Tag: Traffic report vehicles briefly crossword clue

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Constructed by: Dan Kammann & Zhouqin Burnikel

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Places to Catch Some Rays

Themed clues are all the same: PLACE TO CATCH SOME RAY(S):

• 17A Place to catch some rays : SCI-FI MOVIE
• 34A Place to catch some rays : ROOFTOP DECK
• 42A Place to catch a Ray : FOOD NETWORK
• 62A Place to catch a ray : OCEAN FLOOR

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

Bill’s time:6m 52s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Like just-cut radish slices : CRISP

Radishes are edible root vegetables that are commonly grown for use in salads. Gardeners also use radishes as companion plants as the odor given off can deter pests such as aphids, ants and cucumber beetles. I do enjoy eating a spicy radish …

6A Butter used in pantua : GHEE

Pantua is a traditional sweet from the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. It is a deep-fried, syrup-soaked dumpling made from chhena (Indian cottage cheese) or khoa (reduced milk solids), often flavored with cardamom.

14A Wood that repels moths : CEDAR

Cedar is used for the manufacture of some wardrobes and chests as it has long been believed that the fragrant oil in the wood is a moth-repellent. However, whether or not cedar oil is actually effective at keeping moths away seems to be in doubt.

16A “Do __ others … ” : UNTO

The Golden Rule is also known as the ethic of reciprocity, and is a basis for the concept of human rights. A version of the rule used in the Christian tradition is attributed to Jesus:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

A derivative phrase often heard today is “Love thy neighbor (as thyself)”.

19A Nose-in-the-air sort : SNOB

Back in the 1780s, a snob was a shoemaker or a shoemaker’s apprentice. By the end of the 18th century the word “snob” was being used by students at Cambridge University in England to refer to all local merchants and people of the town. The term evolved to mean one who copies those who are his or her social superior (and not in a good way). From there it wasn’t a big leap for “snob” to include anyone who emphasized their superior social standing and not just those who aspired to rank. Nowadays a snob is anyone who looks down on those considered to be of inferior standing.

20A Set of the Rosary : DECADE

The rosary is a set of prayer beads used in the Roman Catholic tradition. The name “rosary” comes from the Latin “rosarium”, the word for a “rose garden” or a “garland of roses”. The term is used figuratively, in the sense of a “garden of prayers”.

21A Scavenging carnivore : HYENA

Hyenas have the reputation of being cowardly scavengers. That said, the spotted hyena that lives in Sub-Saharan Africa actually kills about 95% of its food and a pack of spotted hyenas are capable of driving off leopards or lionesses before they can consume their kill.

27A Traffic report vehicles, briefly : COPTERS

Our term “helicopter” was absorbed from the French word “hélicoptère” that was coined by Gustave Ponton d’Amécourt in 1861. d’Amécourt envisioned aircraft that could fly vertically using rotating wings that “screwed” into the air. He combined the Greek terms “helix” meaning “spiral, whirl” and “pteron” meaning “wing” to give us “helicopter”.

33A Guatemala gold : ORO

Guatemala in Central America became independent from Spain in 1821, first becoming part of the Mexican Empire, and then becoming completely independent two years later.

38A __ of Skye : ISLE

The Isle of Skye is off the northwest coast of Scotland in the Inner Hebrides. It is the second largest island in the country, and has been linked to the mainland by a road bridge since 1995. I’ve never been there, but I hear the views are spectacular.

41A “Basket of Bread” painter Salvador : DALI

“Basket of Bread” is a 1945 painting by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí. The same work goes by the more complete name “Basket of Bread – Rather Death Than Shame”. At first glance, the painting is a relatively simple still life showing the heel of a loaf of bread in a basket sitting at the edge of a table.

42A Place to catch a Ray : FOOD NETWORK

Rachael Ray is a celebrity chef and host of several shows on the Food Network television channel. Ray comes from a family that owned and managed a number of restaurants in the northeast of the country. One of Ray’s TV shows is “$40 a Day”, in which she demonstrates how to visit various cities in North America and Europe and eat three meals and a snack on a daily budget of just $40.

55A Jellyfish home : SEA

Jellyfish are found all over the ocean, right across the whole planet. They have been around for 500-700 million years, and so are the oldest multi-organ animal extant.

61A Coin in the Trevi Fountain : EURO

The Trevi Fountain (“Fontana di Trevi”) is a huge fountain in Rome, one that is the largest constructed in the Baroque style. The tradition is that if one throws a coin in the fountain then one is guaranteed a return visit to the city. Tourists throw in an amazing 3,000 euros (over $4,000) every day. The money is collected and is used to stock a supermarket for the needy of the city.

62A Place to catch a ray : OCEAN FLOOR

Rays are fish with flattened bodies that have gill slits on their underside. There are many, many species of ray, including stingrays and skates. Rays are close relatives of sharks, with both being cartilaginous fish, as opposed to bony fish.

66A Penny-__ : ANTE

Penny ante poker is a game in which bets are limited to a penny, or some other small, friendly sum. The expression “penny-ante” has come to describe any business transaction that is on a small scale.

68A “Broad City” star Glazer : ILANA

Ilana Glazer is a comedian from Long Island, New York. Along with comedian Abbi Jacobson, she is the co-creator of the Comedy Central sitcom “Broad City”.

“Broad City” is a sitcom shown on Comedy Central that started out life as a web series on the Internet. It’s about two young Jewish American women having misadventures in New York City.

Down

2D Remote button with a red dot : REC

The first television remote control was introduced by Zenith Radio Corporation, in 1950. That remote was hard-wired to the TV, and was marketed as “Lazy Bones”. Personally, my first “remote” was a broomstick that I used by pushing in large mechanical buttons that selected either of the three channels that were available back then on the east coast of Ireland …

7D Spots for queens : HIVES

A queen bee has a stinger, just like worker bees. When a worker bee stings, it leaves its stinger in its victim. The worker bee dies after losing its stinger as the loss rips out part of its insides. However, a queen bee can sting with impunity as her stinger’s anatomy is different.

8D “Hostel” director Roth : ELI

Eli Roth is one of a group of directors of horror movies known quite graphically as “The Splat Pack”. I can’t stand “splat” movies and avoid them as best I can. Roth is also famous for playing Donny Donowitz in the Quentin Tarantino movie “Inglourious Basterds”.

“Hostel” is a series of horror movies directed by Eli Roth. I don’t do horror …

21D URL opener : HTTP-

“http” are the first letters in many Internet links. “http” stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. More secure and “safer” websites (like this one!) use links starting with “https”, which stands for “http secure”.

24D Souped-up car : HOT ROD

A hot rod is an American car that has been modified for speed by installing a larger than normal engine. A street rod is generally a more comfortable type of hot rod, with the emphasis less on the engine and more on custom paint jobs and interiors. By definition, a street rod must be based on an automobile design that originated prior to 1949.

To soup up an engine is to increase its horsepower. The verb possibly derives from the older slang term “soup”, which was a narcotic illegally injected into racehorses to make them run faster.

27D Hairdo : COIF

A coif is a hairdo. The term “coif” comes from an old French term “coife” describing a skull-cap that was worn under a helmet back in the late 13th century.

29D Top choices for golfers : POLO SHIRTS

René Lacoste was a French tennis player who went into the clothing business, and came up with a more comfortable shirt that players could use. This became known as a “tennis shirt”. When it was adopted for use in the sport of polo, the shirts also became known as “polo shirts”. The “golf shirt” is basically the same thing. The Lacoste line of clothing features a crocodile logo, because René was nicknamed “The Crocodile”.

39D Toronto summer hrs. : EDT

Beautiful Toronto, Ontario is the largest city in Canada, and the fourth most populous city in North America (after Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles).

44D Adult ed class : ESL

English as a Second Language (ESL)

45D Sticky pine secretion : RESIN

Resinous trees have evolved the ability to secrete resins in response to an injury. The resin serves as a barrier, protecting the tree from insects and pathogens that might otherwise exploit the site of the injury.

50D Spanish dish with rice and saffron : PAELLA

Paella is sometimes referred to as the Spanish national dish, but not by Spaniards. In Spain, paella is regarded as a typical regional dish from Valencia. The name “paella” means “frying pan” in Valencian, and is a reference to the shallow vessel traditionally used to cook the dish over an open fire.

Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice by weight. It is derived from the saffron crocus. The spice itself is the dried stigma found in the flower of the plant.

51D Calculus calculations : AREAS

Remember doing calculus at school, and all those derivatives and integrals? Well, you probably also remember that an integral calculates the area under a curve (for example), and a derivative calculates the slope of a tangent at a particular point on a curve.

62D Bird with piercing eyes : OWL

Much of an owl’s diet consists of small mammals. As a result, humans have used owls for centuries to control rodent populations, usually by placing a nest box for owls on a property. Despite the fact that owls and humans live together in relative harmony, owls have been known to attack humans from time to time. Celebrated English bird photographer Eric Hosking lost an eye when attacked by a tawny owl that he was trying to photograph. Hosking wrote a 1970 autobiography with the wry title “An Eye for a Bird”.

63D Jensen Huang of Nvidia, e.g. : CEO

Tech company Nvidia has benefited tremendously from the AI boom. This is largely because its graphics processing units (GPUs), originally designed for gaming graphics, proved to be exceptionally well-suited for the parallel processing demands of AI workloads.

64D Atomic number of hydrogen : ONE

Hydrogen is a relatively simple element, composed of basically a proton, an electron and no neutrons. It is the most abundant element in the universe.