Tag: Adolescents’ support group crossword clue

Constructed by: Ned White
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 9m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

17 Employment form info, for short : SSN

Social Security number (SSN)

18 Bill of the Planetary Society : NYE

That would be “Bill Nye the Science Guy”. Bill’s show ran on PBS for four years, from 1993-97.

19 Egypt was once part of it: Abbr. : UAR

The United Arab Republic (UAR) was a union between Egypt and Syria made in 1958, and dissolved in 1961 when Syria pulled out of the arrangement.

20 Flue problem : SOOT

The flue in a chimney is a duct that conveys exhaust gases from a fire to the outdoors. An important feature of a flue is that its opening is adjustable. When starting a fire, the flue should be wide open, maximizing airflow to get help ignition.

24 Port north of Kuwait City : BASRA

Basra is a Iraq’s main port, and is located in the southeast of the country, just 34 miles from the Persian Gulf. Access to the gulf is via the Shatt al-Arab waterway, a river that discharges into the gulf in the port city of Umm Qasr.

29 Calls to reserve? : LETS

Thanks to some helpful readers of this blog, I can point out that a tennis umpire might call a “let”, so that a player must re-serve.

30 Masthead section : EDITORS

The masthead is a list often found on the editorial page of a newspaper that gives the members of a newspaper’s editorial board.

32 Gliding ballet move : CHASSE

A chassé is a step used in ballroom and other styles of dance. It has a gliding character and is a triple-step movement. The term “chassé” comes to popular dance from ballet.

39 Dumpster fire : HOT MESS

“Dumpster” is one of those words that we use generically even though it is actually a brand name. The original “Dumpster” was patented by the Dempster Brothers of Knoxville, Tennessee. “Dumpster” is derived from “dump” and “Dempster”.

42 Squat : NADA

The word “nothing” translates to “nada” in Spanish, and to “rien” in French.

“Squat” is a slang word meaning “nothing”, and is a term that probably has a distasteful derivation related to a bodily function.

45 Ricotta sources : EWES

Ricotta is an Italian cheese made from the milk of a sheep or a cow. Ricotta is actually produced from the whey of the milk, the liquid left after the curds have been separated out (curds are used to make “traditional” cheese). The whey is heated again so that the remaining protein, above and beyond that in the curd already removed, precipitates out making ricotta cheese. The word “ricotta” literally means “recooked”, which makes sense to me now …

51 CD attachment? : -ROM

“CD-ROM” stands for “compact disc read only memory”. The name indicates that you can read information from the disc (like a standard music CD for example), but you cannot write to it. You can also buy a CD-RW, which stands for “compact disc – rewritable”, with which you can read data and also write over it multiple times using a suitable CD drive.

54 Blockage letters : SPF

In theory, the sun protection factor (SPF) is a calibrated measure of the effectiveness of a sunscreen in protecting the skin from harmful UV rays. The idea is that if you wear a lotion with say SPF 20, then it takes 20 times as much UV radiation to cause the skin to burn than it would take without protection. I say just stay out of the sun …

57 “___ Day Will Come” (1963 #1 hit) : OUR

“Our Day Will Come” was a number-one hit in 1963 for Ruby & The Romantics. This was the band’s only big seller, so I guess they get filed away as “one-hit wonders”.

58 Renaissance artist who’s famous for his “Coronation of the Virgin” : FRA FILIPPO LIPPI

Fra’ Filippo Lippi was an Italian painter in the 15th century who was also called “Lippo Lippi”, would you believe? The Victorian poet Robert Browning used the artist as the main character in a dramatic monologue he called “Fra Lippo Lippi”.

63 Prop in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” : TREASURE MAP

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” is, in my humble opinion, the best of the Indiana Jones franchise of movies. This first Indiana Jones film was released in 1981, produced by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. Harrison Ford was Spielberg’s first choice to play the lead, but Lucas resisted as he was concerned that he would be too closely associated with the actor (as Ford played Han Solo in “Star Wars”, and also appeared in Lucas’s “American Graffiti”). Tom Selleck was offered the role but he couldn’t get out of his commitments to “Magnum, P.I.” Eventually Spielberg got his way and Ford was hired, a good thing I say …

Down

2 What regular-season soccer games lack, for short : OTS

Overtime (OT)

3 Jeffersons : TWOS

The US two-dollar bill features a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. The bill was introduced in 1862, and withdrawn in 1966. It was reintroduced in 1976, and is still legal tender. That said, there are relatively few two-dollar bills in circulation. Some people even hold that possession of a two-dollar bill is bad luck.

5 Equipment for mixologists : BLENDERS

A mixologist is someone who is well versed in the mixing of cocktails, said he reaching for the shaker …

7 1979 platinum album with the hit “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” : DIONNE

Dionne Warwick is a very, very successful singer, with more Top 100 hits than any other female vocalist other than Aretha Franklin. Warwick had a pretty successful cousin who was a singer as well … named Whitney Houston.

9 Hardly Joe Cool : DWEEB

“Dweeb” is relatively recent American slang that came out of college life in the late sixties. Dweeb, squarepants, nerd; they’re all not-nice terms that mean the same thing, i.e. someone excessively studious and socially inept.

When cartoon beagle Snoopy adopts his “Joe Cool” alias, he puts on sunglasses and just leans against a wall doing nothing.

10 Titaness with a home on the edge of Oceanus : EOS

In Greek mythology, Eos was the goddess of the dawn who lived at the edge of the ocean. Eos would wake each morning to welcome her brother Helios the sun. The Roman equivalent of Eos was Aurora. Rather delightfully, Homer referred to Eos as “rosy-fingered dawn” in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

The Titans were a group of twelve older deities in Greek mythology, the twelve children of the primordial Gaia and Uranus, Mother Earth and Father Sky. In the celebrated Battle of the Titans, they were overthrown by the Olympians, who were twelve younger gods. We use the term “titan” figuratively to describe a powerful person, someone with great influence.

13 Popular big box stores : KMARTS

Kmart is the third largest discount store chain in the world, behind Wal-Mart and Target. The company was founded by S. S. Kresge in 1899, with the first outlets known as S. S. Kresge stores. The first “Kmart” stores opened in 1962, with the “K” standing for “Kresge”. Kmart is famous for its promotions known as “blue light specials”, a program first introduced in 1965 and discontinued in 1991. I remember being in a Kmart store soon after coming to live in the US. That evening an employee installed a light stand an aisle away from me, switched on a flashing blue light and there was some unintelligible announcement over the loudspeaker system. I had no idea what was going on …

25 Adolescents’ support group : ALATEEN

Al-Anon and Alateen are fellowships for relatives and friends of alcoholics. Alateen specifically supports teens who are affected by another’s drinking, whereas Al-Anon focuses on people of all ages.

36 Gobble (down) : SNARF

To snarf down is to gobble up, to eat voraciously. “Snarf” is a slang term that is probably related to “scarf”, which has the same meaning.

37 Jim of 1960s TV : NABORS

Jim Nabors was discovered by Andy Griffith and brought onto “The Andy Griffith Show” as Gomer Pyle, the gas station attendant. Famously, Nabors then got his own show called “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

38 Rigid : ADAMANT

The words “adamant” and “adamantine” can mean hard like rock or stony, in the literal sense. In the more figurative sense, someone who is adamant or adamantine is stubborn or inflexible, like a mule, mulish.

44 Many Sri Lankans : TAMILS

Tamils are a large ethnic group of almost 80 million people who speak Tamil as their mother tongue. Despite the large Tamil population, there is no Tamil state. The highest concentration of Tamils is in Sri Lanka, where they make up about 25% of the population.

The island nation of Sri Lanka lies off the southeast coast of India. The name “Sri Lanka” translates from Sanskrit into English as “venerable island”. Before 1970, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name given to the country during British rule.

46 Modern answer source : SIRI

Siri is a software application that works with Apple’s iOS operating system. “Siri” is an acronym standing for Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface. Voice-over artist Susan Bennett revealed herself as the female American voice of Siri a few years ago. The British version of Siri is called Daniel, and the Australian version is called Karen. Also, “Siri” is a Norwegian name meaning “beautiful woman who leads you to victory”, and was the name the developer had chosen for his first child.

53 Bravo preceder : ALFA

The NATO phonetic alphabet is also called the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) phonetic alphabet. It goes Alfa, Bravo, Charlie … X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

55 Innocent, perhaps : POPE

There is a well-known story, which may not be true, that Pope Innocent VIII was the first person to receive a blood transfusion, in 1492. His physician Giacomo di San Genesio had the pope drink the blood of three 10-year-old boys, who subsequently died. Pope Innocent passed away himself a few days later, as the treatment apparently had little effect.

56 Deception, informally : FLAM

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

61 Supermarket chain since 1926 : IGA

The initialism “IGA” stands for “Independent Grocers Alliance”, and is a chain of supermarkets that extends right around the world. IGA’s headquarters is in Chicago. The company uses the slogan “Hometown Proud Supermarkets”.