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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

8A One who’s definitely not being invited to the party : PARIAH

“Pariah” is an anglicized version of the Tamil word “Paraiyar”. The Paraiyar are a social group of about 9 million people found in some Indian states and in Sri Lanka. The term “pariah” came to be a general term for members of the lowest caste in society, outcasts.

14A Letters indicating a texter’s P.O.V. : IMO

In my opinion (IMO)

Point of view (POV)

15A Fried side dish with catfish, perhaps : OKRA

Catfish get their common name because they have prominent barbels, slender sensory organs located near the mouth. The barbels are said to resemble a cat’s whiskers.

16A Cough drop brand whose name is yodeled in its commercials : RICOLA

Ricola is a Swiss brand of cough drops and breath mints.

17A “Mafia members, e.g.” : MOBSTERS (M up to L gives LOBSTERS)

Apparently, “Cosa Nostra” is the real name for the Italian Mafia. “Cosa Nostra” translates as “our thing” or “this thing of ours”. The term first became public in the US when the FBI managed to turn several members of the American Mafia. The Italian authorities established that “Cosa Nostra” was also used in Sicily when they penetrated the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s. The term “Mafia” seems to be just a literary invention that has become popular with the public.

21A Bamboozle : STUMP

Back in the early 1400s, to “stump” was to stumble over an obstacle, like a “tree-stump”. By the early 1800s, the verb “to stump” was used more generally, to mean “to baffle, bring to a halt by presenting obstacles”.

It’s thought that the lovely word “bamboozle” came into English from the Scottish “bombaze” meaning “perplex”. We’ve been using “bamboozle” since the very early 1700s.

23A Michigan, in Chicago: Abbr. : AVE

Chicago’s Michigan Avenue is home to many of the city’s landmarks, including the Chicago Water Tower, the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park and the Magnificent Mile shopping district.

26A “Alimony recipients, say” : EX-SPOUSES (XS up to S gives ESPOUSES)

Alimony is a payment made by one spouse to another for support after a legal separation. The term “alimony” derives from the Latin “alimonia”, meaning “nourishment, food, support”.

30A Important travel info, in brief : ETDS

Estimated time of departure (ETD)

31A Dessert often eaten before the ides of March : PIE

The first three digits of the mathematical constant pi are 3.14. Pi Day has been celebrated on March 14th (3/14) every year since 1988, when it was inaugurated at the San Francisco Exploratorium. In countries where the day is usually written before the month, Pi Day is July 22nd, reflecting the more accurate approximation of pi as 22/7. Interestingly, March 14th is also Albert Einstein’s birthday.

There were three important days in each month of the old Roman calendar. These days originally depended on the cycles of the moon but were eventually “fixed” by law. “Kalendae” were the first days of each month, originally the days of the new moon. “Nonae” were originally the days of the half moon. And “idus” (the ides) was originally the day of the full moon, eventually fixed at the 15th day of a month. Actually, the ides were the 15th day of March, May, July and October. For all other months, the ides fell on the 13th. Go figure …

35A “Light” weapon : SABER

The famous lightsaber weapons in the ‘Star Wars’ series of films saw a new variation in the seventh episode, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’ The character Kylo Ren wields a lightsaber featuring energy crossguards just above the grip.

43A Kind of bean used in Egyptian falafel : FAVA

The fava bean is also known as the broad bean. “Broad bean” is used “broadly” (pun!) in the UK, whereas “fava bean” is common in the US. “Fava” is the Italian name for the broad bean.

53A “11th of a noted 12” : AQUARIUS (S up to M gives AQUARIUM)

People born between January 20 and February 18 have the star sign Aquarius, the water carrier. The water carrier represented by the constellation Aquarius is a beautiful youth named Ganymede who served as the cupbearer to the gods of ancient Greece.

60A Part of a slider : BUN

Sliders are small hamburgers. One suggestion is that the “slider” originated in the US Navy, with the name being a reference to greasy hamburgers sliding back and forth across the grill as a ship pitches and rolls. More recently, the slider became associated with the White Castle fast food chain of restaurants. White Castle introduced the “Slyder” in 1985.

61A ___ Roy, “Succession” role for which Kieran Culkin won an Emmy : ROMAN

Kieran Culkin began his acting career alongside his older brother Macaulay in the 1990 film “Home Alone”. Kieran’s most lauded performance was the title role in 2002’s “Igby Goes Down”, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

“Succession” is a very popular dark comedy-drama series that premiered in 2018. It’s about a family-owned, global media company. The “succession” in question is who will get to run the empire after the passing of the ailing family patriarch. The marvelous Scottish actor Brian Cox plays the head of the company Logan Roy. Great stuff, albeit quite depressing and terrifying …

63A “It is not enough to be industrious; ___ the ants”: Henry David Thoreau : SO ARE

Henry David Thoreau is a personal hero of mine. He is best known for his book called “Walden” published in 1854. The book outlines his philosophy of life and details his experiences living in a cabin near Walden Pond just outside Concord, Massachusetts.

64A Smallest member of the genus Lynx : BOBCAT

The lynx is a wild cat, of which there are four species. These are:

• The Eurasian lynx: the biggest of the four species.
• The Canada lynx: well-adapted to life in cold environments.
• The Iberian lynx: a native of the Iberian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and the most endangered cat species in the world.
• The bobcat: our North American wildcat, the smallest of the four lynxes

Down

1D 0 : ZILCH

We use the term “zilch” to mean “nothing”. Our current usage evolved in the sixties, before which the term was used to describe “meaningless speech”. There was a comic character called Mr. Zilch in the 1930s in “Ballyhoo” magazine. Mr. Zilch’s name probably came from the American college slang “Joe Zilch” that was used in the early 1900s for “an insignificant person”.

2D Love of Bologna : AMORE

Bologna is a city in northern Italy. It is home to the University of Bologna that was founded way back in 1088, making it the oldest existing university in the world.

3D Fly off the handle : GO BERSERK

Our word “berserk” meaning “deranged” comes from the “Berserkers”, Norse warriors described in Old Norse literature. Berserkers were renowned for going into battle in a fury, and some believe that they consumed drugged food to get themselves worked up for the fighting ahead.

9D Apple accessory announced alongside the removal of the iPhone’s headphone jack : AIRPODS

AirPods are Apple’s line of bluetooth earbuds. When AirPods were introduced in 2016, the market reacted with some skepticism. The left and right AirPods are not connected by any wire, so there was concern that individual earbuds could fall out of the ear, and possibly get lost. Another concern was Apple’s stated intent to abandon the wired headphone socket on new iPhone models. That was then, and this is now …

12D Motrin alternative : ALEVE

“Aleve” is a brand name used for the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug naproxen sodium.

The anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen is sold under the brand names Advil and Motrin.

13D Epitome of a hot place : HADES

Hades was the god of the underworld to the ancient Greeks. Over time, Hades gave his name to the underworld itself, the place where the dead reside. The term “Hades” was also adopted into the Christian tradition, as an alternative name for hell. But, the concept of hell in Christianity is more akin to the Greek “Tartarus”, which is a dark and gloomy dungeon located in Hades, a place of suffering and torment.

27D Org. focused on cloud security? : USAF

The official song of the US Air Force (USAF) is entitled “The US Air Force”, and was written in 1938 by Robert MacArthur Crawford. The original title was “Army Air Corps”, and this was changed to “Army Air Force” during WWII when the service changed its name. The current title was adopted in 1947, when the USAF became a separate service. Regardless of the official name, the song is commonly referred to as “Wild Blue Yonder”.

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder
At ’em boys, Give ‘er the gun!
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under
Off with one helluva roar!
We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey!
Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force!

34D A.I. that has been trained with massive amounts of text, in brief : LLM

A large language model (LLM), is a type of artificial intelligence that’s trained on massive amounts of text data. This training allows the LLM to understand and generate human-like text, and answer questions in an informative way. I think of it as a really advanced version of predictive text. Instead of predicting the next word, an LLM predicts entire sentences, paragraphs, or even articles. Two examples of large language models are ChatGPT and Gemini.

36D Something to jump on : BANDWAGON

“Bandwagon” is an American term originally used to describe the large wagon that carried the band in a circus procession. Bandwagons then became popular at political rallies, and so someone “on the bandwagon” was someone attaching himself or herself to a cause that was likely to succeed. The first use of the term “bandwagon” in this sense is supposedly in the writings of Theodore Roosevelt in 1899.

45D Overwhelming stream : BARRAGE

In its original sense, the word “barrage” described the act of barring, of creating a barrier. In WWI, the French coined the phrase “tir de barrage” meaning “barrier fire”, artillery and mortar fire that was intended to isolate an objective. It was from this sense that we now use the term “barrage” to describe a massive delivery of gunfire, or figuratively, a concentrated outpouring of speech or writing.

50D Ran amok : RIOTED

The phrase “to run amok” (sometimes “to run amuck”) has been around since the 1670s and is derived from the Malay word for “attacking furiously”, “amuk”. The word “amok” was also used as a noun to describe Malay natives who were “frenzied”. Given Malaya’s troubled history, the natives probably had a good reason for that frenzy …

62D El ___ : NINO

When the surface temperature of much of the Pacific Ocean rises more than half a degree Celsius, then there is said to be an El Niño episode. That small temperature change in the Pacific has been associated with climatic changes that can stretch right across the globe. El Niño is Spanish for “the boy” and is a reference to the Christ child. The phenomenon was given this particular Spanish name because the warming is usually noticed near South America and around Christmas-time.

67D Grape whose “white” wine is actually pink, informally : ZIN

Zinfandel is one of my favorite red wine varietals. It amazes me that the rich and heavy red Zinfandel comes from the same grape as does the sweet White Zinfandel.