Day: November 8, 2025

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Constructed by: Kelly Morenus & Erik Agard

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 10m 10s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

16A Patriots quarterback Drake : MAYE

Drake Maye is a professional football quarterback. He participated in the 2024 NFL Draft after playing college football for the North Carolina Tar Heels. The New England Patriots selected him with the third overall pick.

18A Card dealer? : AMEX

American Express, commonly known as Amex, is a multinational financial services corporation. Unlike Visa and Mastercard, which operate primarily as payment networks, Amex issues its own cards directly and processes transactions.

19A Caribou relative : ELK

Male elks are called bulls, and females are known as cows. Bull elks are known for their very loud screaming, which is called bugling. Cow elks are attracted to bulls that bugle more often and most loudly.

“Caribou” is the North American name for “reindeer”.

20A Number in brackets : SEED

“Bracketology” is a term used to describe the process of predicting which college basketball teams will advance in a bracket in the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament. President Barack Obama famously participates in an ESPN segment called “Baracketology” in which he predicts the outcome of the tournament, game by game.

21A Like Santa Fe, among U.S. capitals : OLDEST

Santa Fe is New Mexico’s capital, and the fourth most-populous city in the state (after Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Rio Rancho). Sitting at 7,199 feet above sea level, Santa Fe is the highest state capital in the US. The city’s name translates from Spanish as “Holy Faith”. The full name of the city when it was founded in 1607 was “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís”, meaning “the Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi”. It became the capital of the province Santa Fe de Nuevo México in 1610, making Santa Fe the oldest state capital in the US.

28A Biblical son of Seth : ENOS

Enos was the son of Seth, and therefore the grandson of Adam and Eve, and nephew of Cain and Abel. According to the ancient Jewish work called the Book of Jubilees, Enos married his own sister Noam.

31A Dendriform Tolkien character : ENT

Ents are tree-like creatures that live in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in his series of books “The Lord of the Rings”. “Ent” is an Old English word for “giant”.

Something described as “dendriform” is “tree-shaped”. The term is rooted (pun!) in the Greek “dendros” meaning “tree”.

36A Toast types : GONERS

The slang term “toast” means “finished, doomed”.

39A Exercise named for a physiologist : BURPEE

Burpees are strength-training exercises. Each burpee involves a squat thrust followed by a straight stand. The exercise is named for its inventor, physiologist Royal Huddleston Burpee, Sr.

44A “__ gusto”: “Pleased to meet you” : MUCHO

In Spanish, one might say “Mucho gusto” when meeting someone, which translates literally as “much pleasure”. The phrase is used to mean “(It is) much pleasure (to meet you)”.

52A Slander, e.g. : TORT

“Tort” is a French word meaning “mischief, injury or wrong”. In common law, a tort is a civil wrong that results in the injured party suffering loss or harm, and the injuring party having a legal liability. Tort law differs from criminal law in that torts may result from negligence and not just intentional actions. Also, tort lawsuits may be decided on a preponderance of evidence, without the need of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

The word “libel” describes a published or written statement likely to harm a person’s reputation. It comes into English from the Latin “libellus”, the word for a small book. Back in the 1500s, libel was just a formal written statement, with the more damaging association arising in the 1600s. The related concept of slander is defamation in a transient form, such as speech, sign language or gestures.

54A Eurasian weasel : ERMINE

The stoat has dark brown fur in the summer, and white fur in the winter. Sometimes the term “ermine” is used for the animal during the winter when the fur is white. Ermine skins have long been prized by royalty and are often used for white trim on ceremonial robes.

58A Former capital of Brazil : RIO

Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil (after São Paulo). “Rio de Janeiro” translates as “January River”. The name reflects the discovery of the bay on which Rio sits, on New Year’s Day in 1502.

59A Type of PED : ‘ROID

Steroids are found commonly in nature, with familiar examples being cholesterol and testosterone. The controversial class of drugs called anabolic steroids (known informally as “‘roids” or simply “steroids”) are artificially produced chemicals designed to mimic the effect of the male sex hormone, testosterone. They are termed “anabolic” as they build up cellular tissue (particularly muscle) in a process called anabolism. Taking anabolic steroids can be termed “juicing”, and the aggressive behavior that can be a side-effect is known as “‘roid rage”.

Performance-enhancing drug (PED)

65A Ambulance team: Abbr. : EMTS

Our word “ambulance” originated from the French term “hôpital ambulant” meaning “field hospital” (literally “walking hospital”). In the 1850s, the term started to be used for a vehicle transporting the wounded from the battlefield, leading to our “ambulance”.

Down

2D Most widespread species of penguin : ADELIE

The Adélie penguin is found along the Antarctic coast, and is named after the Antarctic territory called Adélie Land that is claimed by France. Adélie Land was discovered by French explorer Jules Dumont D’Urville in 1840, and he named the territory after his wife Adéle.

3D Puzzle invented by Tetsuya Miyamoto : KENKEN

KenKen is an arithmetic and logic puzzle invented quite recently, in 2004 by a Japanese math teacher named Tetsuya Miyamoto. “Ken” is the Japanese word for “cleverness”.

4D Celebrate Eid al-Fitr, e.g. : EAT

Eid al-Fitr is a religious holiday in the Muslim tradition that is known in English as the “Festival of Breaking the Fast”. It marks the end of Ramadan, a period of dawn-to-sunset fasting.

8D Show place : STADIUM

The Greek word “stadion” was a measure of length, about 600 feet. The name “stadion” then came to be used for a running track of that length. That “running track” meaning led to our contemporary term “stadium” (plural “stadia”).

10D Question from a troll : U MAD?

In Internet terms, a troll is someone who attempts to disrupt online group activities. The fishing term “troll” is used to describe such a person as he or she throws out off-topic remarks in an attempt to “lure” others into some emotional response. I must admit to feeling sorry for people who have such sad lives …

12D Gander-herding call? : EYES ON ME!

To take a gander is to take a long look. “Gander” is a term we’ve been using in this sense since the 1880s, coming from the idea that in taking a long look one might be craning one’s neck like a goose (or gander).

13D Volleyball teams, e.g. : SEXTETS

Indoor volleyball was invented in 1895 and was originally called “mintonette”, a reference to the related game of “badminton”. The variant called beach volleyball originated in 1915 on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, but was popularized on the beaches of Santa Monica starting in 1920.

22D Experience that might include hallucinations : LSD TRIP

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)

24D Lorna __ : DOONE

The novel “Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor” was written by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. R. D. Blackmore was an English novelist, very celebrated and in demand in his day (the late 1800s). His romantic story “Lorna Doone” was by no means a personal favorite of his, and yet it is the only one of his works still in print.

29D Alma mater of Stacey Abrams : SPELMAN

Spelman College is a women’s school in Atlanta, Georgia that was founded as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in 1881. Spelman is part of the Atlanta University Center, along with the nearby all-male Morehouse College, with which Spelman has a long-standing relationship.

Stacey Abrams is a politician and voting rights activist who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017. In 2019, she delivered the Democratic Party’s response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, and became the first African-American woman to do so.

33D Formal bottoms : TROUSERS

Trousers are pants, the garment covering the lower body and each leg separately. Ultimately, the word “trousers” evolved from the Erse word “triubhas” that described close-fitting shorts. Back in the 1600s there was a colorful saying:

A jellous wife was like an Irish trouze, alwayes close to a mans tayle

35D Park with a reproduction torii gate and stave church : EPCOT

EPCOT Center (now just called “Epcot”) is the theme park beside Walt Disney World in Florida. EPCOT is an acronym standing for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and is a representation of the future as envisioned by Walt Disney. Walt Disney actually wanted to build a living community for 20,000 residents at EPCOT, but he passed away without that vision being realized.

A torii is a very traditional Japanese gate, one often seen at the entrance to a Shinto shrine.

A stave church is a medieval wooden church built with a distinctive type of timber framing. The name comes from its construction method. The structure is built around tall, upright wooden posts, or “staves”.

40D Cox of “Orange Is the New Black” : LAVERNE

Actress Laverne Cox’s big break came with the role Sophia Burset on the hit show “Orange is the New Black”. The Burset character is a trans woman and, in flashbacks on the show, the pre-transition Burset is portrayed by Laverne’s identical twin brother Reginald, known by the stage name M Lamar. In 2018, Laverne became the first openly transgender woman to make the cover of a “Cosmopolitan” magazine, and is also the first openly transgender woman to have a wax figure representation of herself in Madame Tussauds.

“Orange Is the New Black” is a very entertaining comedy-drama series made by Netflix about an upper middle-class woman who goes to jail for a drug-related offense committed ten years earlier, in her youth. The series is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman called “Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison”.

47D “One Day at a Time” star : MORENO

Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress Rita Moreno is one of the few performers to have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony (EGOT). Moreno got her big break, and won her Oscar, for playing Anita in the 1961 screen adaptation of “West Side Story”. And, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in 2004.

“One Day at a Time” is a sitcom that started airing in 2017. It is a reboot of an original sitcom with the same title that aired from 1975 to 1984. Norman Lear served as executive producer for both versions of the show.

51D Light that never stops? : GREEN

The first traffic lights date back to 1868 when they were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London. They resembled the signals already in use for trains, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for nighttime use. That first system was operated manually, by a policeman at the base. Sadly, one police officer was killed just one year after the light’s installation, when the gas system exploded.

53D Bags often given as swag : TOTES

Swag is loot, stolen property, and a term that started out as criminal slang in England in the 1830s. “Swag” is also the name given to the promotional freebies available at some events. That said, there’s an urban myth that the promotional version of “swag” is an acronym standing for “stuff we all get”.

55D Time to beware : IDES

In Act I of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, a soothsayer warns the doomed leader to “beware the ides of March”. Caesar ignores the prophecy and is subsequently killed on the steps of the Capitol by a group of conspirators on that fateful day.

62D Goal for some night sch. students : GED

The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a battery of four tests designed to demonstrate that a student has the academic skills of someone who has graduated from an American or Canadian high school.