Cluing ANA
Going to both extremes of abstraction.
After this, these posts are gonna get shorter for a while. This one really ran away from me. But in my defense, there’s a fair amount here to talk about.
Of the common strings I clued over and over while doing the Ubercross Abecedaria, ANA is one of the most variable. It’s the name of one genuine star and a lot of B- to C-listers, and it also has a number of abstract meanings. I was so spoiled for choice, in fact, that I went with 12 options for this post instead of my usual nine, and I still may’ve left a few out. So let’s get to it…
Constructors everywhere thank God for Ana de Armas, who’s featured in hits from Knives Out to No Time to Die as well as more serious fare like Deep Water and Knock Knock. She’s having a special moment now with Blonde, which has earned Oscar and Razzie attention.
Santa Ana, the woman, the city, the winds. Okay, the woman was really “Saint Anne,” Jesus’s grandmother in the apocrypha, but the California city, among the densest in the nation, has special importance to Latinx culture. Plus, the winds. How many people, real or imagined, get weather phenomena named after them? That “El Nino” boy must be pretty old by now.
I may be listing her a bit high, since she was a fan-unfavorite character who died in Season 2, but Ana Lucia Cortez of Lost gave that season some much-needed snap. She seemed likely to join the regular characters at some point, so her brutal end (with the last words “For what?”) helped cement my interest in the show. Miss ya, Michael K., and I miss your Lost parties!
Though older solvers probably know Ana Gasteyer for SNL, you should know her for American Auto as it hits its second season. It’s pretty funny! Plus, she’s done Suburgatory, Wine Country, People of Earth and was just featured on the Today show.
Ana Violeta Navarro-Cárdenas, often just Ana Navarro, is a longtime CNN commentator and more recent host on The View, and like me, she considers herself a centrist but has to keep moving further to the left because when one side in politics has gone cuckoo-bananas, finding the “center” would just mean becoming half crazy. Right, sorry, moving on.
As a suffix, -ana means “things related to.” In practice, it usually means “collector’s tchotchkes related to.” It shows up in Disneyana, Shakespeareana, and especially Americana. It’s not super popular, but I might start using “comicana” in my everyday speech, to sound smarter. Plus, as a prefix, ana- has a bunch of obscure meanings but can join with words like baptist, galactic, and phase.
Ana Cabrera was a CNN journalist for nearly a decade and recently became an MSNBC journalist, mostly because CNN’s not doing so hot lately. In her time there, she hosted two presidential town halls, interviewed Nikki Haley, and anchored nine hours of coverage for the London Bridge bombing, among other achievements. It’s CNN’s loss.
All Nippon Airways (…can I call it that, or is this like when I have to substitute “ninja” for the N-word when quoting rap lyrics?) is the best way to Tokyo by air.
I’m conflicted about giving any attention to the pro-ana movement, which could be described as the dark side of thinspiration. I believe in exercise and keeping the pounds under control, but thinspo sometimes gets into more dangerous territory, and pro-ana lives there. I’ve had friends and relatives’ lives endangered by anorexia. Any mindset that encourages it makes my blood run cold…and the image I picked for “pro-ana” above was the least disturbing image I could find.
So…does something like that belong in a puzzle? Would it ruin the good vibes to have it in there? Or am I obligated to educate people about it? Ignoring extremists doesn’t always made them go away. (I usually picked another option for ANA, but one instance of PRO-ANA did make it into my answers.)
What do Wheel of Fortune, cheerleader shouts, and a kid’s proud declaration to their mom all have in common? They all lend themselves to phrases that include the words “an A.”
Ana Luisa is on the radar of a lot of potential customers. It’s doing its best to be an ethical jewelry company, and if you like the idea of necklaces, earrings, and rings not costing your entire paycheck, maybe give it a look. (There is no Ana Luisa-the-person, though: it was founded by two dudes.)
So here’s the thing. I’m kind of charmed by the definition of ana as a literary miscellany related to one subject. It seems like a cousin of the suffix ana: Shakespeareana is a collection of items like a jigsaw puzzle with Shakespeare characters or a Bard bobblehead; a Shakespeare ana, in theory, is a collection of writings that relate to the man and his work.
But…outside of crossword clues and dictionaries, I have never heard this word used this way. Ever. And I’ve lived my entire life loving words and publishing, so I feel like if this were a common usage today, it would’ve come up.
Other Anas of more modest show-business fame that I could have put here but didn’t: Villafañe (who played Gloria Estefan in the onstage On Your Feet), Alicia (featured in many older puzzles, best-known for Falcon Crest), de la Reguera (who has a whole show called Ana about leaving glamor behind for a simple life, but is better known to English-speaking audiences for Nacho Libre), Ularu (Emerald City, Tribes of Europa, and Siberia with Keanu Reeves), and Ortiz (best known for Dangerous Maids and Ugly Betty, but she just completed a run on Love, Victor…she’s probably the nearest miss).
