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Constructed by: Lance Enfinger & Bob Weisz
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 18m 22s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

17 Part of a full count : THREE BALLS

That would be baseball.

18 Pond plant : ALGA

Algae are similar to terrestrial plants in that they use photosynthesis to create sugars from light and carbon dioxide, but they differ in that they have simpler anatomies, and for example lack roots.

22 Jack of “Twin Peaks” : NANCE

Jack Nance was an American actor who worked a lot with director David Lynch. He was one of the stars of the TV series “Twin Peaks” in which he played Pete Martell, a henpecked lumberjack. Coincidentally, the Log Lady in “Twin Peaks” was played by Catherine E. Coulson, one-time wife of Nance.

“Twin Peaks” is an ABC TV drama about an FBI murder investigation in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The show originally ran for just two seasons, from 1990 to 1991. There followed a 1992 feature film called “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”, and Showtime came up with “Twin Peaks: The Return” that started airing in 2017. I haven’t seen any incarnations of the show, but I hear good things …

24 Fourth-highest mountain on Earth : LHOTSE

At an elevation of 27,940 feet, Lhotse is the fourth highest mountain on the planet. It is located just south of Everest, and lies on the border between Tibet and Nepal.

28 Person in labor : PEON

A peon is a lowly worker who has no real control over his/her working conditions. The word “peon” comes into English from Spanish, in which language it has the same meaning.

29 “Queen of the Blues” Washington : DINAH

“Dinah Washington” was the stage name of the blues and jazz singer Ruth Lee Jones. She was also known as the “Queen of the Blues”, a title that Washington awarded herself.

30 Foil a foil : PARRY

In competitive fencing, a parry is a maneuver that blocks an attack by an opponent. There are actually nine defined ways to execute a parry.

32 COINTELPRO org. : FBI

COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of illegal and covert operations run by the FBI from 1956 to 1971. The goal of the projects was to disrupt American political organizations that the FBI deemed subversive. The list of people targeted by COINTELPRO included Muhammad Ali, Ernest Hemingway, Abbie Hoffman, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

36 Yankee great who wore No. 9 : MARIS

Roger Maris (whose original family name was “Maras”) was the son of Croatian immigrants. It was Maris’s single-season record of 61 home runs that Mark McGwire broke in 1998 (hitting 70 that season). Maris’s own record of 61 runs (from 1961) beat the previous record of 60 set in 1927 by Babe Ruth.

37 Cure component : SALT

Salt is used to “cure” meats. Curing is a preservation process. The salt kills and inhibits the growth of microorganisms by sucking the water out of the microbe’s cells in the process of osmosis. Smoking is also cited as a curing process, although smoking alone is insufficient for preserving food as the antimicrobial smoke compounds only adhere to the outside of the meat or fish. Smoking is usually combined with salt-curing or drying.

42 Infamous fly eater? : OLD LADY

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I dunno why she swallowed that fly,
Perhaps she’ll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly …

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd, to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider …

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird …

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.
What a hog! To swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat …

There was an old lady who swallowed a goat.
Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat!
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog …

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat…

There was an old lady who swallowed a horse –
She’s dead, of course.

47 Weasel : SNEAK

To weasel out of something is to back away from a prior commitment. The association of weasels with the concept of not being trusted might have arisen from the behavior in which a weasel sucks out the contents of an egg while leaving the shell virtually intact.

55 Lot lot : SALES FORCE

Those might be car sales personnel.

57 Like challah : EGGY

Challah is a special braided bread that is eaten by Ashkenazi Jews on the Sabbath. The bread is served to commemorate the manna that fell from the heavens as the Israelites wandered around the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

59 CNBC topic : NYSE

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)

CNBC is a business news channel owned by NBC. Launched in 1989, CNBC was known as the Consumer News and Business Channel up until 1991.

Down

1 Intro to web programming : HTTP

“http” are the first letters in many Internet links. “http” stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. More secure and “safer” websites (like this one!) use links starting with “https”, which stands for “http secure”).

3 Arctic __: bird that flies between poles : TERN

Terns are seabirds that are found all over the world. The Arctic Tern makes a very long-distance migration. One Arctic Tern that was tagged as a chick in Great Britain in the summer of 1982, was spotted in Melbourne, Australia just three months later. The bird had traveled over 14,000 miles in over those three months, an average of about 150 miles a day. Remarkable …

4 New York’s High Line or Boston’s Emerald Necklace : GREENWAY

New York’s High Line is a fascinating freeway built on an abandoned elevated railroad line on the city’s West Side. I had the pleasure of walking along the park a few years ago.

Boston’s Emerald Necklace is a chain of parks in Boston that are linked by waterways and parkways. The chain comprises over one thousand acres of parkland, including notable spaces such as Boston Common and the Fens.

5 Film producer Daniels : LEE

Producer and director Lee Daniels’ name has been associated with several hit films, including “Monster’s Ball” (producer), “Precious” (director), “The Butler” (director) and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” (director and producer).

6 Wells Fargo rival : US BANK

The roots of US Bank stretch back in time to 1863, when the First National Bank of Cincinnati was awarded a license by the administration of President Abraham Lincoln to operate nationwide. The following year, the bank founded the First National Bank of Minneapolis. US Bank’s headquarters are located in Minneapolis to this day.

8 Half of a “Do You Love Me?” duo : GOLDE

“Do You Love Me?” is a song from the 1964 stage musical “Fiddler on the Roof”. It is performed by that lead character Tevye, and his wife Golde.

The enduring musical “Fiddler on the Roof” is based on a collection of stories by Sholem Aleichem about Tevye, a milkman living in Tsarist Russia. The musical version of the tales first opened on Broadway in 1964. “Fiddler on the Roof” had such a long run that it became the first musical to reach 3,000 performances.

9 Many search results : URLS

Uniform resource locator (URL)

11 Drawer in a box : CRAYON

We use the word “crayon” for a stick of colored wax used for drawing. The term was imported in the 16th century from French, in which language it means “pencil”.

12 Spirit guide? : PILOT

Spirit Airlines is a low-cost carrier based in Miramar, Florida that was founded as Charter One in 1980. That said, the 1980 airline service was established as a branch of Clipper Trucking Company that dated back to 1964. Spirit started its low-fare service in 2007.

13 Cattle breed : ANGUS

The full name of the Angus cattle breed is Aberdeen Angus, which is also the name used around the world outside of North America. The breed was developed by crossbreeding cattle from the counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus in Scotland. The breed stands out in the US as Angus cattle don’t have horns.

21 Bridge call : AHOY!

“Ahoy!” is a nautical term used to signal a vessel. When the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, he suggested that “ahoy” be used as a standard greeting when answering a call. However, Thomas Edison came up with “hello”, and we’ve been using that ever since.

23 Incinerator residue : ASH

To incinerate is to burn, more specifically to burn to ashes. The verb “to incinerate” stems from the Latin “in-” meaning “into”, and “cinis” meaning “ashes”.

25 NYE, for Psy : B’DAY

New Year’s Eve (NYE)

“PSY” is the stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang. PSY became an international star when his 2012 music video “Gangnam Style” went viral on YouTube. That video had over 1 billion views on YouTube in about six months, making it the most viewed YouTube video clip of all time. The title of the song refers to a lifestyle experienced in the Gangnam District of Seoul.

26 Badger : RIDE

To badger is to harass. The verb “to badger” comes from the cruel practice of badger-baiting, which dates back to medieval times. Badger-baiting is a blood sport in which a dog is used as bait for a badger in its den, to draw it out into the open. The den is an artificial structure built to resemble a natural badgers’ den, complete with a tunnel entrance. The dog is sent down the tunnel causing the badger and dog to lock their jaws on each other. The badger and dog are then removed from the den by pulling on the dog’s tail. Horrible …

31 “The only way to run away without leaving home,” per Twyla Tharp : ART

I love Twyla Tharp’s choreography, and her “patented moves”. Tharp was born in Portland, Indiana in 1941. She was named for Twila Thornburg, the “Pig Princess” of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana. That’s one to tell the grandkids …

32 __ bean : FAVA

The fava bean is also known as the broad bean. “Broad bean” is used “broadly” (pun!) in the UK, whereas “fava bean” is common in the US. “Fava” is the Italian name for the broad bean.

37 Creature domesticated in China more than 5,000 years ago : SILK MOTH

The textile known as silk is made from a natural protein fiber produced from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm. Ethical vegans tend to avoid silk as many, many silkworms die in order to produce a relatively small amount of fabric. Raw silk is obtained by boiling the silkworms alive inside the cocoons that yield the fibers.

39 Small town : BURG

“Burg” is an informal term used in the US for a smaller town that comes from the German word “burg” meaning “fortified city”.

40 Org. concerned with recalls : FDA

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has its roots in the Division of Chemistry (later “Bureau of Chemistry”) that was part of the US Department of Agriculture. President Theodore Roosevelt gave responsibility for examination of food and drugs to the Bureau of Chemistry with the signing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Bureau’s name was changed to the Food, Drug and Insecticide Organization in 1927, and to the Food and Drug Administration in 1930.

44 Leader from Scranton : BIDEN

Future US president Joe Biden was born in Scranton in 1942. He lived in the Pennsylvania city for the first ten years of his life, before moving with his family to Claymont, Delaware and then to nearby Mayfield.

45 Parting words : ELEGY

An elegy is a mournful poem or funeral song, and is also known as a dirge.

47 Oscar nominee Hawkins : SALLY

English actress Sally Hawkins really hit the big time when she won the starring role in the 2017 romantic fantasy film “The Shape of Water”, and earned herself a Best Actress nomination. My first recollection of a Hawkins performance was as the protagonist Anne Elliot in the 2007 British TV film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”. Recommended …

49 Café au __ : LAIT

“Café au lait” (French for “coffee with milk”) is usually strong drip coffee to which one adds steamed milk. Well, that’s the way we tend to make it here in the US.

51 “Voyage to India” Grammy winner : ARIE

“Voyage to India” is a 2002 studio album released by singer India Arie. The album’s title is the name of an instrumental written and released by Stevie Wonder, a performer much admired by Arie.

56 Hook-and-ladder cos. : FDS

A hook-and-ladder truck is a specialized fire-fighting vehicle comprising a turntable ladder mounted in a semi-trailer. Such a truck is extremely maneuverable, with drivers in both front and back, with separate steering wheels controlling front and rear wheels.