Category: Zachary David Levy

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Constructed by: Zachary David Levy
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Turn the Tide

Themed answers each include “TIDE” as a hidden word, but with the order of the letters TURNED around:

• 60A Stage a comeback, or an apt title for this puzzle : TURN THE TIDE

• 17A Playful tune : LITTLE DITTY
• 27A Threw in the towel : CALLED IT QUITS
• 46A Roadside channel for water runoff : DRAINAGE DITCH

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

Bill’s time: 5m 18s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 “I’ve been here before” feeling : DEJA VU

“Déjà vu” is French for “already seen”.

14 Some dome-topped venues : ARENAS

Our term “arena” comes from the Latin “harena”, describing a place of combat. Originally “harena” was used for sand or a sandy place. Those Ancient Roman places of combat were covered with sand to soak up blood.

15 Roger’s rival, familiarly : RAFA

Rafael Nadal is considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, and he has some superstitions that help him focus on winning. For example, he has a unique pre-match ritual in which he arranges his water bottles in a very specific way. He always places them in a straight line with the labels facing the court, and he adjusts them so that they are perfectly aligned.

Roger Federer is a Swiss tennis player considered by many to be the greatest tennis player of all time. Federer is married to former tennis pro Mirka Vavrinec. The couple are parents to two sets of twins.

19 Half a score : TEN

Our verb “to score” meaning “to tally”, comes from the Old Norse “skor”, which is a “mark, notch”. It is likely that items such as livestock were counted by placing a notch in a stick for each set of twenty, hence our use of the noun “score” to mean “twenty”.

20 Low USN rank : ENS

Ensign is (usually) the most junior rank of commissioned officer in the armed forces. The name comes from the tradition that the junior officer would be given the task of carrying the ensign flag.

26 Proper conduct, in Hinduism : DHARMA

In the Hindu tradition, the term “dharma” describes the laws of the natural universe. The observance of those laws enables one to be content and happy, and to avoid suffering.

27 Threw in the towel : CALLED IT QUITS

The expression “to throw in the towel” means “to give up”, and comes from the world of boxing. In boxing, when someone in the corner feels that a fight needs to be stopped, he or she throws a towel into the ring and accepts the loss. Back in the 1700s, it wasn’t a towel that was thrown into the ring, but rather a sponge.

31 Ooze, as charm : EXUDE

To exude is to ooze out, or to display conspicuously. “To exude” comes from the Latin verb “exudare” meaning “to ooze out like sweat” (from “ex-” meaning “out” and “sudor” meaning “sweat”).

39 Based on deduction instead of experience : A PRIORI

In the world of philosophy, one can have “a priori” knowledge or “a posteriori” knowledge. A priori (“from the earlier”) knowledge is independent of experience, it is just known or assumed. For example, one might say that “all boys are males” is a priori knowledge. A posteriori knowledge relies on experience or some empirical evidence. For example, one might say that “boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADD” is a posteriori knowledge.

42 Two-time Super Bowl MVP Manning : ELI

Eli Manning is a retired footballer who played quarterback for the New York Giants. Eli’s brother Peyton Manning retired from football as the quarterback for the Denver Broncos in 2015. Eli and Peyton’s father is Archie Manning, who was also a successful NFL quarterback. Eli, Peyton and Archie co-authored a book for children titled “Family Huddle” in 2009. It describes the Mannings playing football together as young boys.

45 Elba of “The Wire” : IDRIS

English actor Idris Elba played the drug lord Stringer Bell in the marvelous HBO drama series “The Wire”, and played the title character in the 2013 film “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”. Off the screen, Elba occasionally appears as a disk jockey using the name “DJ Big Driis”.

I didn’t watch the HBO series called “The Wire” when it first aired. We ended up buying all five series on DVD and we watched the whole thing several years ago. It is a great drama series, and I thoroughly recommend it.

54 Threshold : VERGE

Years ago I was taking a tour of a beautiful Elizabethan manor house in England, and was told a little “threshing” story by the guide as we stood in one of the rooms. She reminded us that threshing was the removal of seeds from chaff, and told us that back in the day the “chaff” was sometimes called the “thresh”. Thresh would be used on the floors, particularly in the kitchen areas where it would soak up spills and provide some thermal insulation, much as sawdust was used in my favorite pubs many moons ago. She pointed to two slots at the bottom of the door jambs where she said a low board was placed upright on the floor, to “hold” the “thresh” in the room. The board was called a “thresh-hold”, giving us our contemporary word “threshold”. I am not sure if all of that is really true, but it makes a nice story …

55 Kristen who was on “SNL” from 2005 to 2012 : WIIG

Kristen Wiig is a comic actress who appears on “Saturday Night Live”. She also made an appearance on the first season of Spike TV’s quirky “The Joe Schmo Show”, playing “Dr. Pat”. More recently, she co-wrote and starred in the 2011 hit film “Bridesmaids”, and co-starred in the 2016 reboot of “Ghostbusters”.

56 Henson who created the Muppets : JIM

Jim Henson was a puppeteer, and most famously the creator of the Muppets characters. Henson produced his first puppets for a local television station in Hyattsville, Maryland while he was still in high school. As well as the famous Muppet characters, Henson created, operated and voiced the character Yoda in most of the “Star Wars” movies. Henson died from a streptococcal infection in 1990, on the same day that Sammy Davis, Jr. passed away.

66 Immune system components : T CELLS

T cells are a group of white blood cells that are essential components of the body’s immune system. T cells are so called because they mature in the thymus, a specialized organ found in the chest.

68 Sugar source : CANE

When sugarcane is processed to extract sugar, it is crushed and mashed to produce a juice. The juice is boiled to make a sugary concentrate called cane syrup, from which sugar crystals are extracted. A second boiling of the leftover syrup produces second molasses, from which more sugar crystals can be extracted. A third boiling results in what is called blackstrap molasses.

Down

2 “__ go bragh!” : ERIN

“Erin go bragh!” is an anglicization of the Irish phrase “Éirinn go brách!”, which translates as “Ireland forever!”

3 New York NFLers : JETS

Just like the New York Giants, the New York Jets are based in New Jersey, headquartered in Florham Park. The Jets and the Giants have a unique arrangement in the NFL in that the two teams share Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Jets were an AFL charter team, formed in 1959 as the Titans of New York. The Titans changed their name to the Jets in 1963.

5 Kilmer of “Top Gun: Maverick” : VAL

Val Kilmer’s first big leading role in a movie was playing Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic “The Doors”. A few years later, Kilmer was chosen for the lead in another big production, “Batman Forever”. Things haven’t really gone as well for Kilmer since then, I’d say. Off the screen, he flirted with the idea of running for Governor of New Mexico in 2010. A Hollywood actor as a governor? Would never happen …

2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” is the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 film “Top Gun”. Tom Cruise reprises his role as the navy pilot with the handle “Maverick”, this time training a group of younger Top Gun graduates to fly a dangerous mission. Personally, I think that the sequel is better than the original.

7 Flowering shrubs used as border hedges : PRIVETS

Flowering plants in the genus Ligustrum are generally referred to as privets. Privets are often used to create ornamental and privacy hedges.

9 Toward the tiller : AFT

A rudder is usually a flat sheet of wood or metal located at the stern of a boat, and under the waterline. The rudder is attached to a rudder post, which rotates to change the orientation of the rudder hence steering the boat. That rotation of the rudder post can be achieved by pulling or pushing a lever called a tiller, which is located at the top of the post.

11 Wakeboarding, for one : WATERSPORT

A wakeboard is board with foot bindings on which a rider is towed behind a motorboat. The idea is to use the board to cross the wake, and hopefully lift off the crest of the wake to “get some air”.

12 Mr. T’s squad : A-TEAM

“The A-Team” is an action television series that originally ran in the eighties. The A-Team was a group of ex-US special forces personnel who became mercenaries. Star of the show was Hollywood actor George Peppard (as “Hannibal” Smith), ably assisted by Mr. T (as “B.A.” Baracus) and Robert Vaughn (as Hunt Stockwell).

13 Maxwell House decaf brand : SANKA

The first successful process for removing caffeine from coffee involved steaming the beans in salt water, and then extracting the caffeine using benzene (a potent carcinogen) as a solvent. Coffee processed this way was sold as Sanka here in the US. There are other processes used these days, and let’s hope they are safer …

Maxwell House is a brand of coffee owned by Kraft Foods. The brand took its name from an old and prominent hotel in Nashville, Tennessee called the Maxwell House Hotel. President Theodore Roosevelt stayed in the Maxwell House Hotel and commented once that coffee he drank there was “good to the last drop”. “Good to the last drop” was used as an advertising slogan for Maxwell House coffee for many years.

18 Singer Lovato : DEMI

Pop and R&B singer Demi Lovato started her performing career as a child actress, playing Angela on the kids TV show “Barney & Friends” from 2002 to 2004. When she was all grown up, Levato served as a judge on “The X Factor” from 2012 to 2013, and soon after had the recurring role of Dani on “Glee”.

24 Big name in footwear : ALDO

ALDO is a chain of shoe stores that was founded in Montreal in 1972 by Moroccan-born Canadian Aldo Bensadoun. Bensadoun is the son of a retailer of shoes in Morocco and France, and the grandchild of a cobbler. A man with shoe leather in his blood …

28 Figure skater’s jump : AXEL

An axel is a forward take-off jump in figure skating. The maneuver was first performed by Norwegian Axel Paulsen at the 1882 World Figure Skating championships.

29 Certain state of awareness while sleeping : LUCID DREAM

A lucid dream is a dream in which the person dreaming becomes aware that he or she is dreaming.

30 Sine __ non : QUA

“Sine qua non” is a Latin phrase that we use to mean “the essential element or condition”. The literal translation is “without which not”. One might say, for example, “a challenging crossword is the sine qua non of a good newspaper”. Well, crossword fans might say that …

34 Writer/illustrator Carle : ERIC

Eric Carle is a very successful children’s author and book illustrator, with over 100 million of his books sold around the world. Carle’s most famous title is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, and it alone has sold 30 million copies.

35 Genie’s offering : WISH

The “genie” in the bottle (or lamp) takes his or her name from “djinn”. “Djinns” were various spirits considered lesser than angels, with people exhibiting unsavory characteristics said to be possessed by djinn. When the book “The Thousand and One Nights” was translated into French, the word “djinn” was transformed into the existing word “génie”, because of the similarity in sound and the related spiritual meaning. This “génie” from the Arabian tale became confused with the Latin-derived “genius”, a guardian spirit thought to be assigned to each person at birth. Purely as a result of that mistranslation the word genie has come to mean the “djinn” that pops out of the bottle. A little hard to follow, I know, but still quite interesting …

37 Lake near the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame : ERIE

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can be visited on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created in 1983 and started inducting artists in 1986. The Foundation didn’t get a home until the museum was dedicated in Cleveland in 1995. I had the great privilege of visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame some years ago and really enjoyed myself. The magnificent building was designed by famed architect I. M. Pei.

38 Karate skill level : DAN

The dan ranking system is used in several Japanese and Korean martial arts. The ranking indicates a level of proficiency, and often only applies to practitioners who have already earned a black belt.

44 Afternoon show : MATINEE

“Matinée” is a French word used to describe a musical entertainment held during the daytime. “Matinée” is derived from the word “matin”, meaning “morning”, although here the term is used in the sense of “daylight”.

48 Like pickling liquid : ACETIC

Acetic acid has the formula CH₃COOH, and is the main component of vinegar.

49 Moxie : GRIT

Back as far as 1876, Moxie was a brand name of a “medicine” peddled with the claim that it “built up your nerve”. In 1924, “Moxie” was registered as a trademark for a bitter, non-alcoholic beverage (no more claims of nerve-building). We’ve used the term “moxie” to mean “nerve” ever since …

52 Writer Zora __ Hurston : NEALE

Zora Neale Hurston was an American author who was most famous for her 1937 novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”.

55 Small songbird : WREN

The wren is a small songbird belonging to the family troglodytidae and the genus troglodytes. Wrens are known for making dome-shaped nests.

56 Leave at the altar : JILT

To jilt someone with whom you have a relationship is to drop them suddenly or callously. “Jilt” is an obsolete noun that used to mean “harlot, loose woman”.

58 City outside Phoenix : MESA

The city of Mesa, Arizona is in effect a suburb of Phoenix. The original settlement of non-Native Americans was founded by Daniel Webster Jones who led a Mormon group from St. George, Utah. The settlement was first called Jonesville, then Fort Utah and eventually Lehi. A second group of Mormons arrived and formed a settlement on top of a nearby mesa. It was this use of a mesa that eventually gave the city its current name.

61 Can. neighbor : USA

The US-Canada border is the longest international border in the world. The total length is 5,525 miles. Canada’s border with the lower 48 states is 3,987 miles long, and the border with Alaska extends 1,538 miles.