Day: May 22, 2024

Advertisement

Constructed by: Rebecca Goldstein
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Jump Through Hoops

Themed answers each include a synonym of “JUMP” shown in circled letters (HOOPS) in the grid:

• 62A Bend over backward, or what each set of circled letters is : JUMP THROUGH HOOPS

• 17A Undercover undertaking : STEALTH OPERATION (hiding “HOP”)
• 36A Winter getaway deal : SKI PACKAGE (hiding “SKIP”)
• 43A Meet, Maps, and Drive, e.g. : GOOGLE APPS (hiding “LEAP”)

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

Bill’s time: 6m 04s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10 Brunch side : HASH

Hash, beef and vegetables mashed together, is a very American dish and one that really surprised me when I first came across it. “Hash” just seems like such an unappetizing item, but I soon found out how delicious it was. The name “hash” in this context comes from the French “hacher” meaning “to chop”. Back in the early 1900s the dish called “hashed browned potatoes” was developed, which quickly morphed into “hash browns”. From there the likes of corned beef hash was introduced.

Our word “brunch” is a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch”. The term was coined as student slang in Oxford, England in the late 1890s. However, “brunch” described a combined meal closer to the breakfast hour, and the term “blunch” was used for a meal closer to lunchtime.

14 “Lunch __ a Skyscraper”: iconic New York photograph : ATOP

“Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” is an iconic 1932 photograph showing eleven ironworkers eating their lunches while sitting on a girder suspended 840 feet about the streets of New York City. The photo was staged as part of a PR campaign about a skyscraper that was under construction, namely 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

15 Trip to see Africa’s “Big Five” : SAFARI

Big-game hunters coined the term “big five game five” to describe the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot in Africa. Fortunately, the phrase is used more often these days by tourists on photo safaris. The “big five” are:

• Elephant
• Rhinoceros
• African buffalo
• Lion
• Leopard

16 Capital city with public transit ferries : OSLO

There are 40 islands lying within the city limits of the Norwegian capital of Oslo. As such, the city provides many transit ferries for use by the public. Interestingly, most of those ferry boats have been electrified.

21 __ Lingus : AER

Aer Lingus is the flag carrier airline of Ireland. It was founded in 1936 by the Irish government to provide air service between Ireland and the United Kingdom. The airline’s name means “air fleet” in Irish. In the 1950s, Aer Lingus became the first airline in the world to introduce a duty-free shopping service on board its flights.

25 Sweater pattern : ARGYLE

The argyle pattern is based on the Campbell tartan. The Campbell clan is based in the Argyll region (note the spelling) in the west of Scotland, giving the Argyle pattern its name.

28 Fully __ nachos : LOADED

The dish known as “nachos” was supposedly created by the maître d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. The name of the maître d’ was Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya.

38 “Wild” card game : UNO

The classic card game Uno now comes in several versions. Uno ColorAdd allows people with color blindness to play, and there is also a Braille version that allows blind and sighted friends to play together.

41 Country north of Kenya: Abbr. : ETH

Ethiopia is a country in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation on the continent (after Nigeria) and, with 90 million inhabitants, the most populous landlocked country in the world. Most anthropologists believe that our Homo sapiens species evolved in the region now called Ethiopia, and from there set out to populate the planet.

Kenya lies on the east coast of Africa, right on the equator. The country takes its name from Mount Kenya, the second-highest peak on the continent (after Kilimanjaro). The official languages of Kenya are English and Swahili.

43 Meet, Maps, and Drive, e.g. : GOOGLE APPS (hiding “LEAP”)

Google Meet is Google’s videoconferencing app, one that competes directly with Zoom. Google Meet was launched in 2017, and made available for free to all users during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, usage of the app increased by a factor of 30 in the early months of 2020, with about 100 million people using it daily (compared to about 200 million a day for Zoom). Personally, I prefer Google Meet to Zoom …

Google Maps was developed as a web mapping service for desktops. The (wonderful!) Google Maps mobile app was released in 2008, and is now the most popular smartphone app in the world.

Google Drive is Google’s cloud-based storage service. I’m a heavy user …

47 “Don’t cry for me” singer : EVITA

“Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” is a hit song that came out of the 1976 concept album “Evita” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Recorded by English singer Julie Covington, it is sung by the character Eva Perón on the album and in the subsequent stage musical. Covington opted out from appearing in the musical, and so the role of Eva went to Elaine Paige.

49 Web content std. : HTML

The initialism “HTML” stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is the language used to write most Internet web pages (including this one).

55 Infinitesimally small : ATOMIC

Our word “atom” comes from the Latin “atomus” meaning “indivisible particle”. In turn, the Latin term comes from the Greek “a-tomos” meaning “not-cut”.

67 Novelist Rice : ANNE

“Anne Rice” is the pen name of American author of erotic and Gothic novels Howard Allen O’Brien. Her famous series of novels “The Vampire Chronicles” centers on her character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman who was turned into a vampire in the 18th century. One of the stories, “Interview with the Vampire”, was adapted for the big screen in 1994 and features Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and others in a star-studded cast. Not my kind of movie though, as I don’t do vampires …

69 All over the place : AMOK

The phrase “to run amok” (sometimes “to run amuck”) has been around since the 1670s and is derived from the Malay word for “attacking furiously”, “amuk”. The word “amok” was also used as a noun to describe Malay natives who were “frenzied”. Given Malaya’s troubled history, the natives probably had a good reason for that frenzy …

Down

1 Swinging soiree : BASH

“Soir” is the French word for “evening” and a soirée is an evening party. The French word “soirée” has an acute accent over the first “e”, but we tend to drop this when using the word in English.

2 Gospel icon James : ETTA

Etta James was best known for her beautiful rendition of the song “At Last”. Sadly, as she disclosed in her autobiography, James lived a life that was ravaged by drug addiction leading to numerous legal and health problems. Ms. James passed away in January 2012 having suffered from leukemia.

5 Judy Garland co-star Bert : LAHR

Bert Lahr’s most famous role was the cowardly lion in “The Wizard of Oz”. Lahr had a long career in burlesque, vaudeville and on Broadway. Lahr also starred in the first US production of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot”, alongside Tom Ewell.

Actress Judy Garland’s real name was Frances Gumm. Garland was respected and loved both within and without the entertainment industry. She was the youngest recipient, at 39 years old, of the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.

The classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” didn’t do very well at the box office when it was released for its first run. It was the most expensive film ever made at that time, and disappointed the studios by only returning about a million dollars in profit for them. It also failed to win the Best Picture Oscar (losing out to “Gone with the Wind”), but “Over the Rainbow” did win the Academy Award for Best Original Song. But “The Wizard of Oz” gained a lot of ground in subsequent years through re-releases. It is now the most watched movie in history.

10 Choose a spot in an open office : HOT DESK

Offices that use the concept of hot desking make work spaces available for any worker, rather than assigning spaces to specific workers. The term “hot desking” probably comes from the “hot racking”, the system used by navies in which sailors on differing watches (shifts) use the same bunks in order to make more efficient use of available space.

11 Most populous continent : ASIA

Most of the world’s population lives in Asia (60%), and Asia is the largest continent in terms of landmass (30% of the world). Asia also has the highest population density (246 people per square mile), and the most populous city on the continent is Shanghai, China.

15 Camel in a caravan, maybe : STEED

A camel train carrying passengers or goods across a desert can be referred to as a caravan. “Caravan” derives from the Persian “karwan”, which has the same meaning. Over in Britain, “caravan” is the name given to travel trailers.

19 Early web portal : AOL

A web portal is a website that consolidates information uniformly from several sources, such as email, chat rooms and search engines. As such, it is often the website used by a user at the start of an online session.

26 Hiking gear rental co. : REI

REI is a sporting goods store, with the initialism standing for Recreational Equipment Inc. REI was founded in Seattle by Lloyd and Mary Anderson in 1938 as a cooperative that supplies quality climbing gear to outdoor enthusiasts. The first full-time employee hired by the Andersons was Jim Whittaker, who was the first American to climb Mount Everest.

28 Guffaw : LAUGH

“Guffaw”, meaning “boisterous laugh”, is an imitative word that is Scottish in origin.

32 Race car or kayak : PALINDROME

The three most famous palindromes in English have to be:

• Able was I ere I saw Elba
• A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
• Madam, I’m Adam

One of my favorite terms is “Aibohphobia”, although it doesn’t appear in the dictionary and is a joke term. “Aibohphobia” is a great way to describe a fear of palindromes, by creating a palindrome out of the suffix “-phobia”.

33 Banded gemstone : AGATE

Agate is a micro-crystalline form of quartz (and so is related to sand/silica). Some agate samples have deposited layers that give a striped appearance, and these are called “banded agate”.

34 Home state of Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion : TEXAS

Beyoncé Knowles established herself in the entertainment industry as the lead singer with the R&B group Destiny’s Child. She launched her solo singing career in 2002, after making her first appearance as an actor. In 2006 she played the lead in the very successful movie adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls”. Beyoncé is married to rap star Jay-Z. She is also referred to affectionately as “Queen Bey”, a play on the phrase “the queen bee”. Her fan base goes by the name “Beyhive”.

“Megan Thee Stallion” is the stage name of rapper Megan Pete. Pete’s mother Holly Thomas was also a rap performer, one using the stage name “Holly-Wood”. Thomas would bring Megan to recording sessions rather than put her in daycare, and so exposed her young daughter to the recording business at an early age.

44 Rented a yurt, maybe : GLAMPED

“Glamping” is “glamorous camping”, camping with comforts and amenities.

A yurt is a wood-framed dwelling that is used by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia. Although a yurt is a substantial structure, it is also extremely portable.

45 “The Bells” poet : POE

Poe’s poem “The Bells” was not published until soon after his death. It is famous for the repetition of the word “bells” throughout, tolling away in the very words of the work itself.

46 Hollywood hrs. : PST

The first film shot in Hollywood was a short, silent Western called “In Old California”. Directed by D. W. Griffith, it was shot in 1910. The first feature film shot in Hollywood was 1914’s “The Squaw Man”, another silent Western, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and Oscar C. Apfel.

56 Mackerel relative : TUNA

There are 15 species of tuna, the size of which varies greatly. The smallest is the bullet tuna, which can grow to about 4 pounds in weight and just over 1½ feet in length. The Atlantic bluefin tuna can weigh over 1,500 pounds, and reach about 15 feet in length. That’s a lot of tuna …

The name “mackerel” is applied to over 30 different species of fish, most of which are in the family Scombridae. The term “mackerel” comes from the Old French name for the fish, “maquerel”, with the origins of the earlier name unclear.

63 Squeeze play stat : RBI

In baseball, a squeeze play (also “squeeze bunt”) is one in which a batter bunts the ball expecting to be thrown out at first, but gives a runner at third base a chance to score. In a safety squeeze the runner at third waits to see where the bunt is going before heading for home. In a suicide squeeze, the runner heads home as soon as the pitcher throws the ball.

64 Menorah liquid : OIL

There is a seven-branched menorah used symbolically in ancient temples. However, the Hanukkah menorah is a nine-branched lampstand that is lit during the eight-day holiday called Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights. “Menorah” is the Hebrew word for “lamp”.

65 “Aloha ‘Oe” instrument, briefly : UKE

“Aloha ‘Oe” is a song of Hawaii composed by Liliuokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii and her only queen. The title translates as “Farewell to Thee”.

66 Granola grain : OAT

The names “Granola” and “Granula” were trademarked back in the late 1800s for whole-grain foods that were crumbled and baked until crisp. Granola was created in Dansville, New York in 1894.