Tag: Standard connector for electronic devices crossword clue

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Constructed by: Rena Cohen

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Behind the Wheel

Themed answers each start with a kind of WHEEL:

• 55A Driving a car, or an apt description of the ends of 20-, 26-, and 46-Across : BEHIND THE WHEEL

• 20A Basic lunch choice : CHEESE SANDWICH (cheese wheel)
• 26A Art activity that comes with a key : COLOR-BY-NUMBER (color wheel)
• 46A 1986 film teen with a poor attendance record : FERRIS BUELLER (Ferris wheel)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 20s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Apple Pay alternative : CASH

Apple Pay is a payment service that operates with many of Apple’s mobile devices. Apple Pay competes directly with Google Wallet. I like the idea behind Apple Pay and Google Wallet, but it has taken a long time to gain traction in the retail market …

5A Egg on : GOAD

The verb “to edge” has been used to mean to incite, to urge on, from the 16th century. Somewhere along the way “edge” was mistakenly replaced with “egg”, giving us our term “to egg on” meaning “to goad”.

9A Spills the beans : BLABS

To spill the beans is to divulge a secret. The expression first appeared in American English, in the early 1900s. The phrase arose as an alternative to “spoil the beans” or “upset the applecart”. The similarly meaning phrase “spill the tea” is more prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic.

14A Blue Buffalo competitor : ALPO

Blue Buffalo is a company that makes cat and dog food. Founder Bill Bishop named the company for his pet Airedale Terrier “Blue”.

26A Art activity that comes with a key : COLOR-BY-NUMBER (color wheel)

A color wheel is a visual device that illustrates the relationship between various colors and hues.

33A Name of 12 popes : PIUS

There have been twelve popes named Pius, the latest being Pope Pius XII. He led the Roman Catholic Church until his death in 1958.

36A Diet that shuns processed foods : PALEO

The paleolithic (or “paleo, caveman”) diet is a fad diet that became popular in the 2000s. The idea is to eat wild plants and animals that would have been available to humans during the Paleolithic era (roughly the Stone Age). This period precedes the introduction of agriculture and the domestication of animals. As a result, someone on the diet avoids consuming grains, legumes, dairy and processed foods. The diet consists mainly of lean meat (about 45-65% of the total calorie intake), non-starchy vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts.

37A Standard connector for electronic devices : USB-C

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard dealing with how computers and electronic devices connect and communicate, and dealing with electrical power through those connections.

38A Minuscule : EENSY

“Minuscule” is one of those words that’s often misspelled, usually as “miniscule”.

41A Site with a Write a Review button : YELP

yelp.com is a website that provides a local business directory and reviews of services. The site is sort of like Yellow Pages on steroids, and the term “yelp” is derived from “yel-low p-ages”.

42A Pet collar targets : FLEAS

Fleas can jump incredibly high relative to their size, up to 150 times their own height. This is due to a specialized protein in their legs called resilin, which stores and releases energy like a spring.

46A 1986 film teen with a poor attendance record : FERRIS BUELLER (Ferris wheel)

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was written and directed by John Hughes and released in 1986. There are so many classic scenes in the film, including two wonderful musical interludes. The more sedate of these is a vignette shot in the Art Institute of Chicago that is beautifully filmed. The more upbeat musical scene is a rendition of “Twist and Shout” during a Von Steuben Day parade.

The first Ferris Wheel was built for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. That wheel was designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. who lent his name to wheels built from then on.

50A The Marlins, on scoreboards : MIA

The Miami Marlins baseball team was founded in 1993 as the Florida Marlins. The franchise changed its name to the Miami Marlins in 2011 when it relocated to the newly constructed Marlins Park.

62A Brontë’s “Jane __” : EYRE

“Jane Eyre” is a classic 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, published under the pseudonym “Currer Bell”. It’s a coming-of-age tale in which the title character endures a harsh childhood and education before becoming a governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane falls in love with her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester, but there’s a rocky road to travel before the couple finally get to the altar.

63A Middle Schuyler sister in “Hamilton” : ELIZA

Elizabeth “Eliza” Schuyler Hamilton was the wife of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. Eliza was with her husband when he passed away the day after his famous duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.

64A Alan of “M*A*S*H” : ALDA

Alan Alda is the only person to win acting, directing, and writing Emmys for the same comedy program. He won five Emmys for his work on “M*A*S*H”, three for acting, one for writing and one for directing.

65A Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy : REID

Andy Reid was head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles football team for 13 years before taking up the head coaching position with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2013.

Down

1D Little Leaguer’s warm-up activity : CATCH

Little League Baseball was founded in 1939 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania by Carl Stotz. Back then, Little League was limited to boys. Participation was opened up to girls in 1974, although it took a lawsuit by the National Organization for Women for that to happen.

2D “__ ‘Oe”: “Lilo & Stitch” song : ALOHA

“Aloha ‘Oe,” a famous Hawaiian song, was composed by Liliuokalani, who holds the distinction of being Hawaii’s last monarch and its only reigning queen. The song’s title translates as “Farewell to Thee.”

“Lilo & Stitch” was released by Disney in 2002. Compared to other Disney feature-length cartoons, “Lilo & Stitch” was relatively cheaply produced, using the voices of lesser-known actors. One interesting change had to take place in the storyline during production, when Lilo was meant to fly a Jumbo Jet through downtown Honolulu in one sequence. This was replaced with a sequence using a spaceship instead, as the producers were sensitive to public sentiment after the September 11 attacks.

3D Competitive puzzler with quick fingers : SPEEDCUBER

What was originally called the “Magic Cube” became better known as “Rubik’s Cube”, and was named for its inventor Ernő Rubik. Rubik’s Cube is the world’s biggest selling puzzle game, with over 350 million sold in just over 30 years.

4D Garden spigot attachment : HOSE

Back in the 15th century, a spigot was specifically a plug to stop a hole in a cask. Somewhere along the way, a spigot had a valve added for variable control of flow.

5D Esports player’s computer setting : GAME MODE

Esports (electronic sports) are video game competitions. The International Olympic Committee has held meetings to consider the inclusion of esports in the Olympic Games. What about medals for crossword solving …?

7D Roti flour : ATTA

Atta is a whole-wheat flour used to make flatbreads in South Asian cuisine, such as chapati and naan. “Atta” is the Hindi or Urdu word for “dough”.

8D Mickey Mouse operation? : DISNEY?

Walt Disney’s iconic cartoon character Mickey Mouse, was introduced to the public in 1928 in the cartoon “Steamboat Willie”. He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1978, making him the first cartoon character to be so honored. Walt Disney had some nice words to say in Disneyland in 1954:

I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.

9D Like beach balls and bouncy castles : BLOWN UP

The first inflatable structure was invented in 1959 by a mechanical engineer named John Scurlock, who was developing inflatable covers for tennis courts. He noticed his employees loved to jump on them and so he came up with the “Space Walk”, a large bag for kids to jump on. Today, we refer to them as bouncy castles, bounce houses, or perhaps moonwalks.

10D Sets of points, in math : LOCI

“Locus” (plural “loci”) is Latin for “place”, and is used in English with the same meaning. The term can also be used to describe a center of power or activity. In mathematics, a locus is a set of points that satisfy some property. For example, a locus might be a straight line, part of a line, a surface, or perhaps a curve.

11D Actor Guinness : ALEC

Sir Alec Guinness played many great roles over a long and distinguished career, but nowadays is best remembered (sadly, I think) for playing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”. He won his only Best Actor Oscar for playing Colonel Nicholson in the marvelous 1957 WWII movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Guinness himself served during the Second World War, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He commanded a landing craft during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

27D “I Love Trash” singer on “Sesame Street” : OSCAR

“I Love Trash” is a 1969 song performed by Caroll Spinney, voicing the “Sesame Street” character Oscar the Grouch. The song was written by Jeff Moss, who also penned the “Sesame Street” song “Rubber Duckie” that made it into the “Billboard” Hot 100.

28D Language family that includes Zulu : BANTU

Zulu is one of the many Bantu languages spoken in Africa. There are hundreds of Bantu languages, with most being spoken in central, east and southern Africa. The most commonly spoken Bantu language is Swahili, with Zulu coming in second.

30D Feeling the effects of studying all night, say : BLEARY-EYED

To blear is to dim the vision, usually with watery eyes.

32D Tug-of-war need : ROPE

Tug-of-war is a strength competition between two teams who pull on opposite ends of a rope, vying to pull the opponents over a marked line. The sport was an event in the Summer Olympic Games from 1900 until 1920. The USA teams won all three medals for the tug-of-war at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis.

33D __ pastry : PUFF

Puff pastry is made using a “laminating” process of folding and rolling a block of butter into a lean dough. This creates hundreds or thousands of alternating layers of dough and fat. When baked in a hot oven, the water content in the butter rapidly turns into steam, which expands and pushes the layers up and apart, causing the pastry to “puff”.

39D Man cave counterparts : SHE SHEDS

A “she shed” is the equivalent of a “man cave”. It is somewhere that “she” can use as her own space within a home.

48D Unfair reputation : BAD RAP

A rap sheet is a criminal record. “Rap” is a slang term dating back to the 1700s that means “blame, responsibility” as in “to take the rap”, “bad rap” and “to beat the rap”. This usage morphed into “rap sheet” in the early 1900s.

60D Split __ soup : PEA

A “split pea” is a dried pea that has had its outer seed coat removed, causing the pea to separate into its two halves, known as cotyledons. These cotyledons are the embryonic leaves of the seed, which store the food the young plant needs to germinate.