Tag: ___ Lane home of the Muffin Man crossword clue

Today’s Theme: Get Your Mind out of the Gutter

Themed answers are common phrases that have been reinterpreted with reference to bowling:

• 3D Perfect places for bowlers to aim? : STRIKE ZONES
• 5D Comment when you need a serious comeback at the end of a bowling game? : NO TIME TO SPARE
• 12D Whether to aim at 7 or 10, in bowling? : SPLIT DECISION
• 14D Disappointing news for a bowler? : LANE CLOSURE
• 73D Pace at which bowlers complete their games? : FRAME RATE
• 78D Hip bowling enthusiasts? : ALLEY CATS

There are also ten incidents of the hidden word “PIN” in ten down-answers. Those PINS are arranged in the grid in the traditional triangular format seen in a bowling alley

• 60D ___ blanc : PINOT
• 62D Niña companion : PINTA
• 76D “Wheel of Fortune” option : SPIN
• 82D Like some car air fresheners : PINY
• 86D Like breast cancer awareness ribbons : PINK
• 94D Modern activity banned in most high schools : VAPING
• 95D Rodeo activity : ROPING
• 101D Ben & Jerry’s buy : PINT
• 109D Bowlers’ targets … 10 of which can be found appropriately arranged in this puzzle : PINS

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

Bill’s time: 20m 29s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Cookbook amt. : TBSP

Tablespoon (tbsp.)

5 “Careful where you watch this,” in emails : NSFW

The abbreviation “NSFW” stands for “not safe/suitable for work”. It’s Internet slang used to describe online content that is best not viewed at work.

9 Wonder Woman foe : ARES

Superhero Wonder Woman first appeared in print in 1941, in a publication from DC Comics. As she was created during WWII, Wonder Woman’s first foes were the axis powers. In the less realistic world her biggest foe was and still is Ares, a “baddie” named after the Greek mythological figure. Wonder Woman had several signature expressions, including “Merciful Minerva!”, “Suffering Sappho!” and “Great Hera!”. She also has several devices that she uses in her quest for justice, e.g. the Lasso of Truth, a pair of indestructible bracelets and a tiara that can be used as a deadly projectile. Wonder Woman uses the name “Diana Prince” when “out of uniform”.

13 Canned brand : ALPO

Alpo is a brand of dog food introduced by Allen Products in 1936, with “Alpo” being an abbreviation for “Allen Products”. Lorne Greene used to push Alpo in television spots, as did Ed McMahon and Garfield the Cat, would you believe?

17 “The ___ U Give” (2018 film) : HATE

“The Hate U Give” is a 2018 film that is based on a 2017 novel of the same name by Angie Thomas. Both the film and novel center on the aftermath of a police officer shooting an unarmed teenager.

18 Pro Football Hall of Fame locale : OHIO

The Pro Football Hall of Fame opened in 1963 in Canton, Ohio. One reason that Canton was chosen for the Hall of Fame was that the National Football League (NFL) was founded in the city in 1920.

21 Pound who wrote “Literature is news that stays news” : EZRA

Ezra Pound was an American poet who spent much of his life wandering the world, and spending years in London, Paris, and Italy. In Italy, Pound’s work and sympathies for Mussolini’s regime led to his arrest at the end of the war. His major work was the epic, albeit incomplete, “The Cantos”. This epic poem is divided into 120 sections, each known as a canto.

23 Prop for a belly dancer : VEIL

The Middle Eastern dance referred to in Arabic as “Raqs Sharqi” was known in French as “danse du ventre” meaning “belly dance”. The English and French name is a reference to the abdominal movements used, and the tradition of performing with a bare midriff.

24 “As I Lay Dying” father : ANSE

“As I Lay Dying” is a novel by William Faulkner first published in 1930. The book has an unusual structure, with stream of consciousness writing throughout. There is one whole chapter that I’d like to quote here:

My mother is a fish.

That’s a five-word chapter …

34 666, perhaps : OMEN

666 is the number of the beast that is linked to Satan or the Antichrist, according to the Book of Revelation in the Bible. The fear of the number 666 has been given a name, i.e. hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. Don’t forget that …

37 Yahoo!, but not “Yahoo!” : SITE

Jerry Yang and David Filo called their company “Yahoo!” for two reasons. Firstly, a Yahoo is a rude unsophisticated brute from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”. Secondly, Yahoo stands for “Yet another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

38 Trig calculation : COS

The most familiar trigonometric functions are sine, cosine and tangent (abbreviated to “sin, cos and tan”). Each of these is a ratio: a ratio of two sides of a right-angled triangle. The “reciprocal” of these three functions are cosecant, secant and cotangent. The reciprocal functions are simply the inverted ratios, the inverted sine, cosine and tangent. These inverted ratios should not be confused with the “inverse” trigonometric functions e.g. arcsine, arccosine and arctangent. These inverse functions are the reverse of the sine, cosine and tangent.

41 F.D.R.’s job-creating agcy. : WPA

The Work Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest of the New Deal agencies. The WPA employed millions of people during the Depression, putting them to work on various public works projects. The total spending through the WPA from 1936 to 1939 was nearly $7 billion. We have to give the federal government credit for taking an enlightened view of what types of project qualified for financial support, so artists who could not get commissions privately were hired by the government itself. The result is a collection of “New Deal Art”, including a series of murals that can be found in post offices around the country to this day.

42 Film monster originally intended as a metaphor for nuclear weapons : GODZILLA

The terrifying monster Godzilla is a Japanese invention. The first in a very long series of “Godzilla” films was released way back in 1954. The original name in Japanese was “Gojira”, but this was changed to Godzilla for audiences outside of Japan. “Gojira” is a combination of “gorira” and “kujira”, the Japanese words for gorilla and whale, apt because Godzilla is a big ape-like creature that came out of the deep.

48 Fashion brand with a rhinoceros logo : ECKO

Marc Ecko is a fashion designer from New Jersey. Marc was born Marc Milecofsky. In college, he became a fan of graffiti and used the name “Ecko” to tag his drawings.

50 Acclaimed 2017 biography subtitled “The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror” : LENIN

“Lenin” wasn’t the birth name of the Russian leader. He was born Vladimir Ulyanov, and originally used “Lenin” as a pen name.

58 Taiwanese computer giant : ACER

Acer is a Taiwanese company that I visited a couple of times when I was in the electronics business. I was very impressed back then with the company’s dedication to quality, although I have heard that things haven’t gone so well in recent years …

59 ___ bull : PAPAL

A bulla (also “bull”) is a type of seal impression. A papal bull is a formal document from the Vatican that has such a seal attached, hence the name of the document.

61 Hoodwinks : DUPES

“To hoodwink” has had the meaning “to deceive” since about 1600. Prior to that it meant simply “to blindfold”, and is simply a combining of the words “hood” and “wink”.

63 “King Kong” co-star : WRAY

Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress who is best known for her starring role in the classic 1933 film “King Kong”. When Wray passed away at the age of 96 in 2004, the lights of the Empire State Building were extinguished for 15 minutes. That fine gesture was a nod to the celebrated Empire State Building scene in “King Kong”.

“King Kong” really is a classic movie. It stars Fay Wray as the young woman (Ann Darrow) with whom Kong falls in love. Wray was very interested in the role as she was told that she would be playing opposite the “tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood”. She thought it might be Clark Gable. At least that’s how the story goes …

64 Quattroporte and GranTurismo : MASERATIS

Maserati is a manufacturer of luxury cars in Italy. The company was founded in Bologna in 1914 by five brothers: Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore and Ernesto Maserati. The company uses a trident logo that is based on the trident depicted in the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna.

66 Ballpark with the Home Run Apple : CITI FIELD

Citi Field is the relatively new baseball stadium used by the New York Mets that sits right next door to the site of Shea stadium, where the Mets had played for decades. And the new facility’s name comes from corporate sponsor Citigroup.

71 1980s TV ET : ALF

“ALF” is a sitcom that aired in the late eighties. The title character is a hand-puppet, and supposedly an alien named Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac. The alien crash-landed into the house of amateur radio enthusiast Willie Tanner. Tanner renamed the intruder “ALF”, standing for “alien life form”.

74 Emperor who, in actuality, played the lyre, not the violin : NERO

The Great Fire of Rome raged for five and a half days in 64 AD. Of the fourteen districts of Rome, three were completely destroyed and seven more suffered serious damage. The emperor at the time was Nero, although reports that he fiddled, played his lyre or sang while the city burned; those accounts are probably not true. In fact, Nero was staying outside of Rome when the fire started and rushed home upon hearing the news. He organized a massive relief effort, throwing open his own home to give shelter to many of the citizens who were left living on the street.

75 Suffix in Suffolk : -ISE

Suffolk is a county on the east coast of England that is home to Felixstowe, which is one of the largest container ports in Europe. Suffolk lies just south of the county of Norfolk. Back in the day, the “north folk” lived in “Norfolk” and the “south folk” lived in Suffolk.

77 Lady Vols’ home: Abbr. : TENN

The Tennessee Volunteers (the Vols) is the name given to the men’s sports teams at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. The women’s teams are called the Lady Volunteers.

78 Sound investment? : AMP

An electric guitar, for example, needs an amplifier (amp) to take the weak signal created by the vibration of the strings and turn it into a signal powerful enough for a loudspeaker.

90 Notable Nixon gesture : V-SIGN

One has to be careful making that V-sign depending where you are in the world. Where I came from, the V-for-victory (or peace) sign has to be made with the palm facing outwards. If the sign is made with the palm facing inwards, it can be interpreted as a very obscene gesture.

93 Fort ___ (where Billy the Kid was killed) : SUMNER

I’m guessing that the notorious Wild West outlaw Billy the Kid was of Irish stock as his family name was McCarty. Although he usually used the alias William H. Bonney, another indication of an Irish connection is that he also went by William Antrim, Henry Antrim and Kid Antrim, as Antrim is one of the six counties in the north of Ireland.

96 Principles : TENETS

A tenet is an article of faith, something that is held to be true. “Tenet” is Latin for “he holds”.

98 Barack Obama’s mother : ANN

Barack Obama, Sr. was first married at the age of 18 in his home country of Kenya, and had two children during that marriage. He left his wife and children back in Kenya when he enrolled in the University of Hawaii in 1959 as the school’s first African foreign student. There, Obama met Ann Dunham in a Russian language course. The two entered into a romantic relationship and Dunham became pregnant. Obama told Dunham that he was divorced from his first wife (not true), and the pair were married on Maui in 1961. Six months later, Barack Obama II was born, destined to become the 44th President of the United States. The couple divorced in 1964. After the divorce, Dunham was able to marry Lolo Soetoro, a Javanese surveyor who she met while he was studying for a masters degree at the university. Soetoro returned to Indonesia in 1966, and Dunham joined him there the following year with her 6-year-old son. Barack Obama spent four years in Indonesia before returning to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

99 Lacto-___-vegetarian : OVO

A lacto-ovo vegetarian is someone who does not consume meat or fish, but does who eat eggs (ovo) and dairy (lacto) products.

105 It’s bedazzling : OP ART

Op art is also known as optical art, and puts optical illusions to great effect.

110 N.A.A.C.P. ___ Award : IMAGE

The NAACP Image Awards are presented annually to recognise people of color in the worlds of film, television, music and literature. The first awards were presented in 1967, and the ceremony usually takes place in Los Angeles.

112 It’s a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in the long shot, per Charlie Chaplin : LIFE

Charlie Chaplin earned the nickname “The Tramp” (also “Little Tramp”) from the much-loved character that he frequently played on the screen. Chaplin was much-respected as a performer. The great George Bernard Shaw referred to him as “the only genius to come out of the movie industry”.

114 Co-star of 2011’s “Bridesmaids” : WIIG

Kristen Wiig is a comic actress who appears on “Saturday Night Live”. She also made an appearance on the first season of Spike TV’s quirky “The Joe Schmo Show”, playing “Dr. Pat”. More recently, she co-wrote and starred in the 2011 hit film “Bridesmaids”, and co-starred in the 2016 reboot of “Ghostbusters”.

“Bridesmaids” is a 2011 comedy movie co-written by and starring Kristen Wiig. I wasn’t crazy about this film until Chris O’Dowd turned up as a traffic cop. Wiig and O’Dowd were great together, I thought. Pity about the rest of the movie …

115 Home of the Herald : MIAMI

“The Miami Herald” was first published in 1903 as “The Miami Evening Record”. The newspaper was given its current name in 1910.

120 John of “The Addams Family” : ASTIN

The actor John Astin is best known for playing Gomez, the head of the household on “The Addams Family” TV series.

121 Ring bearers? : TREES

Growth rings can be seen in a horizontal cross section of a tree trunk. These rings are caused by a change in the rate of growth of a tree that comes with the seasons, so the rings are more easily discerned in trees that grow in regions with marked seasonal changes.

Down

2 Istanbul’s Grand ___ : BAZAAR

Our word “bazaar”, meaning “market”, comes from the Persian “bazar”, which means the same thing.

3 Perfect places for bowlers to aim? : STRIKE ZONES

Bowling has been around for an awfully long time. The oldest known reference to the game is in Egypt, where pins and balls were found in an ancient tomb that is over 5,000 years old. The first form of the game to come to America was nine-pin bowling, which had been very popular in Europe for centuries. In 1841 in Connecticut, nine-pin bowling was banned due to its association with gambling. Supposedly, an additional pin was added to get around the ban, and ten-pin bowling was born.

5 Comment when you need a serious comeback at the end of a bowling game? : NO TIME TO SPARE

In bowling, the downing of all ten pins in two balls in the same frame is called a spare, and scores ten points. The player gets a bonus, equal to the number of pins downed with the next ball, which could be up to ten. Hence, a spare can be worth up to 20 points

9 ___ Singer (“Annie Hall” protagonist) : ALVY

I suppose if there is any Woody Allen movie that I enjoy watching, it’s “Annie Hall” from 1977. I think Diane Keaton is a great actress and she is wonderful in this film. You’ll see Paul Simon as well, making a rare movie appearance, and even Truman Capote playing himself. The film is also famous for sparking a movement in the fashion world to adopt the “Annie Hall” look, that very distinctive appearance championed by the Annie Hall character.

11 Estevez of “The Breakfast Club” : EMILIO

Emilio Estevez is one of the members of Hollywood’s famous “Brat Pack”, having appeared in “The Breakfast Club” and “St. Elmo’s Fire”. Estevez’s father (and can’t you tell it from looking at him?) is actor Martin Sheen. Estevez decided to keep his father’s real name, and not the stage name of “Sheen”. Charlie Sheen is Emilio’s brother, and Charlie’s real name is Carlos Estevez.

“The Breakfast Club” is a fabulous teen drama film (a genre which I usually avoid like the plague) released in 1985. It is directed by John Hughes, and stars Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy as the students at a Saturday school detention class.

12 Whether to aim at 7 or 10, in bowling? : SPLIT DECISION

In ten pin bowling, a split takes place when the number-one pin (headpin) is knocked down with the first ball and two or more non-adjacent pins are left standing. The most difficult split to deal with is the infamous 7-10 split, where just the rear pins at the extreme right and left remain standing.

13 “Chop-chop!” : ASAP!

“Chop chop” is Chinese Pidgin English, and is just a reiteration of the word “chop” used in the sense of moving quickly.

15 Colt, maybe : PISTOL

Samuel Colt was fascinated as a young man by the science behind gunpowder and its used in weapons. He decided early on in his life, that he would respond to the challenge of the day, how to achieve the impossible, a weapon that fire more than the two times available at the time using a double-barreled rifle. He came up with the concept of the revolver while at sea, modeling his design on the spoked wheel that steered the ships on which he served. His revolver made him a very rich man in his own lifetime. By the time he died in 1862, his estate was valued at around $15 million. Can you imagine? $15 million back in 1862?

16 City in Texas or Ukraine : ODESSA

The city of Odessa, Texas has as its symbol the jack rabbit. This is because from the thirties through the seventies the city hosted a rodeo for roping rabbits. The Humane Society applied pressure and the city did away with the tradition in 1977.

The city of Odessa (also “Odesa”) in Ukraine was founded relatively recently, in 1794 by Catherine the Great. The city was originally meant to be called Odessos after an ancient Greek city believed to have been located nearby. Catherine liked the way the locals pronounced the name as “Odessa” and so went with the less Greek-sounding name.

26 Forces (upon) : FOISTS

The word “foist”, meaning “to pass off as genuine”, comes from the Dutch word meaning “take in hand”. The original concept came from playing dice, in which one die was held surreptitiously in one hand.

32 Smoky agave spirit : MEZCAL

Mezcal (also “mescal”) is a distilled spirit made from the agave plant. Technically, tequila is a type of mezcal that is distilled specifically from the blue agave.

46 Geographical anagram of ASLOPE : EL PASO

Although there have been human settlements in the El Paso area for thousands of years, the first European settlement was founded in 1659 by the Spanish. That first community was on the south bank of the Rio Grande, and was called El Paso del Norte (the North Pass). Most of the urban development under Spanish rule took place on the south side of the river, with El Paso del Norte acting as the center of governance for the Spanish for the territory of New Mexico. The Rio Grande was chosen as the border between Mexico and the US in 1848, so most of the city of El Paso del Norte became part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua (and is now called Ciudad Juárez ). The area north of the river developed as a US military post, eventually becoming the modern city of El Paso, Texas.

49 Material found in countertops : MICA

Mica is a silicate mineral. Thin sheets of mica are transparent and are used in place of glass in certain applications. This form of mica is called isinglass, and as it has a better thermal performance than glass it is a great choice for “peepholes” in boilers and lanterns. Mica is also used in the electronics industry, making use of its unique electrical and thermal insulating properties.

52 Birthstone of some Scorpios : OPAL

Here is the “official” list of birthstones, by month, that we tend to use today:

• January: Garnet
• February: Amethyst
• March: Bloodstone or Aquamarine
• April: Diamond
• May: Emerald
• June: Pearl or Moonstone
• July: Ruby
• August: Sardonyx or Peridot
• September: Sapphire or Lapis Lazuli
• October: Opal or Pink Tourmaline
• November: Topaz or Citrine
• December: Turquoise or Zircon (also now, Tanzanite)

54 Lotus-___ (figures in the “Odyssey”) : EATERS

The lotus-eaters were a race of people who featured in Greek mythology. The lotus flowers and fruits that were consumed were supposedly narcotic and addictive, and so the lotus-eaters enjoyed a life largely asleep in peaceful apathy.

57 Code for the busiest airport in Australia : SYD

Australia’s Sydney Airport (SYD) is located just five miles south of the city center, and next to Botany Bay. There have been plans dating back to the 1940s to build a second airport on the outskirts of the city.

60 ___ blanc : PINOT

The white wine grape Pinot blanc is a genetic mutation of Pinot gris, which in turn is a mutation of Pinot noir.

62 Niña companion : PINTA

Famously, Christopher Columbus used three ships in his first voyage across the Atlantic: the Santa Maria, the Niña and the Pinta. The Pinta was the fastest of the three, and it was from the Pinta that the New World was first spotted by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana who was a lookout on the fateful day. Pinta was a nickname for the ship that translated as “the painted one”. The Pinta’s real name has been lost in the mists of time.

67 First word across in the world’s first crossword (1913) : FUN

Arthur Wynne is generally credited with the invention of what we now known as a crossword puzzle. Wynne was born in Liverpool, England and emigrated to the US when he was 19-years-old. He worked as a journalist and was living in Cedar Grove, New Jersey in 1913 when he introduced a “Word-Cross Puzzle” in his page of puzzles written for the “New York World”. The first book of crossword puzzles was published by Shuster & Shuster, in 1924. The collection of puzzles was a huge hit, and crosswords were elevated to the level of “a craze” in 1924 and 1925.

70 Director Leone of spaghetti westerns : SERGIO

Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, and someone very much associated with the genre known as “Spaghetti Westerns”. Perhaps most famous of Leone’s westerns were the so-called “Man with No Name” trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. The three films are:

• “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964)
• “For a Few Dollars More” (1965)
• “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966)

72 Knockout : LULU

We call a remarkable thing or a person a lulu. The term “lulu” was coined in honor of Lulu Hurst, the Georgia Wonder, who was a stage magician active in the 1880s.

76 “Wheel of Fortune” option : SPIN

Contestants have been spinning the “Wheel of Fortune” since the game show first aired in 1975.

80 “Family Feud” option : PASS

“Family Feud” is an American game show that has been remade in countries all over the world. We even have a version in Ireland that we call “Family Fortunes”.

89 Highland language : ERSE

There are actually three Erse languages: Irish, Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) and Scots Gaelic. In their own tongues, these would be “Gaeilge” (in Ireland), “Gaelg” (on the Isle of Man) and “Gaidhlig” (in Scotland).

The Scottish Highlands are that part of the country not classified as the Lowlands(!). The Highlands make up the north and west of Scotland.

92 Changed like Ophelia in “Hamlet” : WENT MAD

In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Ophelia is courted by Hamlet, the man himself. Ophelia is the daughter of nobleman Polonius. She dies …

94 Modern activity banned in most high schools : VAPING

An electronic cigarette (also called an “e-cigarette”) is a battery-powered device that resembles a real cigarette. The e-cigarette vaporizes a solution that contains nicotine, forming a vapor that resembles smoke. The vapor is inhaled in a process called “vaping”, delivering nicotine into the body. The assumption is that an e-cigarette is healthier than a regular cigarette as the inhaled vapor is less harmful than inhaled smoke. But, that may not be so …

95 Rodeo activity : ROPING

“Rodeo” is a Spanish word that is usually translated into English as “round up”.

101 Ben & Jerry’s buy : PINT

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield did a correspondence course on making ice-cream in 1977 that was given by Pennsylvania State University’s creamery. The following year they opened an ice cream parlor in an old gas station in Burlington, Vermont. Today Ben & Jerry’s has locations in over 20 countries around the world, and theirs was the first brand ice-cream to go into space.

104 Adele, voicewise : ALTO

“Adele” is the stage name of English singer Adele Adkins. Adele’s debut album is “19”, named after the age she was during the album’s production. Her second album was even more successful than the first. Called “21”, the second album was released three years after the first, when Adele was three years older. Her third studio album “25”, released in 2015, broke the first-week sales records in both the UK and the US.

113 When Bastille Day occurs : ETE

In French, “été” (summer) lasts “trois mois” (three months).

The Bastille is a former fortress in Paris that was used as a prison by the kings of France. On 14 July 1789, an angry mob stormed the Bastille during the French Revolution. The mob was actually after the stores of gunpowder in the fortress, but while inside the building freed seven prisoners and killed the Bastille’s governor. The storming of the Bastille became a symbol of the French Revolution and has been celebrated in France on every July 14th since 1790. That celebration is referred to as “la fête nationale” (the national day) in France, but in English-speaking countries it is usually known as “Bastille Day”.