In early Greece, an agora was a place of assembly. The assemblies held there were often quite formal, perhaps for the reading of a proclamation. Later in Greek history, things became less formal as the agora evolved into a marketplace. Our contemporary word “agoraphobia” comes from these agorae, in the sense that an agoraphobe has a fear of open spaces, a fear of “public meeting places”.
16 Aerosol target : ODORStrictly speaking, the term “aerosol” defines a suspension of either liquid droplets or solid particles in a gas. A good example of an aerosol is smoke. We tend to use the “aerosol” to describe what comes out of a spray can, even though the liquid droplets usually fall out of the gas and don’t stay suspended.
17 Mall map clarification : YOU ARE HERESurprisingly (to me!), our word “mall”, meaning “shady walk” or “enclosed shopping space”, comes from the Italian for “mallet”. All of our shopping-style malls are named for “The Mall” in St. James’s Park in London. This tree-lined promenade was so called as it used to be a famous spot to play the croquet-like game called “pall-mall”. The game derived its name from the Italian for ball (palla) and mallet “maglio”. The London thoroughfare called the Mall still exists, at one end of which is Buckingham Palace. Indeed, parallel to the Mall is a street called Pall Mall.
19 Half a patio pair : TONGA pair of tongs is a tool with a scissor-like hinge used to pick up things, like meat cooking on a barbecue grill or ice from an ice bucket. The verb “to tong” means “to handle with tongs”.
20 Cuban missile crisis strategy : NAL EMBARGO“Embargo” and “blockade” are two similar yet different terms. An embargo is a legal prohibition of trade with a particular country, whilst a blockade is an act of war, a militarily enforced prevention of the movement of goods and services. The term “embargo” came into English from Spanish, in the late 16th century.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day standoff between the US and the USSR in 1962 concerning the deployment of ballistic missiles. The US had deployed ballistic missiles in Turkey in 1961, which had the capability of striking Moscow before the USSR had time to react. The crisis erupted when the US discovered preparations for the deployment of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba, which missiles could strike American cities before the US had time to react. The crisis was resolved when the USSR publicly stated that they would dismantle all offensive weapons in Cuba, and the US declared that it would never again attempt to invade Cuba (the Bay of Pigs Invasion had taken place in 1961). Secretly, the US also agreed to dismantle its ballistic missiles in Turkey, and did so almost immediately.
25 Even the queen, in chess : MANIn the game of chess, the pawns are the weakest pieces on the board. A pawn that can make it to the opposite side of the board can be promoted to a piece of choice, usually a queen. Using promotion of pawns, it is possible for a player to he two or more queens on the board at one time. However, standard chess sets come with only one queen per side, so a captured rook is often used as the second queen by placing it on the board upside down.
26 Beat in a hot dog contest : OUT-EATA hot dog is a sausage served in a split roll. The term “hot dog” dates back to the 19th-century and is thought to reflect a commonly-held opinion that the sausages contained dog meat.
29 Slow movement : LARGOLargo is an instruction to play a piece of music with a very slow tempo. “Largo” is an Italian word meaning “broadly”. The instruction “larghetto” means “play broadly”, and “Larghissimo” means “play very, very slowly”.
31 Web app for the latest : GOOGLE NEWSGoogle News is a news aggregation app that Google released in 2006. Among other features, the app allows a user to the top stories, as well as a selection of news items curated especially for the user. Dangerous, I’d say …
33 What 15 U.S. presidents formerly were, briefly : VPSHere is a list of US vice presidents who rose to the office of US president:
John Adams: under George Washington Thomas Jefferson: under John Adams Martin Van Buren: under Andrew Jackson John Tyler: under William Henry Harrison Millard Fillmore: under Zachary Taylor Andrew Johnson: under Abraham Lincoln Chester Arthur: under James Garfield Theodore Roosevelt: under William McKinley Calvin Coolidge: under Warren G. Harding Harry Truman: under Franklin D. Roosevelt Lyndon Johnson: under John F. Kennedy Richard Nixon: under Dwight Eisenhower Gerald Ford: under Richard Nixon George H.W. Bush: under Ronald Reagan Joe Biden: under Barack Obama 36 Son of Chingachgook, in a Cooper novel : UNCAS“The Last of the Mohicans” is an 1826 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second in a series of five novels that comprise the “Leatherstocking Tales”. All five titles are:
“The Deerslayer” (1841) “The Last of the Mohicans” (1826) “The Pathfinder” (1840) “The Pioneers” (1823) “The Prairie” (1827) 37 Be in the red : OWETo be in the red is to be in debt, to owe money. The expression “in the red” is a reference to the accounting practice of recording debts and losses in red ink in ledgers. The related phrase “in the black” means “solvent, making a profit”.
40 Shaggy pack animal : YAKThe English word “yak” is an Anglicized version of the Tibetan name for the male of the species. Yak milk is much prized in Tibetan culture. It is made into cheese and butter, and the butter is used to make a tea that is consumed in great volume by Tibetans. The butter is also used as a fuel in lamps, and during festivals the butter is even sculpted into religious icons.
41 Pre-wedding show : BRIDAL EXPOThe first World’s Fair was held in 1851, known back then as the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. The fair was the idea of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. It was held in a magnificent glass and cast-iron structure called the Crystal Palace that was purpose-built for the occasion. The Great Exhibition spawned a tradition of what became known as World’s Fairs, expositions that feature national pilions created by participating countries. The term “Expo” was coined for Expo 67, a 1967 World’s Fair held in Montreal. Since then, we’ve been using “expo” to describe any large exposition or trade show.
43 Frequents dive bars, say : SLUMSWe’ve been using the word “dive” in American English for a run-down bar since the latter half of the 19th century. The term comes from the fact that disreputable terns were usually located in basements, so one had to literally and figuratively dive into them. I’m a big fan …
45 Pretentious type : POSEUR“Poseur” is a French word that we absorbed into English in the mid-1800s to describe someone who pretends to be what he or she is not. The root French verb “poser” means “to affect an attitude or pose”.
49 NBA tiebreakers : OTSOvertime (OT)
51 Salad dressing brand … and what each set of circles reveals : HIDDEN VALLEYRanch dressing has been the best-selling salad dressing in the country since 1992. The recipe was developed by Steve Henson who introduced it in the fifties to guests on his dude ranch, the Hidden Valley Ranch in Northern California. His ranch dressing became so popular that he opened a factory to produce packets of ranch seasoning that could be mixed with mayonnaise and buttermilk. Henson sold the brand for $8 million in 1972.
56 Start of a proverb for which Ben Franklin is credited : EARLY TO BED …The proverb “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” comes to us courtesy of Benjamin Franklin. He published it in his “Poor Richard’s Almanack”.
61 “Star Trek: T.N.G.” counselor : TROIDeanna Troi is a character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” who is played by the lovely Marina Sirtis. Sirtis is a naturalized American citizen and has what I would call a soft American accent on the show. However, she was born in the East End of London and has a natural accent off-stage that is more like that of a true Cockney.
63 Online craft shop : ETSYEtsy.com is an e-commerce website where you can buy and sell the kind of items that you might find at a craft fair.
64 Newcastle’s river : TYNEThe River Tyne is in the northeast of England. The most famous city on the river is Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle upon Tyne is home to the famous Newcastle Brown Ale.
65 Summer Triangle star : DENEBDeneb is the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. The name “Deneb” comes from the Arabic word “dhaneb” meaning “tail”, as it lies at the tail of the swan.
The Summer Triangle is the name given to a pattern of stars seen in the northern hemisphere. It is so named as it sits almost directly overhead at midnight in most northern latitudes. The points of the triangle are the bright stars Altair, Deneb and Vega.
Down 1 __ window : BAYA bay window is a window that projects outside, beyond the wall. The resulting space inside the wall forms a “bay-like” space inside a room.
3 Thing of little worth : SOUA sou is an old French coin. We use the term “sou” to mean “an almost worthless amount”.
4 Turkey neighbor : IRANBefore 1935, the country we know today as Iran was referred to as Persia by the Western world. The official name of the country since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is the “Islamic Republic of Iran”.
5 Whitman’s Sampler choices : CARAMELSThe confectionery product known as caramel is made by heating sugar. The process of caramelization requires slow heating of the sugar to about 170 °C. The heating causes the sugar molecules to break down and convert into the compounds that provide the characteristic color and flor of caramel.
Whitman’s chocolate confections he been marketed since 1842, when the company was founded by Stephen F. Whitman on the Philadelphia waterfront. 19-year-old Whitman bought imported fruits, nuts and cocoa from ships in the harbor, from which he made European-style confections that were popular with sailors and their families at home. The Whitman Sampler is a collection of assorted chocolates in a box with a stitched pattern design reminiscent of folk art needlework.
6 “Freaky Friday” actress Lindsay : LOHANI think that actress Lindsay Lohan’s big break came with the Disney remake of “The Parent Trap” in 1998. I’ve really only enjoyed one of Lohan’s films though, “Freaky Friday” from 2003 in which she stars alongside the fabulous Jamie Lee Curtis.
“Freaky Friday” is a well-known children’s novel, written by Mary Rodgers and published in 1972. The basic story is that one Friday, a mother and her teenage daughter he their bodies switched due to the effects of an enchanted fortune cookie. Hilarity ensues! Disney adapted the novel into a movie three times in all:
In 1976, starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster In 1995, starring Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffman In 2003, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan 7 First name in daredevilry : EVELDaredevil Evel Knievel contracted hepatitis C from the many blood transfusions that he needed after injuries incurred during stunts. He had to he a liver transplant as a result, but his health declined after that. Knievel eventually passed away in 2007.
8 Saharan : SEREThe name “Sahara” means “greatest desert” in Arabic. The Sahara is just that, a great desert covering almost 4 million square miles of Northern Africa. That’s almost the size of the United States.
10 One may be sweet : POTATOAlthough in the US we sometimes refer to sweet potatoes as “yams”, the yam is actually a completely different family of plants. True yams are more common in other parts of the world than they are in this country, and are especially common in Africa.
12 __ line : CONGAThe conga line is a dance that originated as a Cuban carnival march. It became popular in the US starting in the thirties. The dance is apparently named after the Congo region of Africa, and it was originated by sles who were brought from there to Cuba.
13 Cereal killer : ERGOTErgots are fungi that cause disease in rye and related plants. If humans eat ergot-contaminated grain, a condition called ergotism can result. Ergotism is the result of consumption of alkaloids produced by the fungi, alkaloids that can cause seizures and manic behior. It has even been suggested that the hysteria exhibited by the Salem “witches” was perhaps caused by the ingestion of ergot-contaminated rye.
22 Company’s tech guru : IT GUYInformation technology (IT)
23 “Shrek” princess : FIONAPrincess Fiona is the title character’s love interest in the “Shrek” series of films.
28 NYC airport on Flushing Bay : LGAFiorello La Guardia was the Mayor of New York from 1934 to 1945, racking up three full terms in office. The famous airport that bears La Guardia’s name was built at his urging, stemming from an incident that took place while he was in office. He was taking a TWA flight to “New York” and was outraged when the plane landed at Newark Airport, in the state of New Jersey. The Mayor demanded that the flight take off again and land at a small airport in Brooklyn. A gaggle of press reporters joined him on the short hop and he ge them a story, urging New Yorkers to support the construction of a new commercial airport within the city’s limits. The new airport, in Queens, opened in 1939 as New York Municipal, often called “LaGuardia” as a nickname. The airport was officially relabeled as “LaGuardia” (LGA) in 1947.
Flushing Bay is a tidal embankment in New York City that takes its name from the town of Flushing. Flushing was settled in 1645 by the Dutch and was named for the port of Vlissingen in the southwest Netherlands. “Flushing” is the English name for the Dutch port.
29 Civil rights legend John : LEWISJohn Lewis was a civil rights leader, and a prominent leader in the 1963 March on Washington in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I He a Dream” speech. Lewis also suffered a fractured skull as he walked at the head of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday. Lewis was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1987, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 by President Obama. Lewis passed away in 2020.
34 __ New Guinea : PAPUAPapua New Guinea is a country occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea (the western side of the island is part of Indonesia).
38 Like idiomatic skeletons : CLOSETEDIn Old French a “clos” was an enclosure, with the diminutive form “closet” describing a small enclosure or private room. Over time this evolved into our modern usage of “closet”, describing a cabinet or cupboard.
The idiom “skeleton in the closet” means “secret to hide”. On the other side of the Atlantic, the concept is more likely to be expressed as “skeleton in the cupboard”.
41 TV host/comedian with 23 Emmy nominations : BURNETTCarol Burnett routinely ended “The Carol Burnett Show” with a rendition of the song “I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together”. As she sang the last line, she would gently tug on her left ear. According to Burnett, that ear tug was a secret signal to her grandmother meaning, “Hi Nanny. I’m fine. I love you”.
43 New South Wales capital : SYDNEYSydney is the most populous city in Australia. People from Sydney are known as “Sydneysiders”.
New South Wales (NSW) is the most populous state in Australia and is home to Sydney, the most populous city in the country. New South Wales was founded in 1788. When the British took over New Zealand in 1840, New Zealand was actually governed for a while as part of New South Wales.
44 Jeans brand : LEEThe Lee company that is famous for making jeans was formed in 1889 by one Henry Did Lee in Salina, Kansas.
47 __-year : LIGHTA light-year (lt. yr.) is a measure of distance, not time. It is the distance that light trels in a vacuum in one year, which is almost six trillion miles. The accepted abbreviation for a light-year is “ly”. A light-second is a much shorter distance: about 186,000 miles.
48 “So long, amigo” : ADIOSThe term “adiós” is Spanish for “goodbye”. “Adiós” comes from the phrase “a Dios vos acomiendo” meaning “I commend you to God”.
49 Skateboard move : OLLIEAn ollie is a skateboarding trick invented in 1976 by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand. Apparently it’s a way of lifting the board off the ground, while standing on it, without touching the board with one’s hands. Yeah, I could do that …
52 Fluctuate : VARYTo fluctuate is to shift back and forth uncertainly, or to rise and fall as if in wes. The verb “to fluctuate” comes from “fluctus”, a Latin word meaning “we”.
53 “East of Eden” twin : ARONJohn Steinbeck considered “East of Eden” his magnum opus. Most of the storyline takes place near Salinas, just south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Two of the characters in the story are brothers Cal and Aron Trask, representative of the biblical Cain and Abel.
According to the Bible’s Book of Genesis, after Cain murdered his brother Abel, he fled to the “Land of Nod” located “east of Eden” (from which John Steinbeck got the title for his celebrated novel “East of Eden”).
54 Bygone days : YOREWe use the word “yore” to mean “time long past” as in “the days of yore”. “Yore” comes from the Old English words for “of years”.
58 Austin-to-Houston dir. : ESEAustin is the capital of the state of Texas. When the area was chosen to be the capital of the Republic of Texas, it was known as Waterloo. The name was changed in honor of Stephen F. Austin, a native of Virginia who was raised in Missouri and led the first successful colonization of Texas.
59 Star of the ball : DEB“Deb” is short for “debutante”, which translates from French as “beginner” when referring to a female.
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Complete List of Clues/Answers Across1 Bare-bones : BASIC 6 Out of concern that : LEST 10 Distance runner’s concern : PACE 14 Early Greek public space : AGORA 15 Excessively: Pref. : OVER- 16 Aerosol target : ODOR 17 Mall map clarification : YOU ARE HERE 19 Half a patio pair : TONG 20 Cuban missile crisis strategy : NAL EMBARGO 22 Uncertainties : IFS 25 Even the queen, in chess : MAN 26 Beat in a hot dog contest : OUT-EAT 27 Like nobility : TITLED 29 Slow movement : LARGO 31 Web app for the latest : GOOGLE NEWS 33 What 15 U.S. presidents formerly were, briefly : VPS 36 Son of Chingachgook, in a Cooper novel : UNCAS 37 Be in the red : OWE 38 Hustle : CHEAT 40 Shaggy pack animal : YAK 41 Pre-wedding show : BRIDAL EXPO 43 Frequents dive bars, say : SLUMS 45 Pretentious type : POSEUR 46 Key participant : PLAYER 49 NBA tiebreakers : OTS 50 Water holder : DAM 51 Salad dressing brand … and what each set of circles reveals : HIDDEN VALLEY 55 Opposed to, in dialect : AGIN 56 Start of a proverb for which Ben Franklin is credited : EARLY TO BED … 60 It’s about a foot : SHOE 61 “Star Trek: T.N.G.” counselor : TROI 62 Do away with : ERASE 63 Online craft shop : ETSY 64 Newcastle’s river : TYNE 65 Summer Triangle star : DENEB
Down1 __ window : BAY 2 Before now : AGO 3 Thing of little worth : SOU 4 Turkey neighbor : IRAN 5 Whitman’s Sampler choices : CARAMELS 6 “Freaky Friday” actress Lindsay : LOHAN 7 First name in daredevilry : EVEL 8 Saharan : SERE 9 Shakes : TREMORS 10 One may be sweet : POTATO 11 Love to death : ADORE 12 __ line : CONGA 13 Cereal killer : ERGOT 18 Artfully escape : EVADE 21 Listening device : BUG 22 Company’s tech guru : IT GUY 23 “Shrek” princess : FIONA 24 Keep in the supply room : STOCK 28 NYC airport on Flushing Bay : LGA 29 Civil rights legend John : LEWIS 30 Blown away : AWED 32 What do you expect? : NORM 33 Put out : VEXED 34 __ New Guinea : PAPUA 35 Perfect thing that’s not beneficial : STORM 38 Like idiomatic skeletons : CLOSETED 39 Tom, Dick and Harry : HES 41 TV host/comedian with 23 Emmy nominations : BURNETT 42 In a suitable manner : APTLY 43 New South Wales capital : SYDNEY 44 Jeans brand : LEE 46 Part of a process : PHASE 47 __-year : LIGHT 48 “So long, amigo” : ADIOS 49 Skateboard move : OLLIE 52 Fluctuate : VARY 53 “East of Eden” twin : ARON 54 Bygone days : YORE 57 Stop legally : BAN 58 Austin-to-Houston dir. : ESE 59 Star of the ball : DEB
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