Tag: Conspiracy theorist’s accessory crossword clue

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Some free spots, for short : PSAS

The Ad Council is a nonprofit that produces public service announcements (PSAs) for various groups, including agencies of the US government. Conceived in 1942, the council operated under the name “War Advertising Council” from 1943 to 1946. It was this organization that produced the famous wartime ads promoting military enlistment, conservation of war materials, and the purchase of war bonds. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made it clear that he wanted the Ad Council to continue its work after the war, and he got his wish.

17A Conspiracy theorist’s accessory : TIN FOIL HAT

A paranoid person (“tin hat”) might wear a hat made of aluminum foil in the belief that it provides protection against mind-control and mind-reading.

Before thin sheets of aluminum metal were available as aluminum foil, thin sheets of tin were used in various applications. Tin foil isn’t a great choice for wrapping food though, as it imparts a tinny taste. On the other side of the pond, aluminum foil has a different name. No, it’s not just the different spelling of aluminum (“aluminium”). We still call it “tin foil”. You see, we live in the past …

19A 16 in a Sweet Sixteen : TEAMS

In the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship, the teams remaining at various stages of the tournament are known as:

• The “Sweet Sixteen” (the regional semi-finalists)
• The “Elite Eight” (the regional finalists)
• The “Final Four” (the national semi-finalists)

20A Main component of a “gutbucket,” a jug band instrument : WASHTUB

A jug band features a jug player, as well as others playing ordinary objects perhaps modified to make sound. One such instrument is the washtub bass. The “tub” is a stringed instrument that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. A washboard might also be used in a jug band, as a percussion instrument. The ribbed surface of the washboard is usually scraped using thimbles on the ends of the fingers.

26A Variety of orange named for a European city : VALENCIA

Valencia is one of the autonomous communities of Spain, and is located in the east of the country on the Mediterranean Coast. Its capital city is also called Valencia, and is the third-largest city in the nation, after Madrid and Barcelona.

29A What blue crabs do roughly 20 times in their lifetimes : MOLT

A live blue crab gets its color from pigments in the shell, which predominantly result in a blue color. When a crab is cooked, all the pigments break down except for astaxanthin, a red pigment, which is why a crab turns up at the dinner table looking very red.

30A Jobs announcement of 2010 : IPAD

Steve Jobs certainly was a business icon in Silicon Valley. I don’t think it is too surprising to learn that the brilliant Jobs didn’t even finish his college education, dropping out of Reed College in Oregon after only one semester. Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, but in 1985 he was basically fired from his own company during the computer sales slump in the mid-eighties. Jobs then founded NeXT Computer, a company focused on supplying workstations to the higher education and business markets. Apple purchased NeXT in 1996, and that’s how Jobs found himself back with his original company.

36A Thick confection used for cake icing : FONDANT

Fondant icing is a smooth, pliable icing that’s often used to decorate cakes and pastries. It has a dough-like consistency that can be rolled out and draped over cakes for a sleek, polished look. Fondant really can provide a beautiful finish, but it has a somewhat divisive taste and texture, often described as overly sweet and chewy.

54A Clichéd line from the side of a product package : AS SEEN ON TV

“Cliché” is a word that comes from the world of printing. In the days when type was added as individual letters into a printing plate, for efficiency some oft-used phrases and words were created as one single slug of metal. The word “cliché” was used for such a grouping of letters. It’s easy to see how the same word would become a term to describe any overused phrase. Supposedly, “cliché” comes from French, from the verb “clicher” meaning “to click”. The idea is that when a matrix of letters was dropped in molten metal to make a cliché, it made a clicking sound.

62A Give a bad hand? : ABET

The word “abet” comes into English from the Old French “abeter” meaning “to bait” or “to harass with dogs” (literally “to make bite”). This sense of encouraging something bad to happen morphed into our modern usage of “abet” meaning to aid or encourage someone in a crime.

Down

2D Vaudeville highlight : SKIT

The Vire is a river that flows through Normandy in France. The poets of the Vire valley were known as the “Vau de Vire”, a term that some say gave rise to our word “vaudeville”.

8D Playwright who wrote “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?'” : SHAW

George Bernard Shaw (GBS) was a very successful Irish playwright. Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature, and an Oscar. He won his Oscar for adapting his own play “Pygmalion” for the 1938 film of the same name starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Most people are more likely to have seen the musical adaptation of “Pygmalion” that goes by the title “My Fair Lady”.

9D “Tell Mama” singer James : ETTA

“Tell Mama” is a 1967 song recorded by Etta James that was written by singer Clarence Carter. Carter had released a 1966 version of the song himself, under the original title “Tell Daddy”.

10D Rocky road ingredient? : ASPHALT

The asphalt surface on roads (or basketball courts) is more properly called asphaltic concrete because asphalt itself (also known as “bitumen”) is just a sticky black liquid that comes from crude petroleum. Asphalt is used as a binder with aggregate to form asphaltic concrete.

15D Part of NOW : WOMEN

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1966. The NOW bylaws include a Statement of Purpose:

NOW’s purpose is to take action through intersectional grassroots activism to promote feminist ideals, lead societal change, eliminate discrimination, and achieve and protect the equal rights of all women and girls in all aspects of social, political, and economic life.

21D “Fiddlesticks!” : SHOOT!

We’ve been using “fiddlesticks” to mean “nonsense” since the early 17th century. Prior to that time, “fiddlestick” just referred to the bow of a fiddle.

23D Disney princess in New Orleans : TIANA

“The Princess and the Frog” is an animated feature released in 2009 by Walt Disney Studios. The film is set in New Orleans in the twenties. A waitress named Tiana kisses a prince who had been turned into a frog, and then she herself turns into a frog.

26D Possible need for entry : VISA

A visa is usually a stamp in one’s passport, an indication that one is authorized to enter (and less often, to exit) a particular country. The word “visa” comes into English, via French, from the Latin expression “charta visa” meaning “paper that has been seen”, or “verified paper”.

33D Kid’s parent : GOAT

Male goats are bucks or billies, although castrated males are known as wethers. Female goats are does or nannies, and young goats are referred to as kids.

36D Company whose logo has a hidden arrow between its fourth and fifth letters : FEDEX

FedEx began operations in 1973 as Federal Express, but now operates very successfully under it’s more catchy, abbreviated name. Headquartered in Memphis with its “SuperHub” at Memphis International Airport, FedEx is the world’s largest airline in terms of tons of freight flown. And due to the presence of FedEx, Memphis Airport has the largest-volume cargo operation of any airport worldwide.

40D Word from the Greek for “folded paper” : DIPLOMA

Our word “diploma” comes from Greek via Latin, with an original meaning of “state or official document”. The Greek word “diploma” described a license or a chart, and originally meant “paper doubled over” from “diploos”, the word for “double”.

44D Pleasing to the palate : SAPID

Something that is sapid is tasty, savory. The opposite to “sapid” is “insipid”, meaning “without taste, bland”.

49D Arm of the Dept. of Labor : OSHA

The US Department of Labor (DOL) was founded as the Bureau of Labor in 1889 under the Department of the Interior. The Bureau’s status was elevated to Cabinet level by President William Howard Taft in 1913, with a bill he signed on his last day in office. The DOL has been headquartered in the Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C. since 1975. The building was named for Frances Perkins who served as Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945 and who was the first female cabinet secretary in US history.

52D French 101 verb : ETRE

The verb “to be” is “être” in French.

56D Physics unit equivalent to roughly 624 gigaelectronvolts : ERG

An erg is a unit of mechanical work or energy. It is a small unit, with one joule comprising 10 million ergs. It has been suggested that an erg is about the amount of energy required for a mosquito to take off. The term comes from “ergon”, the Greek word for work.

57D Thoroughly evaluate : VET

The verb “to vet” comes from the term “veterinarian”. The idea is that to vet something is to subject it to careful examination, like a veterinarian checking out an animal.