Category: David Karp

Advertisement

Constructed by: Aidan Brand & David Karp
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: May Contain Nuts

Themed answers are items that MAY CONTAIN NUTS:

• 52A Allergy warning, and a description of 16-, 22-, 35-, and 43-Across? : MAY CONTAIN NUTS

• 16A Elements of a PG-rated outburst : MILD EXPLETIVES (such as “NUTS!”)
• 22A Groups of groupies : FAN CLUBS [may contain nuts/enthusiasts]
• 35A Dessert served in a goblet : ICE CREAM SUNDAE [may contain crushed nuts]
• 43A Common accessory at a construction site : TOOLBELT [may contain nuts, and bolts]

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

Bill’s time: 5m 21s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9 City in “Aeneid” and “Iliad” : TROY

The ancient city of Troy was located on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. The Trojan War of Greek mythology was precipitated by the elopement of Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta, with Paris of Troy. The war itself largely consisted of a nine-year siege of Troy by the Greeks. We know most about the final year of that siege, as it is described extensively in Homer’s “Iliad”. The city eventually fell when the Greeks hid soldiers inside the Trojan Horse, which the Trojans brought inside the city’s walls. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts …

Aeneas was a Trojan hero of myth who traveled to Italy and became the ancestor of all Romans. Aeneas’s story is told in Virgil’s epic poem “The Aeneid”.

“Iliad” is an epic poem by the Greek poet Homer that tells the story of the ten-year siege of “Ilium” (i.e. “Troy”) during the Trojan war. “The Odyssey”, also attributed to Homer, is sometimes described as a sequel to “Iliad”.

14 __ Grey tea : EARL

The Earl Grey blend of tea is supposedly named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey who was Prime Minister of the UK from 1830 to 1834. Earl Grey tea has a distinctive flavor that is largely due to the addition of oil from the rind of the bergamot orange.

15 Philosopher Descartes : RENE

Anything pertaining to the philosophy of the great Rene Descartes can be described by the adjective “Cartesian”.

21 Yoga pose : ASANA

“Asana” is a Sanskrit word that translates literally 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”.

27 Oodles : SCADS

The origin of the word “scads”, meaning “lots and lots”, is unclear. That said, “scads” was used to mean “dollars” back in the mid-1800s.

34 __-toity : HOITY

Believe it or not, the term “hoity-toity” has been in the English language since the 1660s, but back then it meant “riotous behavior”. It began to mean “haughty” in the late 1800s, simply because the “haughty” sounds similar to “hoity”.

35 Dessert served in a goblet : ICE CREAM SUNDAE [may contain crushed nuts]

There’s a lot of speculation about how the dessert called a sundae got its name, but there seems to be agreement that it is an alteration of the word “Sunday”.

38 Former Iranian rulers : SHAHS

The last Shah of Iran was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The post-revolution government sought the extradition of the Shah back to Iran while he was in the United States seeking medical care (he had cancer). His prolonged stay in the United States, recovering from surgery, caused some unrest back in Iran and resentment towards the United States. Some say that this resentment precipitated the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the resulting hostage crisis.

39 Ferris wheel locale : FAIR

The first Ferris Wheel was built for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. That wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. who lent his name to wheels built from then on.

45 Larceny : THEFT

Larceny is the crime of taking personal property with the intent of permanently depriving the rightful owner. Larceny has been removed from the statute books in Britain and Ireland, where it has been replaced by the more specific crimes of burglary, robbery, fraud and theft. The crime of larceny still exists in the US, where it can be classified into petit larceny and grand larceny. The former is a larceny of less significant amount than the latter, with the differentiating amount varying from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

57 Color associated with the L.A. Dodgers : BLUE

The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team was known as the Brooklyn Dodgers before the franchise moved to California. Before being called the Dodgers, the team was known in Brooklyn as the Robins, the Superbas, the Trolley Dodgers, the Bridegrooms/Grooms, the Grays and the Atlantics.

58 “Checkmate!” : I WIN!

In the game of chess, when the king is under immediate threat of capture it is said to be “in check”. If the king cannot escape from check, then the game ends in “checkmate” and the player in check loses. In the original Sanskrit game of chess, the king could actually be captured. Then a rule was introduced requiring that a warning be given if capture was imminent (today we announce “check!”) so that an accidental and early ending to the game doesn’t occur.

61 Addendum to a real estate sign : SOLD

The terms “realty” and “real estate” actually date back to the late 1600s. Back then, the terms meant “real possessions, things owned that are tangible and real”.

Down

1 “__ Mia!”: Meryl Streep film with ABBA music : MAMMA

The hit musical “Mamma Mia!” was written to showcase the songs of ABBA. I’m a big fan of ABBA’s music, so I’ve seen this show a couple of times and just love it. “Mamma Mia!” is such a big hit on the stage that on any given day there are at least seven performances going on somewhere in the world. There is a really interesting film version of the show that was released in 2008. I think the female lead Meryl Streep is wonderful in the movie, but the male leads … not so much! By the way, one can tell the difference between “Mamma Mia” the ABBA song and “Mamma Mia!” the musical, by noting the difference in the punctuation in the titles.

2 Zodiac ram : ARIES

According to the ancient Greeks, the constellation Aries the Ram represents the mythological winged ram with the Golden Fleece. The Greeks “hijacked” the constellation though, because it also represented a ram in late Babylonian times, long before the Golden Fleece came along.

3 2014 civil rights drama set in Alabama : SELMA

“Selma” is a 2014 film about the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965. Directed by Ava DuVernay, the movie stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson.

11 Dollar bill : ONE

The nation’s first president, George Washington, is on the US one-dollar bills produced today. When the original one-dollar bill was issued in 1863, it featured a portrait of Salmon P. Chase, President Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury.

18 “90 Day Fiancé” channel : TLC

The cable channel TLC started out life as The Learning Channel. Programming on TLC originally focused on educational content, but today there is an emphasis on reality television.

“90 Day Fiancé” is a reality TV show featuring couples who have 90 days to marry each other. One member of the couple is an American citizen, while the other is a foreign national. The 90-day period is defined by the terms of a K-1 visa, which is issued by the US government to a fiancé from a foreign country to allow for travel to the US to prepare for and participate in a marriage ceremony.

22 Vegetarian pita filler : FALAFEL

Falafel is a ball of ground chickpeas or fava beans that has been deep fried and served in pita bread. I love chickpeas, but falafel is often too dry for me …

23 Insistent : ADAMANT

The words “adamant” and “adamantine” can mean “hard like rock, stony”, in the literal sense. In the more figurative sense, someone who is adamant or adamantine is stubborn or inflexible, like a mule, mulish.

24 Reino __: England’s country, in Spanish : UNIDO

“Estados Unidos” is Spanish for “United States”, and “Reino Unido” is Spanish for “United Kingdom”.

The terms “United Kingdom”, “Great Britain” and “England” can sometimes be confused. The official use of “United Kingdom” originated in 1707 with the Acts of Union that declared the countries of England and Scotland as “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”. The name changed again with the Acts of Union 1800 that created the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” (much to the chagrin of most of the Irish population). This was partially reversed in 1927 when the current name was introduced, the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, in recognition of an independent Irish Free State in the south of the island of Ireland.

26 Eyelid woes : STYES

A stye is a bacterial infection of the sebaceous glands at the base of the eyelashes, and is also known as a hordeolum.

28 The NBA’s Cavs, on scoreboards : CLE

The Cavaliers are a professional basketball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cavs joined the NBA as an expansion team in 1970.

34″Their Eyes Were Watching God” author Zora Neale __ : HURSTON

1937’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is the best-known work penned by American author Zora Neale Hurston. The novel gained popularity in the late 1900s after a mediocre reception when first published. It is now associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and in 2005 was named as one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.

36 Goblets : CHALICES

A chalice is a large drinking cup often used for drinking during ceremonies. The term “chalice” comes from the Latin word “calix” meaning “cup”. One notable example is the Holy Chalice of the Christian tradition, in which Jesus served wine to his apostles at the Last Supper.

42 Sport played on a variety of surfaces : TENNIS

There are four different surfaces used for playing tennis competitively:

• Clay courts (used for the French Open)
• Hard courts (used for the US Open and the Australian Open)
• Grass courts (used for Wimbledon)
• Carpet courts

46 Mead need : HONEY

Mead is a lovely drink that’s made from fermented honey and water.

47 Many a Chopin piece : ETUDE

An étude is a short instrumental composition that is usually quite hard to play and is intended to help the performer master a particular technique. “Étude” is the French word for “study”. Études are commonly performed on the piano.

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer who spent most of his life in France. He was most famous for his piano works in the Romantic style. Chopin was a sickly man and died quite young, at 39. For many of his final years he had a celebrated and tempestuous relationship with the French author George Sand (the nom de plume of the Baroness Dudevant). Those years with Sand may have been turbulent, but they were very productive in terms of musical composition.

53 “Rumble in the Jungle” boxer : ALI

The Rumble in the Jungle was the celebrated 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman that took place in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The fight was set in Zaire because of financial arrangements between promoter Don King and Zaire’s President Mobutu Seko. Ali coined the term “rope-a-dope” to describe his incredibly successful strategy in the contest. From the second round onwards, Ali adopted a protected stance on the ropes letting Foreman pound him with blows to the body and head, with Ali using his arms to dissipate the power of the punches. He kept this up until the eighth round, and then opened up and downed the exhausted Foreman with a left-right combination. I hate boxing but I have to say, that was an interesting fight …