Category: Emma Oxford

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Constructed by: Emma Oxford
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Wildflowers

Themed answers each start with a WILD (anagrammed) FLOWER:

• 58A Colorful elements of a meadow, and what can be found at the starts of the answers to the starred clues? : WILDFLOWERS

• 18A *Be extremely helpful : LIVE TO SERVE (WILD “VIOLET”)
• 29A *Staged a fireworks show : LIT UP THE SKY (WILD “TULIP”)
• 36A *Start of an instruction to an automated assistant : SIRI, SET A TIMER (WILD “IRIS”)
• 44A *Sensitive area : SORE SUBJECT (WILD “ROSE”)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 44s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Gasteyer of “Mean Girls” : ANA

Ana Gasteyer is an actress best known for being a cast member of “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) from 1996 to 2002. Gasteyer was famous on SNL for playing Martha Stewart … topless!

“Mean Girls” is a teen comedy movie released in 2004 starring Lindsay Lohan. Tina Fey also puts in an appearance, which really isn’t surprising as Fey wrote the screenplay.

15 Miso soup mushroom : ENOKI

Enokitake (also known as “enoki”) are long and thin white mushrooms often added to soups or salads.

Miso is the name of the seasoning that makes miso soup. Basic miso seasoning is made by fermenting rice, barley and soybeans with salt and a fungus to produce a paste. The paste can be added to stock to make miso soup, or perhaps to flavor tofu.

17 Lenovo products : PCS

Lenovo is a Chinese manufacturer of computers that was founded as “Legend” in 1984. The name was changed to “Lenovo” in 2002. “Lenovo” is a portmanteau of “Le” (from “Legend”) and “novo” (Latin for “new”). IBM sold off its personal computer division to Lenovo in 2005.

18 *Be extremely helpful : LIVE TO SERVE (WILD “VIOLET”)

The common violet is a flowering plant that is native to Europe and Asia. It is a hardy perennial that is often found growing in the wild near the edges of forests and in clearing. The same species is also referred to as the wood violet, sweet violet and garden violet.The color violet is named for the plant, and not the other way round.

23 Tempo similar to largo : LENTO

A lento passage is a piece of music that has a slow tempo. “Lento” is “slow” in Italian.

29 *Staged a fireworks show : LIT UP THE SKY (WILD “TULIP”)

We usually associate the cultivation of tulips with the Netherlands, but they were first grown commercially in the Ottoman Empire. The name “tulip” ultimately derives from the Ottoman Turkish word “tulbend” that means “muslin, gauze”.

33 Part of EVOO : OIL

Virgin olive oil is oil produced from olives with no chemical treatment involved in the production process at all. To be labeled “virgin”, the oil must have an acidity level of less than 2% and must be judged to have “a good taste”. Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) comes from virgin oil production, and is the portion with acidity levels of less than 0.8% acidity that is judged to have “superior taste”.

34 Used DoorDash, say : ATE IN

DoorDash is the largest food delivery company in the country. Customers can order food from many different restaurants using the DoorDash app, and a DoorDash driver delivers it to a home or office. DoorDash also operates ghost kitchens, facilities that prepare meals for delivery customers of a group of restaurants.

35 Auction site : EBAY

eBay was founded in 1995 as AuctionWeb. One of the first items purchased was a broken laser pointer, for $14.83. The buyer was a collector of broken laser pointers …

36 *Start of an instruction to an automated assistant : SIRI, SET A TIMER (WILD “IRIS”)

Iris is a genus of flowering plants that come in a wide variety of flower colors. The term “iris” is a Greek word meaning “rainbow”. Many species of irises are called “flags”. One suggestion is that the alternate name comes from the Middle English “flagge” meaning “reed”. This term was used because iris leaves look like reeds.

42 Rene of “Tin Cup” : RUSSO

The talented actress Rene Russo is a native of Burbank, California. Russo went to high school (with actor/director Ron Howard), but dropped out in tenth grade. At seventeen, she was given the opportunity to train as a model and within a very short time appeared on the cover of “Vogue”. As her modeling jobs slowed down in her early thirties, Russo made a career change and studied theater and acting. Her breakout role was in the 1989 film “Major League.”

“Tin Cup” is a fun romantic comedy starring Kevin Costner. Costner plays a former golf prodigy who has hit bottom, but who drags himself up by the bootstraps thanks to the influence of the female lead played by Rene Russo. Costner plays the title character Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy.

43 Death on the Nile cause, perhaps : ASP

The Egyptian cobra (Naja haje) is also known as the asp. That said, the term “asp” can apply to several species of snake, including the Egyptian cobra. Legend has it that Cleopatra committed suicide by enticing an asp to bite her. If that’s true, then that asp was probably an Egyptian cobra.

44 *Sensitive area : SORE SUBJECT (WILD “ROSE”)

Believe it or not, roses don’t have any thorns as such. Thorns are derived from shoots, spines are derived from leaves, and prickles are derived from the epidermis. The rose’s defensive barbs are in fact prickles.

50 Frightening vision : DAYMARE

A daymare is a condition experienced while awake featuring a pressure on the chest that is normally associated with the sense of fear experienced during a nightmare.

52 Part of TNT : -NITRO-

Trinitrotoluene (TNT)

62 Convent figure : NUN

Convents have been religious houses since the 1200s, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that convents became purely female institutions.

63 Adult stage in insects : IMAGO

The imago is an intermediate stage in the development of an insect. All four stages are embryo, larva, pupa and imago.

67 “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” host Aisha : TYLER

Aisha Tyler is an actor and comedian who was a co-host on “The Talk” for several years starting in 2011. She began hosting the reboot of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” in 2013.

The American improv comedy TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway” is a spin-off of a very successful British show of the same name. The British TV show is itself a spin-off of a BBC radio show that I well remember. Lots of fun …

68 “Evita” role : CHE

Che is the narrator in the musical “Evita” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Down

3 Playing hooky, perhaps : ABSENT

Apparently the term “hooky” comes from “hoekje”, the Dutch name for the game hide-and-seek. To play hooky is to shirk one’s responsibility, as in a schoolkid taking a day off without permission.

5 “Roger that, boss!” : ON IT!

The term “roger”, meaning “yes” or “acknowledged”, comes from the world of radiotelephony. The British military used a phonetic alphabet in the fifties that included “Roger” to represent the letter “R”. As such, it became customary to say “Roger” when acknowledging a message, with R (Roger) standing for “received”.

7 Maker of Ektorp sofas : IKEA

“Sofa” is a Turkish word meaning “bench”.

9 Kathy Bates film based on a Stephen King novel : MISERY

The 1990 film “Misery” is an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. I think it’s the only movie from a King book that I’ve watched and enjoyed. I can’t stomach his books, not because of the writing, but because of the gruesome scenes that are part of the plots. The screen version of “Misery” is toned down a little from the original storyline. In the novel, the Kathy Bates character amputates the James Caan character’s foot to incapacitate him. In the movie she just smashes his ankles. Big difference …

Actress Kathy Bates started her on-screen career in the early seventies, but it wasn’t until 1990 that she landed her breakthrough role, playing Annie Wilkes in the psychological thriller “Misery”. Her performance in “Misery” won her that season’s Best Actress Oscar.

10 Month after diciembre : ENERO

In Spanish, “el año” (the year) starts in “enero” (January) and ends in “diciembre” (December).

11 Mo. after Mar. : APR

The exact etymology of “April”, the name of the fourth month of our year, seems to be uncertain. The ancient Romans called it “mensis Aprilis”, which roughly translated as “opening month”. The suggestion is that April is the month in which fruits, flowers and animals “open” their life cycles.

13 Sault __ Marie : STE

“Sault Ste. Marie” is the name of two cities on either side of the Canada-US border, one in Ontario and the other in Michigan. The two cities were originally one settlement in the 17th century, established by Jesuit Missionaries. The missionaries gave the settlement the name “Sault Sainte Marie”, which can be translated as “Saint Mary’s Falls”. The city was one community until 1817, when a US-UK Joint Boundary Commission set the border along the St. Mary’s River.

21 Queen Anne’s house : STUART

Queen Anne was the last of the Stuarts to rule in Britain and Ireland, and the first sovereign of the Kingdom of Great Britain (after England and Scotland united). Anne was the last of the Stuart line because she died without any surviving children, despite having been pregnant seventeen times.

30 Your, in Tours : TES

Tours is the largest city in the Centre region of France. Sitting on the Loire river, it is said that the people of Tours speak the “purest” form of French in the whole country. The French spoken by a local is also said to be free of any accent.

32 __ nous : ENTRE

In French, something might perhaps be discussed “entre deux” (between two) or “entre nous” (between us).

36 Slugger Sammy : SOSA

Sammy Sosa was firmly in the public eye in 1998 when he and Mark McGwire were vying to be the first to surpass the home run record held by Roger Maris. McGwire fell out of public favor due to stories of steroid abuse (stories which he later admitted were true) while Sosa fell out of favor when he was found to be using a corked bat in a 2003 game.

38 Ger. neighbor : AUS

The name “Austria” is a Latin variant of the German name for the country, “Österreich”. “Österreich” itself means “Eastern borderlands”, a reference to the country’s history as a prefecture of neighboring Bavaria to the west.

39 Nashville sch. : TSU

Tennessee State University (TSU) was established in 1912 in Nashville. It was founded as the Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School, and was originally intended as a school for African Americans. There was a court-ordered merger in 1979 with the traditionally white University of Tennessee at Nashville.

40 ID on a Barnes & Noble buy : ISBN

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was invented by one Gordon Foster who was a professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. The code was originally developed for booksellers, so that they had a unique number (and now a barcode) for each publication. ISBNs are ten digits long if assigned before 2007. Since the start of 2007, ISBNs have been thirteen digits long.

Barnes & Noble (B&N) is the oldest retailer of books in the US. The company started out in the book-printing business in 1873 and opened its first true bookstore in 1917, in New York City.

45 Baseball analyst Hershiser : OREL

Orel Hershiser is big into poker now that he has retired from Major League Baseball. Hershiser lives in Las Vegas and when he isn’t working for ESPN, apparently he is at the poker tables, playing professionally. When Hershiser is eliminated in a poker tournament, he is in the habit of presenting the person who ousts him with an autographed baseball.

49 Nickname for the Canadian $2 coin : TOONIE

“Toonie” is the familiar name for a two-dollar coin in Canada. The toonie was introduced in 1996, and gets its familiar name from the one-dollar coin known as a “loonie”.

56 Art Deco icon : ERTE

“Erté” was the pseudonym of French (Russian-born) artist and designer Romain de Tirtoff. “Erté” is the French pronunciation of his initials “R.T.” Erté’s diverse portfolio of work included costumes and sets for the “Ziegfeld Follies” of 1923, productions of the Parisian cabaret show “Folies Bergère”, as well as the 1925 epic movie “Ben-Hur”. Erté’s most famous work by far is an image titled “Symphony in Black”. It depicts a tall and slender woman dressed in black, holding a black dog on a leash.

59 Brief “I would say … ” : IMO …

In my opinion (IMO)

61 Msg. from a pulpit : SER

A pulpit is a platform in a church from which a sermon is delivered by a preacher. The term comes from the Latin “pulpitum” meaning “scaffold, stage, platform for actors”. “Pulpit” can also be used figuratively, to describe the clerical profession generally.