Day: February 4, 2010

The name’s William Ernest Butler, but please call me Bill. I grew up in Ireland, but now live out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m retired now, from technology businesses that took our family all over the world. I answer all emails, so please feel free to email me at bill@paxient.com

If you are working on the New York Times crossword in any other publication, you are working on the syndicated puzzle. Here is a link to my answers to today’s SYNDICATED New York Times crossword. To find any solution other than today’s, enter the crossword number (e.g. 1225, 0107) in the “Search the Blog” box above.

This is my solution to the crossword published in the New York Times today …

Completion Time: 29m 07s
Theme: Anagrams … e.g. SEA SALT & ATLASES; ABRIDGE & BRIGADE.
Answers I missed: 0

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES
Across
19 SOAVE: Soave is a dry white wine produced in the area around the city of Verona in northeast Italy.

23 ERR: The reference here is to the saying “to err is human, to forgive divine”.

25 PLEBS: In Ancient Rome, the priviliged classes were the patricians. The rest of the Roman population (if not slaves) were the plebs.

27 MAW: A maw is the term used to describe the mouth or stomach of a carnivorous animal. It has become a slang term for the mouth or stomach of a greedy person.

30 BABE: Jack Dunn was the owner/manager of the Baltimore Orioles back in 1913, when he signed on George Herman Ruth as a pitcher. The other players called Ruth “Jack’s newest babe”, and the name stuck.


45 HOGAN: A hogan is a traditional home of the Navajo people.

48 HYDE: Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was published in 1886.

67 PROTEAN: In Greek mythology, the sea-god Proteus had the ability to take on new shapes to hide himself. This led to our word protean, meaning someone or something that is ever-changing, versatile.

69 PATERNO: Joe Paterno has been coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions since 1966. He and his wife Sue wrote a children’s book together, called “We Are Penn State!“

74 RENAMED: St. Petersburg, simply a beautiful city to visit, was renamed Petrograd in 1914, Leningrad in 1924, and back to St. Petersburg in 1991.

Down
2 EBRO: The mighty Ebro flows into the Mediterranean across northeast Spain. It divided the empires of Rome and Carthage after the First Punic War, the Romans to the north, and the Carthaginians to the south. NB: the Carthaginian Republic was centered in Carthage, the ruins of which are on the North African coast in Tunisia.


3 ARIA: “Summertime” is an aria from George Gershwin’s wonderful opera “Porgy and Bess“.

7 TEDS: Dr. Seuss’s real name was Theodore Seuss Geisel, so I am sure some folks must have called him “Ted”. Dr. Seuss is simply a pen name.

8 ABDUL: Paula Abdul, famous most recently as a judge on “American Idol“, sold 13 million copies of her album “Spellbound“.

12 SARG: Tony Sarg was a German-American puppeteer and illustrator. He was hired by Macy’s in 1928 to build helium-filled “puppets” for their Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, a tradition that was to last a long time. In 1935 he designed and built the puppets and displays in Macy’s windows for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

33 ETHYL: The Ethyl Corporation produced the controversial anti-knock fuel additive known as Ethyl, actually tetra-ethyl lead, and we are still living with the consequences …

34 SWEDE: Dag Hammarskjold was the second secretary-general of the United Nations, right up until his death in a plane crash in Rhodesia in 1961. The crash was considered suspicious at the time, as the bodyguards were found to have bullet wounds when they died, but this was put down to bullets exploding in the fire after the crash.

39 IKEA: “Unboring” is the name of an IKEA marketing campaign. Did you know that IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943 …. when he was just 17-years-old??!!

47 HTTP: Just in case you con’t realize it, http are the first letters in most Internet links (just look up at the address of this blog in the address bar above). Oh, and it stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol.

52 CAFTAN: Boubou is the name given to a type of men’s clothing, very similar to a caftan, worn in West Africa.

57 PLENA: A plenum is the name given to a complete legislative assembly under the parliamentary system, with a quorum being the minimum number of members required to be present to conduct business.

64 OREM: Orem, Utah was originally known as Sharon (the Biblical name), and then Provo Bench, and in 1914 it was given the name Orem, the family name of a local railroad operator.

65 ANNE: St. Anne, the mother of Mary, grandmother of Jesus, takes her name from the Hebrew name “Hannah”.

66 TODD: Todd Palin, the former “First Dude” of Alaska, husband of Sarah Palin.