April 6, 2023

Title: FORGED INGRES

Constructors: Tom Pepper & Zhouqin Burnikel

Editor: Erik Agard

Theme Answers:

LEAD SINGER (18A: Freddie Mercury, for Queen)

FORCED TO RESIGN (27A: Given no choice other than stepping down)

ROMAN REIGNS (61A: WWE champ from the Anoa'i family)

Theme synopsis: The last word of each theme answer is an anagram of INGRES: SINGER, RESIGN, REIGNS.

Things I learned:

• HOPI (5A: Patty Talahongva's tribe) Patty Talahongva is a journalist, documentary producer, and news executive. Her HOPI name is White Spider Girl. In 2006, she directed and produced a documentary titled, The Power of Words: Native Languages as Weapons of War, which tells the stories of Comanche, HOPI, Meskwaki, and Navajo code talkers during World War II. The film is a part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.
• ROMAN REIGNS (61A: WWE champ from the Anoa'i family) ROMAN REIGNS is the professional name of Leati Joseph Anoa'i. He is the current World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Universal Champion. The Anoa'i family is a family of professional wrestlers from American Samoa. 

Random thoughts and interesting things:

• LEAD SINGER (18A: Freddie Mercury, for Queen) In 1970, Freddie Mercury (1946-1991) was one of the founding members of the British rock band, Queen, along with Brian May and Roger Taylor. (They were later joined by John Deacon.) The 2018 movie, Bohemian Rhapsody, is a biographical film about the LEAD SINGER's life.
• EAR (24A: Body part with ossicles) and FEET (27D: Body part with metatarsals) We have a bit of anatomy review with our puzzle today. The ossicles are the three bones in the middle EAR commonly referred to as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. The word "ossicle" means "tiny bone," and these three bones are some of the smallest bones in the human body. You have ten metatarsal bones in your FEET; five in each foot.
• LUAU (35A: Party with kalua pua'a and poi) Kalua pua'a is a dish of roast pork prepared in an imu, a type of underground oven. Poi is made by mashing cooked taro. Kalua pua'a and poi are traditional LUAU dishes.
• SWEDES (49A: Greta Thunberg and Alfred Nobel, for example) Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) was a chemist, engineer, and inventor that held 355 patents in his lifetime, one of which was for dynamite. He is best known, however, for donating his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize. Climate activist Greta Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the last four years. Though she hasn't (yet) won the prize named after Alfred Nobel, she has received numerous other accolades, including Swedish Woman of the Year and Time Person of the Year, both in 2019. Alfred Nobel and Greta Thunberg are SWEDES; both of them were born in Stockholm, Sweden.
• HELP (5D: "I Can't ___ Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)") "I Can't HELP Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch" is a 1965 hit song by the Four Tops. The song has been covered by multiple artists, and also used in advertisements. 
• DST (29D: Divine Nine sorority, for short) The Divine Nine is a nickname for the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), a collaborative group of historically Black fraternities and sororities. I learned about this organization when we saw DIVINE NINE as a theme answer on January 25, 2022. Delta Sigma Theta (DST), a sorority founded at Howard University in 1913, is one of the NPHC's member organizations. 
• TOMCATS (43D: Males who meow) and PURR (48D: Sound of feline contentment) Always happy to see a pair of cat clues in the puzzle. My husband and I spent last night with our daughter

  

  Toby and Leah

  and her boyfriend, who have a TOMCAT named Toby. This morning Toby "helped" me write this blog post by attempting to steal things out of my computer bag.
• DOME (60D: Onion ___ (feature of the Taj Mahal)) An onion DOME is an architectural feature named for its resemblance to an onion. The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum in Agra, India. It features a central onion DOME that is decorated with a lotus design. Four smaller DOMEs surround the central DOME.

I admit that I was a little bit relieved to figure out that the theme of today's puzzle is anagrams. I'm a fan of anagram puzzles, and I enjoyed seeing SINGER, RESIGN, REIGNS. The relief is a result of not being familiar with INGRES, so when I first saw the title of FORGED INGRES I wasn't sure what to expect! I did discover that INGRES is one of the filter effects in the graphics software Filter Forge, so perhaps the title is a nod to that. There is also a database management system called INGRES. And Jean-Auguste-Dominique INGRES (1780-1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Take your pick of which INGRES you'd like to anagram. I really liked the entries NAMES NAMES, GUINEA PIGS, and OYSTER STEW. Thank you, Tom and Zhouqin, for this puzzle that was a great way to start my Thursday.