Tag: Explanatory tool crossword clue

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Constructed by: Samantha Podos Nowak
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Hang in There

Happy Christmas, everyone! Themed answers are places where we might HANG (things):

• 36A “Don’t give up,” and a suggestion that can apply to 17-, 25-, 49-, and 59-Across? : HANG IN THERE

• 17A Work space? : ART GALLERY
• 25A Brew house? : COFFEE SHOP
• 49A TV station? : FAMILY ROOM
• 59A Jacket pocket? : COAT CLOSET

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

Bill’s time: 6m 05s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Cherry-picks, perhaps : CULLS

To cull is to pick out the best, get rid of the rejects.

6 Exam for HS jrs. : PSAT

Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT)

14 Pickled garnish in a Gibson : ONION

A Gibson is simply a regular martini (gin and vermouth) with the traditional olive garnish replaced with a pickled onion.

15 Dayton’s state : OHIO

Dayton is a city in the southwest of Ohio that is famously home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The city is also referred to as the “Birthplace of Aviation”, as it was in Dayton that Orville and Wilbur Wright built and improved the Wright Flyer. The Wright Flyer made the first controlled and sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

23 Like a giant redwood : TALL

The giant sequoia tree is also known as the giant redwood. There’s only one part of the world where you can see giant sequoias growing naturally, and that’s on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. However, there are plenty of examples of giant sequoias that have been planted as ornamentals all over the world.

32 PBS funder : NEA

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an agency funded by the federal government that offers support and financing for artistic projects. The NEA was created by an Act of Congress in 1965. Between 1965 and 2008, the NEA awarded over $4 billion to the arts, with Congress authorizing around $170 million annually through the eighties and much of the nineties. That funding was cut to less than $100 million in the late nineties due to pressure from conservatives concerned about the use of funds, but it is now back over the $150 million mark.

39 Big name in pasta sauce : RAO

Rao’s Italian restaurant opened in East Harlem in New York City in 1896. Rao’s also sells a small line of Italian foodstuffs in supermarkets, such as pasta, sauces and olive oil.

42 Chinese menu general : TSO

General Tso’s chicken is an American creation, and a dish often found on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. The name General Tso may be a reference to General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing Dynasty, but there is no clear link.

45 Where the heart is? : TORSO

“Torso” (plural “torsi”) is an Italian word meaning “trunk of a statue”, and is a term that we imported into English.

53 Tarot reader : SEER

Tarot cards have been around since the mid-1400s, and for centuries were simply used for entertainment as a game. It has only been since the late 1800s that the cards have been used by fortune tellers to predict the future. The list of tarot cards includes the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man and the Lovers.

54 Blue or red part of 3D glasses : LENS

3D filming techniques capture and display images in a way that creates the illusion of depth. This is typically achieved by filming a scene with two cameras simultaneously, mimicking how our two eyes perceive the world. These separate images are then combined and projected onto a screen, requiring viewers to wear special glasses to differentiate between the left and right eye images. Older 3D systems utilized red and blue lenses to filter the images, with each eye seeing a slightly different perspective, thus creating a sense of three-dimensionality. Modern systems use polarized lenses instead of red/blue lenses.

57 “Lover” or “Red,” for Taylor Swift : ERA

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a journey through her musical career, with each stage of the show representing a different “era” or album. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Lover
2. Fearless
3. Evermore
4. Reputation
5. Speak Now
6. Red
7. Folklore
8. 1989
9. Midnights

58 Reddish-brown horse : ROAN

In horses, there are two types of roan: red roan, which has a mixture of red and white hairs, and blue roan, which has a mixture of black and white hairs.

59 Jacket pocket? : COAT CLOSET

In Old French a “clos” was an enclosure, with the diminutive form “closet” describing a small enclosure or private room. Over time this evolved into our modern usage of “closet”, describing a cabinet or cupboard.

62 Jamaican citrus fruit : UGLI

The ugli fruit is a hybrid of an orange and a tangerine that was first discovered growing wild in Jamaica where most ugli fruit comes from today. “UGLI” is a trademark name that is a variant of “ugly”, a nod to the fruit’s unsightly wrinkled rind.

63 Seltzer starter : ALKA-

Alka-Seltzer is a brand of fizzy antacid that has been marketed since 1931. In terms of ingredients, it is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, aspirin and anhydrous citric acid.

64 Dunne of “Love Affair” : IRENE

Irene Dunne was a wonderful Hollywood actress. She played a variety of roles, but I always think of her as the leading lady with Cary Grant in the movies “The Awful Truth”, “My Favorite Wife” and “Penny Serenade”. She was great friends with fellow actress Loretta Young, and the two often attended church together. Dunne is often described as the best actress never to win an Oscar, even though she was nominated five times for the Best Actress Academy Award.

“Love Affair” (1939) is a romance film about a charming French playboy and an American singer, who fall in love aboard a transatlantic ocean liner despite both being engaged to others. They make a pact to meet six months later at the top of the Empire State Building if they have managed to free themselves from their existing relationships. The leads are played by Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. “Love Affair” has been remade several times, most notably as “An Affair to Remember” (1957) starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Less notable is 1994’s “Love Affair” starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.

65 IPO option : NYSE

The roots of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) go back to 1792 when a group of 24 stock brokers set up the New York Stock & Exchange Board. They did so in an agreement signed under a buttonwood tree outside 68 Wall Street. That document became known as the Buttonwood Agreement. Today, the NYSE is located in a National Historic Landmark building with the address 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

66 Tide type : NEAP

Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans. At neap tide, the smaller gravitational effect of the sun cancels out some of the moon’s effect. At spring tide, the sun and the moon’s gravitational forces act in concert causing more extreme movement of the oceans.

Down

5 Fly in the ointment : SNAG

Our expression “a fly in the ointment” is used when we come across some relatively minor snag that is a hindrance to completing something. We started using the expression in the 1700s, and it refers to some lines in the Bible; Ecclesiastes 10:1:

Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour

6 __ al ajillo: Spanish chicken dish : POLLO

Pollo al ajillo, which translates to “garlic chicken,” is a classic Spanish dish. Chicken pieces are browned in olive oil and then simmered with lots of garlic, creating a rich and fragrant sauce. Often, a splash of dry sherry or white wine is added to deglaze the pan. Yum …

12 Company whose Color of the Year 2024 is Peach Fuzz : PANTONE

Pantone is a company best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing. Pantone provides a universal language of color, making sure that the color you see on your screen or in a design file is the same color that gets printed. Essentially, Pantone helps ensure consistent and accurate color across different mediums and industries.

22 Like osmium compared to all other stable elements : DENSEST

Osmium is a metallic element in the platinum family. It is the densest naturally occurring element, and is about twice as dense as lead.

24 Olin of “Chocolat” : LENA

Lena Olin is a Swedish actress, and someone who has acting in her blood. Her mother was the actress Britta Holmberg and her father the actor and director Stig Olin. Olin had a very successful career in Sweden, often working with the great Ingmar Bergman. Olin’s breakthrough international and English-speaking role was playing opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” released in 1988. Way back in 1974, Miss Olin was crowned Miss Scandinavia in a beauty pageant for Nordic women held in Helsinki, Finland. Olin’s most famous performance was in “Chocolat” released in 2000, and then she won an Emmy in 2003 for Best Supporting Actress in the TV show “Alias”.

33 “The __ and the Ecstasy”: novel about Michelangelo : AGONY

“The Agony and the Ecstasy” is a 1961 biographical novel about Michelangelo that was penned by Irving Stone. Stone also wrote a 1934 biographical novel about Vincent van Gogh called “Lust for Life”. Both novels were adapted for the big screen. Charlton Heston played Michelangelo in 1965’s “The Agony and the Ecstasy”, and Kirk Douglas played Van Gogh in 1956’s “Lust for Life”.

37 Indie folk artist Bon __ : IVER

Bon Iver is a folk band that started up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 2007. The band’s name comes from the French “bon hiver” meaning “good winter”. The phrase “bon hiver” was popularized by the fun nineties TV show “Northern Exposure”.

38 Oz hoppers : ROOS

The word “kangaroo” comes from the Australian Aborigine term for the animal. There’s an oft-quoted story that the explorer James Cook (later Captain Cook) asked a local native what was the name of this remarkable-looking animal, and the native responded with “Kangaroo”. The story is that the native was actually saying “I don’t understand you”, but as cute as that tale is, it’s just an urban myth.

44 Danica’s role on “The Wonder Years” : WINNIE

“The Wonder Years” is a comedy drama that originally ran on television from 1988 to 1993. Star of the show was 13-year-old Fred Savage who played Kevin Arnold. Kevin’s love interest was Winnie Cooper, played by Danica McKellar. The show was remade almost 30 years later under the same title, with EJ Williams playing young Dean William as he grows up in Montgomery, Alabama. The remake ran for just two seasons, from 2021 to 2022.

46 __ Peanut Butter Cups : REESE’S

Hershey’s produces three sizes of Peanut Butter Cups now. Alongside “standard”, we can buy “Mini” and “Big Cup”.

48 Stumped : ORATED

“To stump” can mean “to go on a speaking tour during a political campaign”. This peculiarly American term dates back to the 19th century. Back then, a stump speech was an address given by someone standing on a large tree stump that provided a convenient perch to help the speaker get his or her message across to the crowd.

50 Japanese port city : OSAKA

The Japanese city of Osaka used to be called Naniwa, with the name changing to Osaka sometime before 1500. “Osaka” can be translated either as “large hill” or “large slope”. Osaka is sometimes referred to as “the Chicago of Japan” as it is a major center of commerce and industry. The city has also been named the “nation’s kitchen”, and was a center for Japan’s rice trade for centuries.

56 Basic barre bend : PLIE

The French word for “bent” is “plié”. In the ballet move known as a plié, the knees are bent. A “demi-plié” is a similar move, but with less bending of the knees. A fondu is similar to a plié, except that only one leg remains on the ground.

A barre is a handrail used by ballet dancers for warm-up exercises and to provide support when practicing certain moves.

60 Cheer after un gol : OLE!

In Spanish, a “fútbol” (football, soccer) supporter might shout “olé!” (bravo!) after “un gol” (a goal).

61 Rita featured on DJ Fresh’s “Hot Right Now” : ORA

Rita Ora is a British singer who was born Rita Sahatçiu in Pristina, Yugoslavia to Albanian parents. The family name “Sahatçiu” comes from a Turkish word meaning “watchmaker”. Rita’s parents changed their name to make it easier to pronounce. So, the family name morphed from “watchmaker” to “time”, which is “ora” in Albanian.