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May 13, 2021 Online Crossword Puzzles. Play the daily crossword puzzle from Dictionary.com and grow your vocabulary and improve your language skills. Learn new words and practice problem solving skills when you play the daily crossword puzzle. Use the crossword solver from Dictionary.com to help fill in all the clues. If you liked our LA Times Crossword Puzzles then you should keep searching through more. Take a visit over to our USA Today Crossword Puzzles and play or print your puzzle today! Crossword Puzzles are always fun to play, especially when their LA Times themed! Get your hands on some of the most fun free printable puzzles on the net!

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Constructed by: Adam Wagner
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Reveal Answer: Shell Games

Themed answers each start and finish with circled letters that spell out GAMES:

65A Sleights-of-hand with cups, or a hint to this puzzle’s circles : SHELL GAMES

17A Kiefer Sutherland and Ashley Olsen each has one : TWIN SISTER (Twister)
23A Window washing aids : CHERRY PICKERS (Checkers)
40A Memorable “Twilight Zone” feature : OPENING NARRATION (Operation)
50A Pressure that won’t quit : CHRONIC STRESS (Chess)

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

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9 Scenery chewers : HAMS

The word “ham”, describing a performer who overacts, is a shortened form of “hamfatter” and dates back to the late 1800s. “Hamfatter” comes from a song in old minstrel shows called “The Ham-Fat Man”. It seems that a poorly performing actor was deemed to have the “acting” qualities of a minstrel made up in blackface.

To chew the scenery is to overact, to ham it up.

17 Kiefer Sutherland and Ashley Olsen each has one : TWIN SISTER (Twister)

Canadian actor Kiefer Sutherland is perhaps best known for playing the lead role of Jack Bauer on the hit TV drama “24”. Kiefer was actually born in London, where his acting parents Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas were living at the time.

I know very little about the Olsen twins, but I am told that many folks believe Mary-Kate and Ashley to be identical twins. They look very much alike, but are in fact fraternal twins. The sisters were cast as Michelle Tanner on the eighties sitcom “Full House”, taking turns playing the role.

Twister is a game requiring a lot of physical dexterity and flexibility. It involves players placing specific hands and feet onto colored pads on a mat, as directed by a spinning arrow on a board. Sales of the game got a great boost in 1966, when Eva Gabor played Twister with Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show”.

18 Tiny cake, maybe : EMOJI

An emoji is a character found on many cell phones that is much like an emoticon, but is more elaborate. “Emoji” is a Japanese word meaning “picture word”.

19 Movers but not shakers, ideally : VANS

The vehicle we call a “van” takes its name from “caravan”, and is a shortened version of the older term. Back in the 1600s, a caravan was a covered cart. We still use the word “caravan” in Ireland to describe what we call a “mobile home” or “recreational vehicle” here in the US.

20 “Blade Runner” genre : NEO-NOIR

A neo-noir film is a contemporary film that incorporates elements of the film noir style of the forties and fifties.

“Blade Runner” is a cult classic, a sci-fi film made in 1982 loosely based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. It was directed by Ridley Scott who regards “Blade Runner” as his most “complete” film. There is a phenomenon known as the “‘Blade Runner’ Curse”. An inordinate number of companies behind products that were displayed prominently in the movie found themselves in financial trouble soon after the movie’s release. Included in the list of troubled concerns are Atari, Cuisinart, Pan Am and the Bell System.

23 Window washing aids : CHERRY PICKERS (Checkers)

A cherry picker is a mobile crane in which the operator stands at the end of the boom. It is also known as a bucket truck, or more formally, an aerial work platform. Wwan support update 1.0 (for mac). Believe it or not, cherry pickers were actually invented to make the process of picking cherries more efficient.

“Checkers” is yet another word that I had to learn moving across the Atlantic. In Ireland, the game is called “draughts”.

26 Advanced sci. class : AP CHEM

The Advanced Placement (AP) program offers college-level courses to kids who are still in high school (HS). After being tested at the end of an AP course, successful students receive credits that count towards a college degree.

30 Confucian path : TAO

The name of the Chinese character “tao” translates as “path”, but the concept of Taoism signifies the true nature of the world.

The sayings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (anglicized from “K’ung Fu-Tse”) are collected in a work called “The Analects” or “Linyu”. It wasn’t Confucius who wrote down his thoughts though, but rather his pupils, some 40 or so years after his death in 479 BC.

31 Three-sided pastry : SAMOSA

A samosa is quite a tasty appetizer. It is usually a triangular-shaped savory that often has a vegetarian filling. The word “samosa” is primarily used on Indian menus, and the name comes from “sanbosag”, the name for the dish in Persia.

40 Memorable “Twilight Zone” feature : OPENING NARRATION (Operation)

The iconic television series “The Twilight Zone” first aired in 1959 and then ran for 156 episodes before being pulled in 1964. “The Twilight Zone” was revived for four years in the late eighties, and was also spun-off into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 1983.

The game called Operation was invented by John Spinello and was first produced in 1965 by Milton Bradley. The game is based on the old electric wire loop game where players had to guide a loop along a winding wire without touching it. Touching the wires completed a circuit causing a buzzer to go off and/or a light to come on.

44 Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence,” e.g. : SEXTET

Tchaikovsky named his string sextet “Souvenir de Florence” because he came up with one of the work’s main themes while he was staying in Florence. The work is scored for two violins, two violas and two cellos.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was one of Russia’s most celebrated composers of the romantic period. Tchaikovsky was helped in his career by Russian businesswoman Nadezhda von Meck, who served as his patroness for 13 years. Famously, von Meck provided financial support so that he could devote himself to composition, but on condition that Tchaikovsky was never to meet her. The pair never did meet, but they did exchange over 1,200 letters.

45 CPR pro : EMT

An emergency medical technician (EMT) might administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

46 “Illmatic” rapper : NAS

Rapper Nas used to go by an earlier stage name “Nasty Nas”, and before that by his real name “Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones”. Nas released his first album “Illmatic” in 1994, and inventively titled his fifth studio album “Stillmatic”, released in 2001.

48 ’90s White House Press Secretary Myers who wrote “Why Women Should Rule the World” : DEE DEE

Dee Dee Myers was a very capable White House Press Secretary in the Clinton administration, and was the first woman to hold that post. Af

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