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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6A Alligatorid of Central and South America : CAIMAN

Caimans are relatively small, crocodile-like reptiles that inhabit Central and South America. That said, the largest species can grow to 13 feet in length, but many are about 3 feet long.

12A Fabric with diagonal ribbing : TWILL

The verb “to twill” means to weave a cloth (called “twill”) that has a pattern of diagonal parallel ribs.

13A Formula 1’s Circuit de Monaco, e.g. : ROAD RACE

The Principality of Monaco is on the Mediterranean coast, and is otherwise surrounded by France, even though it is just under 10 miles from the Italian border. Monaco is the world’s most densely populated country, and the world’s second smallest country (the smallest being Vatican City). The principality has been very prosperous since the late 1800s, with the economy given a tremendous boost with the opening of several gambling casinos.

In motor racing, the designation “formula” is a set of rules that all participants and cars must abide by. The definition of “Formula One” was agreed back in 1946, with the “one” designating that it is the most advanced of the “formulae”, and the most competitive.

15A Hip-hop artist with a 2018 Pulitzer : LAMAR

Kendrick Lamar is a hip-hop singer from Compton, California. Lamar’s full name is Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, with the singer’s given name honoring Motown artist Eddie Kendricks. Notably, his 2017 album “Damn” won a Pulitzer Prize for Music, becoming the first non-classical or non-jazz album to do so.

16A Fine fodder for a Freudian analyst : SEX DREAMS

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist, and founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. One of Freud’s tenets was that our dreams are a necessary part of sleep as they prevent the dreamer from awakening due to desire for unfulfilled wishes. The dream’s content represents those unfulfilled wishes and satisfies the desire.

18A State flower of Utah : SEGO

The sego lily is the state flower of Utah. It is a perennial plant found throughout the Western United States.

29A E-liquid : VAPE JUICE

An electronic cigarette (also called an “e-cigarette”) is a battery-powered device that resembles a real cigarette. The e-cigarette vaporizes a solution that contains nicotine, forming a vapor that resembles smoke. The vapor is inhaled in a process called “vaping”, delivering nicotine into the body. The assumption is that an e-cigarette is healthier than a regular cigarette as the inhaled vapor is less harmful than inhaled smoke. But, that may not be so …

34A Outmoded living room fixtures : PLASMA TVS

Plasma televisions are so called because the screen is made up of tiny cells containing electrically charged ionized gases (plasmas). Each of the cells is effectively a tiny fluorescent lamp. Plasma displays are now obsolete.

37A Reddit Q&A : AMA

Ask me anything (AMA)

43A Number of Beethoven operas : ONE

“Fidelio” is Ludwig van Beethoven’s one and only opera, and a work with which he really struggled. “Fidelio” tells of a woman named Leonore who disguises herself as a prison guard in order to get her condemned husband out of prison.

44A Fishing accessory : CREEL

A creel is a basket used for catching sea creatures (lobsters, for example). Creel is also the name given to the small wicker basket used to hold fish that have been caught by an angler. “Creel” is originally a Scottish word.

46A Retired rapper Azalea : IGGY

“Iggy Azalea” is the stage name of Australian rapper Amethyst Kelly. I haven’t heard of her outside of crosswords, I must admit …

47A “Oppenheimer” setting : LOS ALAMOS

The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico takes its name from the Spanish for “the poplars” or “the cottonwoods”. Famously, it is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory which was founded during WWII to work on the Manhattan Project, the development of the first atomic bomb. The town of Los Alamos didn’t exist as such, until it was planned and constructed to support the employees working on development of the bomb.

“Oppenheimer” is an epic 2023 film starring Cillian Murphy in the title role. The movie follows J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”, from his student days right through World War II and beyond. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film has an amazing ensemble cast that includes:

• Matt Damon (General Leslie Groves)
• Robert Downey Jr. (Lewis Strauss)
• Josh Hartnett (Ernest Lawrence)
• Kenneth Branagh (Niels Bohr)
• Tom Conti (Albert Einstein)
• Gary Oldman (Harry S. Truman)

49A From the British Isles, say : ANGLO

Germanic tribes invaded Great Britain from the early 5th century and created the nation that we now call England. The Anglo-Saxons (sometimes simply “Saxons”), as these tribes came to be called, held sway in the country until the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Anglo-Saxons were descendants of three Germanic tribes:

• The Angles, from Angeln in Northern Germany (and the tribe that gave the name “England”).
• The Saxons, from Lower Saxony and Holland.
• The Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula in Denmark.

The “British Isles” comprise over six thousand islands off the northwest coast of Europe, the two largest being the islands of Great Britain and Ireland. Back in my homeland of Ireland, we’re not too fond of the term “British Isles”, as it tends to awaken memories of the Norman invasion and the Tudor conquest. We tend to go instead with the term “Britain and Ireland”.

51A County fair animal : STEER

A steer is a male bovine that was castrated when young and is then raised for beef. The term “steer” comes from the Old English “steor” meaning “bullock”.

52A Lichtenstein’s “Whaam!,” e.g. : POP ART

Roy Lichtenstein was a pop artist from New York City, and a contemporary of Andy Warhol. He was famous for his “cartoon-strip” paintings, especially works called “Whaam!” and “Drowning Girl”. If you saw the Ben Stiller film “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”, you might remember Lichtenstein’s painting “Crying Girl” coming to life as part of the plot.

Down

1D Closing words of a historic 1963 speech : AT LAST

“Free at last” are words used by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the end of his “I have a dream …” speech:

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

7D Actor Brody : ADRIEN

Adrien Brody won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the Roman Polanski masterpiece “The Pianist”. Brody won the award in 2003 at the age of 29, making him the youngest person ever to receive the Best Actor Oscar.

8D Nobel-winning daughter of Marie Curie : IRENE

Along with her husband Frédéric, Irene Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of artificial radioactivity. Irene was the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, who also won Nobel Prizes. Irene died when she was 58 years old, suffering from leukemia brought on by her exposure to high doses of radiation.

Marie Curie lived a life of firsts. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and indeed was the first person to win two Nobel prizes (in Physics in 1903, and in Chemistry in 1911). Most of Curie’s work was in the field of radioactivity, and was carried out in the days when the impact of excessive radiation on the human body was not understood. She died from aplastic anemia, caused by high exposure to radiation. To this day, Curie’s personal papers are kept preserved in lead-lined boxes as they are highly radioactive, even her personal cookbook.

10D European football club founded in 1899 : AC MILAN

The famous Italian soccer club Associazione Calcio Milan is better known as AC Milan. AC Milan has won four world club titles, more than any club in the game anywhere. The team’s home ground is San Siro, which has a capacity of just over 80,000, the highest in the country. AC Milan used to be owned by the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

13D Clutch hitter nicknamed “Mr. October” : REGGIE JACKSON

Former baseball player Reggie Jackson is known as “Mr. October”, because of his memorable postseason performances.

14D Kitchen brand : OXO

Entrepreneur Sam Farber founded OXO in 1990 after watching his wife struggle to use a vegetable peeler because of her arthritis. He pioneered the “Universal Design” philosophy, creating products like push-button POP containers that are easy for everyone to handle, regardless of hand strength.

18D Obsolescent office accessory : STAMP PAD

Something described as “obsolescent” is going out of use, becoming “obsolete”.

21D Blood bank supply : SERA

Blood serum (plural “sera”) is the clear, yellowish part of blood i.e. that part which is neither a blood cell nor a clotting factor. Included in blood serum are antibodies, the proteins that are central to our immune system. Blood serum from animals that have immunity to a particular disease can be transferred to another individual, hence providing that second individual with some level of immunity. Blood serum used to pass on immunity can be called “antiserum”.

24D Multibillionaire, e.g. : HAVE

Oh yeah …

30D Sugar source : CANE

When sugarcane is processed to extract sugar, it is crushed and mashed to produce a juice. The juice is boiled to make a sugary concentrate called cane syrup, from which sugar crystals are extracted. A second boiling of the leftover syrup produces second molasses, from which more sugar crystals can be extracted. A third boiling results in what is called blackstrap molasses.

32D Lovingly, in a score : AMOROSO

“Amoroso” is the Italian word for “lovingly”, and is used as a direction on a musical score.

33D Is courting out of one’s league, so to speak : DATES UP

That’s what I did, for sure …

35D Poster of TikTok tutorials, e.g. : VLOGGER

A video blog is perhaps what one might expect, i.e. a blog that is essentially a series of video posts. The phrase “video logging” is often shortened to “vlogging”.

38D Square dance figure : CALLER

A square dance is a dance for eight participants, i.e. four couples. For much of the time, the couples are arranged so that they form the sides of a square, hence the name of the dance.

39D Kid-lit character who often loses his tail : EEYORE

Eeyore is the donkey character in A. A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh”. He is very lovable, but has a gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life.

41D Stiller’s partner in comedy : MEARA

Anne Meara married fellow comedic actor Jerry Stiller in 1954. The couple’s children are actors Ben and Amy Stiller. Meara co-starred with Carroll O’Connor and Martin Balsam in the eighties sitcom “Archie Bunker’s Place”, a spin-off from “All in the Family”.

45D Name on a “Kill Bill” poster : UMA

“Kill Bill” is a 2-part Quentin Tarantino movie (I haven’t seen it, as I really don’t “do” Tarantino). “Kill Bill” started off as one film, but as the running time was over four hours, it was split into two “volumes”, released several months apart in 2003 and 2004. There has been a lot of talk about making “Kill Bill: Volume 3”.