Day: June 29, 2024

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Constructed by: Matthew Stock & Nate Cardin
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 15m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Make-up artist’s talent : 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.

6 __ store : DIME

A five-and-ten is a store that sells inexpensive items. “Five-and-ten” is an alternative name for “dime store”, “five-and-dime” and “ten-cent store”. The “five-and-ten” name is short for “five-and-ten cent store”.

14 Celine’s “Beauty and the Beast” counterpart : PEABO

Peabo Bryson is a singer from Greenville, South Carolina. Bryson is noted for singing hits on Disney film soundtracks, often duets. Examples are “Beauty and the Beast” with Céline Dion, and “A Whole New World (Aladdin’s Theme) with Regina Bella.

22 Brief downtime : R’N’R

Rest and relaxation/recuperation/recreation (R&R, R‘n’R)

23 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom awardee Maya : LIN

Maya Lin is a Chinese-American artist and architect from Athens, Ohio. Her most famous work is the moving Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Lin was only 21-years-old when she won a public design competition in 1981 to create the memorial. Although her design is very fitting, sadly Lin was not a popular choice for the work given her Asian heritage. As she said herself, she probably would not have been picked had the competition been judged with the knowledge of who was behind each submission.

The highest civilian awards in the US are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. The former is bestowed by the US president, and the latter by Acts of Congress. That said, Congress has the option of authorizing the President to present the Congressional Gold Medal to the chosen recipient.

24 HBO’s “__ Espookys” : LOS

“Los Espookys” is a comedy TV show about a group of friends who try to make a business out of fabricating horror scenes. Sounds a bit weird to me …

26 Wailing figure of folklore : BANSHEE

A banshee is a female spirit in Irish mythology, from the Irish “bean sí” meaning “woman of the fairy mounds”. The banshee is supposedly heard wailing in the night, especially when someone is about to die.

34 Fictional soccer club playable in FIFA 23 : AFC RICHMOND

“FIFA 23” is a video game in the “FIFA” series created by EA Sports and released in 2022. The whole series is named under license from the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). One of the teams that features in “FIFA 23” is AFC Richmond, the fictional club at the center of the excellent TV show “Ted Lasso”.

38 Animal whose name comes from the Dharug word for “no water” : KOALA

The Dharug people are an Aboriginal Australian people who lived in the area that is in and around the present-day city of Sydney.

39 Derivative work, for short? : CALC

Remember doing calculus at school, and all those derivatives and integrals? Well, you probably also remember that an integral calculates the area under a curve (for example), and a derivative calculates the slope of a tangent at a particular point on a curve.

47 2022 NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion __ Toppin : OBI

Obi Toppin is a pro basketball player who was selected by the New York Knicks in the 2020 draft. Toppin was runner-up in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest in 2021, but emerged victorious the following year.

The NBA’s All-Star Weekend takes place every February during the middle of the NBA regular season. The weekend features the NBA All-Star Game, the Rising Stars Challenge, the Skills Challenge, the Three-Point Contest, and the Slam Dunk Contest. The NBA All-Star Game is the main event, and is played between the best players in the Eastern and Western Conferences.

48 Symbol for magnetic flux : PHI

In the world of physics, the weber is the unit of magnetic flux. The unit is named for the German physicist Wilhelm Eduard Weber who was the co-inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph.

49 Little tater : TOT

Ore-Ida’s founders came up with the idea for Tater Tots when they were deciding what to do with residual cuts of potato. They chopped up the leftovers, added flour and seasoning, and extruded the mix through a large hole making a sausage that they cut into small cylinders. We eat 70 million pounds of this extruded potato every year!

50 “Wolf Like Me” actress Fisher : ISLA

Isla Fisher is an Oman-born, Australian actress who really launched her career with a recurring role on the Australian soap “Home and Away”. She started a career in Hollywood portraying Mary Jane in the 2002 film “Scooby-Doo”. Fisher married English actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in 2010.

“Wolf Like Me” is a comedy-drama TV show from Australia that premiered in 2022. American actor Josh Gad stars alongside Australian actress Isla Fisher. Gad plays a single father living in Adelaide, and Fisher plays an advice columnist. There’s a twist: that advice columnist is a werewolf!

52 Mole peppers : ANCHOS

An ancho is a dried poblano pepper used in Mexican cuisine. The poblano is a mild chili.

Mole sauce comes in various guises. “Mole negro” includes everyone’s favorite ingredient, namely chocolate.

54 Social media account? : SNAP STORY

Snapchat is a messaging system that allows users to send photos and video clips to a limited list of recipients. The photos and clips, called “snaps”, can be viewed for only a few seconds before they are deleted from the recipient’s device, and from the Snapchat servers.

57 Snacks with limited-edition flavors : OREOS

Starting in the early 2010s, Oreo cookies were produced in limited edition runs, many of which were very, very popular. Some examples are:

• Birthday Cake: to celebrate Oreo’s 100th birthday
• Fruity Crisp: to emulate Fruity Pebbles breakfast cereal
• Firework: with Pop Rocks candy in the crème, to celebrate Fourth of July
• Lady Gaga: to promote Lady Gaga’s 2020 album “Chromatica”
• Team USA: to promote the 2020 US Olympic Team

58 Personal gripes : PET PEEVES

The phrase “pet peeve”, meaning “thing that provokes one most”, seems to be somewhat ironic. A “peeve” is a source of irritation, and the adjective “pet” means “especially cherished”.

59 Like the sacred tree Yggdrasil : NORSE

Yggdrasil is an enormous tree that is central to Norse mythology, and is known as the “world tree”. It is thought that it is an ash tree, and that the name “Yggdrasil” comes from the Norse word “igwja” meaning “ash tree”, but that fact is disputed.

Down

3 Like some winners of a Pura Belpré Award : LATINO

The Pura Belpré Award is presented, usually annually, to the Latino or Latina author who best portrays the Latino cultural experience in his or her work for children or youths. The award is named for Puerto Rican Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian to work at the New York Public Library.

4 Bird associated with the Egyptian god Thoth : IBIS

Thoth was an ancient Egyptian god who was depicted as a man with the head of either a baboon or an ibis. He was the god of many things, including wisdom, writing, magic and the dead.

5 Criminal record? : BOOTLEG CD

To bootleg is to make or smuggle alcoholic drinks illegally. The term arose in the late 1800s as slang for the practice of concealing a flask of liquor down the leg of a high boot. The term has been extended to mean the illegal production and sale of just about anything.

8 Topanga neighbor : MALIBU

Topanga is a neighborhood in California located in the Santa Monica mountains. The name “Topanga” is a Tongva language word meaning either “where the mountain meets the sea” or “a place above”. The list of former residents of Topanga includes Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, singer Neil Young, as well as the infamous Manson Family.

Malibu is a beach city in Southern California that is known as home to many Hollywood movie stars. It is also home to several beaches including Malibu Surfrider Beach, which was dedicated in 2010 as the first World Surfing Reserve.

9 Sight before walking down the aisle : ENDCAP

An endcap is a retail product display placed at the end of an aisle in a store. Date shows that goods placed in endcaps usually sell faster than goods on display in aisles.

10 Podcaster/comedian Kirkman : JEN

Jen Kirkman is a stand-up comedian who appears regularly on the late-night comedy talk show “Chelsea Lately” hosted by Chelsea Handler. Kirkman was also a major contributor to stand-up routines performed by the title character in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.

12 __ mountain dog : BERNESE

The Bernese mountain dog breed originated in the Swiss canton of Bern, and in the Swiss Alps. In the early days, they were used as farm dogs. Some farmers used them to pull carts of milk and cheese, and so they were referred to locally as “cheese dogs”.

13 Toms’ neighbors : SNARES

A tom-tom is a drum without snares. The name “tom-tom” came from the Hindi name “tam-tam”, which in turn was likely imitative of the sound made by the instrument.

Snare drums are so called because they have a set of wire strands (snares) stretching across the bottom surface of the drum. When the drum is struck, the snares vibrate against the bottom drumhead producing a unique sound.

20 Help in finding subs : SONAR

The British developed the first underwater detection system that used sound waves. Research was driven by defense demands during WWI, leading to production of working units in 1922. This new sound detection system was described as using “supersonics”, but for the purpose of secrecy the term was dropped in favor of an acronym. The work was done under the auspices of the Royal Navy’s Anti-Submarine Division, so ASD was combined with the “IC” from “superson-ic-s” to create the name ASDIC. The navy even went as far as renaming the quartz material at the heart of the technology “ASDivite”. By the time WWII came along, the Americans were producing their own systems and coined the term SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging), playing off the related application, RADAR. And so, the name ASDIC was deep-sixed …

25 Prefix with permeable : SEMI-

Osmosis is the movement of a solvent (often water) across a semipermeable membrane. In the process of osmosis, the solvent tends to flow from an area of less concentration to an area of higher concentration. This sense of absorbing water effortlessly gives rise to the expression “learning by osmosis”.

27 __ fluid : SPINAL

The clear fluid found within the tissue surrounding the brain and spinal cord is called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

29 Mariners’ realm, once : SAFECO

T-Mobile Park (formerly “Safeco Field”) is the home stadium of the Seattle Mariners. Safeco Insurance was the highest bidder when it came to christening the new stadium opened in 1999, paying $40m for a 20-year contract. T-Mobile took over the naming rights in 2019, after signing a 25-year contract.

30 Starship Enterprise levels : DECKS

The USS Enterprise is a starship in the “Star Trek” universe (pun!). There have been several generations of starships with the name Enterprise, starting with the vessel numbered NCC-1701, which appeared in the original TV series. My favorite “Star Trek” series is “Next Generation”, which features USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D.

34 Progressive rival : ALLSTATE

Allstate is the second-largest provider of personal insurance in the US, after State Farm. Allstate started doing business in 1931 as part of Sears Roebuck, and indeed I can remember when Allstate offices were located in Sears stores. Sears spun off Allstate in 1993.

35 Hostess offering : HO HO

Ho Hos snack cakes were first produced in San Francisco in 1967. The “Happy Ho Ho” mascot was created for the brand in the 1970s, and was a cartoon character in a Robin Hood outfit. Ho Hos weren’t the best thing to come out of the sixties I’d say …

36 Cobra kin : 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.

37 “Horsefeathers!” : BALONEY!

“Baloney” is an American English variant of “Bologna” as in the sausage. The term came to be used to mean “nonsense” in the 1920s. “Baloney” was popularized in the 1930s by New York Governor Alfred E. Smith as he used the term quite often.

39 Siberian resort? : CAT SPA

The Siberian breed of cat is more properly referred to as the Siberian forest cat. One characteristic of the breed is that it causes fewer allergic reactions in humans. This is because the Siberian produces less Fel d 1 protein, the primary allergen present on cats in general.

55 Letter writer’s addendum : PPS

One adds a PS (post scriptum, or simply “postscript”) at the end of a letter (ltr.). A second postscript is a post post scriptum, a PPS.

56 Couture initials : YSL

Yves Saint Laurent (YSL)

“Haute couture”, literally “high dressmaking” in French, is a name given to the creation of exclusive fashions. A couturier is someone who creates or sells such fashions.