Tag: Russian news acronym until 2014 crossword clue

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Constructed by: Patti Varol

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: B-Minus

Themed answers are all common phrases, MINUS a starting letter B:

• 69A So-so grade, or an apt title for this puzzle : B-MINUS

• 18A Be time-consuming? : EAT THE CLOCK (“Beat the clock” minus B)
• 29A Instruction from a lazy track coach? : RACE YOURSELVES (“Brace yourselves” minus B)
• 47A “42nd Street,” e.g.? : ROADWAY MUSICAL (“Broadway musical” minus B)
• 60A Create a state of anarchy? : END THE RULES (“Bend the rules” minus B)

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

Bill’s time: 8m 17s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Thurman of “Red, White & Royal Blue” : UMA

“Red, White & Royal Blue” is a 2023 romcom film that is based on a 2019 novel of the same name by Casey McQuiston. Central to the story is a love affair between a British prince and a son of the US president. The two big names in the cast (to me, anyway) are Uma Thurman playing the American president and Stephen Fry playing the British king.

20A AirDrop tablet : IPAD

AirDrop is Apple’s file-sharing service that allows users to transfer photos, videos, documents, and other data wirelessly between nearby Apple devices (iPhones, iPads, and Macs). I’m a Google Pixel guy, and so use the equivalent Android service called Quick Share.

22A Female pig : SOW

A male pig is a boar, and a female is a sow. Young pigs are piglets.

23A __ cuisine : HAUTE

“Haute cuisine”, literally “high cooking” in French, is the name given to skillfully and elegantly prepared food, especially if it is in the French style.

24A Drummer in the Electric Mayhem : ANIMAL

The Muppet character named Animal is the wild drummer in “The Muppet Show” house band, which is actually called Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

26A “Lessons in Chemistry” actress __ Naomi King : AJA

Aja Naomi King is an actress from Southern California whose breakout role was playing Michaela Pratt on the legal drama “How to Get Away with Murder”.

“Lessons in Chemistry” is a 2022 debut novel by Bonnie Garmus. The protagonist in the story is research chemist Elizabeth Zott, who is expelled from her doctoral program after stabbing a colleague in the wrist while she was being sexually assaulted. While working as a lab technician, she starts using her kitchen for experiments, while using chemistry to produce some delicious meals. Reluctantly, as a single mother, she begins hosting a TV cooking show, using that as a vehicle to challenge traditional gender roles. The novel was adapted into an excellent miniseries of the same name, with Brie Larson playing Zott.

28A TV writers __ and Marty Krofft : SID

Sid and Marty Krofft were two brothers who worked as puppeteers, and then TV creators and writers. Born Cydus and Moshopopoulos Yola in Montreal, the Krofft brothers made several successful children’s TV shows that made it big in the US, including “H.R. Pufnstuf”, “Land of the Lost”, and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters”.

33A Russian news acronym until 2014 : ITAR

“TASS” is the abbreviation used for the former news agency that had the full name Telegraph Association of the Soviet Union (Telegrafnoe Agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza). When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the Moscow-based agency’s scope changed along with its name. It became the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia (ITAR-TASS), before reverting to the simpler name “TASS”.

35A Pseudonym letters : AKA

Also known as (aka)

37A “A Complete Unknown” subject : DYLAN

“A Complete Unknown” is a 2024 biopic covering the early years of Bob Dylan’s career. The storyline draws from Elijah Wald’s 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties”. The film culminates in scenes at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan abandoned his acoustic roots for an electric guitar and a high-decibel backing band. Folk purists, including Pete Seeger, were outraged. Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan, and Edward Norton portrays Seeger.

39A Video file format : MPEG

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was established in 1988 to set standards for audio and video compression. The standards they’ve come up with use the acronym “MPEG”.

47A “42nd Street,” e.g.? : ROADWAY MUSICAL

42nd Street is a major thoroughfare in Manhattan that is home to many of New York’s theaters, particularly around Times Square, where 42nd Street intersects with Broadway. It’s the association with the theater district that led to the naming of the 1932 novel and 1933 film “42nd Street”, which follows the staging of a Broadway musical. That same intersection of 42nd Street with Broadway was the eastern terminus for the famed Lincoln Highway that crossed the continent, terminating on the West Coast at Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

56A Chance, quaintly : HAP

Our word “hap” means chance or fortune. It turns up combined in words like “haphazard” and even “happen”. “To happen” originally meant “to occur by hap, by chance”.

60A Create a state of anarchy? : END THE RULES

Our word “anarchy”, used to describe a society without a publicly enforced government, comes from the Greek “an-” (without) and “arkhos” (leader).

65A Toy brand with Creator 3-in-1 sets : LEGO

Lego launched its “3-in-1” format in 2007, and it remains a popular active product line today. Each set includes explicit instructions for three distinct models that can be constructed out of the pieces included in the one box.

66A Title for Marie Curie : MADAME

Marie Curie lived a life of firsts. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and indeed was the first person to win two Nobel prizes (in Physics in 1903, and in Chemistry in 1911). Most of Curie’s work was in the field of radioactivity, and was carried out in the days when the impact of excessive radiation on the human body was not understood. She died from aplastic anemia, caused by high exposure to radiation. To this day, Curie’s personal papers are kept preserved in lead-lined boxes as they are highly radioactive, even her personal cookbook.

67A Type of A/V connector : RCA

The RCA connector is named after its creator, the Radio Corporation of America. It is an analog connector with a trio of color-coded plugs: yellow for video, white for left audio, and red for right audio. The original version of the connector was designed in the late 1930s and had one cable, to carry mono audio. A second cable was added in the late 1950s, with the advent of stereo sound. The yellow video cable was added in the 1970s, to carry video from VCRs.

Down

2D Stew : MARINATE

Our verb “to marinate” comes from the French “mariner” meaning “to pickle in sea brine”, which in turn comes from the Latin “marinus” meaning “of the sea”. So, “marinade” is related to “marine”.

5D “Dance the Night” singer Lipa : DUA

“Dance the Night” is a 2023 song co-written and recorded by English-Albanian singer/songwriter Dua Lipa. It made it to the number one spot in the UK and Ireland, but not in the US. Dua Lipa appeared in the celebrated 2023 movie “Barbie”, playing Mermaid Barbie. In return, Barbie’s director Greta Gerwig made a cameo in the music video for “Dance the Night”.

6D Who __: New Orleans Saints fans : DATS

The entire community of fans of the New Orleans Saints are sometimes referred to as the “Who Dat Nation”. The name comes from a popular chant heard at a Saints game:

Who dat?
Who dat?
Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?

8D Unstressed vowel sounds : SCHWAS

A schwa is an unstressed and toneless vowel found in a number of languages including English. Examples from our language are the “a” in “about”, the “e” in “taken” and the “i” in “pencil”.

10D Goddess of death played by Cate Blanchett : HELA

In the Marvel Comics universe, Hela is the Asgardian Goddess of Death. She is portrayed by Cate Blanchett in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film “Thor: Ragnarok”. When the character appeared in the 2017 movie, she made a little history by being the MCU’s first primary female antagonist.

19D Hopscotch player’s supply : CHALK

I remember the children’s game called “hopscotch” being a favorite of mine as a young kid. Also known as “potsy” (mainly in New York City), it involves tossing a stone into a pattern of rectangles drawn in chalk on the ground. After tossing the stone into the correct square, the player hops through the rectangular pattern, pausing to retrieve the stone.

21D “Sweet land of liberty,” in song : AMERICA

The patriotic song “America” is also known by its first line, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”. The song was written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831, and was the de facto national anthem of the country until “The Star-Spangled Banner” was declared the official anthem in 1931. The melody of “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” is identical with the British national anthem, “God Save the King/Queen”.

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!

30D Short turnaround? : UEY

Hang a “uey” or “uie”, make a u-turn, make a 180.

32D Many a “What We Do in the Shadows” character : VAMPIRE

“What We Do in the Shadows” is a comedy horror TV show that debuted in 2019, and is based on a 2014 New Zealand mockumentary of the same name. The small-screen version is about four vampires who are roommates on Staten Island. I really don’t do horror, not even comedy horror …

40D Indy 500 leaders : PACE CARS

In automobile racing, a pace car is used for safety when there is an obstruction on the track. The pace car enters the track in front of the leader and slows the racing cars to what is deemed to be a safe speed. While the pace car is on the track, the competitors cannot pass the pace car and nor can they pass each other. When the pace car exits the track, the race resumes.

44D Novelist Wharton : EDITH

Edith Wharton was a novelist and designer from New York City. Wharton was a wealthy woman and built her own estate in Lenox, Massachusetts called the Mount. My wife and I had the privilege of touring the Mount a few years ago, and there we saw evidence of what design meant to Wharton. Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921, making her the first woman to be so honored.

47D “SNL” Emmy winner Gilda : RADNER

Gilda Radner was a comedian and actress, and one of the original cast members of the hit television show “Saturday Night Live”. Radner left her first husband to marry comedic actor Gene Wilder, whom she met while they were both filming the Sidney Poitier movie “Hanky Panky”.

49D Meditation retreat : ASHRAM

“Ashram” is a term used in the Hindu tradition to describe a place of spiritual retreat, one that is typically located in a remote location conducive to spiritual instruction and meditation.

57D Bavaria-based automaker : AUDI

The predecessor to today’s Audi company was called Auto Union. Auto Union was formed with the merger of four individual entities: Audi, Horch, DKW and Wanderer. The Audi logo comprises four intersecting rings, each representing one of the four companies that merged.

64D Karate level : DAN

The dan ranking system is used in several Japanese and Korean martial arts. The ranking indicates a level of proficiency, and often only applies to practitioners who have already earned a black belt.