Tag: Cruelty-free target of poaching crossword clue

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Constructed by: Geoffrey Schorkopf & Rafael Musa

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 20m 29s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Chance to refuel after a run : APRES-SKI

“Après-ski” is a French term meaning “after skiing”. It refers to the good times to be had after coming off the slopes.

9A Cruelty-free target of poaching : PEAR

Our verb “to poach”, meaning “to cook in liquid”, comes from the Old French verb “pochier”, meaning “to put into a pocket”. The idea is that the yolk of a “poached” egg is “pocketed” in the egg white.

14A Ncuti who plays the Fifteenth Doctor : GATWA

Ncuti Gatwa is a Rwandan-born Scottish actor whose breakout role was Eric, the gay best friend of the lead character in the excellent comedy-drama TV show “Sex Education”. In 2023, he became the fifteenth incarnation of the Doctor in the iconic BBC sci-fi series “Doctor Who”. That made Gatwa the first Black actor to lead the show, taking over from Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor.

17A Chiang Mai residents : THAIS

Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand and is located about 435 miles north of the capital of Bangkok. The name “Chiang Mai” translates as “new city”.

18A Bath bomb component : EPSOM SALT

The Surrey town of Epsom in England is most famous for its racecourse (Epsom Downs), at which the Epsom Derby is run every year, one of the three races that make up the English Triple Crown. We also come across “Epsom salts” from time to time. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, originally prepared by boiling down mineral waters. Epsom was indeed a spa town at one time. The town is also home to Epsom College, an English “public school” (which actually means “private, and expensive”). One of Epsom’s “old boys” was the Hollywood actor Stewart Granger.

A bath bomb is a molded object that dissolves in bathwater to produce fragrant aromatics. Most bath bombs effervesce as they dissolve. They were invented relatively recently, in 1989 and introduced by Lush Cosmetics in the UK. The primary ingredients in a bath bomb are citric acid and sodium bicarbonate. The addition of water leads to an acid-base reaction creating monosodium citrate (a salt) and carbon dioxide (the bubbles).

21A The Refined Feline purchase, perhaps : CAT TREE

A cat tree (also “cat condo”) is a manufactured structure provided to indoor cats for play, relaxation and sleep. Apparently, an important feature is height, as cats feel more secure lying high up, with an expansive view of their surroundings.

22A Did brunch, say : ATE

Our word “brunch” is a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch”. The term was coined as student slang in Oxford, England in the late 1890s. However, “brunch” described a combined meal closer to the breakfast hour, and the term “blunch” was used for a meal closer to lunchtime.

24A Vicuña kin : ALPACAS

Alpacas are like small llamas, but unlike llamas were never beasts of burden. They were bred specifically for the fleece. As such, there are no known wild alpacas these days, even in their native Peru.

The vicuña is a South American camelid that lives in the Andes. It produces very little wool, and that wool can only be collected every three years. So, vicuña wool is very expensive due to the shortage of supply. And, the vicuña is the national animal of Peru.

29A Spanish for “the gilded one” : EL DORADO

The original El Dorado was a Muisca chief who was covered with gold dust in a tribal ritual and then dove into Lake Guatavita in present-day Colombia. Later, “El Dorado” was adopted as the name for a mythical “Lost City of Gold” that became a quest for many Spanish Conquistadors who explored the Americas.

35A Y as in Yucatan? : AND

In Spanish, “y” is the word for “and”.

The Yucatán Peninsula is located in southeastern Mexico, where it separates the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest from the Caribbean Sea to the southeast.

36A Japanese leader : EMPEROR

The Emperor of Japan is the ceremonial monarch of the nation. The Japanese imperial family is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world. Following the end of World War II, the 1947 constitution transitioned the emperor’s role from a sovereign entity with claimed divine origins to a purely ceremonial “symbol of the State and of the unity of the people”.

38A Deg. from Goizueta : MBA

The Goizueta Business School is the official, degree-granting business institution of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It was established in 1919, and named in 1994 for Roberto Goizueta, CEO of the Coca-Cola Company.

47A Husk-steamed fare : TAMAL

A tamale (“tamal” in Spanish) is a traditional dish from Mexico composed of a starchy dough that is steamed or boiled in a wrapper made from a corn husk or banana leaf. The dough is called masa, and can include many different ingredients including meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables. A hot tamale is a kind of tamale that originated in the Mississippi Delta. It is particularly spicy, and the masa is replaced with corn meal.

49A New York university : COLUMBIA

Columbia University is an Ivy League school in New York City. Columbia’s athletic teams are called the Lions, which is thought to be a reference to the lion on the English coat of arms. Prior to the American Revolution, Columbia was called King’s College as it was chartered by King George II in 1754.

52A Cutesy name for the squishy parts of a paw : TOE BEANS

The squishy, pink pads on the bottom of a cat’s paws are known as digital pads. More casually, they are referred to as toe beans.

Down

1D Name on a literary award : AGATHA

The Agathas are literary awards given annually for mystery and crime writers producing exceptional works in the “cozy mystery” genre. “Cozies” are crime fiction in which there is a dearth of sex and violence, and in which the crime is committed and solved in a small community or gathering. The awards are named for the queen of the cozy mystery genre, Agatha Christie.

4D Polish brand : ESSIE

Essie Cosmetics is a company that was founded by Essie Weingarten, and which is now owned by L’Oreal. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth II would only wear Essie’s Ballet Slippers color nail polish. Well, that’s what Wikipedia claims …

6D __-Cat : SNO

The brand name “Sno-Cat” is owned by the Tucker company. All snowcats are tracked vehicles built to work in snow, and are famously used in expeditions to the polar regions. The modern Sno-Cat from Tucker differs from its competitors in that it has four independently-mounted tracks.

7D Like gochujang and jjimjilbang : KOREAN

Gochujang is a red, fermented chili paste used in Korean cuisine. The traditional way of preparing the condiment is by allowing it to ferment for years in an earthenware pot on a stone platform in the back garden.

Jjimjilbang are 24-hour, gender-separated bathhouses that became very popular in South Korea in the nineties. The word “jjimjilbang” literally translates as “heating room” from “jjimjil” (heating, steaming) and “bang” (room).

10D Piedmont blues guitarist Baker : ETTA

Etta Baker was a blues guitarist and singer who was born in 1913 and passed away in 2006. She was relatively unknown outside of her hometown in North Carolina for most of her life. However, in the 1990s, she gained national attention after recording her first album at the age of 78. The album, called “One-Dime Blues,” was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1991.

11D Unaccounted for, for short : AWOL

AWOL (absent without leave)

12D Tirade : RANT

The term “tirade” describes a long and vehement speech, and is a word that came into English from French. “Tirade” can have the same meaning in French, but is also the word for “volley”. So, a tirade is a “volley” of words.

25D Mercury or Saturn : CAR

The Mercury brand of car was made by Ford from 1938 until 2011. Mercury was introduced by Henry Ford’s son Edsel Ford. Mercury vehicles were positioned as being more luxurious than the regular Ford models, and more economical than Ford’s high-end Lincoln models.

Saturn was a brand of automobile introduced by General Motors (GM) in 1985. The Saturn line was GM’s response to the increase in sales of Japanese imports, and was initially set up as a relatively independent division within the company. Saturn had its own assembly plant, and its own network of retailers.

26D Gator tail? : ADE

Gatorade was developed at the University of Florida by a team of researchers at the request of the school’s football team. And so, Gatorade is named after the Gators football team.

30D Femme canonisée: Abbr. : STE

In French, a “sainte” (saint – feminine) is “femme canonisée” (canonized woman).

The act of creating a saint is known as “canonization”. The term derives from the process of placing someone in the canon (or “calendar”) of saints.

37D “Oryx and Crake” novelist : ATWOOD

Canadian author Margaret Atwood has described her 2003 novel “Oryx and Crake” as speculative fiction, suggesting that every technological advancement or societal horror depicted in the book has already been attempted by humanity in the real world. For example, in the story’s post-apocalyptic setting, Atwood introduces “pigoons”, pigs genetically modified to grow human organs for transplant. This mirrors the ongoing research in the real world and the established medical practice of using pig valves in human heart surgery.

38D Capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra : MUMBAI

Mumbai is the most populous city in India, and one of the most populous cities in the world. The name of the city was changed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1995. It is the financial capital of India and is home to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the oldest stock exchange in Asia.

Maharashtra is a state in the western peninsular region of India, sitting on the Arabian Sea. It was formed when the former Bombay State was divided in 1960 along linguistic lines into Gujarat (mainly Gujarati-speakers) and Maharashtra (mainly Marathi-speakers). It is the second-most populous state in the nation, after Uttar Pradesh.

42D Sustainable landscaping options : CACTI

The cactus (plural “cacti”) is a member of a family of plants that are particularly well-adapted to extremely dry environments. Almost all cacti are native to the Americas, although some succulent plants from the old world are similar in appearance and are often mislabeled as “cacti”.

43D __ Up: board game with a desert motif : CAMEL

Camel Up is a board game released in 2014. It is a betting game focused on a chaotic, desert racing circuit. Players place wagers on wooden camel pieces that stack on top of one another, allowing lagging racers to physically hitch a ride toward the finish line. And, it is one of my personal favorite tabletop games; great fun …

44D Slender fastener : BRAD

A brad is a slender wire nail with a relatively small head that is typically used to tack pieces of wood together, i.e. to fasten either temporarily or with minimal damage to the wood. Nowadays, brads are commonly applied using a nail gun.

45D Stubbs of the Four Tops : LEVI

Levi Stubbs was the lead vocalist of the Four Tops. Stubbs also landed a pretty famous voice-acting role, providing the voice of the carnivorous plant Audrey II in the 1986 musical movie “Little Shop of Horrors”.

The original lineup of the Four Tops agreed to form a vocal quartet when they were high school students together in Detroit. The group started out using the name “The Four Aims”, but changed it to Four Tops to avoid confusion with the Ames Brothers.

46D Some Olds works : ODES

American poet Sharon Olds published a 2016 collection of “Odes”, modeling it after Pablo Neruda’s celebrated “Odes to Common Things”. In “Ode of Girls’ Things”, she catalogs items like barrettes, hair ties, and silver shoes, treating them as a historical record of childhood’s end.

47D Polka horn : TUBA

The tuba is the lowest-pitched of all brass instruments, and one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra (usually there is just one tuba included in an orchestral line-up). “Tuba” is the Latin word for “trumpet, horn”. Oom-pah-pah …

The polka is a dance from central Europe, one that originated in Bohemia in the mid-1800s. It’s thought that “polka” comes from a Czech word meaning “little half”, reflecting the little half-steps included in the basic dance.

50D Suni honored with the Best Comeback Athlete ESPY Award in 2025 : LEE

Suni Lee is an American gymnast who won the women’s artistic individual all-around event at the 2020 Olympics. A few weeks after her victory in Tokyo, Lee competed in the 30th season of “Dancing with the Stars”, finishing in 5th place.