Day: December 23, 2014

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
5. PC image file format JPEG
The JPEG file format was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), hence the name.

An image file on a computer can be compressed so that it takes up less space. Some time the compression is “lossless” meaning even though the file is compressed, and data it is discarded, the image still looks the same. One example of data that can be discarded without loss of quality, is to not bother recording the color information of pixels that are the same color as others. Just saying “this pixel is the same is that one” takes up less space. One can compress files even more if one allows loss of quality. One well known compression algorithm that is “lossy” is the jpeg (also “.jpg”) format. The person compressing the file can decide how much quality will suffer in jpeg format, with larger files being of higher quality than the smaller ones.

14. Obsessed whale hunter AHAB
Captain Ahab is the obsessed and far from friendly captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”. The role of Captain Ahab was played by Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston film adaptation. Patrick Stewart played Ahab in a 1998 miniseries in which Peck made another appearance, as Father Mapple.

15. Guthrie of “Alice’s Restaurant” fame ARLO
Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie. Both father and son are renowned for their singing of protest songs about social injustice. Arlo is most famous for his epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a song that lasts a full 18m 34s. In the song Guthrie tells how, after being drafted, he was rejected for service in the Vietnam War based on his criminal record. He had only one incident on his public record, a Thanksgiving Day arrest for littering and being a public nuisance when he was 18-years-old.

16. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” e.g. OPERA
“Don Giovanni” is a comic opera by Mozart, with the libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera follows the adventures of Don Giovanni, a young rakish nobleman who finally comes to a bad end.

18. Navy mascot GOAT
Bill the Goat is the US Naval Academy’s mascot. The first mascot for the school was a gorilla, and then followed a couple of cats, a bulldog and a carrier pigeon. The first goat to make an appearance as a mascot was named El Cid, and that was back in 1893. A goat has been the USNA’s mascot continuously since 1904.

23. Big name in taco sauce ORTEGA
The Ortega food manufacturing company has been around for about 150 years. It was founded by Maria Concepcion Jacinta Dominguez Ortega, known affectionately as Mama Ortega within the company.

29. __ Sapphire: gin brand BOMBAY
The Star of Bombay is a huge sapphire that was mined in Sri Lanka, with a weight of 182 carats. The gemstone was given as a gift to actress Mary Pickford by her husband Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford left the Star of Bombay in her will to the Smithsonian Institute, where it can be seen today. The British gin called Bombay Sapphire is named for the stone.

35. Like wines aged in certain barrels OAKY
The Chardonnay grape is believed to have originated in the Burgundy wine region of France. Now it’s grown “everywhere”. Drinkers of California “Chards” seem to be particularly fond of “oak” flavor, so most Chardonnay wines are aged in oak barrels.

37. “On the Waterfront” director Kazan ELIA
Elia Kazan won Oscars for best director in 1948 for “Gentleman’s Agreement” and in 1955 for “On The Waterfront”. In 1999 Kazan was given an Academy Lifetime Achievement Award. He also directed “East of Eden”, which introduced James Dean to movie audiences, and “Splendor in the Grass” that included Warren Beatty in his debut role.

42. Address in an online favorites list, e.g. URL
Internet addresses (like NYTCrossword.com and LAXCrossword.com) are more correctly called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Both in your “Favorites” list, I hope!

43. Chalet backdrop ALPS
There are eight Alpine countries:

– Austria
– Slovenia
– France
– Switzerland
– Liechtenstein
– Germany
– Monaco
– Italy

“Chalet” is a Swiss-French word for an Alpine cottage.

50. “2 Broke Girls,” for one SITCOM
“2 Broke Girls” is a sitcom about two poor young ladies sharing an apartment in Brooklyn, and their attempts to launch a cupcake business. The title characters are played by Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs.

65. Singer Fitzgerald ELLA
Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

66. Control tower device RADAR
Scientists have been using radio waves to detect the presence of objects since the late 1800s, but it was the demands of WWII that accelerated the practical application of the technology. The British called their system RDF standing for Range and Direction Finding. The system used by the US Navy was called Radio Detection And Ranging, which was shortened to the acronym RADAR.

67. Eins und zwei DREI
In German, one and two (eins und zwei) comes to three (drei).

71. “What You Need” band INXS
INXS (pronounced “in excess”) was a rock band from Australia. The band formed in 1977 in Sydney as the Farriss Brothers, as three of the original lineups were indeed brothers.

Down
1. Painter Picasso PABLO
Pablo Picasso’s full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, a name he was given right from birth. Got that?

4. “Cougar Town” network TBS
“Cougar Town” is a sitcom that has aired on ABC since 2009, and is heading to TBS in 2013. The Cougar Town title comes from the name of the local school athletic teams, the Cougars. The actual town’s name is Gulfhaven, Florida.

5. Rain forest cat JAGUAR
The jaguar is the third largest feline in the world, after the tiger and the lion. The jaguar resembles a leopard, but is bigger. It is found through much of South and Central America as well as the southern US. The jaguar has a really strong bite, even compared to the bigger cats. It usually kills its prey by biting through the skull.

6. Senior moment? PROM
A prom is a formal dance held upon graduation from high school (we call them “formals” over in Ireland). The term “prom” is short for “promenade”, the name given to a type of dance or ball.

7. Jack of old oaters ELAM
Jack Elam was a movie actor noted for playing the bad guy in Westerns. When Elam was a boy scout, he was accidentally stabbed in the eye with a pencil. The incident left him blind in that eye, and the iris remained skewed to the outside of his face. This gave him a crazed, wide-eyed look that helped add a sense of menace to the characters Elam played.

The term “oater” that is used for a western movie comes from the number of horses seen, as horses love oats!

12. 14-time A.L. All-Star A-ROD
Poor old Alex Rodriguez earned more nicknames than just A-Rod. He has been called “the Cooler” by some players as there is a perception that teams go cold when he joins them and hot when he leaves. He has also been called “A-Fraud” by teammates because of another perception, that he is over-demanding. Rodriguez now seems to be in a world of hurt for using illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

21. Old nightclub employee B-GIRL
B-girl is short for “bar girl”, a young lady employed by a tavern to encourage the (male, presumably) patrons to spend more money on drinks.

22. 2000s White House nickname DUBYA
President George W. Bush was nicknamed “Dubya” based on the Texas pronunciation of his middle initial “W”.

27. Rob of “Parks and Recreation” LOWE
The actor Rob Lowe is one of the “founding members” of the so-called Brat Pack, having appeared in the movie “St. Elmo’s Fire”. He is currently playing a regular character on the TV show “Parks and Recreation”. My favorite of his roles though, was playing Sam Seaborn on Aaron Sorkin’s great drama series “The West Wing”. When “The West Wing” first aired, Seaborn was billed as the show’s main character, but outstanding performances from the rest of the cast and some great writing meant that Lowe’s role became “one of many”. This led to some dissatisfaction on Lowe’s part, and eventually he quit the show.

30. Sharp-billed game fish BLUE MARLIN
The Atlantic blue marlin has that long, pointed bill, which is actually an extremely elongated upper jaw. It seems that the bill is used to spear and slash its prey when feeding.

32. Prestigious New England law school YALE
Yale is a private Ivy League school located in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale was founded in 1701, making it the third-oldest, higher education establishment in the country (after Harvard, and William and Mary).

33. Fellow CHAP
“Chap” is an informal term for “lad, fellow”, especially in England. The term derives from “chapman”, an obsolete word meaning “purchaser” or “trader”.

34. Hippy dance HULA
Hula is the name of the Polynesian dance. The chant or song that the dance illustrates, that’s known as the mele.

36. Foreign Legion cap KEPI
A kepi is that circular cap with a visor that’s worn in particular by the French military.

The French Foreign Legion is a military wing of the French Army that is noted for accepting foreign nationals into its ranks. The Legion is open to French recruits, but they only make up about a quarter of the fighting force. Having said that, the majority of the officers are Frenchman.

40. Talk show tycoon OPRAH
What can you say about Oprah Winfrey? Born into poverty to a single mother and with a harrowing childhood, Oprah is now the greatest African American philanthropist the world has ever known. Oprah’s name was originally meant to be “Orpah” after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth, and that’s how it appears on her birth certificate. Apparently folks had trouble pronouncing “Orpah”, so she’s now “Oprah”.

41. Valium maker ROCHE
The generic name for Valium is diazepam. It was developed by Dr. Leo Sternbach of Hoffman-La Roche, and approved for use in 1963. This was the second of Dr. Sternbach’s major developments, as he was responsible for the diazepam’s sister drug, Librium, that went to market in 1960.

44. Poem divisions STANZAS
“Stanza” is an Italian word meaning “verse of a poem”.

47. Gym specimen BOD
Our word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek “gymnasion” meaning “public place where exercise is taken”. The Greek term comes from “gymnos” meaning “naked”, as that physical training was usually done unclothed.

51. Throat tissue TONSIL
The palatine tonsils are located at the back of the human throat. The exact role that tonsils play isn’t completely understood, but it is known that they are in the first line of defense in the body’s immune system. They provide some level of protection against pathogens that are ingested and inhaled.

55. High-end watch ROLEX
My most prized possession is a stainless steel Rolex watch that my uncle bought while serving with the RAF in Canada during WWII. Rolex watches were made available to the Canadian servicemen at that time as they were shipping overseas. My uncle brought his Rolex home to Ireland after the war. He needed money for booze one weekend and so sold the watch to my Dad, for five pounds. My Dad gave it to me just before he died, as he knew I loved the watch, and my brothers weren’t interested in it all. Not so long ago I had the watch appraised ($3,000), and my brothers suddenly took a liking to it! Still, it’s not something that will ever be sold, that’s for sure …

57. Sticker in a tavern target DART
Darts is a wonderful game often played in English and Irish pubs, even over here in America. The scoring in a traditional game of darts is difficult to describe in a sentence or two, but the game of darts called “Round the Clock” is simply hitting the numbers 1 through 20 in sequence.

58. Actor Sharif OMAR
Omar Sharif is the great Hollywood actor from Egypt, an actor who played major roles in memorable movies such as “Doctor Zhivago” and “Lawrence of Arabia”. But to me he is my bridge hero (the card game). In his heyday Sharif was one of the best bridge players in the world.

65. Prefix with center EPI-
The “epicenter” is that point on the surface of the earth which is directly above the focus of an earthquake.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Hushed “Hey!” PSST!
5. PC image file format JPEG
9. Quaint word of dismissal PSHAW
14. Obsessed whale hunter AHAB
15. Guthrie of “Alice’s Restaurant” fame ARLO
16. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” e.g. OPERA
17. Cribs and cradles BEDS
18. Navy mascot GOAT
19. Prey grabber TALON
20. Place for a flock LEA
21. Hitchhiked BUMMED A RIDE
23. Big name in taco sauce ORTEGA
25. Remote button MUTE
26. Handles deftly, as a baton TWIRLS
29. __ Sapphire: gin brand BOMBAY
33. Joyful shout CHEER
35. Like wines aged in certain barrels OAKY
37. “On the Waterfront” director Kazan ELIA
38. Sing without words HUM
39. Aid in driving uphill LOW GEAR
42. Address in an online favorites list, e.g. URL
43. Chalet backdrop ALPS
45. Tiny chirp PEEP
46. Past pudgy OBESE
48. Sound of little feet PATTER
50. “2 Broke Girls,” for one SITCOM
52. Pre-med subj. ANAT
54. “Shoot!” OH DARN!
57. At some future date DOWN THE LINE
62. Fish delicacy ROE
63. Fill with wonder AMAZE
64. Silent approvals NODS
65. Singer Fitzgerald ELLA
66. Control tower device RADAR
67. Eins und zwei DREI
68. Harbor structure PIER
69. Bit of salon litter TRESS
70. Freezer bag feature SEAL
71. “What You Need” band INXS

Down
1. Painter Picasso PABLO
2. Like some cliffs and stockings SHEER
3. Deplorably bad effort SAD ATTEMPT
4. “Cougar Town” network TBS
5. Rain forest cat JAGUAR
6. Senior moment? PROM
7. Jack of old oaters ELAM
8. Informal response to “Did you buy those items I asked for?” GOT ‘EM
9. Picnic salad ingredient POTATO
10. “Skip the sordid details” SPARE ME
11. Prefix with port or pad HELI-
12. 14-time A.L. All-Star A-ROD
13. Diminish slowly WANE
21. Old nightclub employee B-GIRL
22. 2000s White House nickname DUBYA
24. Meadow mom EWE
27. Rob of “Parks and Recreation” LOWE
28. Learned ones SAGES
30. Sharp-billed game fish BLUE MARLIN
31. Broadcasts AIRS
32. Prestigious New England law school YALE
33. Fellow CHAP
34. Hippy dance HULA
36. Foreign Legion cap KEPI
40. Talk show tycoon OPRAH
41. Valium maker ROCHE
44. Poem divisions STANZAS
47. Gym specimen BOD
49. Types into the database ENTERS
51. Throat tissue TONSIL
53. Looks after TENDS
55. High-end watch ROLEX
56. Gets within a stone’s throw of NEARS
57. Sticker in a tavern target DART
58. Actor Sharif OMAR
59. Cross a creek, say WADE
60. Anecdotal wisdom LORE
61. Brainstorming contribution IDEA
65. Prefix with center EPI-

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