Tag: Summer music crossword clue

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Constructed by: David P. Williams

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Get the Lead Out

To match the corresponding answer, we must GET THE “LEAD” OUT of each of the themed clues. Clever …

• 34A “Move it!,” or how to make this puzzle’s starred clues match their answers : GET THE LEAD OUT!

• 18A *Misleads in an alley : GUTTER BALL (Miss in an alley)
• 23A *Wordle ad collection : DICTIONARY (Word collection)
• 50A *Storied Gilead locale : OMAHA BEACH (Storied GI locale)
• 57A *Plea deal venues : BELL TOWERS (Peal venues)

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

Bill’s time: 10m 03s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11A Tango number : TWO

It takes two to tango …

The dramatic tango dance originated in the late 1800s in the area along the border between Argentina and Uruguay. Dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires in particular traveled to Europe and beyond in the early twentieth century and brought the tango with them. The tango craze first struck Europe in Paris in the 1910s, and from there spread to London and Berlin, crossing the Atlantic to New York in 1913.

14A Mother of Beyoncé and Solange : TINA

Tina Knowles is the ex-wife of Mathew Knowles who managed the group Destiny’s Child. The most famous former member of Destiny’s Child is Beyoncé Knowles, who is Tina and Mathew’s daughter.

Beyoncé Knowles established herself in the entertainment industry as the lead singer with the R&B group Destiny’s Child. She launched her solo singing career in 2002, after making her first appearance as an actor. In 2006 she played the lead in the very successful movie adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls”. Beyoncé is married to rap star Jay-Z. She is also referred to affectionately as “Queen Bey”, a play on the phrase “the queen bee”. Her fan base goes by the name “Beyhive”.

Solange Knowles is a singer/songwriter, and the younger sister of the incredibly successful singer Beyoncé. Solange was in the news a while back when security camera footage was released showing her punching and kicking Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z in an elevator.

15A William Sydney Porter’s pen name : O HENRY

“O. Henry” was the pen name of writer William Sydney Porter from Greensboro, North Carolina. O. Henry is famous for his witty short stories that have a clever twist in the tail.

17A Pop artist Warhol : ANDY

American artist Andy Warhol was a leader in the pop art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s. Many of his works became the most expensive paintings ever sold. A 1963 Warhol canvas titled “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” fetched over 100 million dollars in 2013.

18A *Misleads in an alley : GUTTER BALL (Miss in an alley)

In ten-pin bowling, a gutter ball is one that ends up in one of the gutters (channels) on either side of each lane.

22A Sub-par performance? : EAGLE

The following terms are routinely used in golf for scores relative to par:

• Bogey: one over par
• Par
• Birdie: one under par
• Eagle: two under par
• Albatross (also “double eagle”): three under par
• Condor: four under par

No one has ever recorded a condor during a professional tournament.

23A *Wordle ad collection : DICTIONARY (Word collection)

Wordle is a web-based word game that a Welsh software engineer developed to play with his partner during the COVID pandemic. The name “Wordle” is a play on the engineer’s own name: Josh Wardle. Wardle published the game on its own website in 2021, primarily for the use of Wardle’s family. One month later, the game had 90 players, and a month later 300,000 players. A week later, the number of daily players had grown to two million! The New York Times purchased Wordle in 2022 “for an undisclosed price in the low-seven figures”.

32A Summer music? : DISCO

Donna Summer is known as “The Queen of Disco”, with great hits like “Love to Love You, Baby”, “I Feel Love” and “Hot Stuff”. In the late sixties and early seventies, LaDonna Gaines (her real name) lived and worked in Germany. There she met and married an Austrian actor called Helmuth Sommer. They divorced not long after the marriage, but Donna kept his family name, just changing the “o” to “u” to give her the stage name of “Donna Summer”.

47A The __ Brothers: blue-eyed soul band : DOOBIE

The Doobie Brothers are a rock band from San Jose, California, and aren’t brothers at all. Apparently, the band took their name from their fondness for “doobies”, a slang term for marijuana cigarettes.

49A Tsukiji market buy, perhaps : TUNA

The Tsukiji Market in Tokyo was the largest wholesale seafood market in the world. After operating since 1935, the market was moved in 2018 to new premises on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay a few miles away. It is now known as Toyosu Market.

50A *Storied Gilead locale : OMAHA BEACH (Storied GI locale)

The Normandy landings on D-Day in 1944 took place along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The worst fighting by far took place on Omaha Beach, a sector assigned to the US Army that was transported by elements of the US Navy and the Royal Navy.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a 1985 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It is set in a dystopian New England of the near future, in a patriarchal state known as the Republic of Gilead, after the overthrow of the US government. The central character is named Offred, a “handmaid” forced to bear children for the male ruling class. The novel was adapted into a highly successful TV series of the same name, starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred.

56A Night of revelry, initially : NYE

New Year’s Eve (NYE)

60A Sashimi’s lack : RICE

Sashimi is thinly sliced raw fish, although it can also be raw meat. The word “sashimi” translates literally as “pierced body”, which may be a reference to the practice of sticking the tail and fin to sliced fish to identify it.

64A Northern limits? : ENS

The limits/ends of the word “northern” are letters N (ens).

66A Some drones : BEES

Drone bees (and ants) are fertile males of the species, whose sole role in life seems to be to mate with a queen. Given that drone bees make no honey, we sometimes use the term “drone” figuratively, to describe a lazy worker, or someone who lives on the labors of others.

Down

2D Manitoba’s capital : WINNIPEG

The Manitoba city of Winnipeg is the largest city in the province, and its capital. The city is named for the nearby Lake Winnipeg, which in turn is an anglicization of a Cree word meaning “muddy waters”.

3D Director’s cut? : AND … SCENE!

I read that it is a common misconception that a director says “And … scene!” meaning “ cut, end of scene”. Apparently, the correct phrasing is “end scene”.

6D Old-fashioned farm apparatus : CHURN

Butter churns are devices that convert cream into butter. The churn agitates the cream mechanically, disrupting milk fat. Clumps of disrupted milk fat form larger and larger fat globules. Eventually, the mixture separates into solid butter and liquid buttermilk.

7D CVS Health subsidiary : AETNA

When the healthcare management and insurance company known as Aetna was founded, the name was chosen to evoke images of Mount Etna, the Italian volcano.

8D Big bang letters : TNT

Trinitrotoluene (TNT)

9D Charlemagne’s domain, briefly : HRE

Charlemagne was the first king to use the title “Holy Roman Emperor”, starting in the year 800, even though the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) was not actually founded per se until over a century later when Otto I was crowned Emperor. Otto was the first of an unbroken line of Holy Roman Emperors who ruled Central Europe from 962 until 1806.

10D Governess who breaks the fourth wall : EYRE

“Jane Eyre” is a celebrated novel written by Charlotte Brontë, under the pen name Currer Bell. The love story is perhaps represented by the oft-quoted opening lines of the last chapter, “Reader, I married him”. There is a wonderful 4-hour television adaptation made by the BBC that I highly recommend to fans of the novel …

In the theater world, the fourth wall is an imaginary plane at the front of the stage through which the audience experiences the action. When a character acknowledges the existence of the audience, perhaps by addressing them, he or she is said to have broken the fourth wall.

11D Star-crossed : TRAGIC

Two lovers who are star-crossed are ill-fated, thwarted by the stars. The term “star-crossed” was coined by William Shakespeare in the prologue to his play “Romeo and Juliet”

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life

12D Financial nabe in NYC : WALL ST

New York’s famous Wall Street was originally named by the Dutch “Het Cingel” (or “the Belt”). That “belt” was the city “wall”, a wall erected by Dutch colonists to protect them from an attack by the British from the north. The attack by land never came, but the British did mount a successful invasion by sea. The British demolished the wall two decades later, in 1699.

13D Little hooters : OWLETS

A baby owl is an owlet. The term “owlet” can also be used for the adults of the smaller species of owls.

19D Auburn rival, to fans : BAMA

The athletic teams of the University of Alabama (“Bama”) are nicknamed the Crimson Tide, which is a reference to the team colors of crimson and white. Bama’s mascot is Big Al, an anthropomorphic elephant.

Auburn University in Alabama was chartered in 1856 as the East Alabama Male College. The school was renamed when it was granted university status in 1960. Auburn’s sports teams are known as the Tigers, for which supporters use the battle cry “War Eagle!”

26D Community pool org. : YMCA

The YMCA (the Y) is a worldwide movement that has its roots in London, England. There, in 1844, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was founded with the intent of promoting Christian principles through the development of “a healthy spirit, mind and body”. The founder, George Williams, saw the need to create YMCA facilities for young men who were flocking to the cities as the Industrial Revolution flourished. He saw that these men were frequenting taverns and brothels, and wanted to offer a more wholesome alternative.

30D Entertainment medium, for short : POD

A podcast is an audio or video media file that is made available for download. The term “podcast” is a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast”. Basically, a podcast is a broadcast that one can play on demand, simply by downloading and opening the podcast file.

32D Fabric named for a French city : DENIM

Nîmes is a lovely city in the south of France. One of the claims to fame of the city is the invention of denim fabric. The French phrase “de Nîmes” (from Nîmes) gives us the word “denim”.

33D Tahiti, par exemple : ILE

In French, an “île” might be Tahiti, “par exemple” (for example).

Tahiti is the most populous island in French Polynesia, which is located in the central Southern Pacific. Although Captain Cook landed in Tahiti in 1769, he wasn’t the first European to do so. However, Cook’s visit was the most significant in that it heralded a whole spate of European visitors, who brought with them prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol. Included among the subsequent visitors was the famous HMS Bounty under the charge of Captain Bligh.

35D Ft. Worth school : TCU

Texas Christian University (TCU) is a private school in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU used to be called AddRan Male & Female, named after AddRan Clark, the son of Addison Clark who died at the age of 3-years-old from diphtheria. Poor young AddRan was named after his father and his brother, Addison and Randolph.

36D Heavenly sign : HALO

The Greek word “halos” is the name given to the ring of light around the sun or moon, which gives us our word “halo” that is used for a radiant light depicted above the head of a saintly person.

37D Wind instrument featured in R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming” : OBOE

“Nightswimming” is a 1993 ballad released by the rock band R.E.M. Rather than featuring the whole band, the song is sung by lead singer Michael Stipe, accompanied by the band’s bass player on piano.

38D City slicker : URBANITE

A city slicker is a person accustomed to an urban lifestyle, and who is particularly unsuited for life in a rural setting. When the term was coined, it was used somewhat derisively by rural Americans. However, that implication seems to have softened somewhat over the years.

46D Chambers of commerce? : MALL

Surprisingly (to me!), our word “mall”, meaning “shady walk” or “enclosed shopping space”, comes from the Italian for “mallet”. All of our shopping-style malls are named for “The Mall” in St. James’s Park in London. This tree-lined promenade was so called as it used to be a famous spot to play the croquet-like game called “pall-mall”. The game derived its name from the Italian for ball (palla) and mallet “maglio”. The London thoroughfare called the Mall still exists, at one end of which is Buckingham Palace. Indeed, parallel to the Mall is a street called Pall Mall.

47D “A Man on the Inside” actor Ted : DANSON

“A Man on the Inside” is a comedy TV series starring Ted Danson as Charles Nieuwendyk, a retiree-turned-amateur private investigator. The show is based on a 2020 documentary “The Mole Agent”, in which an elderly man is hired by a private investigator to investigate the goings-on in a nursing home in El Monte, Chile. “A Man on the Inside” is not set in Chile, but rather San Francisco. I saw this one, and really enjoyed it.

48D Honor bestowed by HM King Charles III : OBE

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry in the UK that was established in 1917 by King George V. There are five classes within the order, which are in descending seniority:

• Knight Grand Cross (GBE)
• Knight Commander (KBE)
• Commander (CBE)
• Officer (OBE)
• Member (MBE)

54D Brief “Then again … ” : OTOH

On the other hand (OTOH)

59D Montgomery of jazz : WES

Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist from Indianapolis. He was known for his unique playing style and innovative use of octaves in his solos. He also played with his thumb rather than a pick, which gave his playing a warmer and more rounded tone.