Category: Ella Dershowitz

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Constructed by: Ella Dershowitz
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Baby Steps

Themed answers finish with BABY STEPS upwards, and to the right, in the grid:

• 55A Tiny units of progress depicted four times in this puzzle? : BABY STEPS

• 23A Fritterlike side with fried catfish : HUSHPUPPY
• 27A “La La Land” Oscar nominee : RYAN GOSLING
• 45A Blue Apron offering : MEAL KIT
• 54A Roomba target : DUST BUNNY

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

Bill’s time: 8m 36s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Home of the College World Series : OMAHA

Back in 1947/48, the College World Series (CWS) was held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and then in 1949 in Wichita, Kansas. Since 1950, the CWS has been held every year in Omaha, Nebraska.

6 Many Chrome runners : PCS

Google’s Chrome is the most popular web browser by far, with Mozilla Firefox in second place and Apple’s Safari in third. I find Chrome to be much, much more user-friendly than Safari, and more featured than Firefox. Chrome also works very seamlessly with other Google products and with Android phones.

9 Dog breed of Tokyo’s Hachiko statues : 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.

The Hachiko statue in Shibuya is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Tokyo. It is a bronze statue of a dog named Hachiko, who would wait for his owner at Shibuya Station every day after work, even after his owner’s death. The dog’s story is told in a 1987 Japanese film “Hachiko Monogatari”, and in a 2009 American remake “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale”. There are also other Hachiko statues in Japan, including one in Ōdate, Akita, where Hachiko was born. There is also a statue in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where the remake was filmed.

16 Western Wyoming county : TETON

Teton County, Wyoming is home to the Grand Teton National Park and the town of Jackson Hole. Teton has the distinction of having the second highest personal per capita income of any county in the US ($94,672 in 2010), second only to New York County ($111,386 in 2010).

17 Giddy : SLAPHAPPY

Someone described as slaphappy is exhibiting extremely silly behavior. The term “slaphappy” first appeared in the 1930s, when it meant “punch-drunk”.

19 Urban Dictionary content : SLANG

Urban Dictionary is a website that was founded in 1999 by a computer science student at Cal Poly. The site contains definitions of mainly slang terms, and is maintained by the site’s members.

20 “Big __” Delaney: “Sons of Anarchy” character : OTTO

“Sons of Anarchy” is a popular FX crime series about an outlaw motorcycle club in California’s Central Valley. Apparently, it is the most successful FX show ever.

22 Pop music’s __ Vanilli : MILLI

Milli Vanilli was an R&B duo consisting of French singer Fab Morvan and German singer Rob Pilatus. The duo won a Grammy for Best New Artist, but had the award revoked. It was discovered that they didn’t even provide the lead vocals for the award-winning recording, and just lip-synced when performing on stage.

23 Fritterlike side with fried catfish : HUSHPUPPY

Hush puppies are a side dish very much associated with the Southern US. They are prepared by deep-frying balls of batter made from a cornmeal base.

Catfish get their common name because they have prominent barbels, slender sensory organs located near the mouth. The barbels are said to resemble a cat’s whiskers.

27 “La La Land” Oscar nominee : RYAN GOSLING

Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor who is one of a string of entertainers to graduate from the Mickey Mouse Club on the Disney Channel. His career really took off when he played the male lead in the 2004 movie “The Notebook” (the best ever “weepie”, according to my wife). Gosling is quite the musician, and is one half of a rock duo called Dead Man’s Bones.

“La La Land” is a 2016 romantic musical film starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a musician and actress who fall in love in “La La Land” (Los Angeles, i.e. “LA”). The film was written and directed by Damien Chazelle, who had found success two years earlier with the musical drama “Whiplash”. “La La Land” won a record-breaking seven Golden Globes and tied the record number of Oscar nominations at fourteen, winning six.

28 __ milk : OAT

Oat milk is one of the alternatives to cow’s milk, and is lactose free. I’m a huge fan …

31 Butter used in saag paneer : GHEE

Ghee is clarified butter used in South Asian cuisines. “Ghee” comes from Sanskrit, and translates as “sprinkled”.

Palak paneer is a dish from Indian cuisine. It consists mainly of paneer (a freshly-made cheese) in a puréed spinach paste. Saag paneer is a more generic form of the dish, one in which other leafy vegetables can be used to make the paste, e.g. mustard greens, collard greens or broccoli.

35 Haggler’s concern : PRICE

Our verb “to haggle”, meaning “to argue about the price”, originally meant “to cut unevenly”. The suggestion is that haggling is chopping away at the price.

38 Past potentates : TSARS

Tsars ruled Russia from the 16th century to the early 20th century. The first Tsar was Ivan the Terrible, who ruled from 1547 to 1584. The last Tsar was Nicholas II, who ruled from 1894 to 1917.

39 Qdoba snack : TACO

Qdoba is a chain of casual restaurants specializing in Mexican cuisine. The chain started out in 1995 with the name Zuma Fresh Mexican Grill, then Z-Teca Mexican Grill in 1997. Both “Zuma” and “Z-Teca” were challenged by establishments that already had similar names, and so the company settled on Qdoba Mexican Grill in 1999, a completely invented moniker.

45 Blue Apron offering : MEAL KIT

Blue Apron is a meal delivery service that has been providing customers across the US with a weekly supply of meals since 2012. The “kit” for a meal comes pre-proportioned with ingredients for a home-cooked repast.

47 Indiana state flower : PEONY

The flowering plant called a peony is named for Paean, the mythical physician to the Greek gods. Indiana adopted the peony as its state flower in 1957.

48 “Stayin’ Alive” genre : DISCO

“Stayin’ Alive” is a great song recorded by the Bee Gees for the soundtrack of the 1977 movie “Saturday Night Fever”. Repeating the song to oneself is recommended as an aid if performing CPR. “Stayin’ Alive” has around 103 beats per minute, and 100–120 chest compressions per minute are recommended. A study on medical professionals found that the quality of CPR is better when thinking of the song “Stayin’ Alive”.

49 Any “Gilmore Girls” episode, now : RERUN

“Gilmore Girls” is a comedy show that originally aired from 2000 to 2007 on the WB. The title characters are mother and daughter Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. All the action takes place in the fictional Connecticut town of Stars Hollow. The theme song was written by Carole King, and is a version of her 1971 recording “Where You Lead”. King sing’s the show’s theme with her own daughter, Louise Goffin.

50 Cartoon still : CEL

Animation cels are transparent sheets made of celluloid acetate that were used in traditional hand-drawn animation to create animated films. They were first introduced in the 1930s and were widely used in animation production until the late 1990s, when digital animation techniques began to dominate the industry.

54 Roomba target : DUST BUNNY

What we call “dust bunnies” in American English, have similar inventive names in other languages. The Finns know them as sheep, the Germans wool mice, the Hungarians dust kittens, the Italians dust cats, and the Swedish dust rats.

The Roomba vacuum cleaner is a cool-looking device that navigates its way around a room by itself, picking up dirt as it goes. Like I said, it’s cool-looking, but I am not sure how effective it is …

57 Mid-pirouette, say : ON TOE

We took our word “pirouette” directly from French, in which language it has the same meaning, i.e. a rotation in dancing. “Pirouette” is also the French word for “spinning top”.

58 Blue-__: pain relief brand : EMU

Blu-Emu is a line of topical pain relievers that was introduced in 2002. As suggested by the name, Blue-Emu products include emu oil as an ingredient. Emu oil is extracted from the fat of emu carcases that are processed for meat.

60 Origin of the street food koshary : EGYPT

Koshary is considered the national dish of Egypt. It became popular as a street food in the late 1800s, and is known as “the food of the poor”. The main ingredients are onions, lentils, rice, macaroni and lemon sauce. Apparently, the lemon sauce is the defining factor.

61 Freelancer’s job : GIG

Musicians use “gig” to describe a job, a performance. The term originated in the early 1900s in the world of jazz. The derivative phrase “gig economy” applies to a relatively recent phenomenon where workers find themselves jumping from temporary job to temporary job, from gig to gig.

The term “free lance” was coined by Sir Walter Scott in his 1820 novel “Ivanhoe”, when he used it to describe a medieval mercenary warrior. Forty years later, a “freelancer” was a journalist who did work for more than one publication without a long-term commitment.

Down

4 “We’re here!” : HOP OUT!

We’re here; hop out of the car.

6 __ shop : POP-UP

A pop-up store is one that is temporary. The idea is that a pop-up store opens in empty retail space for a limited period of time, often to meet the needs of a particular season or holiday. Examples of the genre might be Halloween stores or Christmas stores.

7 Photographer Kristin : CAPP

Kristin Capp is an American photographer noted for her work across the globe, as well as her work in the US. Two of her published collections of images are “Americana” (2000) and “Brasil” (2016).

8 Pie in the __ : SKY

We use the phrase “pie in the sky” to describe a ridiculously optimistic goal. The expression was coined by songwriter and labor activist Joe Hill in 1911 as a lyric in the hymn parody “The Preacher and the Slave”. The chorus is:

You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and Pray, live on hay
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

9 Part of an online tag : AT SIGN

The “at symbol” (@) originated in the commercial world, as shorthand for “each at, per” and similar phrases. I suppose we see the symbol most commonly these days as part of email addresses.

10 Breakfast brand : KELLOGG’S

The Kellogg Company was founded in 1906 by Will Keith Kellogg as the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Will established the enterprise while working with his brother John Harvey Kellogg at his Battle Creek Sanitarium. The brothers created corn flakes as a health food for patients at the sanitarium.

11 Emphatic letters, for short : ITALS

Italic type leans to the right, and is often used to provide emphasis in text. The style is known as “italic” because the stylized calligraphic form of writing originated in Italy, probably in the Vatican.

12 Singer Braxton : TONI

Toni Braxton is a very successful R&B singer, but one who seems to have trouble managing her financial affairs. After two highly successful albums, she had to file for bankruptcy protection in 1993. She recovered and had even more success, and then had to file for bankruptcy again in 2010.

13 Filmmaker Lee : ANG

Ang Lee made history at the 74th Academy Awards in 2002 when he won the Best Director award for “Brokeback Mountain.” He became the first Asian person to win the award and the first non-white person to win in the category.

25 Full of beans : LYING
30 Full of beans : PHONY

The idiom “full of beans” is often used to mean “full of energy”. The same phrase can be used to mean “telling lies”.

26 Name before Wilson or after Rooney : MARA

Mara Wilson started her acting career as a child actress, appearing in “Mrs. Doubtfire”, the 1994 version of “Miracle on 34th Street”, and the title character in “Matilda”. Despite her success as a child star, Mara Wilson decided to step away from acting (for 12 years) and pursue other interests. She became an accomplished author, publishing a memoir called “Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame” in 2016.

Actress Rooney Mara is noted for her role in the 2010 film “The Social Network” and for playing the title character in the 2011 hit movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Mara has American football in her blood. Her mother’s family founded the Pittsburgh Steelers, and her father’s family founded the New York Giants.

32 Time for a costume from a boo-tique? : HALLOWEEN

All Saints’ Day is November 1st each year. The day before All Saints’ Day is All Hallows’ Eve, better known by the Scottish term “Halloween”.

33 “Black Panther” villain Killmonger : ERIK

“Black Panther” is a 2018 superhero film starring Chadwick Boseman in the title role. Black Panther is a Marvel Comics character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. When not a superhero, Black Panther is the king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, and goes by the name “T’Challa”.

38 Cinco menos dos : TRES

In Spanish, “cinco menos dos” (five minus two) is “tres” (three).

40 Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” : FINN

Canadian actor Finn Wolfhard is known for playing Mike Wheeler on the sci-fi horror show “Stranger Things”. Outside of acting, Wolfhard is an accomplished guitarist, and was the lead vocalist for the indie rock band Calpurnia.

41 “Revenge” star VanCamp : EMILY

Emily VanCamp is a Canadian actress who plays one of the leads on the TV series “Revenge”, which is loosely based on Dumas novel “The Count of Monte Cristo”. VanCamp married her “Revenge” co-star Josh Bowman in 2018.

48 Correct coding errors, say : DEBUG

Back in 1947, famed computer programmer Grace Hopper noticed some colleagues fixing a piece of equipment by removing a dead moth from a relay. She remarked that they were “debugging” the system, and so Hopper has been given credit for popularizing the term “bug” in the context of computing.

50 Tank : CAMI

A camisole (also “cami”) is a sleeveless undergarment worn by women that extends down to the waist. “Camisole” is a French word that we imported into English that ultimately derives from the Latin “camisia” meaning “shirt, nightgown”.

“Tank top” is another one of those terms that always catches me out, as it has a different meaning on each side of the Atlantic. In the US, a tank top is a sleeveless shirt, something we would call a “vest” back in Ireland (and the US “vest” is what we call a “waistcoat”). A tank top in Ireland is a sleeveless sweater, which further adds to the confusion. The name “tank top” is derived from “tank suit”, an old name for a woman’s one-piece bathing suit. The use of “tank” for the bathing suit came from “swimming tank”, an obsolete term used in the 1920s for a swimming pool.

54 Generic surname : DOE

Though the English court system does not use the term today, “John Doe” first appeared as the “name of a person unknown” in England in 1659, along with the similar “Richard Roe”. An unknown female is referred to as “Jane Doe ”, and the equivalent to Richard Roe is Jane Roe (as in Roe v. Wade, for example). Variants of “John Doe” used outside of the courts are “Joe Blow” and “John Q. Public”.

56 Indy brand : STP

STP was founded in 1953 by racing enthusiast and businessman Andy Granatelli. The name “STP” stands for “Scientifically Treated Petroleum.”