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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14 “Reward” for altruism, maybe : GOOD KARMA

Karma is a religious concept with its basis in Indian faiths. Karma embraces the notion of cause and effect. Good deeds have good consequences at some later point in one’s life, one’s future life, or one’s afterlife. And, bad deeds have bad consequences.

An egoist (also “egotist”) is a selfish and conceited person. The opposite would be an altruist.

16 Beer whose name means “morning sun” : ASAHI

Asahi is a Japanese beer, and the name of the brewery that produces it. “Asahi” is Japanese for “morning sun”. Asahi introduced a “dry beer” in 1987, igniting a craze that rocketed the brewery to the number one spot in terms of beer production in Japan, with Sapporo close behind.

18 Feature of Garamond or Perpetua : SERIF

Serifs are details on the ends of characters in some typefaces. Typefaces without serifs are known as sans-serif, using the French word “sans” meaning “without” and “serif” from the Dutch “schreef” meaning “line”. Some people say that serif fonts are easier to read on paper, whereas sans-serif fonts work better on a computer screen. I’m not so sure though …

The Garamond group of typefaces is named after Parisian publisher Claude Garamond. He was a leading designer of type in the 1500s, and is credited with the introduction of the apostrophe, accent and cedilla into the French language.

19 Forensic site in Quantico, Va. : FBI LAB

The FBI Academy is located on a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. The academy opened for the first trainees in 1972. Included in the training complex is a 10-acre mock city known as Hogan’s Alley.

20 Like Russia before 1917 : TSARIST

The year 1917 saw two revolutions in Russia, with the pair collectively called “the Russian Revolution”. As a result of the February Revolution that centered on Petrograd, the last Emperor of Russia (Tsar Nicholas II) abdicated and members of the Imperial parliament took control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The Provisional Government was itself overthrown in the October Revolution, which was led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik party.

25 Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music : SOSA

Mercedes Sosa was a singer from Argentina who was hugely popular throughout Latin America and performed all over the world. She was so popular in her homeland that when she passed away in 2009 the Argentine president ordered three days of national mourning, and her body was placed on display at the National Congress building in Buenos Aires.

29 Affliction for Morrie in “Tuesdays With Morrie,” in brief : ALS

Baseball legend Lou Gehrig was known as a powerhouse. He was a big hitter and just kept on playing. Gehrig broke the record for the most consecutive number of games played, and he still holds the record for the most career grand slams. His durability earned him the nickname “The Iron Horse”. Sadly, he died in 1941 at 37-years-old suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an illness we now call “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”. The New York Yankees retired the number four on 4th of July 1939 in his honor, making Lou Gehrig the first baseball player to have his number retired.

“Tuesdays with Morrie” is a novel by Mitch Albom, first published in 1997. The story is a work of nonfiction, telling the tale of sociologist Morrie Schwartz and his students, one of whom is the author Mitch Albom. Albom has frequent visits with his old professor when he discovers that Morrie is dying from ALS.

30 What shells can be filled with : CREW TEAMS

A scull is a boat used for competitive rowing. The main hull of the boat is often referred to as a shell. Crew members who row the boat can be referred to as “oars”. And, a scull is also an oar mounted on the stern of a small boat. It’s all very confusing …

31 Rotary successor : TOUCH-TONE

The first patent for a rotary dial mechanism for a phone was granted in 1898, and the familiar rotary dial phones (with holes for the finger) were introduced by the Bell System in 1919. This form of dialing was called “pulse dialing”. When you dialed the number 5, say, the dial would rotate back to the start position, opening and closing electrical contacts five times and sending five pulses over the telephone line. I used to love rotary dial phones when I was a kid. My grandfather was a telephone engineer and he showed me how to “tap out” the pulses on the “hook” at the top of a pay phone. I was able to make free calls that way. He definitely contributed to the delinquency of a minor …

32 Oldest city in France : MARSEILLE

Marseille (often written “Marseilles” in English) is the second largest city in France, after Paris. Marseille is also the largest commercial port in the country. I used to live nearby, and can attest that Marseille and environs is a great place to visit …

37 W.H. Auden’s “The Fall of ___” : ROME

Noted poet W. H. Auden was born and raised in England, but eventually became a US citizen. As well as hundreds of poems, Auden also wrote librettos for operas, including Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress”.

38 Rat : FINK

A fink is an informer, someone who rats out his or her cohorts.

42 There are layers to this : LASAGNA

“Lasagna” was originally the name of a cooking pot, but the term came to mean a dish that was cooked in it. “Lasagna” also became the name of the flat noodle used in the dish. If you order lasagna on the other side of the Atlantic, you’ll notice the “lasagne” spelling, the plural of “lasagna”. The plural is used as there is more than one layer of pasta in the dish.

49 Kites, e.g. : BIRDS

Kites are birds of prey that feed mainly on carrion.

51 Tad : SKOSH

“Skosh” is a slang term meaning “a little bit”. It was originally military slang that came out of the Korean War. “Skosh” derives from the Japanese word “sukoshi” which translates as “few, little, some”.

Down

1 Some appliances : LGS

LG is a very large South Korean manufacturer of electronics, chemicals and telecom products. The company used to be known as Lucky-Goldstar, whence the initialism “LG”.

2 “Imbecile!” : YOU FOOL!

The unsavory word “imbecile” was formerly used by the medical community to describe someone with moderate to severe mental retardation. The term comes from the Latin “imbecillus” meaning “weak, feeble”, which was extended to mean “weak-minded”. Back in the early 1900s, IQ tests were used to classify those suffering from mental retardation into categories:

• “idiot” … IQ of 0-20
• “imbecile” … IQ of 21-50
• “moron” …IQ of 51-70

5 Political activist who organized 1963’s March on Washington : BAYARD RUSTIN

1963’s March on Washington was one of the largest political rallies in the history of the US, with about a quarter of a million people participating in the march itself. The rally was a call for civil and economic rights for African Americans. Famously, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to the protesters while standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

7 Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short : WMD

The first recorded use of the term “Weapon of Mass Destruction” (WMD) was in 1937. The words were used by Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, in reference to the bombardment of Guernica in Spain during the Spanish Civil War by the German Luftwaffe. He said, “Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?”

8 Seventh and final “Chronicles of Narnia” book, with “The” : … LAST BATTLE

There are seven novels in “The Chronicles of Narnia” children’s fantasy series written by C. S. Lewis:

• “The Magician’s Nephew”
• “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
• “The Horse and the Boy”
• “Prince Caspian”
• “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”
• “The Silver Chair”
• “The Last Battle”

11 Things to wrangle with : LARIATS

Our word “lariat” comes from the Spanish “la reater” meaning “the rope”.

22 Edward Snowden’s former employer : NSA

Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who leaked several top secret NSA documents to the media beginning in June 2013. After disclosing his name as the source of the leaks, Snowden tried to seek asylum in Ecuador. While traveling to Ecuador he had a layover in Moscow. While in Moscow, the US government revoked his passport, which effectively left him stranded in the transit area of Moscow Airport. The Russian government eventually granted him annually-renewable temporary asylum.

27 Accounts ___ (ledger phrase) : RECEIVABLE

A ledger is an account book. The term ”ledger” comes from the Middle English “leggen” meaning “to lay”. The original ledger was a large book “laid” in one particular place permanently, an example being a breviary in a church.

28 Gertrude, for one : DANE

In William Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet”, King Hamlet dies. His brother Claudius hastily marries the king’s widow Queen Gertrude, and succeeds to the throne. The former king’s son, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is not happy and admonishes his mother for taking his uncle as her husband:

O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
Good night, but go not to mine Uncle’s bed,
Assume a virtue, if you have it not. Refrain to night
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence. Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blessed,
I’ll blessing beg of you.

32 Name of the whale in “Pinocchio” : MONSTRO

“The Adventures of Pinocchio” is an 1883 children’s novel by Carlo Collodi, which is all about an animated puppet named Pinocchio, and Geppetto, his poor woodcarver father. In one of his adventures, Pinocchio encounters “the Terrible Dogfish”, a huge sea monster that is given the nickname “the Attila of fish and fishermen”. The sea monster features in the 1940 film “Pinocchio”, but in Walt Disney’s version it is given the name “Monstro” (the Portuguese word for “monster”).

33 Epitome of completeness : DOTTED I

A tittle is a small diacritical mark used in writing. Examples are the cedilla and tilde used in some languages, and the dot over the lowercase letters i and j in English.

35 Chest bump? : 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”.

36 Post-Trebek “Jeopardy!” host : BIALIK

After the sad passing of host Alex Trebek in 2020, producers announced that the game show “Jeopardy!” would be fronted by a series of interim guest hosts. The list included “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings, TV news anchor Katie Couric, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and “The Big Bang Theory” actress Mayim Bialik.

The wonderful Mayim Bialik is an actress best known for playing Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on TV’s “The Big Bang Theory”. Bialik also played the title role in the NBC sitcom “Blossom”. There’s a line in one of “The Big Bang Theory” episodes in which Sheldon talks about “the girl who played TV’s ‘Blossom’”. He notes that the “Blossom” actress has “a PhD in neuroscience or something”. And that is true, actress Mayim Bialik has indeed got a doctorate in neuroscience.

44 Concessions : SOPS

Cerberus is a dog with three heads that appears in both Greek and Roman mythology. Cerberus had the job of guarding the gates of Hades and preventing those who had crossed the River Styx from ever escaping. A sop is a piece of food that has been dipped in some liquid, as one might sop a piece of bread in soup. There is an idiomatic expression, “to give a sop to Cerberus”, which means “to give someone a bribe, pay someone off”. The idea is that if one could bribe Cerberus, give him a sop to eat, then he would let you pass and escape from Hades.