Day: June 2, 2023

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Constructed by: Joe Deeney
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Or So It Says

Themed answers are common phrases reinterpreted as APPROXIMATIONS:

• 18A Middle, approximately? : FUZZY NAVEL
• 27A Sequence, approximately? : GENERAL ORDER
• 35A Straight, approximately? : BALLPARK FRANK
• 44A Right, approximately? : LOOSE FITTING
• 57A Quarters, approximately? : ROUGH HOUSE

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

Bill’s time: 9m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Shea successor : CITI

Citi Field is a relatively new baseball stadium used by the New York Mets that sits right next door to the site of Shea stadium, where the Mets had played for decades. The new facility’s name comes from corporate sponsor Citigroup.

5 Requirements for some new jobs, briefly : RELOS

Relocate (relo)

10 Bunch : SLEW

Our usage of “slew” to mean “large number” has nothing to do with the verb “to slew” meaning “to turn, skid”. The noun “slew” came into English in the early 1800s from the Irish word “sluagh” meaning “host, crowd, multitude”.

14 Soba alternative : UDON

Udon noodles are made from wheat-flour and are very popular in Japanese cuisines such as tempura.

15 Facetious target of a series of guides : IDIOT

“Complete Idiot’s Guides” is a series of how-to reference books published by DK, the British publishing house. The series competes with the “For Dummies” line published by Wiley.

16 Film princess who says, “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought” : LEIA

The full name of the character played by Carrie Fisher in the “Star Wars” series of films is Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, and later Leia Organa Solo. Leia is the twin sister of Luke Skywalker, and the daughter of Anakin Skywalker (aka “Darth Vader”) and Padmé Amidala. Leia is raised by her adoptive parents Bail and Breha Organa. She eventually marries Han Solo.

17 Chap, in British slang : BRUV

In London, a cockney might pronounce the word “brother” as “bruvva”. This pronunciation led to the term “bruv” meaning “brother”, or more generally “chap, bloke”.

18 Middle, approximately? : FUZZY NAVEL

The navel is essentially the scar left behind when the umbilical cord is removed from a newborn baby. One interesting use of the umbilicus (navel, belly button) is to differentiate between identical twins, especially when they are very young.

The cocktail known as a fuzzy navel was invented in the eighties by bartender Ray Foley, the founder of “Bartender Magazine”. The basic drink is made with equal parts of peach schnapps and orange juice, with the “fuzzy” referring to the texture of the skin of a peach, and the “navel” referring to the navel in a navel orange. A variant of the drink is made by adding a splash of vodka, giving a hairy navel. The more vodka, the hairier the cocktail.

20 Start of an old boast : I CAME …

The oft-quoted statement “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”) is believed by many to have been written by Julius Caesar. The words date back to 47 BCE and refer to the short war between Rome and Pharnaces II of Pontus.

23 South American barbecue : ASADO

In much of South America, the event we know as a barbecue is referred to as an “asado”, with “asado” translating from Spanish as “roast”. The “asador” is the “roaster”, the person roasting the meat.

24 Slushy drinks : ICEES

Slush Puppie and ICEE are brands of frozen, slushy drinks. Ostensibly competing brands, ICEE now owns the Slush Puppie brand.

26 Cartoonist Chast : ROZ

Roz Chast had her first cartoon published in “The New Yorker” in 1978, and has had more than 800 published since then.

27 Sequence, approximately? : GENERAL ORDER

General orders are a set of permanent orders that define policy in an organization.

30 Middle of a valley? : ELS

There are two letters L (el) in the middle of the word “valley”.

31 Abbey area : APSE

An apse of a church or cathedral is a semicircular recess in an outer wall, usually with a half-dome as a roof and often where there resides an altar. Originally, apses were used as burial places for the clergy and also for storage of important relics.

32 Prefix with male or female : CIS-

In Latin, the prefix “cis-” means “this side of”. The prefix “trans-” means “the other side of”.

The term “cisgender” is used as the opposite of “transgender”. Cisgender people have a gender identity that matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

35 Straight, approximately? : BALLPARK FRANK

A ballpark figure is an estimated quantity. The original “ballpark figure” was an estimate of the number of people attending a baseball game, the size of the crowd in the “ballpark”.

The Ball Park Franks brand of hot dogs was introduced in the 1950s, with popularity of the product in the early days very much associated with the Detroit Tigers baseball team. The management of Tigers Stadium were unhappy with the supplier of hot dogs in the stadium in 1958, and so held a competition to find a new supplier. A meat packer called Hygrade came up with a new recipe for the contest, and was awarded the contract. Hygrade held a competition within the company to come up with a name for the new product, which resulted in the brand name “Ball Park Franks”.

42 Enthusiasm : VIM

“Vim”, “zip“ and “pep” are each words that mean “energy, power”.

49 Oakland-to-Palo Alto dir. : SSE

The city of Oakland, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, was settled by the Spanish in 1772. The area now known as Oakland was called “Encinal” by those early settlers, which translates as “oak grove”, giving the city its name.

The city of Palo Alto, California takes its name from a specific redwood tree called El Palo Alto (Spanish for “the tall stick”) that is located within the bounds of the city. The tree is 110 feet tall and over a thousand years old.

52 Fantasy author Canavan : TRUDI

Trudi Canavan is an author of fantasy novels from Melbourne, Australia. Canavan’s first novel, “The Magicians’ Guild”, was published in 2001. It was the first book in “The Black Magician Trilogy”, which was followed by “The Novice” (2002) and “The High Lord” (2003). The trilogy was a critical and commercial success, and helped to establish Canavan as a leading author in the fantasy genre.

54 Place with crude buildings? : OIL TOWN

Crude oil is a naturally occurring liquid mixture of hydrocarbons that is found in geological formations. Also known as “petroleum”, crude is usually accessed by drilling. Once collected, it is refined and separated into many, many chemicals, e.g. gasoline and asphalt as well chemicals used to make plastics, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals.

56 Hockey Hall of Famer Cam : NEELY

Cam Neely is a retired professional hockey player from Comox, British Columbia. Having played for the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins, Neely was named president of the Bruins team in 2010.

64 “Inspiration Information” musician Shuggie : OTIS

Singer-songwriter Shuggie Otis is the son of R&B musician Johnny Otis.

65 Salchow kin : AXEL

An axel is a forward take-off jump in figure skating. The maneuver was first performed by Norwegian Axel Paulsen at the 1882 World Figure Skating championships.

The salchow jump in figure skating is named for Swedish skater Ulrich Salchow, who invented the move.

67 Set components : REPS

That set of reps might be completed at a gym.

Down

1 Little lion : CUB

A small percentage of lions are white in color due to a rare genetic mutation. Starting in the 1970s, the rare white lions were removed from the wild and sent to zoos and circuses for breeding. There hasn’t been a spotting of a wild white lion since 1994.

2 Voice of Chief Bogo in “Zootopia” : IDRIS ELBA

Idris Elba is a British actor and DJ. He was born in London to a Sierra Leonean father and a Ghanaian mother. Elba’s breakthrough role came in 2002, when he was cast as Stringer Bell in the HBO series “The Wire”.

“Zootopia” is a 2016 Disney animated film about a rabbit police officer and a red fox con artist who team up to uncover a bizarre conspiracy.

3 Colorful cereal mascot : TOUCAN SAM

Toucan Sam is the mascot of Kellogg’s Froot Loops breakfast cereal, and he can be seen on the front of every box. Froot Loops have been manufactured by Kellogg’s since 1963. The little loops come in different colors, originally red, orange and yellow, but now there are green, purple and blue loops as well. Notice I said “different colors” not “different flavors”. Each loop tastes the same, so I wonder where the color comes from …?

6 End of an academic address : EDU

The .edu domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

• .com (commercial enterprise)
• .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
• .mil (US military)
• .org (not-for-profit organization)
• .gov (US federal government entity)
• .edu (college-level educational institution)

7 Truss who was very briefly U.K. prime minister in 2022 : LIZ

Liz Truss took over as Prime Minister of the UK from Boris Johnson in September 2022. She was the fifteenth and final British PM to serve under Queen Elizabeth II, who died just two days after appointing Truss to the office. Truss resigned on her fiftieth day in Downing Street, after a chaotic six-week spell leading the country. She was succeeded by fellow Conservative Rishi Sunak.

8 Like molasses, vis-à-vis water : OOZIER

When sugar cane is processed to extract sugar, it is crushed and mashed to produce a juice. The juice is boiled to make a sugary concentrate called cane syrup, from which sugar crystals are extracted. A second boiling of the leftover syrup produces second molasses, from which more sugar crystals can be extracted. A third boiling results in what is called blackstrap molasses.

10 Pole, e.g. : SLAV

The country of Poland takes her name from the West Slavic tribe known as the Polans.

12 Singalong quintet : E-I-E-I-O

There was an old American version of the English children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (E-I-E-I-O) that was around in the days of WWI. The first line of the older US version goes “Old MacDougal had a farm, in Ohio-i-o”.

13 Ballroom dance : WALTZ

What we tend to think of as a waltz today is danced at about 90 beats per minute. The original waltz was much faster, and danced at about 180 beats per minute. To differentiate, we now call the faster dance a “Viennese Waltz”, and sometimes refer to the other as the “English Waltz” or “slow waltz”.

24 “Casablanca” role : ILSA

Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund were played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the 1942 movie “Casablanca”. I love the words of one critic describing the chemistry between Bogart and Bergman in this film: “She paints his face with her eyes”. Wow …

28 Google Play purchase : APP

Google Play is Google’s distribution service for digital media content. The service was launched in 2008 as Android Market. Android Market was combined with Google Music, Google Movies and Google eBookstore in 2012 to form Google Play.

29 LG rival : RCA

RCA was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America, and as a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Electric (GE). GE divested RCA in 1932, and then reacquired the company in 1986. Today, RCA is just a brand name owned by Sony Music.

LG is a very large South Korean manufacturer of electronics, chemicals and telecom products. The company used to be known as Lucky-Goldstar, whence the initialism “LG”.

36 One of the “Rugrats” twins : LIL

“Rugrats” is an animated TV series created for Nickelodeon. The series focuses on a group of toddlers; most prominently—Tommy, Chuckie, Angelica, and twins Phil and Lil. “Rugrats” was the longest-running Nickelodeon animated series until that record was surpassed by “SpongeBob SquarePants” in 2012.

37 U.N. head between Boutros and Ban : KOFI

Kofi Annan was a diplomat from Ghana who served as General Secretary of the UN for ten years until the beginning of 2007. Annan was born into an aristocratic family, and had a twin sister named Efua Atta. Efua and Kofi shared the middle name “Atta”, which means “twin” in the Akan language of Ghana. Annan attended the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1971-72, and graduated with a Master of Science degree. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, winning jointly with the United Nations organization itself.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian diplomat, and the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Boutros-Ghali was nominated for a second term as Secretary-General in 1996, but the US used its right of veto to block the appointment. According to senior delegates, the US wasn’t too happy with his handling of the international crisis in Bosnia.

Ban Ki-Moon served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 2007 to 2016. He is from South Korea and spent most of his working life as a diplomat for his country, before taking the post of Foreign Minister in the South Korean government.

38 Planner abbr. : FRI

The name “Friday” comes from an Old English word meaning “day of Frigg”. Frigg was a goddess from Norse mythology who was usually depicted as the wife of Odin.

39 Adjust an ascot : RETIE

An ascot is a wide tie that narrows at the neck, which these days is only really worn at weddings or part of a dress uniform. The tie takes its name from the Royal Ascot horse race at which punters still turn up in formal wear at Ascot Racecourse in England.

43 Booker T.’s band : MGS

Booker T. & the M.G.’s were in effect the house band at Stax Records, and so appeared on loads of famous recordings including some by Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. As such, they became synonymous with what became known as the Stax Sound. One of the unique things about the band was that it was racially integrated, with two white guys making a name for themselves in soul music, which at the time was very much part of black culture. And of course Booker T. & the M.G.’s produced the fabulous 1962 hit “Green Onions”.

45 Letters before a fresh take : OTOH

On the other hand (OTOH)

47 Official fuel of NASCAR : SUNOCO

Back in the late 1800s, Sunoco was known as the Sun Oil Company, hence “Sun-o-co”.

50 Dakota Natives : SIOUX

The Sioux are a group of Native American peoples who are also known as the Dakota. There are three divisions of Sioux, based on language: the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota.

55 Neutrogena shampoo : T/GEL

Neutrogena is a brand of skincare products that was founded in 1930 as a cosmetics company called Natone.

56 Storied loch : NESS

Scotland’s Loch Ness is famous for its fabled “monster”, referred to affectionately as “Nessie”. The loch is the second-largest lake in the country (Loch Lomond is the largest). Loch Ness takes its name from the River Ness that flows from the loch’s northern end.

58 Inspiration for Keats : URN

English Romantic poet John Keats wrote the famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in 1819, and published it anonymously in 1820. The most famous lines of the poem are the last two:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know