Yale University. The Yale school mascot is “Handsome Dan”, the Yale bulldog. The Bulldogs’ logo features a bulldog in front of a letter Y.

48 Tenon’s partner : MORTISE

One simple type of joint used in carpentry is a mortise and tenon. It is basically a projection carved at the end of one piece of wood that fits into a hole cut into the end of another. In the related dovetail joint, the projecting tenon is not rectangular but is cut at a bias, so that when the dovetails are joined they resist being pulled apart. You’ll see dovetail joints in drawers around the house.

50 Science centers : LABS

Our term “laboratory”, often shortened to “lab”, comes from the Medieval Latin word “laboratorium” meaning “place for labor, work”. This in turn comes from the Latin verb “laborare” meaning “to work”.

51 Anklets worn with a poodle skirt : BOBBY SOCKS (giving “bobby pin”)

Bobby socks (or “bobby sox”) are so called because they are shorter than knee socks, they are “bobbed”, shortened, as in a bob haircut. Bobby soxers were young women who were fans of pop music in the 1940s, and who often wore poodle skirts and bobby socks, hence the name.

Poodle skirts have a solid color with a prominent design on the front. Back in the fifties, a poodle was a popular design to adorn the skirt, hence the name “poodle skirt”.

A bobby pin is an unobtrusive hair clip. The clip became popular starting in 1899 with the introduction of the “bob cut”, hence the name “bobby pin”.

56 Gnat or mosquito : PEST

Gnats are attracted to the smell of rotting food, and vinegar. Simple homemade traps that use vinegar are often constructed to attract and kill gnats.

“Mosquito” is Spanish for “little fly”. The female mosquito actually has to have a “blood meal” before she is able to lay her eggs. Mosquitoes are sometimes referred to as “skeeters”.

62 Headsail on a sloop : JIB

A jib is a triangular sail that is set at the bow of a sailboat.

Sloops and cutters are sailboats, and each has just one mast. One major difference between the two types of vessel is that the mast on a cutter is set much further aft than the mast on a sloop.

64 Rogue : KNAVE

We’ve been using “knave” to mean “cad” since about 1200, and as an alternative name for the jack in a deck of cards since the mid-1500s. “Knave” comes from the Old English word “cnafa”, a “boy, male servant”.

65 One of five principal resources in the game Catan : ORE

The Settlers of Catan (now just “Catan”) is a board game that was introduced in 1995, in Germany as “Die Siedler von Catan”. The game is very popular in the US and was called “the board game of our time” by the “Washington Post”. My son plays it a lot, and as a lover of board games, I am going to have to check it out …

66 Cosmetician Lauder : ESTEE

Estée Lauder was a very successful businesswoman, and someone with a great reputation as a salesperson. Lauder introduced her own line of fragrances in 1953, a bath oil called “Youth Dew”. “Youth Dew” was marketed as a perfume, but it was added to bathwater. All of a sudden women were pouring whole bottles of Ms. Lauder’s “perfume” into their baths while using only a drop or two of French perfumes behind their ears. That’s quite a difference in sales “volume” …

67 Shooting sport : SKEET

Skeet shooting is one of three types of competitive shotgun target shooting sports, along with trap shooting and sporting clays. The word “skeet” comes from the Scandinavian word “skot,” which means “to shoot.”

68 Iota : BIT

Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet, and one that gave rise to our letters I and J. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small, as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

Down

4 “Finding Your Roots” airer : PBS

“Finding Your Roots” is a popular TV show in which celebrities are presented with their ancestral histories as compiled by a team of professional genealogists. The long list of celebrities appearing on the show includes Barbara Walters, Condoleeza Rice, Stephen King and LL Cool J. One episode that never aired included the family history of actor Ben Affleck. That episode was pulled when it was discovered that Affleck had persuaded the host to omit information about the actor’s slave-owning ancestors.

5 Brownie __ mode : A LA

In French, “à la mode” simply means “fashionable”. In America, the term has also come to describe a way of serving pie. Pie served à la mode includes a dollop of cream or ice cream, or as I recall from my time living in Upstate New York, with a wedge of cheddar cheese.

Apparently, the first brownies were created for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The recipe was developed by a pastry chef at the city’s Palmer House Hotel. The idea was to produce a cake-like dessert that was small enough and dainty enough to be eaten by ladies as part of a boxed lunch.

6 U.K. fliers : RAF

The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the oldest independent air force in the world (i.e. the first air force to become independent of army or navy forces). The RAF was formed during WWI on 1 April 1918, a composite of two earlier forces, the Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army) and the Royal Naval Air Service. The RAF’s “finest hour” was the Battle of Britain, when the vastly outnumbered British fighters fought off the might of the Luftwaffe causing Hitler to delay his plan to cross the English Channel. This outcome prompted Winston Churchill to utter the memorable words

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

9 Barista employer : CAFE

A barista is a person who serves coffee in a coffee shop. “Barista” is Italian for “bartender”.

10 Boxer who said, “The will must be stronger than the skill” : ALI

Boxer Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Mercellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. Clay joined the Nation of Islam in the early sixties, at which point he changed his name to Muhammad Ali. The name he chose translates into “one who is worthy of praise” (Muhammad) and “most high” (Ali).

25 Four-time Bacall co-star : BOGART

Humphrey “Bogie” Bogart’s breakthrough movie was “The Petrified Forest” from 1936, but for me nothing beats “Casablanca”. That said, check out the original “Sabrina” from 1954. It’s a real delight. Bogie was nominated three times for a Best Actor Oscar, but only won once: for “The African Queen”.

What a unique actress Lauren Bacall was, with that husky voice and her quiet, suggestive manner. She was born in New York City to Jewish immigrant parents from Europe. She was actually a first cousin of Shimon Peres, the former President and Prime Minister of Israel. Famously, Bacall was married to Humphrey Bogart, from 1945 until his passing in 1957.

37 Two-syllable foot : IAMB

An iamb is a metrical foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The lines in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” use four sequential iambs, e.g. “Whose woods / these are / I think / I know”. With that sequence of four iambs, the poem’s structure is described as iambic tetrameter.

38 Be sickly sweet : CLOY

To cloy is to cause distaste by oversupplying something that would otherwise be pleasant, especially something with a sweet taste.

39 Earth’s orbit around the sun, e.g. : ELLIPSE

One way to envision the two foci of an ellipse is to imagine two nails sticking up out of a board, placed a small distance apart. A loop of string is placed on the board, with the nails in the middle. A pen is placed inside the loop, and moved as far away from the nails as possible, confined by the string. The pen is then run around the nails, stretching out the string so that it is taut. The pen will draw an ellipse, and the point where the nails are, they are the ellipse’s two foci.

41 Savanna woodlands, to a giraffe : HABITAT

A savanna (also “savannah”) is a grassland. If there are any trees in a savanna, by definition they are small and widely spaced so that light can get to the grasses allowing them to grow unhindered.

The giraffe is the tallest terrestrial animal on the planet. Its main source of food is acacia leaves that they eat from high, high up in trees, where other herbivores cannot reach.

44 “Maybe your iPhone can answer that” : ASK SIRI

Siri was originally developed as a standalone app by a startup company of the same name. Apple acquired the company in 2010 and integrated the technology into their operating system.

47 Terse “Well, duh!” : OBVI!

“Obvi” is a slang term, a clipping of the word “obvious” that has the same meaning. But, I guess that’s obvious …

55 Pentathlon sword : EPEE

The original pentathlon of the ancient Olympic games consisted of a foot race, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus. When a new pentathlon was created as a sport for the modern Olympic Games, it was given the name the “modern pentathlon”. First introduced in 1912, the modern pentathlon consists of:

1. pistol shooting
2. épée fencing
3. 200m freestyle swimming
4. show jumping
5. 3km cross-country running

61 Vietnamese spring festival : TET

The full name for the New Year holiday in Vietnam is “Tet Nguyen Dan” meaning “Feast of the First Morning”, with the reference being to the arrival of the season of spring. Tet usually falls on the same day as Chinese New Year.