Silent Movie - The Card Game
Rabbit Rabbit. Care to try your luck at cards?
Husband and wife team Hoang-Kim Vu and Jessica Zetzman are veteran constructors for the NYT and Vu has published here as recently as last Thursday. But today is their first pairing on the Corner.
and they have some new tricks up their sleeves. We'd better start by
calling 'em:
62A. With 66-Across, images played in silent films,
and what one might use to play the games in the first parts of the answers to
the starred clues?: TITLE.
66A. See 62-Across: CARDS.
Spreading their themers on the table, we quickly see the names
of 4 films or videos that begin with the TITLE of a CARD game:
23A. *Channing Tatum film series featuring strippers:
MAGIC MIKE. Bling wise this clue was not a
good opening. No trailer for this one, as
I'm sure Merl Reagle would agree
that a flick on male strippers wouldn't pass the
Margaret Farrar "Sunday Morning Breakfast Test".
OTOH, if you
want to try your hand at Magic The Game,
here's everything you need to know.
39A. *Martial arts series based on the writings of Bruce Lee:
WARRIOR. Bruce Lee (Chinese: 李小龍; born Lee Jun-fan, 李振藩;
November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong and American martial
artist, martial arts instructor, actor, director, screenwriter,
producer, and philosopher. Here's the trailer for the 2019 TV series Warrior:
Here are the rules for WAR the card game.
28D. *Netflix series starring Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury:
BRIDGERTON. Bridgerton is an American historical-romance television series based on Julia Quinn's collection of novels.
We have a friend who's been trying to get us to learn the game of BRIDGE
for years. He sometimes lurks on the Corner. Perhaps he'll stop buy
and post some corrections to this "complete tutorial": "Learn How to
Play Bridge" (in 16 minutes?):
31D. *Emmy-nominated
miniseries about a woman leaving her Hasidic community:
UNORTHODOX. Unorthodox
is a German-American drama television miniseries that debuted on
Netflix on March 26, 2020. The first Netflix series to be primarily in
Yiddish, it is inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. Here's the trailer:
Here are the rules for UNO the card game.
Here's the grid:
The following are the rest of our constructors' tricks:
Across:
1. Crushes it on the runway: SLAYS. A bit of fashion hyperbole used only in the present tense. You never hear "The model really SLEW them on the runway yesterday". BTW this clue hath oft been used in crossword puzzles.
6. Disapproving sound: TSK. Perhaps the politest way of expressing the increasingly widespread reaction to just about everything.
9. Wolf (down): SCARF. "eat hastily," 1960, U.S. teen slang,
originally a noun meaning "food, meal" (1932), perhaps imitative, or
from nautical slang scoff "eat hastily or voraciously, devour" which is attested from 1846 (compare U.S. tramps slang scoffing "food, something to eat," 1907). This is said to be a variant of scaff (by 1797) in the same sense, and scaff
(n.) "food, provisions" is attested from 1768, but the group is of
obscure origin. Perhaps the word comes ultimately from some survival of
Old English sceorfan "to gnaw, bite". - etymonline.com
15. Med. condition with repetitive behavior: OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Varying degrees of this disorder are common among cruciverbalists.
16. "Culture Warlords" author Lavin: TALIA. Subtitled My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy. She may have spent just a little too much time there.
17. Get straight: ALIGN.
18. Average: PAR. A CSO to Husker, Boomer, and TTP. Not that any of them are average mind you.
19. Discontinued Apple devices: IPODS.
20. Angry with: MAD AT. Oh, for the good old days when MAD meant this.
21. 27-Down garment: BRA. I'm sure they're worn on the island that's the namesake for 27D.
22. Toothpaste choice: CREST.
26. "Waterloo" singers: ABBA. Oh goodie, music ...!
29. "Don't get any __!": IDEAS. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?
30. Bubbles: SUDS. Common slang for brewed drinks such as ...
 |
| 15 facts about Guinness |
34. Milk container: CARTON. And you can use the milk to make your Guinness even sudsier:
 |
| Guinness Punch recipe |
38. Yale student: ELI. Why they're called ELIS.
43. Artist Yoko: ONO. Well before her famous partnership with John Lennon, Yoko Ono was the "High Priestess of the Happening" and a pioneer in performance art. Drawing from an array of sources from Zen Buddhism to Dada, her pieces were some of the movement's earliest and most daring. With unprecedented radicalism, she rejected the idea that an artwork must be a material object.
 |
| Yoko Ono |
44. Finished: DID IN. The past tense of do in.
46. Set out of bounds: BAN.
47. Hawkeye projectile: ARROW. The clue and the fill connote the sagas of the French and Indian War, immortalized in James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Last of the Mohicans, popularized in the 1992 film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeline Stowe.
A minor nit is that while Nathaniel "Hawkeye" Poe was probably
proficient with a bow and arrow, his weapon of choice was a "Killdeer"
rifle not a bow and arrow. Here's the trailer:
49. Baseball VIPs: GMS. Even more important than the General Managers are the Owners. Apparently a dispute has broken out in the Orioles organization among two sons of long-time owner Peter Angelos over the future of the team, raising the possibility of selling or moving it. This is scary.
50. [shrug emoji]: IDK. I Don't Know.
This immediately reminded me of a story by a priest I used to know. He
was describing questions his elementary school students used to try to
trick him, e.g. "Father, can God make a rock so big that he can't pick
it up?". The priest paused for few seconds, and then shrugged "I don't know🤷". But as this was before MS Windows, it looked more like this "¯\_(ツ)_/¯".
51. Nov. honoree: VET. Veterans Day is always on November 11 so the day of the week changes each year. Here is a calendar and a history of this day that we should always remember.
52. Sub (for): STEP IN. Another CSO to Husker.
55. Collect: GATHER.
58. Lawn care tool: AERATOR. Every thing you'd ever want to know about lawn AERATORS.
60. Upshot: OUTCOME.
61. Body art: TATS. Plural to clecho 42D.
64. God of war: ODIN. Hand up if you expected MARS or ARES? ODIN is the Norse god of war, aka WOTAN in German. Here's Wotan singing a touching farewell ("Abschied") to his disobedient daughter Brunhilde, one of the Valkyries in Wagner's Die Walküre. She has fallen from grace and is now banished from Valhalla to spend the remainder of her days on Earth as a mortal. Teri and I saw this very same performance years ago sung by bass James Morris, a Baltimore native and protégé of the great Rosa Ponselle (lyrics). The soprano was Hildegard Behrens. A CSO to opera lovers Jayce and Ol' Man Keith.
65. God of love: EROS. The Norse goddess of Love was FREYJA, who also makes brief appearances in Wagner's The Ring of the Niebelung:
 |
| Freyja John Doyle Penrose (May 9, 1862 – January 2, 1932) |
68. "Auld Lang __": SYNE. We'll be singing this before you know it. This version has ALL of the lyrics:
69. Helen who was the first actress to achieve the EGOT: HAYES. Helen Hayes MacArthur (née Brown; October 10, 1900 – March 17, 1993) was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was the second person and first woman who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award (an EGOT). She was also the first person to win the Triple Crown of Acting; as of December 2020, the only other person to have accomplished both is Rita Moreno.
 |
| Helen Hayes |
70. Austin festival, briefly: SXSW. South X SouthWest Festival. Hand up from anyone who's been to it?
Down:
1. Con: SCAM.
2. Kinks woman with "a dark brown voice": LOLA. The Kinks were an English rock band formed in Muswell Hill, north London, in 1963 by brothers Ray and Dave Davies. They are regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s. LOLA wasn't the only song they wrote. Here's their SUNNY AFTERNOON:
3. Corrosive chemical: ACID.
4. Studio rollout?: YOGA MAT. A CSO to Lucina.
5. Nick name?: SANTA. How Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus.
6. Auction winner, probably: TOP BID. In addition to Antiques Roadshow the BBC had a long running comedy series (1986 - 1984) called Lovejoy about an antiques dealer extraordinaire. Lovejoy was a "divinator" with a second sense that immediately told him not to BID on an antique that was fake. Played by actor Ian McShane, Lovejoy did however occasionally fake antiques himself, as he was an all-around rogue. In Series 1 Episode 1 he first meets his friend Lady Jane Felsam, played by Phyllis Logan. You may remember Phyllis for her later role as Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey:
7. In short supply: SCARCE.
8. TV series from Seoul, e.g.: K DRAMA. As Korean dramas (Korean: 한국 드라마; RR: Hanguk deurama), more popularly known as K-dramas, are television series in the Korean language, made in South Korea. They are popular worldwide, especially in Asia, partially due to the spread of Korean popular culture (the "Korean Wave"), and their widespread availability via streaming services which often offer subtitles in multiple languages
9. Selfie __: STICK. In ancient Greek times they were called Narcissus Sticks.
10. Insalata of tomato, mozzarella, and basil: CAPRESE. See the clue for the recipe.
11. Sunburn treatment: ALOE. Very popular with constructors because of its VTCR of 75%. Suntan lotion is much better though. Not only does it prevent sunburn, but skin cancer as well.
12. Purges (of): RIDS.
13. Lickety-split: FAST.
24. Rodriguez of "Jane the Virgin": GINA. Gina Alexis Rodriguez-LoCicero (née Rodriguez; born July 30, 1984) is an American actress. She is known for her leading role as Jane Villanueva in satirical romantic dramedy series Jane the Virgin (2014–2019), for which she received a Golden Globe Award in 2015.
 |
| Gina Rodriguez |
26. Served past: ACED.
27. Lingerie brand: BALI. See 21A for one of their products. And here's their eponymous island in the Indonesian archipelago:
 |
| Bali |
32. T. rex, e.g.: DINO. I think this may be a mistake. I'm pretty sure DINO was a Snorkasaurus.
 |
| Dino |
33. Freight boat: SCOW. A scow is a small type of barge. Some scows are rigged as sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small harbors. A CSO to Jinx.
 |
| Sailing Scow New Zealand, circa 1900 |
35. Takes responsibility for: OWNS IT.
37. Ascot kin: CRAVAT. What's the difference between an ASCOT and a CRAVAT? OTOH this reference doesn't think it's that simple.
40. Result of a bases-loaded walk, for short: RBI. Run Batted In, even though it wasn't batted in.
41. "Tubular!": RAD. Surf culture slang for cool or awesome, derived from catching a wave and getting in the "tube".
42. Body art: INK. Singular of clecho 61A.
45. Stalemate: IMPASSE.
48. Updates the backstory to accommodate new material, for short: RETCONS. Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established diegetic facts in the plot of a fictional work (those established through the narrative itself) are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former. [Hey, I'm not making this up!]
52. Provides enough: SATES. IMHO it may be impossible to SATE cruciverbalists.
53. Emotional: TEARY.
54. V-shaped cut: NOTCH. A versatile word, e.g. a mountain pass, a degree of change, a position, etc..
55. Speculate: GUESS. Hand up if you had to speculate about any of today's fill?
56. Radiates: EMITS.
57. Extend, in a way: RENEW.
59. Gold-certifying org.: RIAA. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization formed in 1952 that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legally sold recorded music in the United States". RIAA is headquartered in Washington, D.C. I was 5 years old when they got their start, and they promptly pulled the plug on my business pushing bootlegged 78's.
63. Tackle: TRY. I'm too tuckered out to tackle this one.
waseeley
And thanks as always to Teri for her proofreading and constructive suggestions.
Hoang-Kim Vu & Jessica Zetzman, you are invited to post anything you'd like to share about this puzzle, its evolution, the theme, or whatever, in the Comments section below. We'd love to hear from you.
Cheers,
