Tag: Text insert for a flash-forward film scene crossword clue

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10A Environmental concern : SMOG

The word “smog” is a portmanteau coined in 1905 by Dr. Henry Antoine Des Voeux to describe a mixture of smoke and fog, initially referring to the thick, polluted air in London. The infamous “Great Smog of London” in December 1952 caused thousands of deaths and led to significant environmental legislation.

17A She’s out there! : LESBIAN BAR

Lesbos is a Greek island in the northeast of the Aegean Sea. The Greek poet Sappho came from Lesbos, and she was a woman noted for her powerful emotional poems directed towards other females. It is because of the writings of Sappho from Lesbos that we have our word “lesbian”.

19A “Black-ish” patriarch : DRE

“Black-ish” is a sitcom starring Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross that premiered in 2014. The lead actors play Dre and Rainbow Johnson, a married couple leading an upper-middle class black family. The show is noted for tackling tough issues such as racism, police brutality, attitudes toward the LGBT community, and the 2016 US presidential election.

20A Dulcet : SWEET

“Dulcet” means “pleasing to the ear” and is such a lovely word, I think. It comes from the Old French word “doucet”, a diminutive of “doux”, which is the French for “sweet”.

22A Backstreet ___ : BOYS

The Backstreet Boys (BSB) are a male vocal group that formed in 1993 in Orlando, Florida. In fact, the group’s first performance was in SeaWorld Orlando in May of that year. They’ve come a long way since SeaWorld, and have sold more records than any other boy band in history.

25A Designer Geoffrey : BEENE

Geoffrey Beene was an American fashion designer. He had an impressive list of clients that included First Ladies Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon and Nancy Reagan. He had a very successful line of clothing called “Beene Bag”.

28A Like quartzite vis-à-vis quartz : HARDER

Quartz is a form of silicon oxide and is the second most abundant mineral found in the Earth’s crust, after feldspar. The name “quartz” comes into English via German, and probably ultimately derives from a Slavic word meaning “hard”.

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock. When sandstone is subject to heat and pressure it can turn into metamorphic rock called quartzite.

33A Commercial preceder of Geo : NAT

The National Geographic Channel (Nat Geo) was launched in 2001. Nat Geo has a sister channel known as National Geographic Wild (Nat Geo Wild) that focuses on programming about wildlife.

34A Capital near the Red Sea : SANAA

Sana (also “Sana’a” and “Sanaa”) is the capital city of Yemen. Sitting at an elevation of 7,380 feet, Sana is one of the highest capital cities in the world. Within the bounds of today’s metropolis is the old fortified city of Sana, where people have lived for over 2,500 years. The Old City is now a World Heritage Site. According to legend, Sana was founded by Shem, the son of Noah.

43A First name on the Supreme Court : ELENA

Elena Kagan was the Solicitor General of the United States from 2009 until 2010, when she replaced Justice John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court. That made Justice Kagan the first female US Solicitor General and the fourth female US Supreme Court justice. Kagan also served as the first female dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009.

45A Zilch : ZIP

We use the term “zilch” to mean “nothing”. Our current usage evolved in the sixties, before which the term was used to describe “meaningless speech”. There was a comic character called Mr. Zilch in the 1930s in “Ballyhoo” magazine. Mr. Zilch’s name probably came from the American college slang “Joe Zilch” that was used in the early 1900s for “an insignificant person”.

49A It is “making the complicated simple, awesomely simple,” per Charles Mingus : CREATIVITY

Charles Mingus was a jazz composer, bandleader and double bass player from Nogales, Arizona. He was as famous for his musical talent as he was for his fiery temper, a temper that would often lead to violent outbursts while onstage. This led to him being dubbed “the Angry Man of Jazz”.

51A Out of joint? : FREE

The cooler, the pen, the joint, the slammer, the can … the prison.

Down

2D French letter opener : CHER

“Cher” is French for “dear”. The spelling is “chère” when used with a feminine noun.

7D Broccoli ___ : RABE

Broccoli rabe is perhaps better known as “rapini”, and is a vegetable often used in Mediterranean cuisines. It is quite delicious sauteed with garlic …

8D How to look at your hot fudge sundae : AS A TREAT

There’s a lot of speculation about how the dessert called a sundae got its name, but there seems to be agreement that it is an alteration of the word “Sunday”.

12D Bits in a byte, e.g. : OCTET

In the world of computing, a bit is the basic unit of information. It has a value of 0 or 1. A “byte” is a small collection of “bits” (usually 8), the number of bits needed to uniquely identify a character of text. The term “bit” is an abbreviation for “binary digit”.

26D Classic toy for budding engineers : ERECTOR SET

Oh how I loved my erector set as a kid. The version we used growing up was referred to as a Meccano set, as “Meccano” was the brand name used for the toy sold as “Mechanics Made Easy”. The original erector set was developed by inventor Alfred Carlton Gilbert, and first produced in 1913. Back then it was sold as “The Erector/Structural Steel and Electro-Mechanical Builder”.

30D Interest of Marco Polo, with “the” : … EAST

Marco Polo was a merchant from Venice and a famous traveler throughout Asia. Polo journeyed with his father and uncle on an epic tour of Central Asia and China that lasted 24 years. Marco tends to be the member of the party we remember today though, because it was he who documented their travels in a book called “Il Milione” (usually “The Travels of Marco Polo” in English).

33D Gelded : NEUTERED

To geld is to castrate a male animal. “Geld” comes from the Old Norse word “gelda” meaning “castrate”.

36D ___ Fridays : TGI

T.G.I. Fridays is an American restaurant chain that was founded in 1965 in New York City. Today there are over a thousand T.G.I. Fridays restaurants in over 50 countries. I think that Fridays has always been particularly successful overseas. I used to visit one a lot with my family when we lived in the Philippines, and I believe the most successful Fridays restaurant anywhere in the world is the one in Haymarket Leicester Square in London in the UK.

40D Grammy-winning R&B singer named for a Revlon fragrance : CIARA

Ciara is a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas. She used to date rapper Bow Wow, but married Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson in 2016.

Revlon was founded in the depths of the Great Depression in 1932 by Charles and Joseph Revson. The “S” in the “Revson” name was replaced by the “L” from Charles “Lachman”, a chemist who partnered with the two brothers.

42D Mass : HEFT

The heft of something is its weight, its heaviness. The term “heft” is derivative of the verb “to heave” meaning “to lift, raise”.

45D Trattoria tubes : ZITI

Cylindrical pasta is known in general as “penne”, and there are many variants. For example, ziti is a particularly large and long tube with square-cut ends. “Penne” is the plural of “penna”, the Italian for “feather, quill”.

A trattoria is an Italian restaurant. In Italian, a “trattore” is the keeper of said eating house.

46D Couple : ITEM

An unmarried couple known to be involved with each other might appear in the gossip columns. This appearance as “an item” in the papers, led to the use of “item” to refer to such a couple, but only since the very early seventies.

50D Late actor Kilmer : VAL

Val Kilmer’s first big leading role in a movie was playing Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic “The Doors”. A few years later, Kilmer was chosen for the lead in another big production, “Batman Forever”. Off the screen, he flirted with the idea of running for Governor of New Mexico in 2010. A Hollywood actor as a governor? Would never happen …