Tag: Devil-may-care crossword clue

Today’s Reveal Answer: Make Mine a Double

Themed answers each include two hidden words, both of which are the same alcoholic drink:

• 39A Bar request … or hint to the letters in the circles : MAKE MINE A DOUBLE

• 17A Devil-may-care : HARUM-SCARUM (hiding a double “rum”)
• 24A Town crier’s cry : HEAR YE! HEAR YE! (hiding a double “rye”)
• 51A Rock drummer whose last name is the same as his band : ALEX VAN HALEN (hiding a double “ale”)
• 62A Accessing, as a password-restricted website : LOGGING INTO (hiding a double “gin”)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 06s

Bill’s errors:

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6 “Red, white and blue” land, for short : US OF A

Legend has it that Betsy Ross made the first American flag for General George Washington. However, this story only surfaced during the centennial celebrations of 1876, and although Betsy Ross was indeed one of several flag makers in Philadelphia in the days of George Washington, sadly there’s no definitive evidence that Ross provided that first Stars and Stripes.

14 Quintet followed by “… and sometimes Y” : A-E-I-O-U

The vowels are A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.

20 Actor Guinness of “Star Wars” : ALEC

Sir Alec Guinness played many great roles over a long and distinguished career, but nowadays is best remembered (sadly, I think) for playing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”.

28 Diamond great Ripken : CAL

Cal Ripken played his entire, 20-year professional baseball career for the Baltimore Orioles. Ripken was known as the “Iron Man” because he showed up for work every day, come rain or shine. He played 2,632 straight games, blowing past the previous 2,130-game record held by Lou Gehrig.

31 Gives a red card, in short : DQ’S

Disqualified (DQ’ed)

A series of colored penalty cards is used by referees and umpires in several sports, most notably in soccer. The cards were first used in the 1970 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, after language difficulties created confusion during the prior competition in 1966. The main cards used are a yellow card indicating a caution, and a red card indicating expulsion from the game.

32 Lerner’s partner on Broadway : LOEWE

Frederick Loewe was a composer who was best known for his collaborations with the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, the most famous of which were “My Fair Lady”, “Gigi” and “Camelot”.

Alan Jay Lerner was a lyricist from New York City who was known for his collaboration with Frederick Loewe and Burton Lane. Lerner was also known for his colorful private life. He was left with a persistent amphetamine addiction after being treated with “vitamins with enzymes” in the sixties, that were actually hypodermic shots laced with amphetamines. He also married eight times, and was often in dire financial straits due to the heavy load of alimony payments.

33 Carne ___ (burrito filler) : ASADA

The name of the dish called “carne asada” translates from Spanish as “roasted meat”.

A burrito is a common dish served in Mexican cuisine. It is a flour tortilla filled with all sorts of good stuff. The term “burrito” is Spanish for “little donkey”, the diminutive of “burro” meaning “donkey”. It’s thought that the name was applied as a burrito looks like a bedroll or pack that might be carried by a donkey.

35 Broadband letters : DSL

The initialism “DSL” originally stood for Digital Subscriber Loop, but is now accepted to mean (Asymmetric) Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is a technology that allows Internet service be delivered down the same telephone line as voice service, by separating the two into different frequency signals.

43 German auto sold mainly in Europe : OPEL

Adam Opel founded his company in 1863, first making sewing machines in a cowshed. Commercial success brought new premises and a new product line in 1886, namely penny-farthing bicycles. Adam Opel died in 1895, leaving his two sons with a company that made more penny-farthings and sewing machines than any other company in the world. In 1899 the two sons partnered with a locksmith and started to make cars, but not very successfully. Two years later, the locksmith was dropped in favor of a licensing arrangement with a French car company. By 1914, Opel was the largest manufacturer of automobiles in Germany. My Dad had an Opel in the seventies, a station wagon (we’d say “estate car” in Ireland) called an Opel Kadett.

45 Latches (onto) : GLOMS

“Glom” is a slang term meaning “steal”, although it can also be used to mean “latch onto” when used as “glom onto”. The term probably comes from the Scots word “glam” meaning “to snatch at”.

46 Élan : GUSTO

“Gusto” is an Italian word meaning “taste”. We use it in English in the phrase “with gusto” meaning “with great enjoyment”.

Our word “élan” was imported from French, in which language the word has a similar meaning to ours, i.e “style, flair”.

48 Offering from Hertz or National : CAR

The Hertz car rental company was started in 1918 by Walter L. Jacobs in Chicago. He began with just twelve model T Ford cars available for rent. In 1923, the car rental operation was bought out by John D. Hertz who incorporated it into his truck and coach manufacturing company.

National Car Rental was founded back in 1947 as a conglomerate of 24 independent rental agencies that had already existed around the country.

50 Message-spewing program : BOT

A bot is a computer program that is designed to imitate human behavior. It might crawl around the Web doing searches for example, or it might participate in discussions in chat rooms by giving pre-programmed responses. It might also act as a competitor in a computer game.

51 Rock drummer whose last name is the same as his band : ALEX VAN HALEN (hiding a double “ale”)

Van Halen is a heavy metal band formed in Pasadena, California back in 1972. Brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen originally called the band Mammoth, changing the name to Van Halen in 1974 when they found out there was another Mammoth playing the circuit. Early on, the brothers were renting a sound system from David Lee Roth, and they decided to save some money by bringing him into the band and saving on the rental fee!

57 Petri dish medium : AGAR

Julius Richard Petri was a German bacteriologist and was the man after whom the Petri dish is named. The petri dish can have an agar gel on the bottom which acts as a nutrient source for the specimen being grown and studied, in which case the dish plus agar is referred to as an “agar plate”.

67 Pick up the tab for : TREAT

When we run a “tab”at a bar, we are running a “tabulation”, a listing of what we owe. Such a use of “tab” is American slang that originated in the 1880s.

70 Dark wood : EBONY

Ebony is another word for the color black (often shortened to “ebon” in poetry). Ebony is a dark black wood that is very dense, one of the few types of wood that sinks in water. Ebony has been in high demand so the species of trees yielding the wood are now considered threatened. It is in such short supply that unscrupulous vendors have been known to darken lighter woods with shoe polish to look like ebony, so be warned …

71 Midler of “Beaches” : BETTE

One of my favorite singers, and indeed all-round entertainers, is Bette Midler. If you’ve ever seen her live show you’ll know that “camp” is a good word to describe it, as her humor is definitely “out there” and quite bawdy. Early in her career, Midler spent years singing in the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in New York City. There she became very close friends with her piano accompanist, Barry Manilow. While singing in the bathhouse, Bette only wore a white towel, just like the members of her audience. It was in those days that she created her famous character “the Divine Miss M” and also earned herself the nickname “Bathhouse Betty”.

“Beaches” is a 1988 film starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as two friends who have known each other since childhood, with John Heard playing the third in a love triangle. The film’s theme song, “Wind Beneath My Wings”, became a huge hit for Midler.

Down

3 Goodyear product : TIRE

The Goodyear tire company was founded in 1898. The company was named for Charles Goodyear, the man who invented vulcanized rubber in 1839. Despite the Goodyear name, Charles Goodyear himself had no connection with the company.

6 Belly aches? : ULCERS

Until fairly recently, a peptic ulcer was believed to be caused by undue amounts of stress in one’s life. It is now known that 70-90% of all peptic ulcers are in fact associated with a particular bacterium.

7 Run-down : SEAMY

We’ve used “seamy” to mean “the least pleasant, the worst” since the 1600s. The idea comes from the seamed side of a sewn garment being the less attractive.

8 Crew blade : OAR

Competitive team rowing is sometimes referred to as “crew”. The narrow boat used in the sport is called a shell.

9 The Seminoles of the A.C.C. : FSU

Florida State University (FSU) is located in Tallahassee, the state capital of Florida. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Seminoles (sometimes “the ‘Noles”). The team name was chosen in 1947 by the students in a vote, and alludes to the Seminole people of Florida.

18 Basketball’s O’Neal, informally : SHAQ

Retired basketball player Shaquille O’Neal now appears regularly as an analyst on the NBA TV show “Inside the NBA”. Shaq has quite a career in the entertainment world. His first rap album, called “Shaq Diesel”, went platinum. He also starred in two of his own reality shows: “Shaq’s Big Challenge” and “Shaq Vs.”

25 Dutch cheese town : EDAM

Edam cheese takes its name from the Dutch town of Edam in North Holland. The cheese is famous for its coating of red paraffin wax, a layer of protection that helps Edam travel well and prevents spoiling. You might occasionally come across an Edam cheese that is coated in black wax. The black color indicates that the underlying cheese has been aged for a minimum of 17 weeks.

26 Disney snow queen : ELSA

“Frozen” is a 2013 animated feature from Walt Disney Studios that is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Snow Queen”. The film is all about the exploits of Princess Anna, the younger sister of Elsa, Snow Queen of Arendelle. Spoiler alert: Prince Hans of the Southern Isles seems to be a good guy for most of the film, but turns out to be a baddie in the end. And, a snowman named Olaf provides some comic relief.

28 G.I. garb, for short : CAMO

Our word “camouflage” (often abbreviated to “camo”) evolved directly from a Parisian slang term “camoufler” meaning “to disguise”. The term was first used in WWI, although the British navy at that time preferred the expression “dazzle-painting” as it applied to the pattern painted on the hulls of ships.

The initialism “GI” stands for “Government Issue”, and not “General Infantry” as is widely believed. “GI” was first used in the military to denote equipment made from Galvanized Iron and during WWI, incoming German shells were nicknamed “GI cans”. Soon after, the term GI came to be associated with “Government Issue” and eventually became an adjective to describe anything associated with the Army.

29 “Hurry!,” on an order : ASAP

As soon as possible (ASAP)

30 Body of water between France and Switzerland : LAKE GENEVA

Lake Geneva straddles the border between France and Switzerland. The lake has a lot of “official” names!

• English: Lake Geneva
• French: Lac Léman or Lac de Genève
• German: Genfersee or Genfer See
• Italian: Lago Lemano or Lago di Ginevra

35 ___ Jam records : DEF

Def Jam is a US record label, one focused on hip hop music.

37 Falsetto-voiced Muppet : ELMO

The “Sesame Street” character named Elmo has a birthday every February 3rd, and on that birthday he always turns 3½ years old. The man behind/under Elmo on “Sesame Street” for many years was Kevin Clash. If you want to learn more about Elmo and Clash, you can watch the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey”.

40 Wee bit : IOTA

Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet, and one that gave rise to our letters I and J. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small, as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

47 Gracefully thin : SVELTE

“Svelte” comes into English from Latin, via the Italian “svelto” meaning “stretched out”. Something or someone described as svelte would be slender and graceful.

49 Computer science pioneer Turing : ALAN

Alan Turing was an English mathematician. He was well-respected for his code-breaking work during WWII at Bletchley Park in England. However, despite his contributions to cracking the German Enigma code and other crucial work, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He agreed to chemical castration, treatment with female hormones, and then two years later he committed suicide by taking cyanide. Turing’s life story is told in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead. I thoroughly enjoyed that film …

53 Paul who played Crocodile Dundee : HOGAN

“Crocodile Dundee” is an Australian film released in 1986, and starring Australian comedian Paul Hogan in the title role as Mick Dundee with American actress Linda Kozlowski playing the female lead. The main characters fell in love on-screen, and Hogan and Kozlowski fell for each other off-screen. Hogan divorced his wife (whom he had already married twice) and wedded Kozlowski in 1990.

58 Flying pest : GNAT

Gnats are attracted to the smell of rotting food, and vinegar. Simple homemade traps that use vinegar are often constructed to attract and kill gnats.