Day: December 30, 2019

Bill’s time: 5m 11s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Beloved British princess : DIANA

Diana, Princess of Wales was a close friend of the English singer Elton John. At the princess’s funeral, Elton John performed a revised version of his song “Candle in the Wind” to honor his departed friend. The song was released as a single under the name “Candle in the Wind 1997” It became the fastest and best-selling song of all time, and remains the only single ever to be “certified diamond” in the US.

6 Clothing designer Perry : ELLIS

Perry Ellis was a fashion designer from Portsmouth, Virginia. Ellis was noted for his sportswear creations.

11 Lakers rivals, on NBA scoreboards : LAC

The Los Angeles Lakers basketball team started out in 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The team chose the Lakers name in honor of the nickname of Minnesota, “Land of 10,000 Lakes”. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

14 Improvise : AD LIB

“Ad libitum” is a Latin phrase meaning “at one’s pleasure”. In common usage, the phrase is usually shortened to “ad lib”. On the stage, the concept of an ad lib is very familiar.

15 Coolness under pressure : POISE

Back in the early 1400s, “poise” meant “quality of being heavy”. We’ve been using the term to mean “steadiness, composure” since the mid-1600s, in the sense of being equally “weighted” on either side.

17 *Baseball batting statistic measured in degrees : LAUNCH ANGLE

In baseball, the vertical angle at which the ball leaves a player’s bat is referred to as the launch angle.

20 Arizona city or landform : MESA

The city of Mesa, Arizona is in effect a suburb of Phoenix. The original settlement of non-Native Americans was founded by Daniel Webster Jones who led a Mormon group from St. George, Utah. The settlement was first called Jonesville, then Fort Utah and eventually Lehi. A second group of Mormons arrived and formed a settlement on top of a nearby mesa. It was this use of a mesa that eventually gave the city its current name.

21 Cucumbers used as pickles : GHERKINS

Often, a dill pickle is actually a pickled gherkin, as the gherkin and cucumber are different cultivars within the same species. Here in the US, dill is commonly added to the pickling vinegar or brine, but this wasn’t the case when I used to eat them back in Ireland (I can’t stand dill!). You might see jars labeled as “cornichons”, but they’re gherkins. “Cornichon” is the French word for “gherkin”.

23 Peyton’s quarterback brother : ELI

Peyton Manning is a former NFL quarterback who played most of his professional career with the Indianapolis Colts. Manning retired at the top of his game, holding records for passing yards, touchdown passes, Pro Bowl appearances, and several other records. Peyton is the son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning, and the older brother of NFL quarterback Eli Manning.

27 10-Down may have a sixth one : SENSE
(10D See 27-Across : SEERS)

The so-called “sixth sense” is extrasensory perception (ESP).

28 *Common food thickening agent : XANTHAN GUM

Xanthan gum is a polysaccharide carbohydrate that has many uses, but is most familiar to us as a food additive. It is produced by fermenting simple sugars, using the bacteria Xanthomonas campestris. The main use of xanthan gum is to increase the viscosity of liquids, and so it can prevent oils separating out in dressings and sauces.

36 Soy sauce often gluten-free : TAMARI

Tamari is a variety of soy sauce that is made without wheat, and so is often used by those on a gluten-free diet.

38 Actress __ Brie of “Mad Men” : ALISON

Alison Brie is an actress best known for playing Trudy Campbell, the wife of Pete Campbell on the TV drama “Mad Men”.

42 Inlaid artwork : MOSAIC

In the Middle Ages, mosaics were often dedicated to the Muses. The term “mosaic” translates as “of the Muses”.

46 Emcee’s opening : INTRO

The term “emcee” comes from “MC”, an initialism used for a Master or Mistress of Ceremonies.

47 Crescent point : CUSP

The word “cusp” comes from the Latin “cuspis” meaning “spear, point”. In the world of astrology, a cusp is an imaginary line separating two signs of the zodiac. For example, some whose birthday is between April 16 and April 26 is said to have been born “on the cusp” between the signs Aries and Taurus.

55 Corned beef on __ : RYE

Corned beef is beef that has been cured with salt. “Corn” is an alternative term for a grain of salt, giving the dish its name. Corned beef is also known as “salt beef”, and “bully beef” if stored in cans (from the French “bouilli” meaning “boiled”).

56 Fragrant climbing plant : SWEET PEA

The sweet pea is a fragrant, flowering climbing plant in the legume family, hence the name.

61 Altoids container : TIN

Altoids breath mints have been around since 1780, when they were introduced in Britain. The famous tin in which Altoids are sold is often reused for other purposes. The most famous use is as a container to hold a mini-survival kit.

66 Number of U.S. states with three-word capitals : ONE

Salt Lake City (SLC) was founded by Brigham Young, in 1847. The city takes its name from the Great Salt Lake on which it sits, and indeed was known as “Great Salt Lake City” up until 1868.

68 Fable writer : AESOP

Aesop is remembered today as a fabulist, a writer of fables. Aesop lived in ancient Greece, probably around the sixth century BC. Supposedly he was born a slave, somehow became a free man, but then met with a sorry end. Aesop was sent to the city of Delphi on a diplomatic mission but instead insulted the Delphians. He was tried on a trumped-up charge of stealing from a temple, sentenced to death and was thrown off a cliff.

69 Rx writers : MDS

There seems to be some uncertainty about the origin of the symbol “Rx” that’s used for a medical prescription. One explanation is that it comes from the astrological sign for Jupiter, a symbol put on prescriptions in days of old to invoke Jupiter’s blessing to help a patient recover.

Down

1 Indian lentil dish : DAL

I love dal dishes, which are prepared from various peas or beans (often lentils) that have been stripped of their outer skins and split. Dal is an important part of Indian cuisines. I suppose in Indian terms, split pea soup (another of my favorites) would be called a dal.

2 Boise’s st. : IDA

Boise, Idaho is the capital and the largest metropolitan area in the state by far. There are a number of stories pertaining to the etymology of the name “Boise”. One is that French trappers called the tree-lined river that ran through the area “la rivière boisée”, meaning “the wooded river”.

3 Foil metal : ALUMINUM

Before thin sheets of aluminum metal were available as aluminum foil, thin sheets of tin were used in various applications. Tin foil isn’t a great choice for wrapping food though, as it imparts a tinny taste. On the other side of the pond, aluminum foil has a different name. No, it’s not just the different spelling of aluminum (“aluminium”). We still call it “tin foil”. You see, we live in the past …

4 Yellow-striped pool ball : NINE

Eight-ball and nine-ball are arguably the most popular variants of pool played in North America. In eight-ball, one player sinks the striped balls and the other the solid balls. The first to sink all his or her balls and then the black 8-ball, without fouling, wins the game. In nine-ball, each player must hit the lowest numbered ball on the table first with the cue ball. The first player to sink the 9-ball wins. Sinking the nine ball can happen when first hitting the lowest bowl on the table, or possibly when balls numbered 1-8 have been sunk.

6 MPG-testing org. : EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) routinely estimates the expected miles per gallon (mpg) for vehicles.

9 Capri or Wight : ISLE

The island of Capri off the coast of Southern Italy has been a tourist resort since the days of ancient Rome. Capri is home to the famous Blue Grotto, a sea cave that is illuminated with sunlight that’s colored blue as it passes through the seawater into the cave.

The Isle of Wight is the largest island in England, and lies about five miles off the south coast of the country. For many centuries, the island was a kingdom in its own right. One popular tourist attraction on the Isle of Wight is Osborne House, a former royal residence that was built as a summer home for Queen Victoria, and that was designed by the queen’s consort Prince Albert. Queen Victoria died in Osborne House, in 1901.

11 Guy watching Telemundo, probably : LATINO

Telemundo is a Spanish-language TV channel that is headquartered in Miami. Founded in 1984 as Net Span, Telemundo is the second-largest provider of Spanish-language programming after Univision.

12 Pete of the N.Y. Mets who broke Aaron Judge’s rookie record for home runs in 2019 : ALONSO

Pete Alonso is professional first baseman who made his Major League debut in 2019 with the New York Mets.

13 Room for a broom : CLOSET

In Old French a “clos” was an enclosure, with the diminutive form “closet” describing a small enclosure or private room. Over time this evolved into our modern usage of “closet”, describing a cabinet or cupboard.

The sweeping implement known as a “broom” used to be called a “besom”. A besom was made from a bundle of twigs tied to a stouter pole. The favored source for the twigs came from thorny shrubs from the genus Genista. The common term for many species of Genista is “broom”. Over time, “broom besoms” came to be known simply as “brooms”.

22 Letterspacing technique, in typography : KERNING

Some fonts allow the adjustment of the spacing between individual letters. The process of adjusting that spacing evenly over all letters is called “tracking”. The process of adjusting the spacing individually between letters is called “kerning”.

24 Singer Del Rey : LANA

“Lana Del Rey” is the stage name of singer/songwriter Elizabeth Grant. Del Rey calls herself a “self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra”. Nice …

26 Tolkien creature : ENT

Ents are tree-like creatures that live in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in his series of books “The Lord of the Rings”. “Ent” is an Old English word for “giant”.

31 L.A. commuter org. : MTA

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has public transportation responsibility in the state of New York (as well as part of Connecticut). “MTA” might also refer to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is known as “the Metro” and sometimes “the MTA”.

35 Tiger’s ex-wife : ELIN

Elin Nordegren is the ex-wife of Tiger Woods. Nordegren is a native of Sweden, and it was back in Sweden that she was hired as a nanny by the wife of golfer Jesper Parnevik. The job brought her to the US, where she met Tiger Woods. The pair were married in 2004, and have two children together: Sam Alexis born in 2007, and Charlie Axel born in 2009. The marriage fell apart after Woods admitted to infidelity and the couple divorced in 2010.

37 “Love __ Battlefield”: Pat Benatar hit : IS A

Pat Benatar is a singer from Brooklyn, New York who was born Patricia Andrzejewski. She married her high school boyfriend Dennis Benatar in 1972 when she was 19 years old, but they divorced in 1979. Presumably, she kept the Benatar name as her career was already showing signs of taking off. Benatar’s biggest hits are “Hit Me with Your Best Shot”, “Love is a Battlefield” and “We Belong”.

40 Paris airport : ORLY

Orly is a town on the outskirts of Paris, to the south of the city. It is home to the Paris-Orly Airport, the second busiest international airport for the city after the more recently built Charles de Gaulle Airport. That said, Orly is home to more domestic flights than Charles de Gaulle.

43 Hall of talk TV : ARSENIO

Arsenio Hall got his big break with his role in the movie “Coming to America” with Eddie Murphy in 1988. The following year he started hosting “The Arsenio Hall Show”, which ran until 1994. He had a loyal group of fans in the audience that had the habit of almost “barking” while pumping their fists in the air. The raucous move became so popular it extended far beyond the influences of Arsenio, and to this day it is still used as a mark of appreciation in some arenas. Not by me, mind you …

44 Frozen periods : ICE AGES

Ice ages are periods in the Earth’s history when there are extensive ice sheets present in the northern and southern hemispheres. One might argue that we are still in an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago, as evidenced by the presence of ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica.

45 Guerrilla Guevara : CHE

Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born in Argentina, and in 1948 he started to study medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. While at school he satisfied his need to “see the world” by taking two long journeys around South America, the story of which are told in Guevara’s memoir later published as “The Motorcycle Diaries”. While travelling, Guevara was moved by the plight of the people he saw and their working conditions and what he viewed as capitalistic exploitation. In Mexico City he met brothers Raul and Fidel Castro and was persuaded to join their cause, the overthrow of the US-backed government in Cuba. He rose to second-in-command among the Cuban insurgents, and when Castro came to power Guevara was influential in repelling the Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing Soviet nuclear missiles to the island. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to continue his work as a revolutionary. He was captured by Bolivian forces in 1967, and was executed. Fidel Castro led the public mourning of Guevara’s death, and soon the revolutionary was an icon for many left-wing movements around the world.

Guerrilla (sometimes “guerilla”) warfare is a type of fighting engaged in by irregular forces using ambushes and sabotage. The term “guerra” is Spanish for war, and “guerrilla” translates as “little war”.

48 Chillax : UNWIND

“Chillax” is a slang term meaning “chill and relax”. Who’da thunk it …?

51 Congregation response : AMEN

The word “amen” translates as “so be it”. “Amen” is said to be of Hebrew origin, but it is also likely to be influenced by Aramaic and Arabic.

57 Gloomy aura : PALL

A pall is a cloth used to cover a casket at a funeral. Pallbearers actually carry the coffin, covered by the pall. The phrase “casting a pall over”, meaning to create a dark mood, is metaphorical use of the pall over the casket.

60 Flightless South American bird : RHEA

The rhea is a flightless bird that is native to South America. The rhea takes its name from the Greek Titan Rhea. It’s an apt name for a flightless bird as “rhea” comes from the Greek word meaning “ground”.

63 Suffix with fluor- : -IDE

In chemistry, when a metal combines with a nonmetal, the nonmetal is often given the suffix “-ide”. One example would be iron sulfide, made from iron (a metal) and sulfur (a nonmetal).

Fluoridation is the addition of a fluoride salt to the public drinking water system, a measure taken to reduce tooth decay. What I find interesting is that bottled water usually has no added fluoride, and most domestic water filters remove the fluoride from the water coming out of the faucet. Maybe that explains why my dental hygienist has been applying a fluoride varnish to my teeth …

64 __ v. Wade : ROE

Roe v. Wade was decided in a US District Court in Texas in 1970, and reached the Supreme Court on appeal. The basic decision by the Supreme Court was that a woman’s constitutional right to privacy applied to an abortion, but that this right had to be balanced with a state’s interest in protecting an unborn child and a mother’s health. The Court further defined that the state’s interest became stronger with each trimester of a pregnancy. So, in the first trimester the woman’s right to privacy outweighed any state interest. In the second trimester the state’s interest in maternal health was deemed to be strong enough to allow state regulation of abortion for the sake of the mother. In the third trimester the viability of the fetus dictated that the state’s interest in the unborn child came into play, so states could regulate or prohibit abortions, except in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. I’m no lawyer, but that’s my understanding of the initial Supreme Court decision …

65 Short albums, for short : EPS

An extended-play (EP) record, CD or download contains more music than a single, but less than an LP.