Tag: One with good taste crossword clue

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Constructed by: Rebecca Goldstein

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Reinvent the Wheel

The openings of themed answers give us a “REINVENTION” of the word “WHEEL”:

• 63A Waste time and effort, in a way, or progress as this puzzle’s circled letters do? : REINVENT THE WHEEL

• 3D “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” novelist : L FRANK BAUM
• 6D Smallest Central American country : EL SALVADOR
• 9D Durable material made from hagfish skin : EEL LEATHER
• 12D Sideways jump flourishes : HEEL CLICKS
• 63A Waste time and effort, in a way, or progress as this puzzle’s circled letters do? : REINVENT THE WHEEL

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

Bill’s time: 8m 04s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Designation for some food carts : HALAL

“Halal” is a term describing an action or object that is permissible under Islamic Law. In particular “halal” is used to describe food that can be consumed. Anything that is not allowed is described as “haram”.

10A Portal name with an exclamation point : YAHOO!

Jerry Yang and David Filo called their company “Yahoo!” for two reasons. Firstly, a Yahoo is a rude unsophisticated brute from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”. Secondly, Yahoo stands for “Yet another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

15A Actress Woodard : ALFRE

Alfre Woodard is an actress from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the 1983 film “Cross Creek”. Off the stage and screen, Woodard is very active in the Democratic Party.

17A Justice Kagan : ELENA

Elena Kagan has broken a few significant glass ceilings in her career. In 2003, she was named the first female dean of Harvard Law School, and in 2009 she became the nation’s first female Solicitor General. Kagan joined the US Supreme Court in 2010, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

25A “__ Misérables” : LES

Victor Hugo’s famous 1862 novel “Les Misérables” has been translated into English several times. However, the title is usually left in the original French as a successful translation of “les misérables” seems to be elusive. Some suggestions for an English title are “The Wretched”, “The Victims” and “The Dispossessed”. The novel follows the lives of several characters including an ex-convict Jean Valjean, a fanatic police inspector Javert, a beautiful prostitute Fantine, and Fantine’s illegitimate daughter Cosette.

26A Orange variety : NAVEL

Navel oranges are the ones with the small second fruit that grows at the base, at the “navel”. The variety has been traced back to a single mutation that took place in an orange tree in Brazil many years ago. The mutation also rendered the fruit seedless and hence sterile, so it is propagated using grafts.

32A Online image : AVATAR

The Sanskrit word “avatar” describes the concept of a deity descending into earthly life and taking on a persona. It’s easy to see how in the world of online presences one might use the word avatar to describe one’s online identity.

35A Poetry event : SLAM

A poetry slam is a competition in which poets read their own work (usually), with winners being chosen by members of the audience. Apparently the first poetry slam took place in Chicago in 1984. Now there is a National Poetry Slam that takes place each year, with representatives from the US, Canada and France.

39A One with good taste? : PALATE

The roof of the mouth is known as the palate. The anterior part of the palate is very bony, and is called the hard palate. The posterior part is very fleshy and is called the soft palate. The soft palate is muscular and moves to close off the nasal passages while swallowing. We often use the term “palate” figuratively, to describe the sense of taste.

40A Falafel bread : PITA

Falafel is a ball of ground chickpeas or fava beans that has been deep fried and served in pita bread. I love chickpeas, but falafel is often too dry for me …

41A Langley org. : CIA

The CIA headquarters is located in Langley, Virginia in a complex called the George Bush Center for Intelligence. The facility was named for former Director of the CIA and US President George H. W. Bush. Langley used to be the largest intelligence agency (by area) in the western world, but that honor now goes to the BND Headquarters in Berlin.

42A “The lady __ protest too much, methinks” : DOTH

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a line spoken by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother in the play by William Shakespeare.

44A Orinoco flow : AGUA

The Orinoco is a major river in South America that flows over 1,320 miles through Venezuela and Colombia, emptying into the Atlantic Ocean.

48A Gumbo vegetable : OKRA

Gumbo is a type of stew or soup that originated in Louisiana. The primary ingredient can be meat or fish, but to be true gumbo it must include the “holy trinity” of vegetables, namely celery, bell peppers and onion. Okra used to be a requirement but this is no longer the case. Okra gave the dish its name as the vernacular word for the African vegetable is “ki ngombo”, from the Bantu language spoken by many of the slaves brought to America.

66A Part of UAE : ARAB

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Down

3D “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” novelist : L FRANK BAUM

L. Frank Baum (the “L” is for Lyman) is famous for writing “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Writing early in the 20th century, Baum actually described in his books things that had yet to be invented, like television, laptop computers and wireless telephones.

6D Smallest Central American country : EL SALVADOR

El Salvador is a nation in Central America, the smallest country in the region. The capital of El Salvador is the city of San Salvador. “El Salvador” is derived from the name given to the land by the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century: “Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesucristo, El Salvador Del Mundo”, which translates as “Province of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World”.

9D Durable material made from hagfish skin : EEL LEATHER

Hagfish are eel-shaped fish that also go by the adorable name “slime eels”. That’s because they release slime from mucous glands in their skin, as a means of defense. One 20-inch long hagfish can turn a 5-gallon bucket of clear water into a gelatinous mass in seconds, a mass that would suffocate a nearby predator.

14D Quaker grains : OATS

The Quaker Oats Company was founded in 1901 when four oat mills merged, including the Quaker Mill Company of Ravenna, Ohio. Quaker Mill’s owner Henry Parsons Crowell played the key role in creating the new company and remained at the helm until 1943.

29D Co. for surfers : ISP

Internet service provider (ISP)

30D Natives of pre-Columbian Peru : INCAS

The Inca people emerged as a tribe around the 12th century, in what today is southern Peru. They developed a vast empire over the next 300 years, extending along most of the western side of South America. The Empire fell to the Spanish, finally dissolving in 1572 with the execution of Túpac Amaru, the last Incan Emperor.

31D Super Mario brother : LUIGI

Luigi is the younger and taller fraternal twin brother of Nintendo’s Mario. He first appeared in the 1983 arcade game “Mario Bros.”, and is often portrayed as a more timid character than his famous sibling.

33D Potatoes, in Urdu : ALOO

Urdu is one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and is one of the 22 scheduled languages in India. Urdu partly developed from Persian and is written from right to left.

36D Arcade pioneer : ATARI

Our word “arcade” comes from the Latin “arcus” meaning “arc”. The first arcades were passages made from a series of arches. This could be an avenue of trees, and eventually any covered avenue. I remember arcades lined with shops and stores when I was growing up on the other side of the Atlantic. Arcades came to be lined with lots of amusements, resulting in amusement arcades and video game arcades.

37D Like the ruins in Tulum : MAYAN

Tulum was a walled city that served as a port for the major Mayan city of Coba in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatán Peninsula. Tulum now lies in ruins, as the city was abandoned towards the end of the 16th century. The ruins are a popular destination for tourists.

45D Some short-term rentals : AIRBNBS

Airbnb is a website-based service that matches people wanting to rent out short-term living quarters to people seeking accommodation. The company was founded in 2008 as AirBed & Breakfast. The original concept was renting out an “air bed” and providing “breakfast” to someone looking for cheap, temporary accommodation. That’s right; the “Air” in “Airbnb” has nothing to do with “air” travel …

48D Buddy from way back when : OLD CHUM

A chum is a friend. The term “chum” originated in the late 1600s as an alternative spelling for “cham”. In turn, “cham” was a shortened form of “chambermate”, a roommate at university.

50D Actor Schreiber : LIEV

Liev Schreiber is highly regarded as a stage actor, and has many classical roles under his belt. He won a Tony in 2005 for his Broadway performance in “Glengarry Glen Ross”, and earned excellent reviews for his performance in Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”.

52D Theater eponym : LOEW

Loews Theatres was a chain of movie theaters founded in 1904 by Marcus Loew. The chain merged with AMC Theaters in 2006.

55D Brit’s stroller : PRAM

Another word used in Britain and Ireland that’s rarely used over here is “pram”, which in my day was the most common term for what is called a baby carriage in the US. “Pram” is short for “perambulator”.

In the US, the term “ stroller” describes a wheeled chair used to push a baby or small child. In the UK, the most common equivalent for this item is “pushchair”. The term “buggy” is also widely used in the UK, often interchangeably with pushchair, though it often refers to a lighter, more collapsible model.

56D Wireless router brand named for a Finnish architect : EERO

The Eero line of wireless mesh Wi-Fi systems was the world’s first such network system to hit the market, doing so in 2016. The brand name was chosen as a tribute to the Finnish American architect Eero Sarinen, designer of many structures around the world, including the magnificent Gateway Arch in St. Louis.

60D Russell of “The Diplomat” : KERI

Actress Keri Russell’s big break in television came with the title role in the drama show “Felicity” that ran from 1998 through 2002. The lead character in the show is Felicity Porter, a young lady introduced to the audience with a head of long curly blonde hair. Famously, Russell cut her hair extremely short at the start of the second season, an action that was associated with a significant drop in the show’s viewership. Russell had to grow out her hair over the season. I haven’t seen “Felicity”, but I really do enjoy Russell playing one of the leads in the entertaining Cold War drama called “The Americans” that finished its original run in 2018.

“The Diplomat” is an excellent political thriller starring Keri Russell as the ambassador to the UK. The supporting cast includes some great names such as Rufus Sewell, Alison Janney and Bradley Whitford. The latter two actors were veterans of the marvelous show “The West Wing”, which is where “The Diplomat” creator Debora Cahn started her writing career.

61D Mardi Gras follower : LENT

In Latin, the Christian season that is now called “Lent” was termed “quadragesima” (meaning “fortieth”), a reference to the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry. When the church began its move in the Middle Ages towards using the vernacular, the term “Lent” was introduced. “Lent” comes from “lencten”, an Old English word meaning springtime, or the month of March.

“Mardi Gras” translates from French as “Fat Tuesday”, and the holiday gets its name from the practice of eating rich foods on the eve of the fasting season known as Lent. Lent starts on the next day, called Ash Wednesday.

64D Org. that operates AIT scanners : TSA

The AIT (Advanced Imaging Technology) full-body scanners at airports are “millimeter wave” scanners. They get their name because they use safe, non-ionizing radio waves, with wavelengths measured in millimeters (between 1 and 10 mm), to see if anything is hidden under your clothes.

65D Actor/comedian Meadows : TIM

Actor and comedian Tim Meadows appeared for ten seasons as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). He also played a character named John Glascott on the sitcom “Schooled”, and the same character on “The Goldbergs”.