Tag: All excited crossword clue

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Constructed by: Will Nediger & Beth Rubin

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: Opposite Day

Themed answers each contain a pair of words hidden within that CONTRADICT each other, that are OPPOSITES:

• 100A Oxymoron, or what can be found five times in this puzzle : CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

• 26A Took unnecessary risks, in a British idiom : SAILED CLOSE TO THE WIND (lose & win)
• 43A Backup for a proofreader, perhaps : ANOTHER PAIR OF EYES (no & yes)
• 58A Grow increasingly recalcitrant : BECOME UNGOVERNABLE (come & go)
• 70A Suffer public humiliation : FALL FLAT ON ONE‘S FACE (all & none)
• 85A 2010 animated film featuring Princess Fiona : SHREK FOREVER AFTER (fore & aft)

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

Bill’s time: 14m 19s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6A Creature in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” : DODO

The Dodo is a character who appears early in Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. It is thought that the Dodo is a caricature of the author himself, as both author and character have a stutter.

14A Supermodel Kate : MOSS

Kate Moss is an English supermodel. Moss is reported to have earned $9 million for her work in 2007. In 2008, a gold statue valued at almost $3 million was made of Moss for an exhibition in the British Museum. It is thought that the work is the largest gold statue to have been produced since those made by the ancient Egyptians.

18A Old Renault : LE CAR

French automaker Renault made the “mini-like” Renault 5 and sold it as the Renault Le Car in North America. My Dad had a Renault 5 in Ireland, back in the day …

20A Penny : CENT

The official name of our smallest denomination coin is “cent”, and our use of the word “penny” is just a colloquialism derived from the British coin of the same name. In the UK, the plural of penny is “pence”, whereas we have “pennies” in our pockets in the US.

23A Mandala medium, often : SAND

The sand mandala is a beautiful creation made with colored sand in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Mandalas are elaborate designs created by monks over many, many hours. Once the design is completed it is immediately destroyed, symbolizing the transitory nature of material life.

32A Asian language : LAO

Lao, the language of Laos, does not use spaces between words (or periods!), although this is apparently changing. Spaces are used between sentences and clauses.

33A Handel oratorio : MESSIAH

“Messiah” is a famous oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel that was first performed in Dublin, Ireland in 1742. The libretto is a text from the King James Bible that was compiled by Handel’s friend Charles Jennens. Not long after he received the libretto from Jennens, Handel took just 24 days to compose the full oratorio. He was obviously on a roll, because Handel started into his next oratorio, “Samson”, just one week after finishing “Messiah”. He completed the first draft of “Samson” within a month.

42A Ginger __ : ALE

The brand most closely associated with ginger ale is Canada Dry. “Canada Dry Pale Ginger Ale” was first formulated in 1904 by a Canadian chemist called John McLaughlin from Ontario. Prohibition in the United States helped sales of the drink as it was particularly effective in masking the taste of illegally-produced, homemade liquor.

46A Lightweight fabric : LINEN

The textile known as linen is made from flax fibers. The name “linen” probably comes from “linum”, which is Latin for both “flax” and “textile made from flax”.

49A “C’est la __!” : VIE

“C’est la vie” is French for “that’s life”.

50A Trolley car : TRAM

Trams were a common form of transport in London starting with horse-drawn versions in 1860. They were gradually replaced by diesel buses after WWII, with the last tram running in 1952. Even though trams disappeared in the early fifties, many of the rails that carried the trams remained in some streets for many years afterwards (I remember them well, as a child). A new generation of tram, a so-called light-rail system, was introduced in London in 2000.

52A Pres. on a dime : FDR

President Roosevelt was a major driver in the founding of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. The Foundation’s most successful fundraising campaign was to encourage the public to just send a dime to support the charity, so that even before the Foundation officially changed its name, the public were already calling it March of Dimes. After President Roosevelt passed away in office, Congress passed legislation calling for a new design for the dime, one featuring the image of FDR. The Roosevelt dime was introduced in 1946, on the day that would have been the President’s 64th birthday.

53A Imrie of “The Thursday Murder Club” : CELIA

English actress Celia Imrie has had a long and successful career, particularly in the UK. On this side of the pond, she is perhaps best known for her film roles, in movies like “Calendar Girls”, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”, “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” and “The Thursday Murder Club”. Sci-fi fans might know her for portraying the stoic Naboo fighter pilot Bravo 5 in ”Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace”.

63A 2028 Olympics host: Abbr. : USA

The 2028 Summer Olympic Games was awarded to Los Angeles in 2017. LA previously hosted in 1932 and 1984. The only other three-time host cities are London and Paris.

64A “The Fresh Prince of __-Air” : BEL

“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” sitcom originally ran from 1990 to 1996. It starred Will Smith as a teenager from Philadelphia who arrives in Bel Air to live in a mansion with his wealthy aunt and uncle.

65A __ acid : AMINO

There are 20 different types of amino acids that make up proteins. However, only 11 of them can be synthesized by the human body, while the remaining nine essential amino acids must be obtained from food sources.

66A Apology starter : MEA

Many Roman Catholics are very familiar with the Latin phrase “mea culpa” meaning “my fault”, as it is used in the Latin Mass. The additional term “mea maxima culpa” translates as “my most grievous fault”.

67A Male swan : COB

An adult male swan is a cob and an adult female is a pen. Young swans are swanlings or cygnets.

74A 2024 Olympics host : PARIS

When Paris hosted the Summer Olympics in 2024, it became only the second city to host the Olympics three times (London hosted in 1908, 1948 and 2012).

77A Newark’s county : ESSEX

Essex County, New Jersey is actually in the New York Metropolitan Area. The county seat is Newark.

What is now the city of Newark, New Jersey was settled in 1666 by puritans from the New Haven Colony. It is thought that the settlement was named for one of the towns named Newark in England, either Newark-on-Trent in Yorkshire or Newark in Nottinghamshire.

81A Org. nicknamed “No Such Agency” : NSA

The NSA traces its roots to the Cipher Bureau, the nation’s first peacetime code-breaking unit. It was established in 1917 and also known as the “Black Chamber”. Secretary of State Henry Stimson famously shuttered the bureau in 1929, asserting that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail”, which is a tad ironic given the agency’s massive modern scale. Today, the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States.

85A 2010 animated film featuring Princess Fiona : SHREK FOREVER AFTER

2010’s “Shrek Forever After” is the fourth installment of the “Shrek” franchise of films that are loosely based on the 1990 children’s picture book “Shrek!” by William Steig.

92A Singer __ King Cole : NAT

Nat King Cole’s real name was Nathaniel Adams Coles. Cole made television history in 1956 when his own show debuted on NBC, a first for an African-American. Cole couldn’t pick up a national sponsor, so in order to save money and possibly save the show, many guest artists worked for no fee at all – the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte and Peggy Lee. The show survived for a year, but eventually Nat King Cole had to pull the plug on it himself.

93A Game for little batters : TEE-BALL

Although there seems to be some dispute about who invented tee-ball, the game did emerge in the 1950s.

94A Hazardous gas : RADON

The element radon (Rn) is a radioactive gas, and a byproduct produced when uranium decays naturally in the earth. Radon gas can collect and accumulate in buildings and rooms that are particularly well insulated with very little air exchange. The danger is very real, as radon is listed as the second most frequent cause of lung cancer after cigarette smoke.

98A OB test : AMNIO

Amniocentesis (“amnio” for short) is the prenatal test which involves the removal of a small amount of the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus using a hypodermic needle. The fluid naturally contains some fetal cells, the DNA of which can then be tested to determine the sex of the child and to check for the presence of genetic abnormalities.

99A Reuben sandwich bread : RYE

There are conflicting stories about the origin of the Reuben sandwich. One such story is that it was invented around 1914 by Arnold Reuben, an immigrant from Germany who owned Reuben’s Deli in New York.

100A Oxymoron, or what can be found five times in this puzzle : CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

The word “oxymoron” is in itself an oxymoron. It is derived from the Greek words “Oxys” and “moros” meaning “sharp” and “stupid” respectively.

109A __ of paradise : BIRD

Birds of paradise form a family of birds that are noted for the elaborate plumage of the males of most species. Most are found in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia, and usually in dense rainforest habitats.

116A Mother-of-pearl : NACRE

Nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, is the strong iridescent material laid down by some mollusks on the inside of their shells, and it’s also what makes up pearls. The creature lays down nacre as a defensive mechanism, protecting the soft tissue of its body from the rough surface of the outer shell. Similarly, it uses nacre to encapsulate harmful debris or a parasite that penetrates the shell, and that’s how a pearl is formed. Cultured pearls are made by inserting a tissue graft from a donor oyster, around which the nacre is laid down.

120A Woolen cloth : TWEED

Tweed is a rough woolen fabric that is very much associated with Scotland in the UK, and with County Donegal in Ireland. The cloth was originally called “tweel”, the Scots word for “twill”. Apparently a London merchant misinterpreted some handwriting in the early 1800s and assumed the fabric was called “tweed”, a reference to the Scottish River Tweed, and the name stuck …

Down

2D Singer and civil rights activist Horne : LENA

Lena Horne was an American jazz singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne started her career as a nightclub singer and then began to get some meaty acting roles in Hollywood. However, she ended up on the blacklist during the McCarthy Era for expressing left wing political views. One of Horne’s starring roles was in the 1943 movie “Stormy Weather” for which she also performed the title song.

3D Palm berry : ACAI

Açaí (pronounced “ass-aye-ee”) is a palm tree native to Central and South America. The fruit has become very popular in recent years and its juice is a very fashionable addition to juice mixes and smoothies.

4D City where pizza was invented : NAPLES

Pizza was invented in Naples, where it has a long tradition that goes back to ancient Rome. During an 1889 visit to Naples, Queen Margherita of Savoy was served a special pizza that was created with toppings designed to mimic the colors of the Italian flag. The ingredients of tomato (red), mozzarella (white) and basil (green) can still be found together on menus today, on a pie usually named Pizza Margherita after the queen. I do love basil on my pizza …

5D __ well : ARTESIAN

An artesian well is one that is drilled into an artesian aquifer. As the groundwater in the aquifer is under positive pressure, the water in the well rises without having to be pumped.

6D Frisbee, e.g. : DISC

The Frisbee concept started back in 1938 with a couple who had an upturned cake pan that they were tossing between each other on Santa Monica Beach in California. They were offered 25 cents for the pan on the spot, and as pans could be bought for 5 cents, the pair figured there was a living to be earned.

7D Birthstone between sapphire and topaz : OPAL

The largest opal ever found, and the most valuable, is the Olympic Australis. It was discovered in South Australia in 1956. That same year, the Summer Olympics were being held in Melbourne so the newly discovered stone was given the name “Olympic Australis”.

8D Paul who played twins in “There Will Be Blood” : DANO

Paul Dano is an actor and musician from New York City. I best know him for playing Brian Wilson in “Love & Mercy”, a fascinating film about the Beach Boys.

“There Will Be Blood” is a 2007 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis. The movie is based (loosely) on the 1927 novel by Upton Sinclair called “Oil!”

10D Annabella of “Tulsa King” : SCIORRA

Actress Annabella Sciorra played Tony Soprano’s lover on HBO’s “The Sopranos”. I also remember Sciorra as the tormented mother in “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle”.

“Tulsa King” is a comedy-crime drama show that stars veteran action icon Sylvester Stallone headlining a scripted television series for the very first time in his fifty-year career. Stallone plays Dwight “The General” Manfredi, a Mafia capo who is exiled to Oklahoma to establish new criminal operations after serving twenty-five years in prison.

11D __ cloth: Ghanaian textile : KENTE

Kente is a textile from Ghana made of silk and cotton. The fibers used are very colorful, and the resulting pattern has a basket-like appearance. The name of the textile comes from the Asante dialect word “kenten” meaning “basket”.

14D Figure that comes with strings attached : MARIONETTE

A marionette is a type of puppet, one that is controlled from above by a series of strings or wires. The term “marionette” is French for “little, little Mary” and is probably a reference to one of the first such puppets, which depicted the Virgin Mary.

24D Small porch : STOOP

A stoop is a raised platform at the door of a house. “Stoop” came into American and Canadian English in the mid-1700s from the Dutch “stoep” meaning “flight of steps”.

33D Beach city near Pepperdine : MALIBU

Malibu is a beach city in Southern California that is known as home to many Hollywood movie stars. It is also home to several beaches including Malibu Surfrider Beach, which was dedicated in 2010 as the first World Surfing Reserve.

Pepperdine University is a private school located near Malibu in Los Angeles County. It was founded in 1937 in the city of Los Angeles during the Great Depression as a Christian liberal arts college by philanthropist George Pepperdine. Pepperdine had made his fortune selling auto parts.

35D __ Falls Convention : SENECA

The National Women’s Hall of Fame is located in Seneca Falls, New York, which was home to the nation’s first women’s rights convention, in 1848. The Hall was established in 1969, when it was hosted by Eisenhower College, which is also in Seneca Falls. The current facility opened for visitors in 1979. I was lucky enough to spend a very uplifting afternoon there several years ago ….

37D Soup often garnished with bean sprouts : PHO

Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is a noodle soup from Vietnam that is a popular street food, and the nation’s unofficial national dish. It is often ordered with a side of hanh dam, pickled white onions.

38D Nev. neighbor : ARI

I’m guessing that the most interesting place to visit on the Arizona-Nevada state line is the Hoover Dam. The border runs right through the center of the massive concrete structure, and the dam’s powerhouse. If you walk across the top of the dam, you’ll encounter two large outdoor clocks displaying the time zones of each state: Pacific Time for Nevada and Mountain Time for Arizona. Because Arizona rejects Daylight Saving Time, these two clocks display the exact same hour for only half the year. To ensure safety, the dam’s workforce officially operates strictly on Nevada’s Pacific Time year-round.

39D Wrap with tzatziki : GYRO

A gyro is a traditional Greek dish of meat roasted on a tall vertical spit that is sliced from the spit as required. Gyros are usually served inside a lightly grilled piece of pita bread, along with tomato, onion and tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber sauce).

41D “Hanna” star Creed-Miles : ESME

Esmé Creed-Miles is an actress from England who is perhaps best known for portraying the title character in the excellent action drama TV show “Hanna”. She is the daughter of fellow English actress Samantha Morton.

The action drama TV show “Hanna” is based on the 2011 movie of the same name. Irish actress Saoirse Ronan plays the title role in the movie, while English actress Esmé Creed-Miles portrays Hanna on TV. Hanna is a young woman who was inducted as an infant into a training program producing super-soldiers. She was rescued by her birth mother’s lover, who raised and trained her on his own. Great stuff …

45D Physiologist Pavlov : IVAN

Ivan Pavlov was studying gastric function in dogs in the 1890s when he observed that his subject dogs started to salivate before he even presented food to them. This “psychic secretion”, as he called it, interested him so much that he changed the direction of his research and studied the reactions of dogs to various stimuli that were associated with the presentation of food. Famously, he discovered that a dog could be conditioned to respond as though he was about to be fed, just by sensing some stimulus that he had come to associate with food. This might be a bell ringing, an electric shock (poor dog!) or perhaps the waving of a hand. Nowadays we might describe someone as “Pavlov’s Dog” if that person responds just the way he/she has been conditioned to respond, rather than applying critical thinking.

55D Massachusetts home of the Tanglewood Music Festival : LENOX

Tanglewood is an estate in Lenox, Massachusetts that is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). The estate takes its name from “Tanglewood Tales” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The author wrote the book in 1853 while staying in a cottage in the area. The owner renamed the cottage after Hawthorne’s work, and the name was then adopted for the nearby estate.

61D Pardon : AMNESTY

A pardon is in effect a demonstration of pity and forgiveness for the crime. Amnesty is absolution while formally forgetting (“amnesty” is related to the term “amnesia”) that the crime took place. Further, a pardon can only be awarded to someone who has been convicted, whereas amnesty can be awarded to individuals who have not yet faced trial.

67D Pointy tooth : CANINE

The canine teeth of a mammal are also called the eyeteeth or cuspids. The name “canine” is used because these particular teeth are very prominent in dogs. The prefix “eye-” is used because in humans the eyeteeth are located in the upper jaw, directly below the eyes.

70D Figure who manipulates flames in a Nickelodeon fantasy series : FIREBENDER

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” is an animated fantasy TV show that aired from 2005 to 2008. The main character is a twelve-year-old monk named Aang, who has the power to bend all four elements: water, earth, fire and air.

72D Villainous Count of kid-lit : OLAF

Count Olaf is the antagonist in “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, the collection of children’s novels penned by Lemony Snicket (the pen name of Daniel Handler).

81D Annual Player Selection Meeting, informally : NFL DRAFT

The first NFL Draft took place in 1936 in Philadelphia with the intention of rescuing financially struggling teams by eliminating costly bidding wars for top college talent. The event is known officially as the Annual Player Selection Meeting.

82D Step on the scale? : SOL

The sol-fa syllables are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la & ti.

83D Largest Chinese ethnic group : HAN

The Han Chinese people are the largest ethnic group in the world, and comprise 18% of the planet’s population. The 1.3 billion Han also make up 92% of China’s population. The group takes its name from the Han dynasty that ruled much of modern day China from roughly 200 BCE to 220 CE.

86D Philosopher Immanuel : KANT

Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher. Kant published “Perpetual Peace” in 1795, laying out what he believed were conditions for ending all wars and creating a lasting peace. The good news for us is that one of these conditions was to have a world full of constitutional republics, so it seems we are on the right track here in the US!

87D Winter stoats : ERMINES

The stoat has dark brown fur in the summer, and white fur in the winter. Sometimes the term “ermine” is used for the animal during the winter when the fur is white. Ermine skins have long been prized by royalty and are often used for white trim on ceremonial robes.

88D “Lovecraft Country” actor Courtney B. __ : VANCE

Actor Courtney B. Vance is perhaps best known for portraying ADA Ron Carver on the TV show “Law & Order: Criminal Intent”, and attorney Johnnie Cochrane on the limited TV series “The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story”. In 1997, Vance married fellow actor Angela Bassett, and in 2019 he was appointed president of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation.

90D Reddish-brown tea : ROOIBOS

Red tea is made from the leaves of the South African rooibos plant. The name “rooibos” translates as “red bush”.

103D Tokarczuk who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature : OLGA

Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018. She also won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her novel “Flights”. Her epic historical novel “The Books of Jacob”, published in 2014, is generally regarded as Tokarczuk’s magnum opus.

104D Onigiri wrapper : NORI

Onigiri is an item from Japanese cuisine, one often served in a bento box. It comprises white rice, usually formed into the shape of a pyramid or cylinder. The rice is wrapped in nori, dried edible seaweed.

108D Toboggan, e.g. : SLED

“Toboggan” came into English from the French Canadian “tabagane”, the name for a long sled with a flat bottom. The French Canadian word is probably from the Algonquian word for a sled, “tobakun”.

109D Texter’s “Just a moment” : BRB

Be right back (brb)