Tag: Ballade’s last stanza crossword clue

Bill’s time: 4m 45s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6 Gp. with moms, dads and educators : PTA

Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)

14 One of Ringo’s set : DRUM

Sir Ringo Starr’s real name is Richard Starkey. Before he joined the Beatles, replacing drummer Pete Best, Starkey played with the Raving Texans. It was with the Raving Texans that he adopted the name “Ringo Starr”, because he wore a lot of rings and he thought it sounded “cowboyish”. Back then his drum solos were billed as “Starr Time”.

15 __ kwon do : TAE

Tae kwon do is the national sport of Korea. “Tae” means “to strike or break with foot”; “kwon” means “to strike or break with fist”; “do” means “way” or “art”. Along with judo, tae kwon do is one of only two martial arts included in the Olympic Games.

17 Autodialed annoyance, often at dinnertime : ROBOCALL

Robocalls; why can’t they be stopped, why not, why not …?

19 Prof’s aides : TAS

Teaching assistant (TA)

22 Protection for political refugees : ASYLUM

Asylum (plural “asyla”) is a Latin word meaning “sanctuary”.

28 Computer event with a “blue screen of death” : CRASH

On a Windows computer system, a stop error is known informally as a blue screen of death (BSoD). The error screen has a blue background, with an error message written in white lettering. Oh, and there is also a white sad emoticon 🙁

30 Penultimate Greek letter : PSI

Psi is the 23rd and penultimate letter of the Greek alphabet, and the one that looks a bit like a trident or a pitchfork.

31 Big Pharma watchdog: Abbr. : FDA

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has its roots in the Division of Chemistry (later “Bureau of Chemistry”) that was part of the US Department of Agriculture. President Theodore Roosevelt gave responsibility for examination of food and drugs to the Bureau of Chemistry with the signing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Bureau’s name was changed to the Food, Drug and Insecticide Organization in 1927, and to the Food and Drug Administration in 1930.

“Big Pharma” is a nickname for the pharmaceutical industry. The monker comes from the acronym for the lobbying group for the industry, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

41 Black or Red waters : SEA

There are four seas named in English for colors:

• the Yellow Sea
• the Black Sea
• the Red Sea
• the White Sea.

44 Bills with Franklin on them : C-NOTES

Benjamin Franklin’s portrait is featured on one side of the hundred-dollar bill (also called a “C-spot, C-note, benjamin”), and Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on the other side. There is a famous error in the image of Independence Hall. If you look closely at the clock face at the top of the building you can see that the “four” is written in Roman numerals as “IV”. However, on the actual clock on Independence Hall, the “four” is denoted by “IIII”, which has been the convention for clock faces for centuries.

47 Japanese vegetable : UDO

Udo is a perennial plant native to Japan known taxonomically as Aralia cordata. The stems of udo are sometimes boiled up and served in miso soup.

50 “__ Land”: 2016 Best Picture? Not! : LA LA

There was a celebrated gaffe made at the Oscar ceremony honoring the best films of 2016. Presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, due to no fault of their own, declared “La La Land” as the winner of the Best Picture award. The producers of “La La Land” were over two minutes into their acceptance speeches when it became clear that the actual winner of the award was the movie “Moonlight”.

52 Elite English boarding school : ETON

Eton College near Windsor in the south of England was founded way back in 1440 by King Henry VI. Originally known as “The King’s College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor”, the school was intended to provide free education to poor boys. Free education today at Eton? Not so much …

53 Deadly “2001” computer : HAL

In Arthur C. Clarke’s “Space Odyssey” (famously adapted for the big screen as “2001: A Space Odyssey”) the computer system that went rogue was called HAL 9000, or simply “HAL”. HAL stands for “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer”. Even though, Clarke denied it, there’s a good argument that can be made that the acronym HAL is a veiled reference to IBM, the big player in the world of computing at the time of the novel’s publication (1968). The acronym HAL is just a one-letter shift from the initials “IBM”.

54 “Brideshead Revisited” novelist Waugh : EVELYN

Evelyn Waugh was an English author who is most famous for his fabulous 1945 novel “Brideshead Revisited”. Evelyn Waugh met and fell in love with Evelyn Gardner in 1927. Known to friends as “He-Evelyn” and “She-Evelyn”, the couple were married in 1929 (but divorced one year later).

“Brideshead Revisited” is a novel written by Evelyn Waugh that famously was made into a British television series starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. “Brideshead” was the name of the magnificent estate in the storyline. For the television production, Castle Howard in North Yorkshire was used as Brideshead. if you ever get the chance, Castle Howard is for my money, the must-see stately home in England.

58 Wall St. takeover : LBO

A leveraged buyout (LBO) is a transaction in which an investor acquires a controlling volume of stock in a company, but buys that stock with borrowed funds (hence “leveraged”). Often the assets of the acquired company are used as collateral for the borrowed money. There is a special form of LBO known as a management buyout (MBO) in which the company’s own management team purchase the controlling interest.

63 Punctuation that Brits call a full stop : PERIOD

The punctuation mark used to terminate a sentence is called a “period” in American English, and a “full stop” in British English. The same punctuation mark has no symbol in Morse code, so the word STOP is used instead in telegraphy.

65 Guggenheim display : ART

The Guggenheim art museum on Fifth Avenue in New York opened in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. The museum was funded by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that had been set up by the American businessman and philanthropist for whom the foundation was named. When Guggenheim died in 1952, the New York museum was renamed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. I’ve only visited the museum once in my life, and I love the building (designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright). The works that I saw there … not so much …

66 Johns, to Brits : LOOS

What we call “lye” is usually sodium hydroxide, although historically the term 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 …

The use of “john” as a slang term for a toilet is peculiar to North America. “John” probably comes from the older slang term of “jack” or “jakes” that had been around since the 16th century. In Ireland, in less polite moments, we still refer to a toilet as “the jacks”.

68 Caustic chemical : LYE

What we call “lye” is usually sodium hydroxide, although historically the term 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 …

69 Bowler’s target : PIN

Bowling has been around for an awfully long time. The oldest known reference to the game is in Egypt, where pins and balls were found in an ancient tomb that is over 5,000 years old. The first form of the game to come to America was nine-pin bowling, which had been very popular in Europe for centuries. In 1841 in Connecticut, nine-pin bowling was banned due to its association with gambling. Supposedly, an additional pin was added to get around the ban, and ten-pin bowling was born.

Down

2 Arm bone : ULNA

The radius and ulna are bones in the forearm. If you hold the palm of your hand up in front of you, the radius is the bone on the “thumb-side” of the arm, and the ulna is the bone on the “pinky-side”.

3 *Deadly “game” in “The Deer Hunter” : RUSSIAN ROULETTE (Russian dressing)

“The Deer Hunter” is a disturbing 1978 movie about three Russian Americans from Pennsylvania, and their time in the military during the Vietnam War. The “game” of Russian roulette features prominently in the film’s storyline. According to director Michael Cimino, Robert de Niro requested that a live cartridge be loaded into the gun during the main Russian roulette scene, to heighten the intensity of the atmosphere. Cimino agreed, although he was quite obsessive about ensuring that for each take, the bullet wasn’t next in the chamber.

The disturbing game of Russian roulette involves the placing of a single round in a revolver, spinning the cylinder and then a player firing the gun with the muzzle placed against his or her head. The “game” supposedly originated in Russia, and the name was first cited in a short story that dates back to 1937. Russian roulette was made famous by the 1978 movie “The Deerhunter” as it plays a central role in the film’s plot.

Russian dressing isn’t Russian at all, and rather is a American creation. The main ingredients are mayonnaise and ketchup. Russian dressing is the sandwich spread used in a Reuben sandwich.

5 *Ones helping with the horses : RANCH HANDS (ranch dressing)

Ranch dressing has been the best selling salad dressing in the country since 1992. The recipe was developed by Steve Henson who introduced it in the fifties to guests on his dude ranch, Hidden Valley Ranch in Northern California. His ranch dressing became so popular that he opened a factory to produce packets of ranch seasoning that could be mixed with mayonnaise and buttermilk. Henson sold the brand for $8 million in 1972.

7 Low-pitched brass instruments : TUBAS

The tuba is the lowest-pitched of all the brass instruments, and one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra (usually there is just one tuba included in an orchestral line-up). “Tuba” is the Latin word for “trumpet, horn”. Oom-pah-pah …

8 Cookiedom’s Famous __ : AMOS

Wally Amos was a talent agent, one who was in the habit of taking home-baked cookies with him as an enticement to get celebrities to see him. He was urged by friends to open a cookie store (the cookies were that delicious, I guess) and this he did in Los Angeles in 1975 using the name “Famous Amos”. The store was a smash hit and he was able build on the success by introducing his cookies into supermarkets. The brand was eventually purchased, making Wally a rich man, and Famous Amos cookies are still flying off the shelf. Wally Amos also became an energetic literacy advocate. He hosted 30 TV programs in 1987 entitled “Learn to Read” that provided reading instruction targeted at adults.

9 *Stallone nickname, with “the” : ITALIAN STALLION (Italian dressing)

In the “Rocky” series of films, Rocky Balboa was given the ring name “The Italian Stallion”. Rocky’s first real opponent was Apollo Creed, who was known in the ring as “The Master of Disaster” and “The Count of Monte Fisto”.

Don’t try asking for Italian dressing in Italy, as it’s a North American invention. Italians are fond of dressing their salads with olive oil, vinegar, salt and maybe some black pepper. Try it!

10 Henri’s “Hi” : SALUT

In French, “salut” means “hi”, and is less formal than “bonjour”. The term can also be used as a friendly toast.

11 Pilothouse wheels : HELMS

In its broadest sense, the term “helm” describes the whole of a ship’s steering mechanism, including the rudder and tiller. In a more specific sense, the helm is the handle, tiller or wheel that is used to control the steering gear.

13 Lion constellation : LEO

The constellation named Leo can be said to resemble a lion. Others say that it resembles a bent coat hanger. “Leo” is the Latin for “lion”, but I’m not sure how to translate “coat hanger” into Latin …

14 Severe reprimands, and a hint to the starts of the answers to starred clues : DRESSING-DOWNS

To give someone a “dressing-down” is to give a reprimand, a scolding. One suggestion is that the phrase has nautical roots. Sails that had become old and dry were “dressed down” to make them more useful. They were taken down and dressed with oil and wax so that they performed better in the wind. Similarly, a sailor might be given a figurative dressing-down in order to improve his effectiveness.

18 Singer Lauper : CYNDI

If you’ve ever heard Cyndi Lauper speaking, you’d know that she was from Queens, New York. She is the daughter of divorced parents, and strongly influenced by a supportive mother. Lauper was always a free spirit, and even as a young teen in the mid-sixties she dyed her hair different colors and wore outlandish fashions. She was a young woman who wanted to “find herself”, and to that end she once spent two weeks alone in the woods up in Canada, well, just with her dog.

24 St. Louis hrs. : CST

Central Standard Time (CST)

The city of St. Louis, Missouri was settled by French explorers in 1763. Sitting on the Mississippi River, it grew into a very busy port. By the 1850s, it was the second busiest port in the country, with only New York moving more freight. St. Louis was named for Louis IX of France. Louis was canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII, and was the only French king to be declared a saint.

29 Iranian currency : RIAL

The rial is the currency of Iran (as well as Yemen, Oman, Cambodia and Tunisia). Generally, there are 1,000 baisa in a rial.

31 *Trio after turtle doves : FRENCH HENS (French dressing)

The fabulous Christmas Carol called “The Twelve Days of Christmas” dates back at least to 1780 when it was first published in England, though it may be French in origin. The concept of twelve days of Christmas comes from the tradition that the three kings came to visit the Christ Child twelve days after he was born. This same tradition is the origin of the title to Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night”.

French dressing is an American condiment that today is ketchup-based. The original French dressing was based on oil and vinegar.

33 Paris pronoun : TOI

In French, the pronouns “toi” and “vous” both mean “you”, with the former being used with family and friends, and children. “Vous” is more formal, and is also the plural form of “toi”.

35 TV watchdog : FCC

TV broadcasting is monitored by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC has been around since 1934, when it replaced the Federal Radio Commission.

43 October gemstones : OPALS

97% of the world’s opals come from Australia, so it’s no surprise perhaps that the opal is the national gemstone of the country. The state of South Australia provides the bulk of the world’s production, i.e. about 80%.

45 Italian “hour” : ORA

In Italian, there are “sessanta minuti” (sixty minutes) in an “ora” (hour).

51 Bugs Bunny animator Tex : AVERY

Tex Avery was a cartoon animator and voice actor in Hollywood. He was the man who created Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, and it was Avery who gave Bugs Bunny the line “What’s up, doc?” Apparently it was a phrase that was common in his native Texas and one that became a bit of a catchphrase at North Dallas High School, which Avery attended in the twenties.

52 Ballade’s last stanza : ENVOI

An envoy (also “envoi”) is a short closing stanza in some works of poetry.

55 Website with business reviews : YELP

yelp.com is a website that provides a local business directory and reviews of services. The site is sort of like Yellow Pages on steroids, and the term “yelp” is derived from “yel-low p-ages”.

59 “__, James __” : BOND

Ian Fleming’s spy first introduced himself with the words “Bond, James Bond” in the 1953 novel “Casino Royale”. Sean Connery first uttered the words on the silver screen in the first Bond movie, “Dr. No”.