Day: March 23, 2024

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Constructed by: Nate Cardin
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 7m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4 Caldecott Medal winner __ Jack Keats : EZRA

Ezra Jack Keats was an American author and illustrator who is most famous for his 1962 award-winning children’s picture book “The Snowy Day”. Keats was known for setting his books in urban environments and for featuring protagonists with varying cultural backgrounds.

The Randolph Caldecott Medal is awarded annually to the prior year’s “most distinguished American picture book for children”. The inaugural year for the award was 1938. The medal is named for British artist and illustrator Randolph Caldecott. In 2009, the structure of the awards was tweaked so that selected runners-up for the Medal were given the status of “Caldecott Honor Books”.

14 “We come to this place … ” theater chain : AMC

The AMC theater chain used to go by the name American Multi-Cinema Inc., hence the initialism “AMC”.

15 __ point : MOOT

To moot is to bring up as a subject for discussion or debate. So, something that is moot is open to debate. Something that is no longer moot, is no longer worth debating. We don’t seem to be able to get that right, which drives me crazy …

16 Pea family plant : CLOVER

Clovers are species of flowering plants in the pea family. Clover leaves are trifoliate, have three leaflets. There are about 5,000 three-leaf clovers for every 1 four-leaf clover, leading to the association of a four-leaf clover with good luck.

19 Asks for more Money : RENEWS

“Money” magazine is a sister publication of “Time”, and focuses on personal finance.

20 Pueblo people : HOPI

Many members of the Hopi nation live on a reservation that is actually located within the much larger Navajo reservation in Arizona.

21 Pickens of “Blazing Saddles” : SLIM

The actor Slim Pickens was best known for playing cowboys on the big screen. Prior to acting, he spent 20 years as a rodeo performer. Pickens was born Louis Lindley Jr. As a young man aspiring to appear in rodeos, Lindley was warned that there would be a small chance of him winning prize money, there would be “slim pickin’s”. He entered his first rodeo using the name “Slim Pickens”.

“Blazing Saddles” is a 1974 Mel Brooks movie that has become a modern-day classic. I really only enjoy one Mel Brooks film, and “Blazing Saddles” isn’t it. Just in case you’re interested, I very much enjoy “Young Frankenstein” …

23 Retro hip beer, for short : PBR

Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) is the most recognizable brand of beer from the Pabst Brewing Company. There appears to be some dispute over whether or not Pabst beer ever won a “blue ribbon” prize, but the company claims that it did so at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The beer was originally called Pabst Best Select, and then just Pabst Select. With the renaming to Blue Ribbon, the beer was sold with an actual blue ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle until it was dropped in 1916 and incorporated into the label.

26 Common retirement vehicles : ROTH IRAS

Roth Individual Retirement Accounts (Roth IRAs) were introduced in 1997 under a bill sponsored by Senator William Roth of Delaware, hence the name.

31 YouTube genre that may cause tingles, for short : ASMR

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR ) is a tingling sensation that some people experience in response to certain stimuli, such as soft sounds, gentle whispering, or slow movements. It is often described as a feeling of relaxation and well-being. Although there is no consensus on what causes ASMR, one suggestion is that it may be related to the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure. There are a wide variety of ASMR videos available, including videos of people whispering, tapping on objects, or performing other gentle actions.

36 Tribeca Film Festival co-founder : DE NIRO

The Tribeca Film Festival in New York City was launched in 2002 by Tribeca Productions, the production company co-founded by Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. The intent was to revitalize the lower Manhattan neighborhood in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

41 Raisins, in an after-school snack : ANTS

Ants on a log is a snack food prepared by spreading something like peanut butter or cream cheese on celery and placing raisins on top. If you leave out the raisins, the snack becomes “ants on vacation”.

43 Me in C minor : E-FLAT

The sol-fa syllables are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la & ti.

47 __ Spy apples : NORTHERN

The spy apple (also “northern spy” or “king”) is a cultivar that originated in 1800 in East Bloomfield, New York. The USPS honored the spy apple by including it in a set of four stamps commemorating historic strains of apple (along with the Baldwin, golden delicious and Granny Smith).

58 Numbers like 3 and 14, but not 3.14 : INTEGERS

An integer is a number that does not include a fraction. The word “integer” is Latin for “whole”.

62 Fujairah fed. : UAE

The Emirate of Fujairah is the fifth-largest of the seven members of the United Arab Emirates. Its capital is Fujairah City, which is the only UAE capital located on the Gulf of Oman.

Down

1 Apt rhyme of slay and runway : SASHAY

To sashay is to strut along in a showy manner. “Sashay” is an Anglicized form of the French word “chassé”, a sliding step used in square dancing.

3 Teacher defended by Darrow in 1925 : SCOPES

In 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Act which made it unlawful for a public school teacher to teach the theory of evolution over the Biblical account of the origin of man. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sought to challenge this law and found a test case of a Tennessee high school teacher named John Scopes, who was charged with violating the law by presenting to his students ideas put forth by Charles Darwin. Celebrity lawyers descended on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee to argue the case. Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan prosecuted the case, and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow spoke for John Scopes. At the end of a high-profile trial, Scopes was found guilty as charged and was ordered to pay a fine.

4 Modem terminals? : EMS

The “terminals” of the word “modem” are letters M (ems).

A modem is a device that is used to facilitate the transmission of a digital signal over an analog line. At one end of the line, a modem is used to “modulate” an analog carrier signal to encode digital information. At the other end of the line, a modem is used to “demodulate” the analog carrier signal and so reproduce the original digital information. This modulation-demodulation gives the device its name: a MOdulator-DEModulator, or “modem”.

5 Menageries : ZOOS

The world’s first zoo opened in Britain in 1820. Now known as “London Zoo”, the facility was referred to back then as the “Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London”. The term “zoo” is a shortening of “zoological”.

A menagerie is a varied group, and particularly refers to a collection of wild or unusual animals. The term “menagerie“ comes from the French “ménagerie”, which described housing for domestic animals.

6 “u slay me” : ROFL

Rolling on floor laughing (ROFL)

8 Roots rock band that started as the Blue Velvets, for short : CCR

Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) was a rock band from San Francisco that played in a Southern rock style, with hits such as “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Down on the Corner” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain”.

9 Hebrew leader? : ALEPH

Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and beth is the second.

10 Pride banner with yellow, white, purple, and black stripes : NONBINARY FLAG

The nonbinary flag was introduced in 2014, and comprises four horizontal stripes. The yellow stripe represents those whose gender falls outside of the binary, the white those with any or all genders, the purple those with a mix of male and female genders, and the black those not having a gender.

11 Veto : OVERRULE

The verb “veto” comes directly from Latin and means “I forbid”. The term was used by tribunes of ancient Rome to indicate that they opposed measures passed by the Senate.

12 The __ Charitable Trusts: NGO with a think tank : PEW

The Pew Charitable Trusts is an NGO established in 1948 by the children of Joseph N. Pew, the founder of Sun Oil Company (now Sunoco). Its stated mission is to improve public policy, inform the public, and invigorate civil life. Pew also operates the Pew Research Center, the third-largest think tank in Washington, D.C.

13 Brief closing : YRS

Yours (YRS)

22 Bob that may be a solution for post-pregnancy thinning : MOM HAIR

The term “mom hair” generally describes a style that is easier to maintain, often featuring a longer-in-back and shorter-in-front bob cut.

25 Prairie wanderer : DOGIE

“Dogie” (sometimes “dogy”) is cowboy slang for a motherless calf in a herd.

36 Paul of “The Fabelmans” : DANO

Paul Dano is an actor and musician from New York City. I best know him for playing Brian Wilson in “Love & Mercy”, a fascinating film about the Beach Boys.

“The Fabelmans” is a 2022 coming-of-age drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tony Kushner. The movie is a semi-autobiographical story loosely based on Spielberg’s adolescence and first years as a filmmaker. The plot is told through an original story of the fictional Sammy Fabelman, a young aspiring filmmaker who explores how the power of films can help him see the truth about his dysfunctional family and those around him.

40 Generational portmanteau : XENNIAL

Xennials, often considered to be a “micro-generation”, were born between 1977 and 1983, bridging the gap between Generation X and Millennials. Unlike older generations, they have a strong understanding of pre-Internet life and the value of face-to-face communication. At the same time, they are comfortable with technology and have adapted to the digital world in a way that many older generations have not. Well, that’s what I just read …

44 Roster : LINEUP

Our word “roster”, meaning “list, register”, actually comes from the same root as our word “roast”, would you believe. “Roster” came into English from the Dutch “rooster”, meaning “table, list”. An alternative use of the Dutch “rooster” was “gridiron”, from the “roosten” meaning “to roast”. The connection is that a roster of names is often listed on a sheet of paper that has grid lines resembling the marks left by a gridiron on roasted meat. Quite interesting …

55 Openly queer : OUT

Back in the 1950s, to come “out of the closet” was to admit to being an alcoholic. By the seventies, the phrase mainly referred to gay people shrugging off secrecy about their sexual orientation.

56 Component of some vaccines : RNA

Traditional vaccines typically use weakened or inactivated viruses, or pieces of the virus, to stimulate an immune response. mRNA vaccines use a small piece of genetic material from the virus, called messenger RNA (mRNA), to instruct cells in the body to produce a harmless piece of the virus to trigger the immune response. mRNA vaccines are developed more quickly than traditional vaccines. This was demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, where mRNA vaccines were developed and authorized for emergency use within months of the emergence of the novel coronavirus.

57 Conference acronym : TED

The acronym “TED” stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”. TED is a set of conferences held around the world by a non-profit group called the Sapling Foundation. The conference subjects are varied, and the meetings are often led by big names such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Gates and Jane Goodall. The Sapling Foundation then makes recordings of the conferences available for free online with the intent of disseminating the ideas globally. These conferences are known as “TED Talks”. There are also TEDx events, which are locally-run talks presented under license from TED.