Tag: Strategy with delaying tactics crossword clue

Bill’s time: 5m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5 High-five sound : SLAP

The celebratory gesture that we call a “high five” is said to have been invented by former baseball players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke when they were both playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s.

9 Hamster homes : CAGES

The rodents known as hamsters are commonly kept as house pets. Male hamsters are called bucks, females are called does, and baby hamsters are known as pups.

14 Word in a bailiff’s order : RISE

Here in the US, the term “bailiff” is sometimes applied to a peace officer who provides security in a court.

15 Comics possum : POGO

“Pogo” is a comic strip launched in 1948 that was the creation of cartoonist Walt Kelly. The story centers on animals that live in the Okefenokee Swamp on the Georgia-Florida border, with the title character “Pogo Possum” being an anthropomorphic opossum.

17 Mail-routing abbr. : ATTN

Attention (attn.)

18 How some close NFL games are won : IN OT

In overtime (in OT)

19 Black, in Bordeaux : NOIRE

Bordeaux is perhaps the wine-production capital of the world. Wine has been produced in the area since the eighth century. Bordeaux has an administrative history too. During WWII, the French government relocated from Paris to the port city of Bordeaux when it became clear that Paris was soon to fall to the Germans. After the Germans took France, the capital was famously moved to Vichy.

24 Defense org.? : ABA

I suppose that might be the American Bar Association or the old American Basketball Association.

33 Loafer or moc : SHOE

The loafer slip-on shoe dates back to 1939. “Loafer” was originally a brand name introduced by Fortnum and Mason’s store in London. The derivative term “penny loafer” arose in the late fifties or early sixties, although the exact etymology seems unclear.

“Moc” is short for “moccasin”, a type of shoe. The moccasin is a traditional form of footwear worn by members of many Native American tribes.

34 Outlying communities : EXURBS

An extension to the term “suburb”, an “exurb” is an area beyond the suburbs at the very outskirts of a city. The term “exurbia” is often used to denote an area inhabited by more wealthy people.

41 Fab Four first name : PAUL

The ex-Beatles bass player’s full name is Sir James Paul McCartney. “Paul” was knighted for his services to music in 1997.

The Beatles were described on the sleeve notes of their 1963 album “With the Beatles” as the “fabulous foursome”. The press picked up on the phrase and morphed it into “the Fab Four”.

48 Capote nickname : TRU

The larger-than-life Truman “Tru” Capote was an author and comedian. Capote is perhaps most associated with his novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and his true crime novel “In Cold Blood”. Truman Capote grew up in Monroeville, Alabama. There he met, and became lifelong friends with, fellow novelist Harper Lee. Capote was the inspiration for the character “Dill” in Lee’s celebrated work “To Kill a Mockingbird”. In turn, Harper Lee was the inspiration for the character “Idabel” in Capote’s “Other Voices, Other Rooms”.

52 Pancake flipper : SPATULA

A spatula is a tool or implement used for mixing, lifting or spreading. “Spatula” is the Latin name for the tool, and is a diminutive of the word “spatha” meaning “broad, flat blade”. “Spatha” also gives rise to our related term “spade”.

55 Ab neighbor : PEC

“Pecs” is the familiar name for the chest muscle, which is more correctly known as the pectoralis major muscle. “Pectus” is the Latin word for “breast, chest”.

64 When many start lunch : NOON

Our word “noon”, meaning “midday”, comes from the Latin “nona hora” that translates as “ninth hour”. Back in ancient Rome, the “ninth hour” was three in the afternoon. Over the centuries, traditions such as church prayers and “midday” meals shifted from 3 p.m. to 12 p.m., and so “noon” became understood as 12 noon.

65 Slender wind : OBOE

The oboe is perhaps my favorite of the reed instruments. The name “oboe” comes from the French “hautbois” which means “high wood”.

68 Bread with hummus : PITA

Pita is a lovely bread from Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines. Pita is usually round, and has a “pocket” in the center. The pocket is created by steam that puffs up the dough during cooking leaving a void when the bread cools.

The lovely dip/spread called hummus usually contains mashed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic. The name “hummus” is an Arabic word for “chickpeas”.

71 Place to hold a snifter : STEM

A brandy snifter is a glass with a short stem, a wide bowl and a narrow top. The bowl is cupped in the hand so that the brandy, whiskey or other spirit is warmed, to facilitate evaporation. The wide bowl gives a large surface area, further encouraging evaporation, and the narrow top traps the aroma in the glass. So, one can easily “sniff” the spirit’s aroma in the “snifter”.

Down

1 Stick in one’s __ : CRAW

“Craw” is another name for “crop”, a portion of the alimentary tract of some animals, including birds. The crop is used for the storage of food prior to digestion. It allows the animal to eat large amounts and then digest that food with efficiency over an extended period. The expression “to stick in one’s craw” is used when one cannot accept something, cannot “swallow” it.

2 “Lovely” musical meter maid : RITA

“Lovely Rita” is a Beatles song on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album. When the album was released in 1967, the term “meter maid” wasn’t used in the UK, although it was a slang term used in the US. The song helped spread the usage of “meter maid” all around the English-speaking world. Apparently the inspiration for the song was McCartney getting a parking ticket one day outside the Abbey Road Studios. He accepted the ticket with good grace, from a warden named Meta Davis. McCartney felt that Meta “looked like a Rita”, so that was the name she was given in the song.

3 Piedmont wine center : ASTI

Asti is a sparkling white wine from the Piedmont region of Italy, and is named for the town of Asti around which the wine is produced. The wine used to be called Asti Spumante, and it had a very bad reputation as a “poor man’s champagne”. The “Spumante” was dropped in a marketing attempt at rebranding associated with a reduction in the amount of residual sugar in the wine.

Piedmont in the northwest of Italy is one of the nation’s twenty administrative regions. It is a mountainous region that is surrounded on three sides by the Alps. The Italian name “Piemonte” translates as “foot of a mountain”. Piedmont’s capital city is Turin.

5 Veggie favored by Popeye : SPINACH

The cartoon character Popeye is very fond of spinach, eating cans of the vegetable through his pipe and garnering great strength from it.

8 Idaho product : POTATO

Idaho has the nickname “Gem State”, mainly because almost every known type of gemstone has been found there. Idaho is also sometimes called the Potato State as potatoes are such a popular crop in the state. I’d go for the potatoes over the gems, but that’s probably just me …

11 Beautiful people, as a group : GLITTERATI

“Glitterati” is a melding of the words “glitter” and “literati”.

13 Jouster’s mount : STEED

“Jousting” and “tilting” are synonyms describing the medieval competition in which two horsemen yielding blunted lances attempt to unseat each other. Such an event has been referred to as “jousting” since the 1300s. At some point, the path of the two charging horsemen was separated by a cloth barrier known as a tilt (“tilt” meant “cloth covering”). The term “tilting” was applied to the sport in the 1500s, although by then the cloth barrier had been upgraded to a wooden fence.

21 Sacred Nile bird : IBIS

The ibis is a wading bird that was revered in ancient Egypt. “Ibis” is an interesting word grammatically speaking. You can have one “ibis” or two “ibises”, and then again one has a flock of “ibis”. And if you want to go with the classical plural, instead of two “ibises” you would have two “ibides”!

26 Scrolling PC key : PGUP

PGUP (Page Up) and PGDN (Page Down) are two navigation keys found on a PC keyboard.

27 Frisks, with “down” : PATS …

Back in the 1500s, the verb “to frisk” meant “to dance, frolic”, a sense that carries through to our contemporary adjective “frisky”. “Frisk” somehow took on the meaning “pat down in a search” in the late 1700s.

28 Salt Lake City’s state : UTAH

Salt Lake City (SLC) was founded by Brigham Young, in 1847. The city takes its name from the Great Salt Lake on which it sits, and indeed was known as “Great Salt Lake City” up until 1868.

29 Philanthropist : BENEFACTOR

Philanthropy is a concern for human welfare, and the act of donating to persons or groups who support such concerns. The term “philanthropy” derives from the Greek “phil-” meaning “loving”, and “anthropos” meaning “mankind”.

36 Fake coin : SLUG

A slug is a counterfeit coin that is used to trick a coin-operated machine. A slug might just be a metal blank, or another coin of lower value. I remember the Austrian Schilling trick that was used in the nineties in the UK. A counterfeiter simply glued two Austrian Schillings back-to-back, and these passed nicely as pound coins. Back then, that represented a 90% profit for the bad guy.

40 Quarterback Brady : TOM

Quarterback Tom Brady signed up with the New England Patriots in 2000, and led the team to more Super Bowl appearances than any other player in history. Brady is from San Mateo, California, which isn’t very far from here. He dated actress Bridget Moynahan for a couple of years, and the pair have a child together. Brady has been married to Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen since 2009.

44 Big Island port : HILO

Hilo is the largest settlement on the big island of Hawaii, and has a population of over 43,000 (that’s not very many!). I love the Big Island …

50 Cape Canaveral event : LAUNCH

The famous headland in Florida called Cape Canaveral was named by Spanish explorers in the early 16th century. As the Cape acts as a launching station for many of NASA’s rockets, when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 the NASA facility on nearby Merritt Island was renamed the Kennedy Space Center, and President Johnson went as far as renaming the whole of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy. The name change for the cape didn’t go down well in Florida though, as the headland had been called Cape Canaveral for over 400 years. So, the name was restored in 1973, and Cape Kennedy is no more.

51 Bunches of Brownies : TROOPS

Brownies are members of the Girl Guiding organization who are seven to ten years old. When the group was founded in 1914 by Lord Baden-Powell, they were known as Rosebuds. That name wasn’t popular with the membership and so was changed, taking inspiration from an 1870 story by Juliana Horatia Ewing called “The Brownies”.

53 Martinez with three Cy Youngs : PEDRO

Pedro Martinez is a retired baseball pitcher from the Dominican Republic. Martinez won the Cy Young Award three times, and was on the Boston Red Sox team that won the 2004 World Series.

58 Minnesota’s state bird : LOON

The common loon (also “great northern diver”) is the provincial bird of Ontario, and the state bird of Minnesota. The loon once appeared on Canadian $20 bills and also appears on the Canadian one-dollar coin, giving the coin the nickname “the loonie”.

59 Last bio : OBIT

Our word “obituary” comes from the Latin “obituaris”. The Latin term was used for “record of the death of a person”, although the literal meaning is “pertaining to death”.