Day: December 15, 2024

Bill’s time: 30m 35s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Chess player’s study : TACTICS

The terms “strategy” and “tactic” are often confused. In the original frame of reference, namely war, strategy is decided prior to battle. Tactics are implemented during the battle, and are consistent with the strategy.

8 Painting stolen from 71-Across : MONET

French artist Claude Monet was one of the founders of the Impressionist movement, and indeed the term “Impressionism” comes from the title of his 1872 painting “Impression, Sunrise”. That work depicts the port of Le Havre, which was Monet’s hometown. Later in his life, Monet purchased a house in Giverny, and famously installed lily ponds and a Japanese bridge in the property’s extensive gardens. He spent two decades painting the water lily ponds, producing his most famous works. I was fortunate enough to visit Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny a few years ago. A beautiful place …

17 Crunchy root vegetables : RADISHES

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.

19 Fertilizer compound : POTASH

“Potash” is the common name for potassium carbonate, and is a name also applied to other minerals containing the element potassium. The term arises from the old process for producing the chemical which involved soaking wood ashes in water and evaporating the mixture in an iron pot. The resulting material were called “pot ashes”.

20 Painting stolen from 64-Across : KAHLO

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter famous for her self-portraits. She was married to the equally famous artist Diego Rivera. Kahlo was portrayed by actress Salma Hayek in a film about her colorful life called “Frida” released in 2002.

23 Hunter on high : ORION

According to Greek mythology, Orion was a giant hunter who was placed in the night sky by Zeus, the king of the gods. Orion is very recognizable as a constellation, especially with the three bright stars known as “Orion’s Belt”. The brightest star in the sky, Sirius, is said to be Orion’s hunting dog, and this star sits at Orion’s “foot”.

24 Like the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” key-wise : IN F

“Yesterday” is such a beautiful ballad. It was written by Paul McCartney, who also routinely performed the song as a solo piece. “Yesterday” wasn’t originally released as a single, and first appeared as a track on the 1965 Beatles album, “Help!” In several polls over in the UK, “Yesterday” has been named the number one pop song of all time.

35 Capital on the Río de la Plata : BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (hiding “Sargent”)

Buenos Aires is the capital of Argentina, and is located on the estuary of the Ria de la Plata. As it is a port city, the people of Buenos Aires are known as porteños (“people of the port”). The name “Buenos Aires” can be translated from Spanish as “fair winds”.

39 “Anchors Aweigh” grp. : USN

The song “Anchors Aweigh” is strongly associated with the US Navy, largely because it is the fight song of the US Naval Academy. “Anchors Aweigh” was composed in 1906 by Lieutenant Charles Zimmerman who was bandmaster of the US Naval Academy Band at the time.

When an anchor is “aweigh” or “atrip”, it is just clear of the ocean bottom, it has just been lifted.

42 Downhill event : SLALOM

“Slalom” is an anglicized version of the Norwegian word “slalam” that translates as “skiing race”. There is a longer version of the traditional slalom that is called giant slalom

48 Niçoise salad need : TUNA

A Niçoise salad is known as a “salade niçoise” in its native France, where it was named for the city of Nice in the south of the country. The original contains no cooked vegetables, but here in North America there are almost always included some boiled potatoes.

50 Role for Jay Silverheels : TONTO

Tonto was played by the actor Jay Silverheels In the television version of “The Lone Ranger”. In the terrible 1981 movie “The Legend of the Lone Ranger”, Tonto was portrayed by Michael Horse. Tonto was then played by Johnny Depp In the 2013 movie “The Lone Ranger”. Famously, the Lone Ranger’s horse was called Silver and Tonto’s mount was named Scout. But, in the early TV shows, Tonto rode a horse called White Feller.

52 Charles de Gaulle’s birthplace : LILLE

Lille is a large city in the very north of France that sits right on the border with Belgium. The name “Lille” is a derivation of the term “l’isle” meaning “the island”. The former name “L’Isle” dates back to 1066, and is a reference to a castle that once stood on an island in the Deûle river that runs through the city. The city grew around the island and the castle.

Charles de Gaulle was a colonel in the French army at the outbreak of WWII. He was promoted to brigadier general after a successful attack on German tank forces in 1940, one of the few successes enjoyed by the French at the start of the war. Some months later, he was appointed junior minister in the French government, at which time he strenuously argued against surrender to Germany, advocating removal of the government to the French territory of Algeria. He was unsuccessful in his arguments and so flew to England where he set about building the Free French Forces from soldiers who had also fled the country. De Gaulle made several important radio addresses to the French from London that helped rally the resistance movement. Despite a shaky relationship with Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower, de Gaulle managed to maintain a working relationship with the rest of the Allies and was accepted as leader of the new French government when Paris was liberated in 1944.

53 Neighborhood grocery stores : BODEGAS (hiding “Degas”)

“Bodega” is a Spanish term describing a winery or, these days, a grocery store.

54 Painting stolen from 21-Across : ERNST

Max Ernst was a painter and sculptor, and a pioneer in the Dada movement and Surrealism. Ernst was born near Cologne in Germany in 1891 and he was called up to fight in WWI, as were most young German men at that time. In his autobiography he writes “Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914”, which was a statement about his experiences in the war. In reality, Ernst died in 1976 having lived to the ripe old age of 85.

56 Nobelist Bohr : NIELS

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 was on the right side of those debates.

59 Customary practice : WONT

The adjective “wont” means “accustomed”, as in “I am wont to solving the crossword of an evening”.

60 Popeye’s witchy foe in early comics : SEA HAG

The Sea Hag is Popeye’s archenemy, and sails the seas with her pet vulture Bernard on her boat called “The Black Barnacle”.

64 Bar with hashish pipes : HOOKAH LOUNGE (hiding “Kahlo”)

A hookah is a water pipe, a device for smoking tobacco in which the smoke is passed through a water basin before it is inhaled.

Hashish is a drug that is derived from the Indian hemp or cannabis plant. The term “hashish” (also “hasheesh”) comes from the Arabic word for “grass”.

66 Baseball great Hershiser : OREL

Orel Hershiser is big into poker now that he has retired from Major League Baseball. Hershiser lives in Las Vegas and when he isn’t working for ESPN, apparently he is at the poker tables, playing professionally. When Hershiser is eliminated in a poker tournament, he is in the habit of presenting the person who ousts him with an autographed baseball.

68 Solution strength, in chemistry : TITER

Remember those titrations we did in the chemistry lab at school? They were to measure the concentration of solutions, also known as the solution’s titer.

70 Fat used in candlemaking : SUET

Fat, when extracted from the carcass of an animal, is called suet. Untreated suet decomposes at room temperature quite easily so it has to be rendered, purified to make it stable. Rendered fat from pigs is what we call lard. Rendered beef or mutton fat is known as tallow.

82 Pillow cover : SHAM

A sham is something that is imitation, fake. In the world of bed linens, a sham is also an imitation or fake, in the sense that it is a decorative cover designed to cover up a regular pillow used for sleeping.

87 Director DuVernay : AVA

Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker who became the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, a feat she achieved in 2012 for her feature film “Middle of Nowhere”. “Middle of Nowhere” tells the story of a woman who drops out of medical school to focus on her husband when he is sentenced to 8 years in prison. DuVernay also directed the 2014 film “Selma” about the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

92 Painting stolen from 33-Across : GOYA

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter who was often called the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Two of Goya’s most famous works are “The Nude Maja” and “The Clothed Maja”.

93 Painting stolen from 105-Across : MIRO

Joan Miró was a Spanish artist. He immersed himself in Surrealism, so much so that Andre Breton, the founder of the movement, said that Miró was “the most Surrealist of us all”. There are two museums dedicated to Miró’s work. The Fundació Joan Miró is in his native Barcelona, and the Fundació Miró Mallorca is in Palma de Mallorca, where the artist spent much of his life.

95 Opened or closed like an eye, in film lingo : IRISED

The iris diaphragm of a lens is analogous to the iris of the eye, in that it is the opening through which light passes. The size of that aperture changes the amount of light passing through the lens. The size of the aperture is routinely referred to as the f-stop, and can be varied on many cameras.

98 Tour de France units: Abbr. : KMS

Back in the late 1800s, long-distance cycle races were used as promotional events, traditionally to help boost sales of newspapers. These races usually took place around tracks, but in 1902 the backers of the struggling sports publication “L’Auto” decided to stage a race that would take the competitors all around France. That first Tour de France took place in 1903, starting in Paris and passing through Lyon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes and then back to Paris.

109 Connecticut coastal town near Stamford : DARIEN

The town of Darien, Connecticut is home to the only ambulance service in the nation that is manned by high school students. Darien EMS – Post 53 is actually a scouting unit, but it still provides emergency care at no cost to patients and is funded by private donations. High school students can legally provide the service because the state of Connecticut permits emergency medical technicians to be certified at the age of 16. Another bit of Darien trivia is that the town was used for exterior shots in the movie “The Stepford Wives”, both the 1975 original and the 2004 remake.

111 Actress Thurman : UMA

Robert Thurman was the first westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Robert raised his children in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and called his daughter “Uma” as it is a phonetic spelling of the Buddhist name “Dbuma”. Uma’s big break in the movies came with her starring role in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 hit “Pulp Fiction”. My favorite Uma Thurman film is the wonderful 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”.

114 Abbr. on a music score : CRES

Crescendo (cresc.) is an Italian word meaning “gradually becoming louder”, and is often seen on a musical score. The term with the opposite meaning is “diminuendo” (dim.).

116 Member of la familia : TIA

In Spanish, a “tia” (aunt) is a “miembro de la familia” (member of the family).

118 Classic nursery rhyme : MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (hiding “Dali”)

“Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a nursery rhyme that originated in the US, first published in Boston in 1830. The rhyme was written by Sarah Josepha Hale, and was based on a real-life Mary who had a pet lamb that followed her around. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” has the distinction of being the first words recorded by Thomas Edison on his phonograph invention in 1877.

124 Toronto team, for short : LEAFS

The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team was founded way back in 1917. As members of the National Hockey League, the Maple Leafs have won the Stanley Cup championships thirteen times, the second best record in the league. Having said that, the last championship the team won was in 1967, and the resulting “drought” is the longest in the NHL.

125 Attacked by mosquitoes, say : BITTEN

“Mosquito” is Spanish for “little fly”. The female mosquito actually has to have a “blood meal” before she is able to lay her eggs. Mosquitoes are sometimes referred to as “skeeters”.

126 Claudius, vis-à-vis King Hamlet : POISONER

Early in William Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”, the title character utters the aside “A little more than kin, and less than kind”. Prince Hamlet’s disparaging remark is a reference to his uncle Claudius, the new king of Denmark. Hamlet’s opinion of his uncle is well-deserved, as Claudius had secretly poisoned the prince’s father in order to seize the throne.

128 Iditarod entries : SLEDS

The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race covers an incredible 1,161 miles, from Anchorage to Nome in Alaska. The race starts every year on the first Saturday in March, with the first race having been held in 1973. Finishing times range from over 8 days to 15 days or more. The first few races only used a northern route, but then a southern route was added to the roster every second year. It’s kind of a good thing, because when the racers take the northern route they don’t even pass through the town of Iditarod!

129 Annual star-studded fashion event : MET GALA

The Costume Institute Gala is an annual fundraising event that benefits the Anna Wintour Costume Center in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. The fundraiser is commonly referred to as the “Met Gala” or “Met Ball”, and was established in 1948.

Down

1 Three, in Torino : TRE

Turin (“Torino” in Italian) is a major city in the north of Italy that sits on the Po River. Back in 1861, when the Kingdom of Italy was formed, Turin was chosen as the first capital of the country.

4 Painting stolen from 101-Across : TITIAN

Titian was an Italian painter and a founding member of the Venetian School of the 16th century. His most famous work is probably “Assumption of the Virgin”, which was commissioned for the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice and which can be seen there on the high altar to this very day.

8 First cars made by Ford : MODEL AS (giving “A”)

The Ford Model A was the original car produced by the Ford Motor Company. The first production run lasted from 1903 to 1904, when it was replaced by the Model C. The name “Model A” was brought back in 1927 and used for the successor to the Model T.

10 Hair removal brand : NAIR

Nair is a hair-removal product that has some pretty harsh ingredients. The most important active constituents are calcium hydroxide (“slaked lime”) and sodium hydroxide (“caustic soda”). Other Nair components seem to be there to soothe the skin after the harsher chemicals have done their job. The name “Nair” probably comes from combining “no” and “hair”.

11 Salinger’s “For ___ – With Love and Squalor” : ESME

J. D. Salinger wrote a short story called “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor” that was originally published in “The New Yorker” in 1950. It is a story about a young English girl called Esme and an American soldier, and is set in WWII.

12 “Penn & Teller: Fool Us” airer : THE CW (giving “W”)

“Penn & Teller: Fool Us” is a TV show in which magicians compete to “fool” celebrated illusionists Penn & Teller. The idea is to perform an illusion in front of Penn & Teller, without the pair working out how the trick is done. Despite the setting in Las Vegas, the show was commissioned by British network ITV. ITV canceled the show after one season, and so it was taken up by the American network The CW. The show was originally hosted by English TV personality Jonathan Ross, with American actress Alyson Hannigan taking over at the start of season three.

13 Painting stolen from 35-Across : SARGENT

John Singer Sargent was an American artist, one best known for his portrait painting. Sargent trained as an artist mainly in Paris, although he found that he had to leave the city after one of his paintings was deemed “scandalous” by French society. The work was “Portrait of Madame X” (1884), a painting of a noted lady in society that was considered too risque and sensual. After the painting was exhibited, his commissions dried up and Sargent moved to London in order to continue his career. Today the “Portrait of Madame X” is considered by many to be Sargent’s best work.

16 Duffer’s obstacle : POND

A duffer is a golfer, and not a very good one at that.

18 ’60s campus activist grp. : SDS

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was an activist group in the sixties. The SDS organized the largest student strike in the history of the United States on 26 April 1968, with about a million students staying away from class that day. The “Students for a Democratic Society” name was revived in 2006 with the foundation of a new US-based student organization with left wing beliefs. Today’s SDS was founded by a pair of high school students from Greenwich Village, New York.

19 “1984” drudge : PROLE

Author George Orwell introduced us to the proles, the working class folk in his famous novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Collectively, the proles make up the section of society known as the proletariat.

28 Surgeon’s stitch : SUTURE

A suture is used to close an open wound. The term “suture” comes from the Latin word “suere” meaning “to sew”, the past participle of which is “sutus”.

29 Actress Creel of “Saved by the Bell” : LEANNA

The sitcom “Saved by the Bell” originally aired from 1989 to 1993. It was based on an earlier sitcom “Good Morning, Miss Bliss”, which was later renamed to “Saved by the Bell: The Junior Years”. There were also two spin-offs: “Saved by the Bell: The college Years” and “Saved by the Bell: The New Class”.

32 Place to keep plants : SILL

“Sill plate”, or simply “sill”, is an architectural term describing a bottom horizontal member to which vertical members are attached. Window sills and door sills are specific sill plates found at the bottoms of windows and door openings.

35 Motel proprietor in “Psycho” : BATES

Bates Motel and house were constructed on the backlot of Universal Studios for the 1960 Hitchcock movie “Psycho”. They are still standing, and for me are highlights of the backlot tour that is available to visitors.

The classic Alfred Hitchcock suspense film “Psycho” released in 1960 is based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The Bloch novel in turn is loosely based on actual crimes committed by murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. When “Psycho” was making its initial run in theaters, latecomers were not granted admission, abiding by a policy instigated by Hitchcock himself. He felt that anyone missing the opening scenes would not enjoy the film.

36 Ancient Greek region for which part of the Mediterranean is named : IONIA

The geographic region called Ionia is located in present-day Turkey. It was prominent in the days of ancient Greece, although it wasn’t a unified state and rather a collection of tribes. The tribal confederacy was more based on religious and cultural similarities than a political or military alliance. Nowadays we often refer to this arrangement as the Ionian League.

The Ionian Sea is that part of the Mediterranean lying between Greece and the southern part of Italy (under the sole of the “boot”). It is one of the most seismically active regions on the planet.

37 Innocent sort : NAIF

A naïf is someone who is naive, as “naïf” is the French word for “naive”.

38 God of the Qu’ran : ALLAH

The Koran is also known as the “Qur’an” and “Quran” in English. “Qur’an” a transliteration of the Arabic name for the holy text of the Muslim faith. The literal translation of “Koran” is “the recitation”.

43 Hodgepodges : OLIOS

“Hochepot” is an Old French word for stew or soup, and this gave rise to an Anglo-French legal term for a collection of property that was gathered prior to being divided up. This became our “hodgepodge” in the early 1400s.

45 Dark, in poesy : EBON

“Poesy” is an alternative name for poetry, and is often used to mean the “art of poetry”.

51 Basic skateboard trick : OLLIE

An ollie is a skateboarding trick invented in 1976 by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand. Apparently it’s a way of lifting the board off the ground, while standing on it, without touching the board with one’s hands. Yeah, I could do that …

57 Adjust to, as a thermostat : SET AT

The suffix “-stat” comes from the Greek “statos” meaning “standing, stationary”. It was first used in the mid-1700s in the term “heliostat”, which described an instrument that made the sun appear stationary. We still use “-stat” in the name of devices that stabilize or regulate. For example, a thermostat controls temperature and a rheostat uses resistance to control current flow in an electrical circuit.

59 ___ Clan, iconic hip-hop group of the 1990s : WU-TANG (giving “A”)

Hip hop’s Wu-Tang Clan isn’t really a band, but rather a musical collective in which members rotate in and out quite freely. The group formed in 1992 in Staten Island, New York. They became the first hip-hop act to get a Las Vegas residency.

63 Painting stolen from 53-Across : DEGAS

Edgar Degas was a French artist who was famous for both his paintings and his sculptures. Some of Degas’ most beautiful works feature female ballet dancers, and others depict women bathing.

67 Franz who composed “The Merry Widow” : LEHAR

“The Merry Widow” is an operetta composed by Franz Lehar. It is a comic piece about a rich widow and the attempts by her countrymen to marry her off in order to keep her fortune in the poverty-stricken Grand Duchy of Pontevedro. “The Merry Widow” was first performed in 1905 and has been popular ever since.

71 Deception : FLAM

“Flim-flam” (sometimes just “flam”) is another word for a confidence trick. The term has been in use since the 1500s, would you believe?

72 Shankar at Woodstock : RAVI

Ravi Shankar was perhaps the most famous virtuoso (to us Westerners) from the world of Indian classical music, and was noted for his sitar playing. Shankar was the father of the pop singer Norah Jones.

73 Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan : OMAR

Ilhan Omar has been representing Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in the US House since 2019. At that time, she became one of the first two Muslim women, as well as the first Somali American, to serve in the US Congress.

74 Acme’s antonym : NADIR

The nadir is the direction pointing immediately below a particular location (through to the other side of the Earth for example). The opposite direction, that pointing immediately above, is called the zenith. We use the terms “nadir” and “zenith” figuratively to mean the low and high points in a person’s fortunes.

78 Online tracker : COOKIE

When you visit a website, often it will leave a little piece of text information called a “cookie” on your computer. As a cookie is a text file, and not executable, it is relatively harmless. However, as browsers routinely read these text files, cookies can be used by spyware. Basically, the browser can read the cookie and tell a lot about your browsing habits. This can be a good thing, so when you go back to your favorite websites you will be recognized and this can help you. For example, you may have shopped at a site and you’ll find that your shopping cart still has the items you were looking at, often because the items were stored in a cookie. However, they can be “bad” as some spyware uses the cookies to detect your browsing habits and can direct the browser to do things you may not want it to do. I do accept cookies, as they do enhance the browsing experience, but only from sites that I trust …

85 Bergen’s dummy Mortimer : SNERD

Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s most famous character was Charlie McCarthy, but Bergen also worked with Mortimer Snerd. Edgar had a daughter who became very famous as well: actress Candice Bergen.

91 “Half a truth is often a ___”: Benjamin Franklin : GREAT LIE

Benjamin Franklin came from a large family. He was his father’s fifteenth child (Josiah Franklin had seventeen children in all, with two wives). Benjamin was born in Boston in 1706. He had very little schooling, heading out to work for his father when he was ten years old. He became an apprentice printer to his older brother at the age of twelve. Benjamin did quite well with that limited education …

94 Painting stolen from 77-Across : O’KEEFFE

Georgia O’Keeffe was an influential American artist, one who led the introduction of American art into Europe. Famously, she was married to photographer Alfred Stieglitz who helped develop her career in the early days. Georgia O’Keeffe’s last home was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she had done a lot of her work during her lifetime. She died there in 1986, at the ripe old age of 98. One of her most famous paintings is from 1926, called “Black Iris III”.

102 Xerox : copy machine :: ___ : kitchen wrap : SARAN

What’s known as plastic wrap in America, we call cling-film in Ireland. The brand name “Saran” is often used generically in the US, while “Glad” wrap is common down under. Plastic wrap was one of those unintended inventions, a byproduct of a development program to create a hard plastic cover for cars.

A xerox is a copy made on a xerography machine. Xerography is a dry photocopying technique that was invented in 1938 by Chester Carlson, although he originally referred to the process as electrophotography. Joseph Wilson commercialized Carlson’s process some years later, coining the term “Xerography” using the Greek words for “dry” and “writing”. Wilson changed the name of his own photographic company to Xerox.

106 Culmination of many a “Law & Order” episode : TRIAL

“Law & Order” ran for many, many years on NBC, from 1990 to 2010. It is a police drama that spawned a huge franchise of shows both here in the US and overseas. I am probably a bit biased, but my favorite is the version shown in BBC America called “Law & Order: UK”.

110 Painting stolen from 118-Across : DALI

The famous surrealist Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Spain. I had the privilege of visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres some years ago, just north of Barcelona. If you ever get the chance, it’s a “must-see” as it really is a quite magnificent building with a fascinating collection of art.

113 Comedian Johnson of “Laugh-In” : ARTE

Arte Johnson, as well as being a frequent judge on “The Gong Show”, played the German soldier on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”. Johnson’s character’s famous catchphrase was, “Very interesting, but …”

115 Big inits. in fuel additives : STP

STP is a brand name of automotive lubricants and additives. The name “STP” is an initialism standing for “Scientifically Treated Petroleum”.

119 From Jan. 1 until now : YTD

Year-to-date (YTD)

121 Actress de Armas of “Knives Out” : ANA

Ana de Armas is an actress from Cuba. Having attended the National Theater School of Cuba, she moved to Spain at the age of 18. Thre, she made a name for herself in a Spanish TV series called “El Internado”. De Armas moved to Los Angeles in 2014, after which her performance opposite Ryan Gosling in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049” earned her critical acclaim.

“Knives Out” is an intriguing murder mystery film released in 2019. There’s a great cast including Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette and Christopher Plummer. I really enjoyed this one, partly because it’s a clever, contemporary take on a classic whodunit movie …