Today’s Reveal Answer: Ark

Themed answers each include two occurrences of the same animal as hidden words (using circled letters in the grid):

• 13D Holder of the contents of the circled squares? : ARK

• 18A Frank discussion, perhaps : MAN-TO-MAN-TALK (hiding “ANT” and “ANT”)
• 24A Courses without letter grades : PASS/FAIL CLASSES (hiding “ASS” and “ASS”)
• 40A Road Runner’s call : BEEP BEEP! (hiding “BEE” and “BEE”)
• 53A By whatever means : CATCH AS CATCH CAN (hiding “CAT” and “CAT”)
• 63A 1970 W.W. II drama with a repetitive name : TORA! TORA! TORA! (hiding “RAT” and “RAT”)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 46s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4 Old rocket stage : AGENA

The RM-81 Agena was an upper-stage rocket designed and built by Lockheed, and first used in 1959. After 365 launches, it was retired in 1987.

9 Penne, say : PASTA

Cylindrical pasta is known in general as “penne”, and there are many variants. For example, ziti is a particularly large and long tube with square-cut ends. “Penne” is the plural of “penna”, the Italian for “feather, quill”.

16 Stephen ___, Justin Trudeau’s predecessor as Canadian P.M. : HARPER

Stephen Harper was Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 until his Conservative Party was defeated in the 2015 federal election. In 2003. Harper helped create the modern Conservative Party of Canada by brokering a deal that merged his Canadian Alliance party with the Progressive Conservative Party.

20 Nobelist Wiesel : ELIE

Elie Wiesel was a holocaust survivor, and is best known for his book “Night” that tells of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was also the first recipient of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Award, which was later renamed the Elie Wiesel Award in his honor.

29 “Don’t Bring Me Down” grp., 1979 : ELO

“Don’t Bring Me Down” was the biggest hit that the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) had in the US. The song was dedicated to NASA’s Skylab, which reentered the earth’s orbit in 1979, the same year the song was released.

30 Classic sci-fi film with a sequel 28 years later : TRON

Released in 1982, Disney’s “Tron” was one of the first mainstream films to make extensive use of computer graphics. The main role in the movie is played by Jeff Bridges. The original spawned a 2010 sequel called “Tron: Legacy”, as well as a 2012 TV show called “Tron: Uprising”.

40 Road Runner’s call : BEEP BEEP! (hiding “BEE” and “BEE”)

Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner are two much-loved cartoon characters from Warner Bros. Wile E. Coyote was created first, and Road Runner was invented as someone for Wile E. to play off. I love this cartoon; definitely one of the best …

44 The Spouter in “Moby-Dick,” for one : INN

The full title of Herman Melville’s novel is “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”. Note that the convention is to hyphenate “Moby-Dick” in the title, as that was how the book was first published, in 1851. However, there is no hyphen in the name of the whale “Moby Dick” as reproduced throughout the text.

50 Fleur-de-___ : LIS

“Lys” (sometimes “lis”) is the French word for “lily” as in “fleur-de-lys”, the heraldic symbol often associated with the French monarchy.

60 Taste that is neither sweet nor salty nor sour nor bitter : UMAMI

Umami is one of the five basic tastes, along with sweet, sour, bitter and salty. “Umami” is a Japanese word used to describe “a pleasant savory taste”. Umami was proposed as a basic taste in 1908, but it wasn’t until 1985 that the scientific community finally accepted it as such.

61 Sashimi fish : AHI

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.

63 1970 W.W. II drama with a repetitive name : TORA! TORA! TORA! (hiding “RAT” and “RAT”)

The predetermined code word to be used by the Japanese if they managed to achieve surprise in their attack on Pearl Harbor was “tiger”, or “tora” in Japanese. This gave the title to the excellent 1970 movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!”.

67 Kitten’s plaint : MEW

A plaint is a grouse, a complaint.

68 Things doctors see when patients say “aah” : UVULAS

The uvula is that conical fleshy projection hanging down at the back of the soft palate. The uvula plays an important role in human speech, particularly in the making of “guttural” sounds. The Latin word for “grape” is “uva”, so “uvula” is a “little grape”.

69 Animal in a Shakespearean title : SHREW

William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” is about a courting couple. The male in the couple is Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, and the female is Katharina/Kate, the so-called “shrew”. As the play progresses, the “shrew” is “tamed” and becomes an “obedient” bride … a controversial storyline in the contemporary world, to say the least. Regardless, modern adaptations have been made, including 1948’s Broadway musical “Kiss Me Kate” and the 1999 romantic comedy “10 Things I Hate About You”.

71 Animal in some ancient cave art : BISON

There are two species of bison left (four species are extinct). We are most familiar with the American bison (commonly called the American buffalo), but there is also a European bison, which is sometimes called a “wisent”.

Down

1 Animal in an insomniac’s count : SHEEP

People with insomnia might count sheep as an aid to falling asleep.

2 Animal in old Qantas ads : KOALA

QANTAS is the national airline of Australia. The company name was originally an acronym standing for “Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services”. QANTAS has featured a koala in advertising campaigns for many years, although the company’s logo is a kangaroo and the company’s nickname is “Flying Kangaroo”.

3 Abominable Snowmen : YETIS

The yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, is a beast of legend. “Yeti” is a Tibetan term, and the beast is fabled to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. Our equivalent legend in North America is that of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. The study of animals whose existence have not yet been substantiated is called cryptozoology, and a cryptid is a creature or plant that isn’t recognized by the scientific community, but the existence of which has been suggested.

4 Convenience at a convenience store : ATM

Automatic Teller Machine (ATM)

6 Boredom : ENNUI

“Ennui” is the French word for “boredom”, and a word that we now use in English. It’s one of the few French words we’ve imported that we haven’t anglicized, and actually pronounce “correctly”.

7 Stinging weed : NETTLE

Most nettle species have stinging hairs that secrete formic acid. This formic acid is the same chemical that is found in the venom injected with a bee or ant sting. The Latin word for ant is “formica”, which gives its name to the acid.

10 Klee or Klimt : ARTIST

Artist Paul Klee was born in Switzerland, but studied art in Munich in Germany. You can see many of Klee’s works in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. If you get to Bern in Switzerland, even more of them can be seen at the Zentrum Paul Klee that was opened in 2005. Klee’s most celebrated work is his pointillist painting from 1932 called “Ad Parnassum”, which is owned by the Kunstmuseum, also located in Bern.

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter who primarily painted the female body, often producing works that were described as erotic. One of Klimt’s most famous paintings is “The Kiss”, which he completed in 1908.

11 Cold War competition : SPACE RACE

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite towards the end of 1957 in a development that shocked the establishment in the US. Within months, President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Space Race had begun …

The term “Cold War” was coined by the novelist George Orwell in a 1945 essay about the atomic bomb. Orwell described a world under threat of nuclear war as having a “peace that is no peace”, in a permanent state of “cold war”. The specific use of “cold war” to describe the tension between the Eastern bloc and the Western allies is attributed to a 1947 speech by Bernard Baruch, adviser to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

13 Holder of the contents of the circled squares? : ARK

Genesis 6:19-20 states that Noah was instructed to take two animals of every kind into the ark. Later, in Genesis 7:2-3 Noah was instructed to take on board “every clean animal by sevens … male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth”. Apparently, “extras” (7 rather than 2) were needed for ritual sacrifice.

16 Mandlikova of tennis : HANA

Hana Mandlikova is a former professional tennis star from Czechoslovakia. Mandlikova won four Grand Slam titles and then retired in 1990, at the ripe old age of 28.

19 “Cheers” bartender Sam : MALONE

On the sitcom “Cheers”, bartender Sam Malone was played by Ted Danson. Malone was a retired relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and a recovering alcoholic. Great show …

21 “Put a tiger in your tank” brand : ESSO

“Put a Tiger in Your Tank” was an advertising slogan and theme used by Esso gasoline in the 1960s.

26 Elks ___ : CLUB

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) was founded in 1868, and is a social club that has about a million members today. It started out as a group of men getting together in a “club” in order to get around the legal opening hours of taverns in New York City. The club took on a new role as it started to look out for poor families of members who passed away. The club now accepts African Americans as members (since the seventies) and women (since the nineties), but atheists still aren’t welcome. The list of US presidents that have been members of the BPOE includes Presidents Eisenhower, Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Ford.

31 Animal in a creek : NEWT

Newts wouldn’t be my favorite animals. They are found all over the world living on land or in water depending on the species, but always associated with water even if it is only for breeding. Newts metamorphose through three distinct developmental stages during their lives. They start off as larvae in water, fertilized eggs that often cling to aquatic plants. The eggs hatch into tadpoles, the first developmental form of the newt. After living some months as tadpoles swimming around in the water, they undergo another metamorphosis, sprouting legs and replacing their external gills with lungs. At this juvenile stage they are known as efts, and leave the water to live on land. A more gradual transition takes place then, as the eft takes on the lizard-like appearance of the adult newt.

32 CNN anchor Burnett : ERIN

Erin Burnett is a television journalist and the host of her own show on CNN called “Erin Burnett OutFront”. Apparently Burnett also used to show up occasionally as advisor to Donald Trump on “The Celebrity Apprentice”.

33 Hedgehog of video games : SONIC

Sonic the Hedgehog is a title character in a videogame and the mascot of Sega, the computer game developer. Sonic was set up as a rival to Nintendo’s mascot “Mario”.

41 Oblong pastry : ECLAIR

The name for the pastry known as an “éclair” is clearly French in origin. The French word for lightning is “éclair”, but no one seems to be too sure how it came to be used for the rather delicious bakery item.

47 Physics Nobelist Niels : BOHR

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who won his 1922 Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics and atomic structure. Later in his life, Bohr was part of the team working on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein had a series of public debates and disputes in the twenties and thirties. Although the two respected each other very highly, they held very different views on quantum theory, different views on the laws of physics at the atomic level. The passage of time has shown that Bohr won out in those debates.

49 Walled city on the coast of France : ST-MALO

Saint-Malo is a walled port city in Brittany in the northwest of France. Saint-Malo was a fortified island in the Middle Ages, and became home to French privateers and pirates in the 1800s, much to the chagrin of the British on the other side of the English Channel.

54 Trading board game with “settlers” : CATAN

The Settlers of Catan is a board game that was introduced in 1995, in Germany as “Die Siedler von Catan”. The game is very popular in the US and was called “the board game of our time” by the “Washington Post”. My son plays it a lot, and as a lover of board games, I am going to have to check it out …

55 Med. care providers : HMOS

Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

56 Now, in Nogales : AHORA

Nogales (properly called “Heroica Nogales”) is a city in the Mexican State of Sonora. Nogales lies right on the Mexico-US border, opposite the city of Nogales, Arizona.

57 Animal on a cigarette pack : CAMEL

The advertising mascot for Camel cigarettes was officially known as “Old Joe”, but was popularly known as “Joe Camel”. Joe originated in the seventies, in an advertising campaign that ran only in Europe where sometimes he was depicted wearing a French Foreign Legion cap. He was imported to the US in 1988 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Camel brand. The big controversy surrounding the use of the camel character was that a 1991 study found that 5-6 year old children could recognize Joe Camel more readily than either Mickey Mouse or Fred Flintstone. Also, soon after Old Joe was introduced in the US, the Camel brand’s share of the illegal market to underage smokers went up from 1% to just under 33%.

58 Wolf in “The Jungle Book” : AKELA

Akela is the wolf in the “Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. He gave his name to a cubmaster in the scouting movement, who is now known as “Akela”.