Day: December 1, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
10. A little later ANON
“Anon” originally meant “at once” and evolved into today’s meaning of “soon”, apparently just because the word was misused over time.

17. Cartoon bird on a cap ORIOLE
The Baltimore Orioles was one of the eight charter teams of MLB’s American League, so the franchise dates back to 1901. Prior to 1901, the team has roots in the Minor League Milwaukee Brewers, and indeed entered the American League as the Brewers. In 1902 the Brewers moved to St. Louis and became the Browns. The team didn’t fare well in St. Louis, so when it finally relocated to Baltimore in the early fifties the team changed its name completely, to the Baltimore Orioles. The owners so badly wanted a fresh start that they traded 17 old Browns players with the New York Yankees. The trade didn’t help the team’s performance on the field in those early days, but it did help distance the new team from its past.

19. Actress Massey ILONA
Ilona Massey was a Hollywood actress, a native of Budapest in Hungary. Given her cultural background and the period at which she hit the big screen, Massey was marketed by the studios as “the new Dietrich”.

21. Brie alternative CAMEMBERT
Camembert cheese is named after the place it was first produced, the commune of Camembert in Normandy in the north of France.

Brie is a soft cheese, named after the French province of Brie where it originated.

23. Word on U.S. coins GOD
From 1776, “E pluribus unum” was the unofficial motto of the United States. “E pluribus unum” is Latin for “Out of many, one”. It was pushed aside in 1956 when an Act of Congress designated “In God We Trust” as the country’s official motto.

24. Loosely worn garb SARIS
The item of clothing called a “sari” (also “saree”) is a strip of cloth, as one might imagine, unusual perhaps in that is unstitched along the whole of its length. The strip of cloth can range from four to nine meters long (that’s a lot of material!). The sari is usually wrapped around the waist, then draped over the shoulder leaving the midriff bare. I must say, it can be a beautiful item of clothing.

25. Red Cross headquarters GENEVA
Genève (the French for Geneva) is the Swiss city where the Croix-Rouge (French for Red Cross) is headquartered.

Back in 1859, a Swiss businessman called Henry Dunant went to meet French emperor Napoleon III, to discuss making it easier to conduct commerce in French-occupied Algeria. The Emperor was billeted at Solferino, where France and Austria were engaged in a major battle. In one day, Dunant witnessed 40,000 soldiers die in battle and countless wounded suffering on the battlefield without any organized medical care. Dunant abandoned his business agenda and instead spent a week caring for the sick and wounded. Within a few years he had founded the precursor to the Red Cross, and in 1901 he was awarded the first ever Nobel Peace Prize.

28. Bars on market shelves UPC
UPC stands for Universal Price Code or Universal Product Code. The first UPC-marked item to get scanned in a store was on June 26, 1974 at 08:01 a.m. at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum …

32. Femur neighbor PATELLA
The patella is the kneecap.

The thigh bone, the femur, is the longest and the largest bone in the human body.

33. __-jongg MAH
“Mahjong” (also mahjongg and mah-jongg) is the Chinese word for “sparrow”. Mahjong is a game that originated in China, and is usually played by four players. There is a myth that the game was developed by the Chinese philosopher, Confucius. The myth also suggests that Confucius was fond of birds, and hence chose the name “sparrow”.

36. Mariner TAR
A Jack Tar, or just “tar”, was a seaman in the days of the British Empire. The term probably arose due to a sailor’s various uses of tar back then, including waterproofing of clothes and using tar in the hair to slick down a ponytail.

39. “As __ beneath a waning moon was haunted”: Coleridge E’ER
“As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted” is a line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”.

“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is my wife’s favorite poem. Coleridge wrote the masterpiece one night in 1797 after a vivid dream heavily influenced by opium.

40. Block back? -ADE
The back end of the word “blockade” is “-ade”.

42. Volga region language TATAR
Tatars are an ethnic group of people, mainly residing in Russia (a population of about 5 1/2 million). Actor Charles Bronson had a Tatar heritage. Bronson’s real name was Charles Buchinsky.

The Volga is the longest river in Europe, and is considered the national river of Russia.

44. Graynor who played Olivia’s sister on “Fringe” ARI
Ari Graynor is an American actress who first came to national attention playing the character of Caitlin Rucker in a few episodes of the HBO series “The Sopranos”.

52. Native of Odessa or Paris TEXAN
The city of Odessa, Texas has as its symbol the jack rabbit. This is because from the thirties through the seventies the city hosted a rodeo for roping rabbits. The Humane Society applied pressure and the city did away with the tradition in 1977.

Paris, Texas is a city located about 100 miles northeast of Dallas. Known as “the second largest Paris in the world”, the city boasts a 65-foot high replica of the Eiffel Tower, one with a giant red cowboy hat on top.

54. Supermodel Bündchen GISELE
Gisele Bündchen is a fashion model from Brazil. Bündchen does quite well for herself as she has been the highest-paid model in the world for several years now. She has amassed a fortune of about $150 million. She was romantically involved with Leonardo DiCaprio for about five years, and now is married to Tom Brady, the quarterback for the New England Patriots.

57. Hyphenated IDs SSNS
The main purpose of a Social Security Number (SSN) is to track individuals for the purposes of taxation, although given its ubiquitous use, it is looking more and more like an “identity number” to me. The social security number system was introduced in 1936. Prior to 1986, an SSN was required only for persons with substantial income so many children under 14 had no number assigned. For some years the IRS had a concern that a lot of people were claiming children on their tax returns who did not actually exist. So, from 1986 onward, it is a requirement to get an SSN for any dependents over the age of 5. Sure enough, in 1987 seven million dependents “disappeared”.

Down
1. Hard to move STOIC
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher famous for teaching at the Stoa Poikile, the “Painted Porch”, located on the north side of the Ancient Agora of Athens. Because of the location of his classes, his philosophy became known as stoicism (from “stoa”, the word for “porch”). And yes, we get our adjective “stoic” from the same root.

2. Sokoloff of “The Practice” MARLA
Marla Sokoloff is an actress from San Francisco, California. Sokoloff’s best known roles are Lucy Hatcher on TV’s “The Practice”, and Gia Mahan on the sitcom “Full House”.

5. Lake Michigan feeder KALAMAZOO RIVER
The Kalamazoo River flows through the state of Michigan, emptying into Lake Michigan. The river was terribly contaminated from industrial waste and processing from the forties through the sixties. Decades of attempts to clean it up suffered a serious setback in 2010 when there was a spill of over 1 million gallons of oil into a creek feeding the Kalamazoo. This spill resulted in the most expensive, non-offshore environmental cleanup in the history of the country.

6. Öland Isl. site SWE
Öland Island is the second largest island in Sweden. Öland Island is also its own province, the smallest province in the country.

8. Oliver of “Frost/Nixon” PLATT
Oliver Platt is a very talented actor from Windsor, Ontario. My favorite role of his was the remarkable White House Counsel Oliver Babish on the great TV drama series “The West Wing”.

The British journalist David Frost is perhaps best known in the US for hosting the television show “Through the Keyhole” and for his celebrity interviews, most notably with former President Richard Nixon. That interview was adapted as a play and then a movie called “Frost/Nixon”. The movie was directed by Ron Howard. It’s a little slow, but it is a must see for political history buffs like me.

11. Alexandria setting NILE DELTA
Alexandria is the largest seaport in Egypt. As one might tell from its name, the city was founded by Alexander the Great, in about 331 BC. Alexandria was the capital city of Egypt for almost a thousand years and was one of the most famous cities in the ancient world. It was also famous for its lighthouse, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

26. 2004 A.L. MVP Guerrero, familiarly VLAD
Vladimir Guerrero is an ex-Major League Baseball player from the Dominican Republic. Guerrero now plays back in his home country for Tigres del Licey.

27. Rhein tributary AARE
The Aar (also called the “Aare” in German) is the longest river entirely in Switzerland. A famous spot along the Aar is the Reichenbach Falls in the center of the country, actually a series of waterfalls near the city of Meiringen. These falls are celebrated in the world of literature as it was here that Sherlock Holmes fell to his supposed doom with his nemesis Professor Moriarty (in “The Adventure of the Final Problem”).

30. Where lion dances may be seen CHINATOWN
The lion dance is a traditional dance in Chinese cultures in which performers move around in an elaborate lion costume. Apparently we Westerners often mistake the lion for a dragon. The Chinese dragon dance does exist, and is similar, but the dancers perform outside of the costume and hold up the dragon on poles.

43. Animal for whom a blood factor is named RHESUS
The Rhesus macaque is also known as the Rhesus monkey. As it is widely available and is close to humans anatomically and physically, the Rhesus macaque has been used in scientific research for decades. The Rhesus monkey was used in the development of rabies, smallpox and polio vaccines, and it also gave its name to the Rhesus factor that is used in blood-typing. It was also Rhesus monkeys that were launched into space by the US and Soviet space programs. Humans and macaques share about 93% of their DNA and had a common ancestor about 25 million years ago.

45. Oud __: Belgian beer BRUIN
Oud Bruin is a type of beer from the Flemish part of Belgium. The name “Oud Bruin” translates as “old brown”, and the beer is sometimes called “Flanders Brown” in English.

49. Egyptian symbols of royalty ASPS
The asp is a venomous snake found in the Nile region of Africa. It is so venomous that the asp was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as a means of execution. Cleopatra observed such executions noting that the venom brought on sleepiness without any painful spasms. When the great queen opted to commit suicide, the asp was therefore her chosen method.

51. Speck IOTA
Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

54. Setting at 0 degrees long. GST
GST is Greenwich Standard Time.

A meridian is a line of longitude, and the Prime Meridian is that line of longitude defined as 0 degrees. The Prime Meridian is also called the Greenwich Meridian as it passes through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in southeast London. Of course the line of longitude that is used to represent 0 degrees is an arbitrary decision. 25 nations formally decided in 1884 to use the Greenwich Meridian as 0 degrees as it was already a popular choice. That is all except the French, who abstained from the vote and used the Paris Meridian as 0 degrees on French charts for several decades.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Hints at, with “of” SMACKS
7. Hikes UPS
10. A little later ANON
14. Bar subject TAX LAW
15. Writer’s framework PLOTLINE
17. Cartoon bird on a cap ORIOLE
18. Apparent displacement due to observer movement PARALLAX
19. Actress Massey ILONA
20. Gain, for one DETERGENT
21. Brie alternative CAMEMBERT
23. Word on U.S. coins GOD
24. Loosely worn garb SARIS
25. Red Cross headquarters GENEVA
28. Bars on market shelves UPC
31. Go the other way ZAG
32. Femur neighbor PATELLA
33. __-jongg MAH
34. Dominate, in sports lingo OWN
35. Impudence LIP
36. Mariner TAR
37. Places where cell phones are prohibited? PRISONS
39. “As __ beneath a waning moon was haunted”: Coleridge E’ER
40. Block back? -ADE
41. Halting one? SENTRY
42. Volga region language TATAR
44. Graynor who played Olivia’s sister on “Fringe” ARI
45. Hit on ice BODYCHECK
49. Designed to prevent intrusion, in a way ANTIVIRUS
52. Native of Odessa or Paris TEXAN
53. Do recon on SCOPE OUT
54. Supermodel Bündchen GISELE
55. Statement-making accessory POWER TIE
56. Two-direction section S-CURVE
57. Hyphenated IDs SSNS
58. Also AND
59. Like Consumer Reports merchandise TESTED

Down
1. Hard to move STOIC
2. Sokoloff of “The Practice” MARLA
3. Universal principle AXIOM
4. Imitates CLONES
5. Lake Michigan feeder KALAMAZOO RIVER
6. Öland Isl. site SWE
7. Shoe parts UPPERS
8. Oliver of “Frost/Nixon” PLATT
9. Vexed SORE
10. Used up ALL GONE
11. Alexandria setting NILE DELTA
12. __ equal basis ON AN
13. First in line NEXT
16. Range exercise TARGET PRACTICE
20. Stoops DEIGNS
22. Ripped, so to speak BRAWNY
25. Merriment GAIETY
26. 2004 A.L. MVP Guerrero, familiarly VLAD
27. Rhein tributary AARE
28. They closely monitor slides UMPS
29. Shave PARE
30. Where lion dances may be seen CHINATOWN
32. Addresses the court PLEADS
38. Rank indicators STRIPES
42. Hyped TOUTED
43. Animal for whom a blood factor is named RHESUS
45. Oud __: Belgian beer BRUIN
46. Wield EXERT
47. Have a cow CALVE
48. Knock-__ KNEED
49. Egyptian symbols of royalty ASPS
50. They’re often seen on base: Abbr. NCOS
51. Speck IOTA
54. Setting at 0 degrees long. GST

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