Day: December 7, 2023

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Constructed by: Norman M. Aaronson
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Touristic Phobias

Themed answers are common phrases reinterpreted as reasons TRAVELERS won’t visit tourist spots cited in the clues:

• 18A Some travelers won’t tour the Corn Palace for fear that … : THE WALLS HAVE EARS
• 29A Some travelers won’t go to the top of the Eiffel Tower because they never … : COME TO THE POINT
• 47A Some travelers won’t visit the La Brea Tar Pits for fear of being … : STUCK IN THE PAST
• 62A Some travelers won’t get on the London Eye because they would just … : GO ROUND IN CIRCLES

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

Bill’s time: 6m 22s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5 Hilton heiress : PARIS

Paris Hilton is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels. She has been classified as a “celebutante” (a portmanteau of “celebrity” and “debutante”), a woman who is famous for being famous.

10 African snake : MAMBA

Mambas, most famously black mambas, are highly venomous snakes that used to be responsible for a great number of fatalities before anti-venoms became available. Mamba venom is a deadly mix of neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and cardiotoxins that attack the heart. A bite, if left untreated, causes the lungs and the heart to shut down.

15 Actor Alan : ALDA

Alan Alda is the only person to win acting, directing, and writing Emmys for the same comedy program. He won five Emmys for his work on “M*A*S*H”, three for acting, one for writing and one for directing.

17 __ Sports Bureau: statistics giant : ELIAS

The Elias Sports Bureau has been providing research and statistics for professional sports since 1913. The business was set up in 1913 in New York City by Al Munro Elias and his brother Walter.

18 Some travelers won’t tour the Corn Palace for fear that … : THE WALLS HAVE EARS

The Corn Palace is a multi-purpose facility in Mitchell, South Dakota. It is a neo-Moorish structure that opened for business in 1921, albeit without domes and minarets (added in 1937). It is the only surviving of over thirty corn palaces built across the Midwest. The name of the structure is a reference to the murals and designs on the walls of the building that are made from corn and other grains.

23 First Burmese prime minister : U NU

U Nu was the first Prime Minister of Burma, in office from 1948 until 1956. Who knew …? (that’s a lame play on “U Nu”, apologies).

25 Fort Collins sch. : CSU

Colorado State University (CSU) was founded in Fort Collins in 1870 as the Colorado Agricultural College. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Colorado State Rams, although back in the days of the Colorado Agricultural College, the teams were referred to as the Aggies.

29 Some travelers won’t go to the top of the Eiffel Tower because they never … : COME TO THE POINT

The “Exposition Universelle” (World’s Fair) of 1889 was held in Paris, France. The 1900 fair is remembered for the magnificent entrance arch that was constructed for visitors. That entrance arch was to remain standing for only nine years, but the city decided to keep it and you can visit it today. Today we call that entrance arch the Eiffel Tower. The tower is sometimes referred to in French “La Dame de Fer”, meaning “the Iron Lady”.

36 “No Ordinary Love” singer : SADE

“No Ordinary Love” is a 1992 song released by the band Sade from England. The accompanying music video features the band’s lead singer Sade Adu portraying a mermaid in a wedding dress searching for a sailor that she had kissed. That is no ordinary love …

37 Gift list addressee : SANTA

If you want to send a note to Santa from Canada, he has his own special postal code: “North Pole, HOH OHO”. The US Postal Service suggests that we send mail for Santa to zip code 99705, which directs it to the city of North Pole, Alaska.

38 Lightbulb unit : WATT

Joseph Swan was a scientist and inventor from England. Swan owes his fame to the development of a successful incandescent light bulb, around the same time that Thomas Edison was patenting his famous bulb design. Swan’s own house, in the northeast of England, was the first in the world to be fitted out with working light bulbs. Swan patented his bulb design in England in 1879, the same year that Edison was awarded his patent in the US.

43 Actor Elba : IDRIS

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”.

45 Eyelid affliction : STYE

A stye is a bacterial infection of the sebaceous glands at the base of the eyelashes, and is also known as a hordeolum.

46 Pajama parts : TOPS

Our word “pajamas” (sometimes “PJs” or “jammies”) comes to us from the Indian subcontinent, where “pai jamahs” were loose fitting pants tied at the waist and worn at night by locals and ultimately by the Europeans living there. And “pajamas” is another of those words that I had to learn to spell differently when I came to America. On the other side of the Atlantic, the spelling is “pyjamas”.

47 Some travelers won’t visit the La Brea Tar Pits for fear of being … : STUCK IN THE PAST

The La Brea Tar Pits are located right in the heart of the city of Los Angeles. At the site there is a constant flow of tar that seeps up to the surface from underground, a phenomenon that has been around for tens of thousands of years. What is significant is that much of the seeping tar is covered by water. Over many, many centuries animals came to the water to drink and became trapped in the tar as they entered the water to quench their thirst. The tar then preserved the bones of the dead animals. Today a museum is located right by the Tar Pits, recovering bones and displaying specimens of the animals found there. It’s well worth a visit if you are in town …

51 “Help!” letters : SOS!

The combination of three dots – three dashes – three dots, is a Morse signal first introduced by the German government as a standard distress call in 1905. The sequence is remembered as the letters SOS (three dots – pause – three dashes – pause – three dots). That said, in the emergency signal there is no pause between the dots and dashes, so “SOS” is really only a mnemonic. Similarly, the phrases “Save Our Souls” and “Save Our Ship” are back-formations that were introduced after the SOS signal was adopted.

53 Liberal arts maj. : SOC

The term “liberal arts” dates back to classical antiquity. The liberal arts were those subjects deemed essential to master for a citizen to take an active part in civil life. “Citizens” were “free people”, hence the use of the term “liberal arts”. The list of subjects studied in olden times were generally sevenfold: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy/astrology.

54 Pub __ : CRAWLS

A pub crawl (also “bar-hopping”) is a tour of a selection of local public houses. One usually takes one drink at each stop, which might perhaps explain the use of the word “crawl” …

57 With 1-Across, bun topper : SESAME …
[1A See 57-Across : … SEED]

The sesame is a flowering plant that is cultivated mainly for its edible seeds. The seeds are a source of oil, and in fact the sesame is the oldest known oilseed crop.

62 Some travelers won’t get on the London Eye because they would just … : GO ROUND IN CIRCLES

The London Eye is a very large Ferris wheel that sits right beside the River Thames in London. It is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe, and was the tallest in the world when it was constructed in 1999. The London Eye is the most-visited paid tourist attraction in the whole country.

66 Kitchen cover : APRON

In Old French, a “naperon” was a “small table-cloth”. The term was absorbed into English as “napron”, describing a cloth used to cover the front of a person at work. Over time, “a napron” was heard as “an apron”, giving us our contemporary noun “apron”.

Down

1 College Board exams : SATS

College Board is a company that develops and administers standardized tests used to determine college readiness in students and to provide a service within the college admissions process. The company was founded in 1899 at Columbia University by a dozen or so schools to provide guidance to secondary schools as they prepared students for third-level education.

2 K thru 12 : ELHI

“Elhi” is an informal word used to describe anything related to schooling from kindergarten through grade 12, i.e. elementary through high school.

3 Genesis spot : EDEN

According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in a garden “in” Eden, with Eden being geographically located by reference to four rivers, including the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some scholars hypothesize that Eden was located in Mesopotamia, which encompasses much of modern-day Iraq.

4 Dippy __: original name of Disney’s Goofy : DAWG

Disney’s Goofy first appeared as Dippy Dawg in 1932. Goofy became famous for his “How to …” series of cartoons in the 1940s which dealt with everything from snow skiing to sleeping, and from football to riding a horse. Goofy’s last theatrical appearance was in a 2007 work called “How to Hook Up Your Home Theater”.

6 Scoreboard abbr. for the 2023 NL East champions : ATL

The Atlanta Braves are the only team to have won baseball’s World Series in three different home cities. They won as the Boston Braves in 1914, the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and the Atlanta Braves in 1995.

7 Congressional Gold Medal honoree Parks : ROSA

Rosa Parks was one of a cadre of brave women in days gone by who refused to give up their seats on a bus to white women. It was the stand taken by Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 that sparked the Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott. President Clinton presented Ms. Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. When she died in 2005, Rosa Parks became the first ever woman to have her body lie in honor in the US Capitol Rotunda.

9 Google : SEARCH

The Google search engine was originally called “BackRub” would you believe? The name was eventually changed to “Google”, an intentional misspelling of the word “googol”. A googol is a pretty big number, 10 to the power of 100. That would be the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros.

11 Not aweather : ALEE

Alee is the direction away from the wind. If a sailor points into the wind, he or she is pointing aweather. The sheltered side of an island, for example, might be referred to as the “lee” side.

12 Soccer great Hamm : MIA

Mia Hamm is a retired American soccer player. She played as a forward on the US national team that won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991. Hamm scored 158 international goals, which was more than any other player in the world, male or female, until the record was broken in 2013. Amazingly, Hamm was born with a clubfoot, and so had to wear corrective shoes when she was growing up.

19 Last year’s sr. : ALUM

An alumnus (plural “alumni”) is a graduate or former student of a school or college. The female form is “alumna” (plural “alumnae”). The term comes into English from Latin, in which an alumnus is a foster-son or pupil. “Alum” is an informal term used for either an alumna or alumnus.

20 Bouquet holder : VASE

“Bouquet” comes from the French word for “bunch” in the sense of “bunch of flowers”. In French, the term is derived from an older word describing a little wood or small grove of trees. We started using “bouquet” to mean “perfume from a wine” in the early 1800s.

24 Locale of Snowbird and Alta : UTAH
[44D Locales at Snowbird and Alta : SKI RUNS]

Snowbirds are people from Canada and the northern US who head south for the winter, to places like Florida and California.

Alta ski resort actually lies within the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area. The first ski lift in the resort was opened way back in 1939. Today, Alta is one of only three ski resorts in the country that prohibits snowboarding (along with Deer Valley, Utah and Mad River Glen, Vermont). The ski resort of Snowbird, located next to Alta, has been in operation since 1971.

26 Two-bit : TIN-POT

The American quarter is a little unusual in the world of decimal currency, if you think about it. Most currencies have a “20-cent” coin, which is easier to work with mathematically. The US went for the quarter in deference to the practice of dividing Spanish Milled Dollars into eight wedge-shaped “bits”. That’s also why the quarter is sometimes referred to as “two bits”. We’ve been using the adjective “two-bit” to mean “cheap, tawdry” at least since 1929. State quarters were introduced in 1999.

28 Les __-Unis : ETATS

“Les États-Unis” is what French speakers call “the United States”.

29 Kumquat, for one : CITRUS

The kumquat tree bears fruit that looks like a small orange, about the size of an olive. The rind of a kumquat is sweet, and the center sour, so often it is only the rind that is eaten.

33 Brewery ovens : OASTS

An oast is a kiln used for drying hops as part of the brewing process. Such a structure might also be called an “oast house” or “hop kiln”. The term “oast” can also apply to a kiln used to dry tobacco.

34 Gruyère, e.g. : SWISS

Gruyère is a hard cheese that is named for the medieval Swiss town of Gruyères. I had the pleasure of visiting Gruyères many years ago, and have very fond memories of stuffing myself with the most delicious fondue made from the local cheese mixed with wine …

40 Caustic agents : LYES

What we call “lye” is usually sodium hydroxide (NaOH), although historically the term “lye” was used for potassium hydroxide. Lye has many uses, including to cure several foodstuffs. Lye can make olives less bitter, for example. The chemical is also found in canned mandarin oranges, pretzels and Japanese ramen noodles. More concentrated grades of lye are used to clear drains and clean ovens. Scary …

48 Country of 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi : IRAN

Narges Mohammadi is a human rights activist from Iran. She has spent many years imprisoned in her homeland after criticizing many of the policies of the Iranian government. Mohammadi was awarded the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, while in prison, for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

50 Tech giant that purchased Gateway : ACER

Gateway was a computer manufacturer that was founded in Sioux City, Iowa in 1985. Gateway competed mainly with Dell, manufacturing and selling computers to order, directly to users. The company developed quite a bit of brand recognition by shipping products in spotted boxes that were patterned after the markings on a Holstein cow. Gateway was purchased by the Korean computer manufacturer Acer in 2007, and Acer discontinued the Gateway brand in 2011.

55 Quaker cereal : LIFE

Life breakfast cereal was introduced by Quaker Oats in 1961. Back then, Life contained just whole grain oats. Today’s recipe includes added sugar and flour.

The Quaker Oats Company was founded in 1901 when four oat mills merged, including the Quaker Mill Company of Ravenna, Ohio. Quaker Mill’s owner Henry Parsons Crowell played the key role in creating the new company and remained at the helm until 1943.

56 __ appeal : SNOB

Back in the 1780s, a snob was a shoemaker or a shoemaker’s apprentice. By the end of the 18th century the word “snob” was being used by students at Cambridge University in England to refer to all local merchants and people of the town. The term evolved to mean one who copies those who are his or her social superior (and not in a good way). From there it wasn’t a big leap for “snob” to include anyone who emphasized their superior social standing and not just those who aspired to rank. Nowadays a snob is anyone who looks down on those considered to be of inferior standing.

58 Strike underminer : SCAB

We first started calling strikebreakers scabs in the early 1800s, and before that a scab was a person who refused to join a trade union (back as early 1777). The word “scab” probably comes from the use of “scab” as a symptom of a skin disease, and so is a term that is meant to insult.

61 Best Play, for one : ESPY

The ESPY Awards, also known as the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Awards, were first presented in a ceremony in 1993. The ESPYs were created by ESPN as a response to the lack of sports coverage during the summer months. ESPN decided to create an awards show to help fill that gap.

64 2022 Telugu-language film directed by S.S. Rajamouli : RRR

“RRR” is a 2022 Indian Telugu-language period action film. It is set in the 1920s and is based on the lives of two real-life freedom fighters, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem. The film is a fictional retelling of their fight against the British Raj and the Nizam of Hyderabad. “RRR” had a massive budget of over $60 million USD, making it one of the most expensive films ever made in Indian cinema.