Midwesterner's embarrassed interjection / WED 11-6-24 / Gobi desert grazer / Inspiration for Toblerone's shape / Hip-hop's Madvillain or Mobb Deep / Baxter, "Poor Things" protagonist / Composer with a namesake horn / Green roll / Patterned fabric named for a Mideast capital
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Constructor: Adam Aaronson
Relative difficulty: Medium
Theme answers:
- PLATINUM (14A: Silvery element)
- BLACK SABBATH (29A: Band in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame)
- SOMALIA (39A: African country)
- LIMEADE (41A: Sweetened beverage)
- MEADOWLARK (53A: Bird with a distinctive call)
a fermented beverage made of water and honey, malt, and yeast (merriam-webster.com)
Mead has a reputation for being extremely sweet. Many people are hesitant to even try it after having tasted one of those syrupy-sweet honey wines that so many commercial meaderies make. People assume that it’s sweet just because it was made from honey. What they don’t realize is that the sugar in the honey gets fermented and turned into alcohol, just like the sugar in grapes. Whether the final product is sweet or not is up to the mead maker. People have even asked us if mead is thick like honey. That of course is not the case, since the honey is broken down by the yeast and turned into alcohol and CO2, meaning there’s not much left of the original honey except flavor. [...] There are two main methods of making a sweet product. The first is to simply add honey to the mead after it is done fermenting (with steps taken to prevent it from fermenting again). The second is to add more honey than the yeast is capable of converting into alcohol, which leaves some sugar behind. Each strain of yeast can only tolerate so much alcohol before the alcohol they make actually kills them. This method is fairly unpredictable, in part because there are usually several strains of yeast in any given fermentation, not just the one added by the wine or mead maker. The nutrient regimen and other factors can also impact how much alcohol the yeast can produce. ("Is Mead Sweet?," Contrivance Wine & Mead Co.)
[DRAX] |
The one answer I was truly happy to see today was AGNES Varda (54D: ___ Varda, director with an honorary Palme d'Or and Oscar). I've been (intermittently) shouting for years that, like fellow legendary film director Yasujiro OZU, she should be in more puzzles. Then last year, Erik Agard and Malaika Handa finally used a [French film director Varda] clue for AGNES, and I was elated. And now I'm re-elated. Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 is one of my three favorite movies (along with Wilder's The Apartment and Hitchcock's Rear Window). Varda had a long and varied career. Her documentaries are particularly exceptional. I have a beautiful, massive Criterion Collection box set of her films (haven't come close to watching all of them yet). Still haven't seen VARDA in the grid yet, but, baby steps, baby steps. And this puzzle's cinephilic streak keeps going, extending from DRAX and AGNES to BELLA (22D: ___ Baxter, "Poor Things" protagonist). That seemed like a somewhat tough BELLA clue. Yes, it's a recent role, and an Academy Award-winning role, but I don't know how widely known Emma Stone's character's name is. I saw the movie in the theater and the name still didn't come to me quickly. But crosses seem fair. Anyway, Marvel movie reference notwithstanding, I love this puzzle's movie-mindedness. It's the one part of the puzzle that did, in fact, click with me.
Notes and explainers:
- 19A: Northernmost city in North America with over one million people (EDMONTON) — brain, not clicking, assumed that "North America" meant "United States of America," and so tried to invent a city called EDISON, AK.
- 20A: Inspiration for Toblerone's shape (ALP) — weird clue. Yes, the inspiration is an ALP, but more specifically, a very famous ALP: The Matterhorn. This is a little like cluing PRESIDENT as [Person on the five-dollar bill]. I mean ... yes ... but
- 2D: Composer with a namesake horn (SOUSA) — yes, the SOUSAphone, which is a horn, and (sadly) not a telephone you use when you need someone to compose a march, stat!
- 8D: Hip-hop's Madvillain or Mobb Deep (DUO) — a tough clue if you know nothing about hip-hop, which experience tells me is a lot of you. I've heard of both these acts and DUO still didn't leap to mind.
- 11D: Actress Tracee ___ Ross of "American Fiction" (ELLIS) — Diana Ross's daughter.
- 67D: Midwesterner's embarrassed interjection ("OPE!") — I forget which Midwesterner says this. Minnesotan? Hmm, looks like it's common across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. According to this 2020 article from "Oshkosh Northwestern": "['OPE' is] said after bumping into someone, dropping something, or as an alert of someone needing to get around or “sneak right past ya.”"
The Guild is asking that readers honor their picket line by boycotting the Times’ selection of games, including Wordle and the daily digital crossword, and to avoid other digital extensions such as the Cooking app.
Annie Shields, a campaign lead for the News Guild of New York, encouraged people to sacrifice their streaks in the wildly popular Wordle and Connections games in order to support the strike.