Tag: Improviser’s concluding phrase crossword clue

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Constructed by: Zhouqin Burnikel

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: 9 to 5

We must replace the 9th letter of the alphabet (I) with the 5th letter (E) in order for them to match their corresponding clues. Very clever …

• 123A Start of a spelling rule, or a rule to keep in mind while answering the starred clues : I BEFORE E

• 23A *Command to turn : FACE LEFT! (from FACE-LIFT)
• 29A *Recovers somewhat : FEELS BETTER (from FEELS BITTER)
• 45A *Flourishing : LIVING WELL (from LIVING WILL)
• 49A *Perform a daring act : BELL THE CAT (from BILL THE CAT)
• 70A *Makes explicitly clear : SPELLS OUT (from SPILLS OUT)
• 94A *Person who works a lot? : AUTO DEALER (from AUTO DIALER)
• 96A *Ink-filled tool for illustrators : DRAWING PEN (from DRAWING PIN)
• 112A *Places to drop envelopes : LETTER BOXES (from LITTER BOXES)

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

Bill’s time: 19m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4A Career fair haul : SWAG

Swag is loot, stolen property, and a term that started out as criminal slang in England in the 1830s. “Swag” is also the name given to the promotional freebies available at some events. That said, there’s an urban myth that the promotional version of “swag” is an acronym standing for “stuff we all get”.

21A Mammals with big calves : WHALES

Male whales are referred to as bulls, females are cows, and the young are calves.

24A Winter cap feature : EARLAP

Earlaps (or ear flaps) might be attached to a cap.

31A Coup target : ETAT

A coup d’état (often just “coup”) is the sudden overthrow of a government, and comes from the French for “stroke of state”. The Swiss-German word “putsch” is sometimes used instead of “coup”, with “Putsch” translating literally as “sudden blow”. We also use the abbreviated “coup” to mean “sudden, brilliant and successful act”.

33A Small camping shelter : PUP TENT

A pup tent is a small ridge tent, one meant for use by 2-3 people. The term “pup tent” has been around since the mid-1800s. A pup tent was sometimes called a dog tent.

35A Slowpoke’s place : REAR

Back in the early 1800s, a “poke” was a device attached to domestic animals such as pigs or sheep to keep them from escaping their enclosures. The poke was like a yoke with a pole, and slowed the animal down, hence the term “slowpoke”.

36A “Despacito” singer Fonsi : LUIS

“Despacito” is a 2017 song released by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, featuring Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee. The song’s accompanying music video was the most-viewed video of all time on YouTube from 2017 to 2020.

39A Part of LAPD : LOS

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the third-largest local law enforcement agency in the country, after New York PD and Chicago PD. Among other things, LAPD is famous for popularizing the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) concept, forming their team in 1967.

40A Nonprofit org. with a school for aspiring moviemakers : AFI

The American Film Institute (AFI) was founded in 1967 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). One of the AFI’s more visible programs is the “100 Year Series”, including lists of Best Movies in several categories and a list of the Best Movie Quotes in 100 years of movie-making.

45A *Flourishing : LIVING WELL (from LIVING WILL)

A living will is an advance healthcare directive that formally outlines a patient’s preferences for medical treatments if they lose the capacity to make decisions. The concept was first proposed in 1969 by Luis Kutner, an Illinois human rights lawyer and the co-founder of Amnesty International.

49A *Perform a daring act : BELL THE CAT (from BILL THE CAT)

To bell the cat is to undertake a daring, or impossible task for the benefit of a group, even if it is dangerous for the person doing it. The phrase comes from the classic fable “The Mice in Council”, in which a group of mice vote to attach a warning bell to their feline predator’s collar, only to realize no one is brave enough to execute the plan.

53A Tudyk of “Firefly” : ALAN

American actor Alan Tudyk is from El Paso, Texas. He is perhaps best known to audiences for playing Hoban “Wash” Washburne in the TV show “Firefly”. Tudyk also plays Eric Morden (aka “Mr. Nobody”) on the superhero TV series “Doom Patrol”.

“Firefly” is a sci-fi TV show that originally aired in 2002 and 2003. Set in the distant future, the show follows a group of humans who arrive in a new star system in a firefly-class spaceship named Serenity. “Firefly” only ran for 14 episodes, but creator Joss Whedon parlayed the storyline into a 2005 movie titled “Serenity” with basically the same cast.

54A Emulate Alysa Liu : ICE SKATE

American figure skater Alysa Liu made history in 2019 at the age of 13 when she became the youngest skater ever to win a U.S. Figure Skating Championship ladies’ title, breaking a record previously held by Tara Lipinski.

56A Bark beetle target : ELM

Bark beetles are so named because some species reproduce in the bark of trees. This can be a problem for the elm tree, as bark beetles are known to transmit the devastating Dutch elm disease. There is another species of bark beetle that is known as the coffee berry borer, and it is the major pest attacking coffee plants around the world.

57A Fancy-schmancy : POSH

No one really knows the etymology of the word “posh”. The popular myth that “posh” is actually an acronym standing for “port out, starboard home” is completely untrue, and is a story that can actually be traced back to the 1968 movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. The myth is that wealthy British passengers traveling to and from India would book cabins on the port side for the outward journey and the starboard side for the home journey. This trick was supposedly designed to keep their cabins out of the direct sunlight.

62A Novel at the center of Bloomsday celebrations : ULYSSES

Regular readers will know that I am unashamedly supportive of my native Irish culture, but I have to tell you that I can’t stand many of the works of James Joyce. I have spent many a fine day traipsing around Ireland learning about him, but I find myself more absorbed by Joyce’s life than by his writing. Having said that, “Ulysses” is an interesting novel in that it chronicles just one ordinary day in the life of a Dubliner named Leopold Bloom. There’s a huge celebration of “Ulysses” in Dublin every year on June 16th, called Bloomsday. The festivities vary from readings and performances of the storyline, to good old pub crawls. “Ulysses” was made into a film of the same name in 1967 starring Milo O’Shea.

64A Westernmost city in Texas : EL PASO

Although there have been human settlements in the El Paso area for thousands of years, the first European settlement was founded in 1659 by the Spanish. That first community was on the south bank of the Rio Grande, and was called El Paso del Norte (the North Pass). Most of the urban development under Spanish rule took place on the south side of the river, with El Paso del Norte acting as the center of governance for the Spanish for the territory of New Mexico. The Rio Grande was chosen as the border between Mexico and the US in 1848, so most of the city of El Paso del Norte became part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua (and is now called Ciudad Juárez). The area north of the river developed as a US military post, eventually becoming the modern city of El Paso, Texas.

66A McIntosh or Macintosh : APPLE

Every McIntosh apple grown today can trace its roots back (pun!) to a tree on a farm near Morrisburg in Ontario, Canada. John McIntosh owned the tree, and he started to cultivate seedlings in 1811. Today, the McIntosh is the national apple of Canada.

Macintosh (also “Mac”, since 1998) is a line of computers from Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced in 1984, and I remember someone showing me one at work in those early days of personal computing. There was a piece of white plastic connected to the main computer by a cord, and I was amazed when the guy showed me that it controlled where the cursor was on the screen. My colleague told me that this lump of plastic was called “a mouse” …

68A Poison Ivy, to Robin : ENEMY

Poison Ivy, whose real name is Pamela Lillian Isley, is a supervillain in the Batman universe. She first appeared, in print, in June 1966. Her abilities typically involve control over plants and immunity to most toxins, which she often uses to protect the natural world from humanity, sometimes coming into conflict with Batman.

Batman’s partner Robin is known for his very creative “Holy …!” exclamations. Here are few worth repeating from the original “Batman” TV show:

• “Holy Tintinnabulation!”
• “Holy Knit One, Purl Two!”
• “Holy Oleo!”
• “Holy Hole in a Doughnut!”

69A Seasoning for kimchi : SALT

Kimchi is a traditional dish from Korea. It is made from fermented vegetables, and is pretty strong stuff …

75A Apex predators of the sea : ORCAS

An apex predator is at the top of a food chain, and has no other natural predators. Examples are the orca (“killer whale”) in the oceans, the lion in Africa, and the Tyrannosaurus in the days of the dinosaurs.

77A New York City’s __ Place : ASTOR

Astor Place is a neighborhood around a two-block street in Manhattan, New York City that bears the same name. It is named for John Jacob Astor, who was once the richest person in the country.

80A Vidal of hair care : SASSOON

Vidal Sassoon was a hairdresser and businessman from London. Sassoon is credited with “liberating” women from the hair salon by popularizing hairstyles that one could “wash and wear”.

83A Vader’s childhood nickname : ANI

Darth Vader is (to me) the most colorful antagonist in the “Star Wars” universe. Born as Anakin “Ani” Skywalker, he was corrupted by the Emperor Palpatine and turned to “the Dark Side”. In the original films, Darth Vader was portrayed by English bodybuilder David Prowse, and voiced by actor James Earl Jones. Jones asked that he go uncredited for the first two “Star Wars” films, feeling that his contributions were insufficient to warrant recognition. I disagree …

84A Southernmost Ivy : PENN

The University of Pennsylvania (also “Penn” and “UPenn”) was founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. Penn was the first school in the country to offer both graduate and undergraduate courses. Penn’s sports teams are known as the Quakers, and sometimes the Red & Blue.

87A Software-driven F/X : CGI

Computer-generated imagery (CGI)

91A Fat-heavy diet : KETO

A ketogenic (also “keto”) diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. When a body consumes insufficient carbohydrates to meet the need for energy, then the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies in order to make up the energy deficit. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the bloodstream is known as “ketosis”, a term that gives rise to the name “ketogenic diet”. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe a ketogenic diet in order to control epilepsy in children. A condition of ketosis can reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures.

94A *Person who works a lot? : AUTO DEALER (from AUTO DIALER)

The “city lot” sense of “lot” is intertwined with the older practice of “casting lots”. Historically, land division was often determined by chance, particularly in early settlements or when distributing land among a group. “Lots” were physical objects, like stones or slips of paper, marked to represent different land parcels. These were drawn randomly, and the “lot” a person received corresponded to the specific piece of land assigned to that marker. This practice of “casting lots” directly led to the use of “lot” as a term for a defined piece of land, eventually giving us the modern usage in “city lot” and “parking lot.”

96A *Ink-filled tool for illustrators : DRAWING PEN (from DRAWING PIN)

What we know as a thumb tack or pushpin here in North America is called a drawing pin in British English. Thumb tacks made from brass might be referred to as “brass tacks”, giving us the expression “getting down to brass tacks” meaning “getting down to the finer details”.

103A Ione of “La Brea” : SKYE

Ione Skye is an American actress born in London, England. She is best known for portraying the character Diane Court in the 1989 high school romance movie “Say Anything…”, starring opposite John Cusack. Skye is the daughter of the Scottish folk singer Donovan.

The TV show “La Brea” is a sci-fi series that premiered in 2021. It is set in present-day Los Angeles and follows a family who are separated when an earthquake opens a gigantic sinkhole that transports them through a portal to the Ice Age. The sinkhole is located at the La Brea Tar Pits, hence the show’s title.

115A High-five sound : SLAP

The celebratory gesture that we call a “high five” is said to have been invented by former baseball players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke when they were both playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s.

123A Start of a spelling rule, or a rule to keep in mind while answering the starred clues : I BEFORE E

“I before E, except after C”. With so many exceptions, I think this is one rule that’s not taught in schools anymore …

129A Daisylike flowers : ASTERS

Apparently, most aster species and cultivars bloom relatively late in the year, usually in the fall. The name “aster” comes into English via Latin from the Greek word “astéri” meaning “star”, a reference to the arrangement of the petals of the flower.

131A Telepath’s ability : ESP

The term “telepathy” was coined in 1882 by Frederic W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. The word comes from the Greek words “têle” meaning “afar, at a distance” and “pathos” meaning “feeling, perception”. So, “telepathy” literally means “distant feeling” or “perception at a distance” reflecting the concept of mind-to-mind communication across space without physical senses.

Down

1D __ Romeo: motorsport brand : ALFA

The “Alfa” in “Alfa Romeo” is actually an acronym, one standing for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (“Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company”). ALFA was an enterprise founded in 1910 and which was taken over by Nicola Romeo in 1915. In 1920 the company name was changed to Alfa Romeo.

4D Busiest airport in MO : STL

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport has the IATA airport code STL. Commonly referred to as Lambert Field, the airport is named for Albert Bond Lambert, an olympic golfer and aviator from St. Louis. Back in the 1920s, Lambert Field was the first airport to have an air traffic control system, albeit a pretty rudimentary one in which pilots received flag signals.

10D Draped wedding garment : SAREE

The item of clothing called a “sari” (also “saree”) is a strip of cloth, as one might imagine, unusual perhaps in that it is unstitched along the whole of its length. The strip of cloth can range from four to nine meters long (that’s a lot of material!). The sari is usually wrapped around the waist, then draped over the shoulder leaving the midriff bare. I must say, it can be a beautiful item of clothing.

11D Discovery astronaut Ochoa : ELLEN

Ellen Ochoa was the first Hispanic woman in space, serving on a nine-day mission on the space shuttle Discovery in 1993. She spent over 1,000 hours in space over the course of four missions. In 2013, Ochoa became only the second woman to serve as Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

14D OPI rival : 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 …

15D Sequence of film cuts : MONTAGE

In the world of movies, a montage is a series of short clips that are arranged in sequence to suggest the passage of time. The term “montage” is French, and translates as “mounting”.

16D Regattas : BOAT RACES

The word “regatta” is Venetian dialect and was originally used to describe boat races among the gondoliers of Venice on the Grand Canal back in the mid-1600s.

17D Raison d’__ : ETRE

“Raison d’être” is a French phrase meaning “reason for existence”.

18D High-end camera initials : DSLR

Digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR)

20D National park north of Anchorage : DENALI

“Denali” means “the high one” in the native Koyukon Athabaskan language, and is the name used for the peak formerly known as Mount McKinley. Denali’s summit stands at 20,310 feet, making it the highest mountain peak in North America. I was surprised to learn that there is a Denali State Park, as well as the Denali National Park. The two are located adjacent to each other (which makes sense!). The State Park is undeveloped for all practical purposes, with just a few campgrounds and trailheads.

Anchorage, Alaska is the northernmost city in the US with over 100,000 residents (in fact, it has a population close to 300,000). It is also the state’s most populous city, and is home to more than 40% of Alaska’s residents.

28D Shorebird with webbed feet : GULL

Gulls (also “seagulls”) are a family of seabirds that is most closely related to terns. Some species of gull can be quite clever. For example, they can reportedly use pieces of bread as bait to catch goldfish in ponds. Others can be quite fearless, and have been known to land on the backs of whales and peck out pieces of flesh.

32D Salade Niçoise fish : TUNA

A Niçoise salad is known as a “salade niçoise” in its native France, where it was named for the city of Nice in the south of the country. The original contains no cooked vegetables, but here in North America there are almost always included some boiled potatoes.

37D Nome dome home : IGLOO

The Inuit word for “house” is “iglu”, which we usually write as “igloo”. The Greenlandic (yes, that’s a language) word for “house” is very similar, namely “igdlo”. The walls of igloos are tremendous insulators, due to the air pockets in the blocks of snow.

The town of Nome lies on the northern edge of Norton Sound, an inlet of the Bering Sea in Alaska. The sound was named by Captain James Cook in 1778 in honor of Sir Fletcher Norton, who was Speaker of the British House of Commons at that time.

38D Bird with a long neck : SWAN

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

43D Destructive wind : GALE

A gale is a very strong wind, one defined by the Beaufort scale as having wind speeds from 62 to 74 kilometers per hour.

47D “Roman Holiday” scooter : VESPA

Vespa is a brand of motor scooter that was originally made in Italy (and now all over the world) by Piaggio. “Vespa” is Italian for “wasp”.

“Roman Holiday’ is a 1953 film, and surely one of the greatest romcoms ever made. Audrey Hepburn plays a princess who escapes her minders to explore Rome on her own. On her ventures, she meets up with a newspaper reporter played by Gregory Peck. Peck was a major Hollywood A-lister, while Hepburn was a complete unknown at the time. His contract gave him solo, above-the-title billing. Partway through filming, Peck was so impressed by Hepburn’s talent that he contacted his agent and insisted that she be given equal, co-star billing. He correctly predicted that she would win an Academy Award for the role.

55D Reports by hotline : CALLS IN

A famous hotline was used during WWII by President Roosevelt in the White House and Prime Minister Churchill in the Cabinet War Room bunker in London. That link was secured in 1943, marking the world’s very first use of voice encryption. An even more famous hotline was set up between Washington and Moscow in 1963, in the aftermath of the near catastrophic Cuban Missile Crisis. Often referred to as the “red telephone”, the Washington-Moscow hotline has never used phones. Instead, there were teletypewriters at either end, which were later upgraded to telecopiers, and now the parties use emails.

60D Prefix with graph or gram : EPI-

In the world of literature, an epigraph is a few words at the beginning of a composition that sets forth a theme, and is often a quotation. The term “epigraph” can also be used for an inscription on maybe a building or a statue.

An epigram is a short and clever statement, poem or discourse.

63D Electronica instrument : SYNTH

One of the first commercial music synthesizers was invented by Robert Moog, and it was brought to mainstream popularity by Wendy Carlos’s 1968 album “Switched-On Bach”. The album reinterpreted the works of Johann Sebastian Bach using the synthesizer, and became an unlikely hit. It won three Grammy Awards, and is credited by many with launching the electronic music genre.

65D Hybrid thoroughfare with frequent access points : STROAD

“Stroad” is a portmanteau of “street” and “road”, coined in 2011 by civil engineer Charles Marohn to describe the wide, multi-lane commercial corridors found everywhere in North American suburbs. Marohn argued that such arteries are a failure. They often carry vehicles traveling over 40 miles per hour while dodging turning traffic and pedestrians, and coping with endless retail driveways.

68D Shout of discovery : EUREKA!

“Eureka” translates from Greek as “I have found it”. The word is usually associated with Archimedes, uttered as he stepped into his bath one day. His discovery was that the volume of water that was displaced was equal to that of the object (presumably his foot) that had been submerged. He used this fact to determine volume (and density) of a crown, something he needed in order to determine if it was made of pure gold or was a forgery.

71D Alley-__ : OOP

An alley-oop is a play in basketball in which one player lobs the ball close to the basket for a teammate who usually scores with a slam dunk.

74D Gimbap alternative : SUSHI

Gimbap is a Korean cuisine dish that outwardly resembles Japanese sushi rolls. The name “gimbap” comes from “gim” meaning “dried seaweed”, and “bap” meaning “cooked rice”. The Korean dish avoids raw fish and seasons its rice with toasted sesame oil and salt rather than fermented rice vinegar.

76D Cypress, for one : CONIFER

Cypress is a family of coniferous trees known for its durable, rot-resistant wood. The tree’s botanical name is “Cupressus”, which comes from the Greek myth of Cyparissus. He was a boy who accidentally killed his pet stag, and then begged Apollo to let his tears fall for eternity. Apollo transformed the grieving youth into a cypress tree, the “weeping conifer”.

79D Ian Fleming’s alma mater : ETON

The world-famous Eton College is just a brisk walk from Windsor Castle, which itself is just outside London. Eton is noted for producing many British leaders, including prime ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson. The list of Old Etonians also includes Princes William and Harry, the Duke of Wellington and George Orwell. Author Ian Fleming was also an Eton alumnus, as was Fleming’s iconic character James Bond, although 007 was expelled from the school.

81D Amazon contents : AGUA

The Amazon River of South America is the world’s largest in terms of volume, and accounts for an amazing one-fifth of the world’s total river flow. Perhaps even more amazing is that there are no bridges across the Amazon! There isn’t even one, mainly because the river flows through tropical rainforest where there are few roads and cities.

89D Cunning folks : SLY FOXES

Foxes are often described as cunning or sly. This is a reference to their reputation for eluding hunters.

90D Garden with forbidden fruit : EDEN

In the Christian tradition, the “fall of man” took place in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This went against the bidding of God, and was at the urging of the serpent. As a result, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden to prevent them from becoming immortal by eating from the tree of life. The first humans had transitioned from a state of innocent obedience to a state of guilty disobedience.

98D Genetics pioneer Mendel : GREGOR

Gregor Mendel was an Austrian monk, and a scientist who achieved fame after his passing when his work in the field of genetics was rediscovered. The conclusions he drew from his studies of garden peas led to him earning the moniker “father of modern genetics”.

101D Piehole : KISSER

The term “piehole” meaning “mouth” has been in use since the early 1980s. It is a variation of the older term “cake hole” that originated with the British armed forces during WWII. “Cake hole” is still used in the UK, with “piehole” largely limited to North America.

104D Throws, in slang : YEETS

In contemporary slang, to yeet is to throw away, discard. “To yeet” usually implies the use of force and a general disregard for what is being discarded. As in, “I really want to yeet the word ‘yeet’ …”

106D Kiwi in Kyoto, say : EXPAT

Unlike many nicknames for people of a particular country, the name “Kiwi” for a New Zealander isn’t offensive at all. The term comes from the flightless bird called the kiwi, which is endemic to New Zealand and is the country’s national symbol. “Kiwi” is a Maori word, and the plural (when referring to the bird) is simply “kiwi”. However, when you have two or more New Zealanders with you, they are Kiwis (note the “s”, and indeed the capital “K”!).

107D Sierra __, Africa : LEONE

The Republic of Sierra Leone is a country in West Africa that lies on the Atlantic Coast. The capital city of Freetown was originally set up as a colony to house the “Black Poor” of London, England. These people were mainly freed British slaves of Caribbean descent who were living a miserable life in the run-down parts of London. Perhaps to help the impoverished souls, perhaps to rid the streets of “a problem”, three ships were chartered in 1787 to transport a group of Blacks, with some Whites, to a piece of land purchased in Sierra Leone. Those who made the voyage were granted British citizenship and protection. The descendants of these immigrants, and others who made the journey over the next 60 years, make up the ethnic group that’s today called the Sierra Leone Creole.

112D Dragon’s place : LAIR

Our English word “dragon” comes from the Greek “drakon” meaning “serpent, giant seafish”.

114D Grammy-winning banjoist Fleck : BELA

Béla Fleck is a banjo player who performed with the bands New Grass Revival and Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. He was born in New York City and was given the name Béla Anton Leoš Fleck. He was named after Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, Austrian composer Anton Webern, and Czech composer Leoš Janáček. That’s quite a name to live up to, but by all accounts Fleck is one of the most technically proficient banjo players the world has ever known.

117D Cozumel coin : PESO

Cozumel is an island in the Caribbean off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It is a tourist destination, and is especially attractive to scuba divers. My son and I spent a great week there diving many years ago …

124D Texter’s “Victory!” : FTW!

“FTW” is an initialism abbreviating “for the win”, a phrase meaning “being great, sure to succeed”.