Category: Sala Wanetick

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Constructed by: Sala Wanetick

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Talking Shop

Themed answers all might be described as TALKING SHOPS, places dedicated to TALKING:

• 62A Discussing business, or a punny description of the answer to each starred clue : TALKING SHOP

• 17A *Place to take an oral exam : LANGUAGE LAB
• 24A *Program that hones public speaking skills : DEBATE CAMP
• 38A *Spot for a “Good Hang” recording, say : PODCAST STUDIO
• 53A *Destination after speaking to a bot, perhaps : CALL CENTER

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

Bill’s time: 8m 25s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A One of the Musketeers : ATHOS

Alexandre Dumas’ “Three Musketeers” are Athos, Porthos and Aramis, although the hero of the novel is the trio’s young protégé D’Artagnan. A musketeer was an infantry soldier who was equipped with a musket. Funnily enough, the three “musketeers” really don’t use their muskets, and are better known for prowess with their swords.

10A Old Prizm maker : GEO

Geos were small vehicles manufactured by General Motors, mainly in the nineties. They were designed to compete head-to-head with the small imports that were gaining market share at the time in the US. Some Geo models that you might remember are the Metro, the Prizm and the Storm. The cars were actually built as joint-ventures with Japanese manufacturers. The Prizm was a GM/Toyota project, the Metro was GM/Suzuki, and the Storm was GM/Isuzu.

20A Toronto’s province : ONTARIO

The city of Toronto was originally established as York in 1793 by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, who named it after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. It was incorporated and renamed Toronto in 1834. The name “Toronto” is believed to be of Indigenous origin, likely from Iroquoian words meaning “place where trees stand in the water” or “meeting place.”

23A Obama-era legislation, for short : ACA

The correct name for what has been dubbed “Obamacare” is the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (ACA).

28A Béret spot : TETE

In French, on one’s “tête” (head), one might wear “un chapeau” (a hat) or perhaps “un béret” (a beret).

31A Soul singer Redding : OTIS

Otis Redding is often referred to as the “King of Soul”, and what a voice he had. Like so many of the greats in the world of popular music it seems, Redding was killed in a plane crash, in 1967 when he was just 26 years old. Just three days earlier he had recorded what was to be his biggest hit, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay”.

34A Basilica recess : APSE

In its modern usage, the term “basilica” applies to a Roman Catholic church that has been given special ceremonial rights by the Pope.

37A Letters that may end with a bang? : TNT

Trinitrotoluene (TNT)

38A *Spot for a “Good Hang” recording, say : PODCAST STUDIO

Good Hang with Amy Poehler is a podcast that the comedian launched in 2025. It is basically an online talk show in which Poehler converses with guests from the entertainment industry, in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. In 2025, Good Hang won the first ever Golden Globe for Best Podcast.

42A Track that fills the dance floor : BOP

“Bop” is a shortened form of “bebop”, the name of a jazz style that dates back to the early 1940s. “Bebop” probably came from “Arriba! Arriba!”, which were words of encouragement uttered by Latin-American bandleaders to their musicians.

47A Diaper bag item : WIPE

“Diaper” is another word that I had to learn when I moved to America. What are called “diapers” over here, we call “nappies” back in Ireland. The term “diaper” is actually the original term that was used in England for the garment, where “diaper” referred to the cloth that was used. The term “diaper” was brought to the New World where it stuck. Back in Britain, “diaper” was displaced by the word “nappy”, a diminutive of “napkin”.

53A *Destination after speaking to a bot, perhaps : CALL CENTER

A bot is a computer program designed to imitate human behavior. It might crawl around the Web doing searches for example, or it might participate in discussions in chat rooms by giving pre-programmed responses. It might also act as a competitor in a computer game.

58A Breakfast spot : DINETTE

Since the 1930s, a dinette has been a small dining space usually located off a kitchen, or the table and seating filling that space. Before the thirties, “dinette” was a term meaning “lunch, preliminary dinner”.

61A Freight unit : TON

Here in the US, a ton is equivalent to 2,000 pounds. In the UK, a ton is 2,240 pounds. The UK unit is sometimes referred to as an Imperial ton, long ton or gross ton. Folks over there refer to the US ton then as a short ton. To further complicate matters, there is also a metric ton or tonne, which is equivalent to 2,204 pounds. Personally, I wish we’d just stick to kilograms …

65A Editorial “Wasn’t me!” : SIC

[Sic] indicates that a quotation is written as originally found, perhaps including a typo. “Sic” is Latin for “thus, like this”. The term is more completely written as “sic erat scriptum”, which translates as “thus was it written”.

67A Angler’s exclamation : GOT ONE!

We use the verb “to angle” to mean “to fish” because “angel” is an Old English word meaning “hook”.

68A “__ to the Mets”: The Strokes song : ODE

The Strokes are a rock band that formed in 1998 in New York City. There are five band members in all, who met while attending elite prep schools in Manhattan and Switzerland.

69A Gobsmack : STUN

“Gobsmack” is slang from Britain and Ireland. “Gob” is also slang for “mouth”. So someone who is gobsmacked has received a smack in the “mouth”, is stunned.

70A Philosopher Kierkegaard : SOREN

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and theologian, and I’ve never really understood anything that he wrote!

Down

2D EDM genre with hypnotic melodies : TRANCE

Electronic dance music (EDM)

4D Aunt in Pixar’s “Elio” : OLGA

“Elio” is a 2025 animated film about an 11-year-old boy named Elio who is mistakenly beamed up to an intergalactic “Communiverse” and forced to fake his way through being Earth’s official ambassador.

9D Color technique for hair and nails : OMBRE

The adjective “ombré” describes a color or tone that is a blend of one into another. “Ombré” is French for “shaded”. A softer and more gradual shading of one color into the other is referred to as “sombré”.

10D “The Holdovers” actor Paul : GIAMATTI

Paul Giamatti is a favorite actor of mine, with notable performances in the 2004 movie “Sideways”, the TV series “Billions”, and the excellent historic miniseries “John Adams”. One quirky fact about Giamatti is that he is the subject of the “Wax Paul Now” campaign, a viral movement that is pushing for the actor to get a wax statue in his likeness in Madame Tussauds.

2023’s “The Holdovers” is an engrossing film set in the winter of 1970 at a New England prep school. The central character, played ably by Paul Giamatti, is a curmudgeonly classics instructor who is forced to chaperone the students left behind during the Christmas break. He forms a bond with two other lonely souls: a deeply troubled student and the school’s grieving head cook who recently lost her son in the Vietnam War.

11D Classic Chevy : EL CAMINO

The El Camino is a coupe utility hybrid vehicle that Chevrolet introduced in 1959. It is basically a station wagon that has been modified to carry 1,100+ pounds on a cargo bed.

26D North African cobras : ASPS

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.

29D Ramadan ender : EID

Eid al-Fitr is a religious holiday in the Muslim tradition that is known in English as the “Festival of Breaking the Fast”. It marks the end of Ramadan, a period of dawn-to-sunset fasting.

33D Rock’s __ Soundsystem : LCD

LCD Soundsystem is a rock band from New York City that was founded in 2001. The “LCD” initialism is a play on “liquid crystal display”, and actually stands for Liquid Christmas Display. It is a reference to one of the band’s early gigs at a Christmas party in which they performed cover versions of songs by Liquid Liquid.

36D Italy’s cont. : EUR

Italy is a European country that has many unique distinctions. One is that it completely engulfs two independent microstates within its borders: San Marino and Vatican City.

38D Photo that might be shaken : POLAROID

Polaroid cameras are instant cameras that were first introduced by the Polaroid Corporation in 1948. They can produce a physical print of a photograph within seconds of taking the picture with self-developing film that contains all the chemicals needed to produce a finished photograph.

41D Beaver-built structure : DAM

Beavers build dams so that they can live in and around the slower and deeper water that builds up above the dam. This deeper water provides more protection for the beavers from predators such as bears. They are nocturnal animals and do all their construction work at night.

42D “The Graham Norton Show” airer : BBC

Graham Norton is an Irish comedian, actor and television host who is based in the UK. He is best known perhaps for his chat show “The Graham Norton Show” that started airing in 2007. Fans of the sitcom “Father Ted” might remember him playing the character named Father Noel Furlong.

59D CARE and WWF : NGOS

Non-governmental organization (NGO)

The humanitarian agency CARE was founded in 1945 as the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe. It was this agency who introduced the original “CARE package”, a carton of food aid delivered to individuals. Since 1993, the acronym CARE has been standing for “Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere”.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was founded in 1961. Its mission is …

… to stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.

63D Tiger Stadium sch. : LSU

Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium goes by the intimidating nickname “Death Valley”. This evolved from the original moniker “Deaf Valley”, a reference to its ear-splitting crowd noise. During the famous 1988 “Earthquake Game” against Auburn, the cheers following a game-winning LSU touchdown was recorded as an actual seismic event on a seismograph located in the campus geoscience complex.

64D Filmmaker Burns : KEN

Ken Burns directs and produces epic documentary films that usually make inventive use of archive footage. Recent works are the sensational “The War” (about the US in WWII) and the magnificent “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”, as well as 2014’s “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History”. Burns’ 2017 offering was “The Vietnam War”, which he co-directed with Lynn Novick.