Tag: Meets on the river? crossword clue

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Constructed by: Nancy Serrano-Wu
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Say Sayonara, Impala

Themed answers are cute parting phrases in English based on differing languages. Each uses a parting word rhymed with a WILD animal:

• 20A Wild “adios“? : MANANA, PIRANHA
• 24A Wild “goodbye“? : LATER, ALLIGATOR
• 41A Wild “auf wiedersehen“? : TSCHUSS, OCTOPUS
• 47A Wild “au revoir“? : ADIEU, COCKATOO

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

Bill’s time: 5m 41s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Use a swizzle stick : STIR

“Swizzle” drinks date back to the early 1800s. The drink gave rise to the verb “to swizzle” to mean “to stir” from the mid-1800s. The drink also gave the name to the swizzle stick, which was introduced in cocktails in 1933. I drank a rum swizzle or two on the island of Bermuda many years ago, and very nice they are too. They are so popular in Bermuda that the swizzle is often called the island’s national drink.

16 Read, as a QR code : SCAN

A QR Code (for “Quick Response Code”) is a two-dimensional barcode that is favored over UPC barcodes as it can read more quickly and can store much more information. The QR Code comprises black squares within a square grid on a white background.

20 Wild “adios”? : MANANA, PIRANHA

In Spanish, the day after “hoy” (today) is “mañana” (tomorrow).

Piranhas are reputed to be able to strip an animal to its bones in seconds, but this is somewhat of a myth. Piranhas are not in fact strict carnivores, and usually are more of a nuisance to fishermen rather than a danger, as they tend to eat bait that has been set to catch other fish. Much of the reputation of the piranha is owed to the description written by President Theodore Roosevelt in his book “Through the Brazilian Wilderness”. President Roosevelt was somewhat hoodwinked though, as local fishermen put on a special “show” for him. They dumped hordes of hungry piranhas into a dammed section of a river and then tossed in a sliced up cow. President Roosevelt was pretty impressed by the orchestrated feeding frenzy.

The term “adiós” is Spanish for “goodbye”. “Adiós” comes from the phrase “a Dios vos acomiendo” meaning “I commend you to God”.

22 “Cornflake Girl” singer Amos : TORI

“Cornflake Girl” is a 1994 song written and recorded by Tori Amos. Amos uses the term “cornflake girl” to describe someone who is apt to hurt you despite being a close friend.

23 Dodge pickup truck : RAM

Chrysler put ram hood ornaments on all of its Dodge-branded vehicles starting in 1933. When the first line of Dodge trucks and vans were introduced in 1981, they were named “Rams” in honor of that hood ornament.

24 Wild “goodbye”? : LATER, ALLIGATOR

Crocodiles and alligators do indeed bear a resemblance to each other, although they belong to distinct biological families. One of the main ways used to distinguish them is by their teeth and jaws. Both the upper and lower sets of teeth of a crocodile are visible when its mouth is closed, whereas only the upper teeth of an alligator are visible with the mouth shut.

Our salutation “good-bye” started out as a contraction of “God be with ye”, which was a more common phrase in the 14th century. The structure of the contraction was influenced by the existing phrases good day, good evening, etc.

32 + or – particles : IONS

As we all recall from science class, a positive ion is called a cation and a negative ion is an anion. The names “cation” and “anion” come from Greek, with “kation” meaning “going down” and “anion” meaning “going up”.

33 “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” cable network : HBO

Bryant Gumbel is a television journalist best known for co-hosting NBC’s “The Today Show” for 15 years. Bryant’s older brother is sportscaster Greg Gumbel.

34 Targets of Terro bait traps : ANTS

Terro is a borax-based bait used to treat ant infestation. Borax is toxic to ants, and acts very slowly. Because it is slow-acting, worker ants carry it back to the nest and poison the colony.

35 Popovich who is the winningest coach in NBA history : GREGG

Gregg Popovich took over as coach of the San Antonio Spurs in 1996. He is often referred to as “Pop” or “Coach Pop”. Popovich holds the record for the NBA coach with the longest run of consecutive winning seasons.

38 Emulate Eileen Gu and Lindsey Vonn : SKI

Eileen Gu is a San Francisco-born freestyle skier who started competing for China starting in 2019.

41 Wild “auf wiedersehen”? : TSCHUSS, OCTOPUS

In German, one might use the term “tschüss” to say “good-bye” in an informal manner.

The name “octopus” comes from the Greek for “eight-footed”. The most common plural used is “octopuses”, although the Greek plural form “octopodes” is also quite correct. The plural “octopi” isn’t really correct as the inference is that “octopus” is like a second-declension Latin noun, which it isn’t. That said, dictionaries are now citing “octopi” as an acceptable plural. Language does evolve, even though it drives me crazy …

“Auf Wiedersehen” is German for “goodbye”, literally translating as “till we see each other again”.

45 “Big Blue” on the Big Board : IBM

The origin of the IBM nickname “Big Blue” seems to have been lost in the mists of time. That said, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the IBM logo is blue, and almost every mainframe they produced was painted blue. I remember visiting IBM on business a few times in my career, and back then we were encouraged to wear white shirts and blue suits “to fit in” with our client’s culture.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is nicknamed the “Big Board”.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) can give some quite descriptive ticker symbols to companies, for example:

• Anheuser-Busch (BUD, for “Budweiser”)
• Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP, as in “beer tap”)
• Steinway Musical Instruments (LVB, for “Ludwig van Beethoven”)
• Sotheby’s (BID, for the auction house)

47 Wild “au revoir”? : ADIEU, COCKATOO

“Adieu” is French for “goodbye, farewell”, from “à Dieu” meaning “to God”. The plural of “adieu” is “adieux”.

Cockatoos are birds closely related to the true parrots. The name “cockatoo” probably comes from the Malay “kaka” (parrot) and “tuwah” (older sibling).

“Au revoir” is a French phrase translating literally as “until seen again”, although the accepted usage is “goodbye”.

55 French Quarter city, informally : NOLA

The city of New Orleans, Louisiana has the nickname “The Big Easy”. This name might come from the early 1900s when musicians found it relatively “easy” to find work there. The city is also known by the acronym NOLA, standing for New Orleans (NO), Louisiana (LA).

The oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans is the French Quarter, which is also called the “Vieux Carré (French for “Old Square”). After being founded by the French in 1718 as “La Nouvelle-Orléans”, the city developed around this central square.

56 Skinny tropical tree : PALM

Palms are perennial flowering plants that take many forms, some as shrubs and some as vines, for example. Some take on a tree-like shape, with a woody stem topped by a crown of leaves. Such palms are usually referred to as “palm trees”. The coco de mer palm tree has the largest seeds of any plant on the planet. We are more familiar with the coconut palm tree, which has the second-largest plant seeds known.

58 Bryce Canyon state : UTAH

Bryce Canyon National Park is truly a beautiful part of America. The strange thing is that Bryce isn’t a canyon at all, but rather is a natural amphitheater created by erosion of sedimentary rocks that are part of the Paunsaugunt Plateau.

61 Pad thai protein option : TOFU

The delicious dish called pad Thai is a meld of stir-fried rice noodles with tamarind juice, red chili pepper plus a mix of vegetables and possibly tofu, meat or fish. It is usually topped with crushed peanuts, coriander and lime. The name “pad Thai” translates as “fried Thai-style”.

Down

1 Canned meat used in Hawaiian cuisine : SPAM

Spam is a precooked meat product that is sold in cans. It was introduced by Hormel Foods in 1937. The main meat ingredients are pork shoulder meat and ham. The name “Spam” was chosen as the result of a competition at Hormel, with the winner earning himself a hundred dollars. According to the company, the derivation of the name “Spam” is a secret known by only a few former executives, but the speculation is that it stands for “spiced ham” or “shoulders of pork and ham”. Spam is particularly popular in Hawaii, so popular that it is sometimes referred to as “the Hawaiian steak”.

2 “Julius Caesar” costume : TOGA

In ancient Rome, the classical attire known as a toga (plural “togae” or “togas”) was usually worn over a tunic. The tunic was made from linen, and the toga itself was a piece of cloth about twenty feet long made from wool. The toga could only be worn by men, and only if those men were Roman citizens. The female equivalent of the toga was called a “stola”.

William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar” is a little unusual, in that Julius Caesar is not the main character. The protagonist is actually Marcus Brutus, who plays a major role in Caesar’s assassination.

3 Multivitamin ingredient : IRON

The term “anemia” (or “anaemia”, as we write it back in Ireland) comes from a Greek word meaning “lack of blood”. Anemia is a lack of iron in the blood, or a low red blood cell count. Tiredness is a symptom of the condition, and so we use the term “anemic” figuratively to mean “lacking in vitality or substance”.

4 Meets on the river? : REGATTAS

The word “regatta” is Venetian dialect and was originally used to describe boat races among the gondoliers of Venice on the Grand Canal back in the mid-1600s.

5 Actress Hedy in the National Inventors Hall of Fame : LAMARR

Hedy Lamarr was an American actress who was actually born in Vienna in modern-day Austria. Not only was Lamarr a successful Hollywood performer, during WWII she was the co-inventor of a frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum method of transmitting radio signals that is still used to this day in wireless communication. Impressive …

6 Paradise : UTOPIA

The word “Utopia” was coined by Sir Thomas More in his book “Utopia” published in 1516 to describe an idyllic fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. More’s use of the name Utopia comes from the Greek “ou” meaning “not” and “topos” meaning “place”. By calling his perfect island “Not Place”, More was apparently making the point that he didn’t think that the ideal could actually exist.

7 Jeans maker Strauss : LEVI

Levi Strauss was the founder of the first company in the world to manufacture blue jeans. Levi Strauss & Co. opened in 1853 in San Francisco. Strauss and his business partner were awarded a patent in 1873 for the use of copper rivets to strengthen points of strain on working pants.

11 Campus sports gp. : NCAA

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) dates back to the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. When his son broke his nose playing football at Harvard, President Roosevelt turned his attention to the number of serious injuries and even deaths occurring in college sports. He instigated meetings between the major educational institutions, leading to the formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) in 1906, which was given the remit of regulating college sports. The IAAUS became the NCAA in 1910. The NCAA has been headquartered in Indianapolis since 1999.

12 Road goo : TAR

The terms “tarmac” and “macadam” are short for “tarmacadam”. In the 1800s, Scotsman John Loudon McAdam developed a style of road known as “macadam”. Macadam had a top-layer of crushed stone and gravel laid over larger stones. The macadam also had a convex cross-section so that water tended to drain to the sides. In 1901, a significant improvement was made by English engineer Edgar Purnell Hooley who introduced tar into the macadam, improving the resistance to water damage and practically eliminating dust. The “tar-penetration macadam” is the basis of what we now call “tarmac”.

13 USN rank : ENS

Ensign is (usually) the most junior rank of commissioned officer in the armed forces. The name comes from the tradition that the junior officer would be given the task of carrying the ensign flag.

21 Yuletide song : NOEL

“Noël” is the French word for the Christmas season, and ultimately comes from the Latin word for “birth” (natalis). “Noel” has come to be used as an alternative for “Christmas carol”.

Yule celebrations coincide with Christmas, and the words “Christmas” and “Yule” (often “Yuletide”) have become synonymous in much of the world. However, Yule was originally a pagan festival celebrated by Germanic peoples. The name “Yule” comes from the Old Norse word “jol” that was used to describe the festival.

24 Clickable connections : LINKS

In essence, the World Wide Web (WWW) is a vast collection of documents that is accessible using the Internet, with each document containing hyperlinks which point to other documents in the collection. So the “Web” is different from the Internet, although the terms are often used interchangeably. The Web is a collection of documents, and the Internet is a global network of computers on which the documents reside. The Web was effectively the invention of British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. The key to Berner-Lee’s invention was bringing together two technologies that already existed: hypertext and the Internet. I, for one, am very grateful …

25 High point of a home tour? : ATTIC

An attic or loft is a room or space located below the roof of a building. The term “attic” is a shortened form of “attic story”, the uppermost story or level of a house. This term “attic story” originally applied to a low, decorative level built on top of the uppermost story behind a building’s decorative facade. This use of decoration at the top of buildings was common in ancient Greece, and was particularly important in the Attica style. That Attica style was so called because it originated in the historical region of Attica that encompassed the city of Athens. And that’s how our attics are linked to ancient Greece.

27 Ship captain’s journal : LOG

The word “logbook” dates back to the days when the captain of a ship kept a daily record of the vessel’s speed, progress etc. using a “log”. A log was a wooden float on a knotted line that was dropped overboard to measure speed through the water.

28 Org. exited in Brexit : THE EU

The UK held a referendum in June 2016 in which 52% of voters chose to leave the European Union (EU). The term “Brexit” was used for the vote, a portmanteau of “Britain” and “exit”. The vote led to some debate about the future of the UK. The Scottish electorate voted for the UK to stay in the EU, and so that revived speculation about Scotland leaving the UK. There is also some discussion about Northern Ireland’s future in the UK, as the Northern Irish electorate also voted to stay in the EU.

36 Many ICU professionals : RNS

A registered nurse (RN) might work in an intensive care unit (ICU).

37 Snack food mascot with a monocle : MR PEANUT

Planters is the company with the Mr. Peanut icon. Mr. Peanut was the invention of a first-grader named Antonio Gentile, a young man who won a design contest in 1916. A remarkable achievement, I’d say …

40 Politically motivated spending : PORK

Pork-barrel politics have been around for a long time. The term “pork barrel” originated in 1863 in a story by Edward Everett Hale called “The Children of the Public”. Hale used the phrase in a positive way, describing any public spending by the government for the benefit of citizens. By the 1870s the term “pork” had negative connotations, with references in the press to “pork-barrel bills” in Congress. Nowadays “pork” really applies to any government project designed to benefit a relatively small group of citizens (usually potential voters for a particular politician) with the bill being paid by the citizenry as a whole.

44 Unwelcome windshield item : TICKET

What we know as a windshield here in North America, is referred to as a windscreen on the other side of the Atlantic. In America, we use the term “windscreen” for a mesh or foam device placed around a microphone to limit noise caused by wind.

47 Rights advocacy gp. : ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has its roots in the First World War. It grew out of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (CLB) that was founded to provide legal advice and support to conscientious objectors. The ACLU’s motto is “Because Freedom Can’t Protect Itself”. The ACLU also hosts a blog on the ACLU.org website called “Speak Freely”.

49 The Madrigal family home in “Encanto,” e.g. : CASA

“Encanto” is a 2021 animated Disney film. It is about a Colombian family, named the Madrigals, who have magical powers that provide assistance to the people in their community (Encanto).

50 Dog in Oz : TOTO

Toto is Dorothy’s dog in the film “The Wizard of Oz”, and in the original book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. Toto was played in the movie by a dog called Terry, but Terry’s name was soon changed to Toto in real life due to the success of the film.

51 Norwegian saint : OLAF

Of the many kings of Norway named Olaf/Olav (and there have been five), Olaf II is perhaps the most celebrated, as he was canonized and made the patron saint of the country. Olaf II was king from 1015 to 1028 and was known as “Olaf the Big” (or “Olaf the Fat”) during his reign. Today he is more commonly referred to as “Olaf the Holy”. After Olaf died he was given the title of “Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae”, which is Latin for “Norway’s Eternal King”.

52 Pearl Harbor site : OAHU

The US Navy’s presence in Pearl Harbor dates back to 1899. The original name for the bay was “Wai Momi”, which translates from Hawaiian as “Waters of Pearl”.

54 Catmobile, e.g. : CAR

The catmobile is a vehicle driven by Catman or Catwoman in the Batman universe.