Tag: Legislative century crossword clue

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Constructed by: MaryEllen Uthlaut

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Separate Checks

Four rows in the grid hide synonyms of “CHECK”, shared between two answers SEPARATED by a black square:

• 63A With 65-Across, request from some diners, or what a black square creates in rows 3, 6, 8, and 10 of this puzzle : SEPARATE …
• 65A See 63-Across : … CHECKS

• 17A Airport area : TARMAC
• 18A Noble title : COUNTESS (AC-COUNT, separated)

• 27A Silky material : SATIN
• 30A Spoken : VOICED (IN-VOICE, separated)

• 38A Tennis shutout : LOVE SET
• 40A Run away (with) : ABSCOND (T-AB, separated)

• 47A Leaping rodent : GERBIL
• 50A Edsel, notably : LEMON (BIL-L, separated)

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

Bill’s time: 8m 52s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Grape used for sweet wine : MUSCAT

Muscat grapes are used to make wine, and are also grown for raisins and table grapes. Muscat is used a lot in Chilean table wines, and relatively rarely in Italian or Californian table wines. However, muscat is used extensively in fortified wines in all wine-growing regions of the world. The sweet dessert wine made from muscat in Spain is called muscatel.

7A Ornery sort : CUSS

The term “ornery cuss” is an American-English colloquialism describing a difficult or ill-tempered person.

11A Nev. neighbor : ARI

Arizona’s journey to statehood was a long one, finally achieved on February 14, 1912. That made it the 48th state to join the Union, and the last of the contiguous states. Before that, Arizona was part of the New Mexico Territory.

14A Colored ring : AREOLA

An areola (sometimes “areole”) in anatomy is a small ring of color, as in the areola surrounding the nipple, and the areola surrounding the pupil of the eye. “Areola” (plural “areolae”) comes from Latin, meaning “small open space”, and is a diminutive of the Latin word “area”, meaning “open space”.

19A High-five, e.g. : 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.

20A HP supply : INK

“Inkjet” is a very accurate and descriptive name for the type of printer. Printing is accomplished by shooting extremely fine jets of ink onto the page.

The giant multinational HP (originally “Hewlett-Packard”) was founded in 1939 with an investment of $538 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. The company name would have been Packard-Hewlett, if Dave Packard had won a coin toss!

22A Airport serving Tokyo : NARITA

Plans were put together for the construction of Narita International back in 1966. However, the airport was not a popular addition to the metropolis in some quarters and demonstrations, often violent, delayed the project. Originally planned for completion in 1971, the airport didn’t open until 1978. The opening ceremony was attended by about 6,000 protesters and 14,000 security police.

26A Buttonlike flower : TANSY

The tansy is a flowering plant of the aster family, native to Europe and Asia. It is found in other parts of the world, but there it is often considered to be invasive.

27A Silky material : SATIN

The material known as “satin” takes its name from “Zayton”, the medieval Arabic name for the Chinese port city of Quanzhou. Quanzhou was used for the export of large amounts of silk to Europe.

32A Novelist Lurie : ALISON

Alison Lurie is an American novelist. Lurie won a Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for her novel “Foreign Affairs”. Three of her works have been adapted for television: “The War Between the Tates”, “Imaginary Friends” and “Foreign Affairs”.

34A The Mustangs of the NCAA : SMU

Southern Methodist University (SMU) is located in University Park, Texas (part of Dallas) and was founded in 1911. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Mustangs. Also, SMU is home to the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

38A Tennis shutout : LOVE SET

In sports like tennis, the score of zero is designated as “love”. Some people believe that this usage originates from the French “l’oeuf” (meaning “the egg”). The idea is that the written character “0” looks like an egg.

44A North Sea diving bird : AUK

Auks are penguin-like sea birds that live in colder northern waters including the Arctic. Like penguins, auks are great swimmers, but unlike penguins, auks can fly.

47A Leaping rodent : GERBIL

Most species of gerbil are native to arid regions, and in fact used to be called “desert rats”. They make popular household pets because they are very social and friendly by nature. As desert natives, they also have specially adapted kidneys that produce a very small amount of waste so that bodily fluids are preserved.

50A Edsel, notably : LEMON

Long before we associated the term “lemon” with a defective car, it was used to describe defective items in general.

The Edsel brand of automobile was named for Edsel, son of Henry Ford. Sadly, the name “Edsel” has become synonymous with “failure”, which was no fault of Edsel himself who had died several years before the Edsel line was introduced. When the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel on 4 September 1957, Ford proclaimed the day to be “E Day”.

56A Kin of ad hoc : PRO TEM

“Pro tempore” can be abbreviated to “pro tem” or “p.t.” “Pro tempore” is a Latin phrase that best translates as “for the time being”. It is used to describe a person who is acting for another, usually a superior. The President pro tempore of the US Senate is the person who presides over the Senate in the absence of the Vice President of the US. It has been tradition since 1890 that the president pro tem is the most senior senator in the majority party. The president pro tem ranks highly in the line of succession to the presidency, falling third in line after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

The Latin phrase “ad hoc” means “for this purpose”. An ad hoc committee, for example, is formed for a specific purpose and disbanded after making its final report.

67A Perfect examples : EPITOMES

The more common meaning of “epitome” is “perfect example of a group, quality, type”. An epitome is also an abstract or summary of a book or article.

69A Champagne label word : SEC

Sparkling wines can be classified according to sweetness. These classifications are, from driest to sweetest:

• Brut Nature
• Extra Brut
• Brut
• Extra Dry (Or Extra Sec)
• Dry (or Sec)
• Semi-Dry (or Demi-Sec)
• Sweet (or Doux)

Down

2D Eurasia’s __ Mountains : URAL

The eastern side of the Ural Mountains in Russia and Kazakhstan is generally regarded as the natural divide between the continents of Europe and Asia.

3D “Buona __” : SERA

“Buona sera” is Italian for “good evening”.

7D Birds that make hourly appearances : CUCKOOS

Cuckoo clocks are usually regulated with a pendulum and signal the hour with the appearance of a cuckoo and the sound of a cuckoo’s call. They have been around since the 1600s, but really took off in the 1850s when production ramped up in the Black Forest region of Germany for the export market.

8D Card game with an edition for colorblind players : UNO

The classic card game Uno now comes in several versions. Uno ColorAdd allows people with color blindness to play, and there is also a Braille version that allows blind and sighted friends to play together.

10D Legislative century : SENATE

The US Senate comprises 100 senators, with each of the fifty states being represented by two popularly elected senators. US senators were appointed by their state legislators from 1798 through 1913, until the Seventeenth Amendment called for popular elections.

11D Had DiGiorno, perhaps : ATE IN

DiGiorno is a brand of frozen pizza that first hit the shelves in 1991. The brand’s “rising crust” pizza was introduced in 1995, and was somewhat of a coup. Up to that time, frozen pizzas were notorious for thin, cracker-like crusts because the dough had to be par-baked before freezing. That breakthrough inspired the slogan “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno”.

16D Fine fiddle : STRAD

Generations of the Stradivari family produced violins and other stringed instruments, the most famous of which were constructed by Antonio Stradivari.

21D Veterans Day mo. : NOV.

Veterans Day used to be known as Armistice Day, and is observed on November 11th each year. This particular date was chosen as the Armistice that ended WWI was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

24D Mireille of “Hanna” : ENOS

Mireille Enos is an actress from Kansas City. She is perhaps best known for her TV work, playing Sarah Linden on “The Killing” and for playing twins Kathy and JoDean Marquart on “Big Love”. Enos is married to actor Alan Ruck, who I mainly remember playing Cameron Frye in the great movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

“Hanna” is an excellent action drama series that is based on a 2011 film of the same name. The title character in the TV show is played by English actress Esmé Creed-Miles. Hanna is one of a group of children who were born with deliberately enhanced DNA in order to create a cadre of super-soldiers. Good stuff …

25D Peruvian metropolis : LIMA

Lima is the capital city of Peru. It was founded in 1535 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who named it “la Ciudad de los Reyes” (the City of Kings). He chose this name because the decision to found the city was made on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany that commemorates the visit of the three kings to Jesus in Bethlehem. Lima is home to the oldest university in all of the Americas, as San Marco University was founded in 1551 during the days of Spanish colonial rule.

29D Early DVR : TIVO

TiVo is a digital video recorder (DVR) that revolutionized the way we watch television. The first TiVo devices were installed in homes in 1999, when they were the first consumer DVRs to hit the market. TiVo was originally marketed as a way to “pause live TV.” It quickly became known for its ability to record TV shows and movies, allowing viewers to watch them at their convenience.

31D Birthplace of 2021 AL Rookie of the Year Randy Arozarena : CUBA

Randy Arozarena is a Cuban-born Mexican MLB player. He defected from Cuba at the age of 19 in 2015, after his father’s sudden death. He fled the island in 2015 on a small, eight-person boat, spending eight hours in the shark-infested Gulf of Mexico before reaching safety in the Yucatán Peninsula. He had played for Cuban youth teams, but moved on to represent Mexico in international baseball tournaments.

36D King James preposition : UNTO

In 1604, King James I of England convened a conference at Hampton Court in order to produce a new translation of the Bible, as the Puritan sect within the church had problems with prior versions. 47 scholars made new translations for the New Testament from Greek and from the Old Testament from Hebrew. The result is the King James Authorized Version.

48D Año openers : ENEROS

In Spanish, we start “el año” (the year) in “enero” (January) as noted on a “calendario” (calendar).

52D Pancake with frizzled edges : CREPE

“Crêpe” is the French word for “pancake”.

55D Prefix with linear : RECTI-

Something described as rectilinear is characterized by straight lines.

57D Broadway “Auntie” : MAME

“Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade” is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis. The bestseller was adapted into an award-winning Broadway play “Auntie Mame”, starring Rosalind Russel in the title role. A 1966 Broadway musical version followed, with Anglea Lansbury playing the lead. I am guessing that we are more likely to have seen the 1974 big screen musical adaptation “Mame”, starring Lucille Ball as the title character.

60D Aspire laptop maker : ACER

Acer’s Aspire line is a series of personal computers, both desktops and laptops, that were introduced in 1999.

61D Predatory seabird : SKUA

Skuas are a group of about seven species of seabird. Some of these species are known as jaegers in the Americas. The skua takes its name from the island of Skúvoy in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. The name “jaeger” comes from the German word for “hunter”.

64D Lost Tribes number : TEN

The Twelve Tribes of Israel originated from the twelve sons of Jacob (later named “Israel”) and his wives, Leah and Rachel, and their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah. The tribes were known collectively as the Israelites, and they eventually established the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah. In approximately 722–720 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered the Kingdom of Israel, and deported its inhabitants. The deported are known as the Ten Lost Tribes.

66D Nomadic invader : HUN

The Huns were a nomadic people who originated in Eastern Europe in the 4th century. Under the command of Attila the Hun they developed a unified empire that stretched from modern-day Germany across to the steppes of Central Asia. The whole of the Hunnic Empire collapsed within a year of Attila’s death in 453 AD.