Holiday Crossword Puzzle

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Across
  1. 9. 1959 improvisational classic widely considered the best selling jazz record ever — a cool album with a moody name.
  2. 10. 1777 engagement whose twin battles persuaded France (and later Spain and Holland) to join the American Revolution. America’s French Kiss of sorts.
  3. 11. Intermediate extrusive rock listed alongside rhyolite, basalt and obsidian as a common volcanic stone — the middle child of volcanic families.
  4. 13. Nationalized by Nasser in 1956, triggering an international crisis.
  5. 14. Stacked barrel arrangement beloved by clay shooters with 24-to-32-inch barrels and open chokes.
  6. 15. Goddess of wisdom, war and crafts who sprang fully armed from Zeus’s head and often appears with an owl and aegis.
  7. 17. 2023 film that became the highest grossing movie of the year, earning about $1.44 billion worldwide and setting a record for female directors.
  8. 18. California city where the UN Charter was finalized by representatives of 50 nations.
  9. 19. Reed worker who might spend half a gig counting rests and the other half taking them.
  10. 22. UN body created by the Charter with five privileged seats and ten rotating ones added in 1963 — a chamber of five perennials and ten musical chairs.
  11. 23. Small group originally including Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin that became the Soviet Union’s supreme policy making body until being superseded by a larger Presidium in 1952.
  12. 27. Flavor creating browning process triggered when proteins and sugars meet high heat — and no ducks are harmed.
  13. 29. Founding document drafted by delegates from 50 nations in San Francisco in 1945 — the paperwork that birthed the U.N.
  14. 32. Landlocked “red hero” capital that holds the record for coldest national seat of government.
  15. 33. 2019 Cannes Palme d’Or champ that treats “class divide” as a home-invasion genre. No exterminator needed.
  16. 35. Saintly sounding rift that runs roughly eight hundred miles and even lent its name to a movie.
  17. 41. Album that made Beyoncé the first Black woman this century to win ‘yeehaw’ album of the year. Nothing to do with bovines, kids or presidents.
  18. 45. French novelist who penned Les Misérables and openly supported abolitionist John Brown — Victor of French letters who admired Brown.
  19. 46. Only NFL team to retire a jersey number for “The 12”
  20. 48. Legendary pharaoh credited with unifying Upper and Lower Egypt around 3150 BCE and founding Memphis — not the one in Tennessee.
  21. 49. 2005 mass protests in Beirut after Hariri’s assassination that helped bring about a Syrian troop withdrawal. Think “local turning tree.”
  22. 53. French novel whose 1862 translation was read by Union soldiers and censored by Confederate publishers.
  23. 54. Monk credited with inventing the Armenian alphabet in 406 A.D.
  24. 55. City that hosted the Summer Olympics in 1964 and again in 2021
Down
  1. 1. Union general who delivered General Order No. 3 in Galveston, proclaiming that all slaves were free; his announcement birthed a holiday.
  2. 2. Shula’s Opus…the only one ever accomplished in the NFL.
  3. 3. The ‘Autumn Wind’ is a pirate.
  4. 4. Fantasy movie filmed in Kiwi-land that completed a clean sweep of its 11 nominations.
  5. 5. 5,642 meter Caucasus peak that surpasses Mont Blanc as Europe’s highest mountain.
  6. 6. 1648 peace whose legacy is every IR syllabus’s favorite “state sovereignty” origin story
  7. 7. Historic village built around an 1826 axe company that turned rural Canton, Connecticut, into an early mass production hub.
  8. 8. Katharine Lee Bates patriotic hymn, often invoked as a would-be national anthem alternative
  9. 12. Parliament in Jerusalem, where coalition math is a full-time job.
  10. 13. Portmanteau for the billions in consumer spending sparked by Taylor Swift’s Eras tour — GDP bump when a pop star hits town.
  11. 16. Anonymous 1776 Philly “paperback” that talked colonists out of staying loyal to a crown
  12. 20. Abolitionist championed by Victor Hugo and referenced in the censored sections of his novel — Harper’s Ferry raider eulogized in song.
  13. 21. River whose 500 channel delta is Europe’s largest and empties into the world’s largest inland sea.
  14. 24. Psychologist whose obedience experiments showed that about two thirds of participants would deliver maximum shocks. Just push the button if you’re told, baby.
  15. 25. The Fab Four’s AI finished track that snagged a Grammy decades later.
  16. 26. Lava’s underground alter ego.
  17. 28. State of mental discomfort described by Festinger when actions don’t align with beliefs — that uneasy feeling when deeds betray convictions.
  18. 30. Back of the envelope finance guideline: divide this multiple of six and nine by a percentage rate to estimate doubling time.
  19. 31. 1215 document whose clause 39 protects free men from imprisonment without due process.
  20. 34. High altitude Andean seat of “peace” that isn’t Bolivia’s constitutional capital.
  21. 36. Post 1979 Iranian title held by only two men that sits above the president — not to be confused with a pizza order.
  22. 37. Prophecy fearing patriarch of the Greek pantheon who infamously took “eat your kids” literally.
  23. 38. Hip hop diss track that became only the second single ever to win both song and record of the year.
  24. 39. Overhead set gear that dips in for dialogue and (ideally) stays out of frame
  25. 40. “Lady Soul” who became the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
  26. 42. Habit of calling supporting evidence “data” and everything else “fake news”
  27. 43. Head of lighting on a film set (not the one at the golf course)
  28. 44. Holiday marking the day Union troops freed enslaved African Americans in Texas, two and a half years after Lincoln’s proclamation. Doesn’t stop it from sounding stupid.
  29. 47. Surname of a whisper pop phenom whose middle name is Pirate and whose songs about bad guys and birds swept major awards.
  30. 50. Virginia village whose name became shorthand for “it’s over” in 1865
  31. 51. Iroquoian-born field game whose stick’s name is French for a bishop’s staff. Early “fields” could be miles long.
  32. 52. 1880 novel subtitled “A Tale of the Christ” (later a 1959 11 Oscar epic) whose hero drives a quadriga with equine names borrowed from stars like Altair, Aldebaran, Antares and Rigel.