Day: October 21, 2011

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
6. Country singer Gibbs glided a short distance? : TERRI FLEW INCHES
Terri Gibbs is a country music singer. She had thirteen singles that made the Billboard country singles charts in the eighties. Gibbs was born blind.

9. Old West gun, crossing over? : WINCHESTER RIFLE
The Winchester rifle was one of the first repeating rifles to be manufactured in volume. The Winchester repeater is known as “The Gun that Won the West”.

20. Where somebody might be spotted : GYM
People at the gym who are doing weight training will often “spot” for each other. This means that the person who is spotting assists in the lift, allowing the “lifter” to work with more weight than usual.

26. Radio switch : AM/FM
The radio spectrum is divided up into bands based on frequency. So, “high band” is composed of relatively high frequency values, and “low band” of frequencies that are relatively low. FM radio falls into the band called Very High Frequency, or VHF. AM radio uses lower frequencies, and so falls into the relatively low bands of Low, Medium and High Frequency (LF, MF, and HF). Television signals use frequencies even higher than VHF, frequencies in the Ultra High Frequency band (UHF).

28. Trip director, for short : GPS
GPS stands for Global Positioning System. The modern GPS system that we use today was built by the military who received the massive funding needed because of fears during the Cold War of the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. We civilians, all round the world, owe a lot to President Ronald Reagan because he directed the military to make GPS available to the public for the common good. He was moved to do so after the Soviet Union shot down KAL flight 007 carrying 269 people, just because it accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace.

34. What Newton’s first law of motion concerns : INERTIA
Newton’s first law of motion states that a body that is moving maintains the same velocity unless it is acted upon by an external force. That resistance to changing velocity is known as “inertia”.

35. Cowboy Rogers as part of a posse after some younger namesakes joined up? : ELDEST ROY IN GANG
Cowboy actor and singer Roy Rogers’ real name was Leonard Franklin Slye. His nickname was “King of the Cowboys”. Roy Rogers married Dale Evans in 1947. Dale’s nickname was “Queen of the West”.

36. Poisonous gilled mushrooms, crossing over? : DESTROYING ANGEL
Destroying angel is the name given to several species of mushroom, all of which are poisonous.

39. Like a roast : EMCEED
Emcee: meaning “MC”, the Master or Mistress of Ceremonies.

45. Prelapsarian home : EDEN
Anything “prelapsarian” is related to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve, before they “lapsed”.

46. L.A. winter hrs. : PST
On the other side of the Atlantic, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is known as “summer time”. The idea behind summer/daylight-savings is to move clocks forward an hour in spring and backwards in the fall, so that afternoons have more daylight.

64. Simon Templar’s creator, crossing over? : LESLIE CHARTERIS
Simon Templar is a very cool character in “The Saint” series of books written by British author Leslie Charteris. “The Saint” was adapted into a famous UK television series in the sixties, with Roger Moore in the title role.

Down
7. First name in despotism : IDI
Idi Amin received most of his military training in the British armed forces, eventually achieving the highest rank possible for a Black African in the British Colonial Army in 1959, that of Warrant Officer. On his return to Uganda he joined the military and quickly rose to the rank of Deputy Commander of the Army. During that time he was quite the athlete. He was a noted rugby player and swimmer, and for nine years held the Ugandan national light-heavyweight boxing title. By the early seventies Amin was commander of all the armed forces of Uganda, and in 1971 seized power in a military coup, displacing the country’s president Milton Obote. There followed seven years of brutal rule by Amin during which it is estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were murdered. Amin was ousted from power in 1979 after a war with Tanzania, and fled to Libya where he stayed for a year. He then moved to Saudi Arabia, where he was financially supported by the Saudi Royal Family for the remainder of his life. He died in 2003.

8. Plant with fiddleheads : FERN
Fiddleheads are those furled fronds that you often see on young ferns. They can be harvested and served as a vegetable.

14. “The ___ Daba Honeymoon” (1914 #1 song) : ABA
You might recognize the chorus of the 1914 song called “Aba Daba Honeymoon”. It goes:

Aba daba daba daba daba daba dab,
Said the chimpie to the monk;
Baba daba daba daba daba daba dab,
Said the monkey to the chimp.

15. Language in which “yes” and “no” are “baat” and “te,” respectively : CAMBODIAN
The Cambodian language is also known as “Khmer”.

20. Free Web-based correspondence service : GMAIL
Gmail is a free webmail service provided by Google, and my favorite of the free email services. Gmail made a big splash when it was introduced because it offered a whopping 1GB of storage whereas other services offered a measly 2-4MB on average.

22. “This Week in Baseball” host Allen : MEL
For many years, the sportscaster Mel Allen was the play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees. He was also the first host of television’s “This Week in Baseball”.

23. “As You Like It” setting : ARDEN
The Forest of Arden is the setting for Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. Even though there is a Forest of Arden surrounding Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-on-Avon, seeing as the play is set in France, one has to assume that the “As You Like It” Arden is an Anglicization of the forested “Ardennes” region that stretches from Belgium into France.

25. Piece in the game Othello : DISC
The game of Reversi is also sold as Othello. The name Othello was chosen as a nod to the play by William Shakespeare.

27. Whimsically odd : FEY
“Fey” is such a lovely word, meaning magical or fairylike. It comes from the Middle English word “feie” which has a less pleasant definition, “fated to die”.

29. What the “Surgeon’s Photo” supposedly depicts : NESSIE
The “Surgeon’s Photograph” is an image that was taken in 1934, supposedly of the Loch Ness monster. It is perhaps the most famous picture of Nessie to this day, the one with a “head” and “neck” sticking up out of the water. The picture’s renown doesn’t seem to have abated, even though it was shown to be a hoax in the mid-nineties. The picture is called the “Surgeon’s Photograph” because it was “taken” by a Dr. Wilson.

33. “Dear me!” : EGAD
“Egad” was developed as a polite way of saying “oh God” in the late 1600s, and is an expression of fear or surprise somewhat like “good grief!”.

37. 1976 Broadway musical based on Henry VIII’s life : REX
The musical “Rex” is based on the life of King Henry VIII. It opened on Broadway in April 1976, and closed a month and a half later. The music for the show was composed by Richard Rodgers, making “Rex” one of the very few flops penned by Rodgers.

38. “Henry & June” author : NIN
Anaïs Nin was a French author, famous for her journals that she wrote for over sixty years from the age of 11 right up to her death. She also wrote highly-regarded erotica, and cited D. H. Lawrence as someone from whom she drew inspiration.

The 1990 movie “Henry & June” is loosely adapted from the book of the same name by Anaïs Nin. The book is based on diaries written by Nin telling of her part in a love triangle with American author Henry Miller and his wife June, played by Uma Thurman in the movie.

42. Banker’s recommendation, for short : IRA
I have to tell you, when I first came to the US from Ireland it was pretty confusing seeing big signs along the freeway advocating IRA contributions. Back in Ireland, that was pretty illegal (where IRA stands for the outlawed Irish Republican Army!).

44. TV show with the most Emmy nominations, informally : SNL
NBC first aired a form of “Saturday Night Live” in 1975, under the title “NBC’s Saturday Night”. The show was actually created to give Johnny Carson some time off from “The Tonight Show”. Back then “The Tonight Show” had a weekend episode, and Carson convinced NBC to pull the Saturday or Sunday recordings off the air and hold them for subsequent weeknights in which Carson needed a break. NBC turned to Lorne Michaels and asked him to pull together a variety show to fill the vacant slot, and he came up with what we now call “Saturday Night Live”.

49. Part of NBC: Abbr. : NATL
NBC has had a number of different logos in the history of the company, including the famous peacock with which we are familiar today. The first peacock logo was introduced in the early days of color television and was designed to illustrate how wonderful color television would be, so go buy one! (NBC was owned by RCA, and they had a vested interest in sales of color television sets).

52. Natalie Portman’s birthplace : ISRAEL
The actress Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem, Israel. She moved to the US with her family when she was just three years old.

54. Grad sch. composition : DISS
Dissertation.

55. Overused plot device : CLICHE
“Cliché” is a word that comes from the world of printing. In the days when type was added as individual letters into a printing plate, for efficiency some oft-used phrases and words were created as one single slug of metal. The word “cliché” was used for such a grouping of letters. It’s easy to see how the same word would become a term to describe any overused phrase. Supposedly, “cliché” comes from French, from teh verb “clicher” meaning “to click”. The idea is that when a matrix of letters was dropped in molten metal to make a cliché, it made a clicking sound.

57. Chaim Potok’s “My Name Is Asher ___” : LEV
“My Name Is Asher Lev” is a novel by Rabbi Chaim Potok, first published in 1972. The story follows the experiences of Asher Lev, a Hasidic Jewish boy in New York City. His story continues in the sequel “The Gift of Asher Lev”.

61. Curtis of hair care : HELENE
Helene Curtis Industries was based in Chicago, and was taken over by Unilever in 1996. Helene Curtis was the first company to use the term “hairspray”, when it introduced aerosol products in 1950.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
2. Bring joy to : ELATE
5. Like some store-bought nuts : SHELLED
6. Country singer Gibbs glided a short distance? : TERRI FLEW INCHES
9. Old West gun, crossing over? : WINCHESTER RIFLE
11. Doing time : INSIDE
12. Nautical leader? : ASTRO-
13. Illegal copying : PIRACY
16. Corporate treadmill : RAT RACE
19. Org. with a draft : NBA
20. Where somebody might be spotted : GYM
21. Nitwit : ASS
22. Lady’s attendant : MAID
26. Radio switch : AM/FM
28. Trip director, for short : GPS
31. Chemist’s container : BEAKER
34. What Newton’s first law of motion concerns : INERTIA
35. Cowboy Rogers as part of a posse after some younger namesakes joined up? : ELDEST ROY IN GANG
36. Poisonous gilled mushrooms, crossing over? : DESTROYING ANGEL
39. Like a roast : EMCEED
40. Presenters’ bits : LEAD-INS
41. Offense : SIN
43. Every mirror image has one : AXIS
45. Prelapsarian home : EDEN
46. L.A. winter hrs. : PST
48. Common female middle name : ANN
50. Source of much plywood : FIR
52. Like a crown’s gems, maybe : INLAID
55. Resolve : CLEAR UP
56. Stressful tests : ORALS
58. Matter barely worth mentioning : TRIFLE
60. Leasable tropical locales aren’t truthful? : CHARTER ISLES LIE
64. Simon Templar’s creator, crossing over? : LESLIE CHARTERIS
65. Slip around : EVADE
66. Reach the top : SUCCEED

Down
1. Sleep-preventing sound, perhaps : DRIP
3. Poetic contraction : ‘TIS
4. Bookkeeping notation : ENTRY
7. First name in despotism : IDI
8. Plant with fiddleheads : FERN
10. Learn the hard way? : CRAM
14. “The ___ Daba Honeymoon” (1914 #1 song) : ABA
15. Language in which “yes” and “no” are “baat” and “te,” respectively : CAMBODIAN
17. Knock : RAP
18. Give out : ASSIGN
20. Free Web-based correspondence service : GMAIL
22. “This Week in Baseball” host Allen : MEL
23. “As You Like It” setting : ARDEN
24. Particular : ITEM
25. Piece in the game Othello : DISC
27. Whimsically odd : FEY
28. Letter from school? : GRADE
29. What the “Surgeon’s Photo” supposedly depicts : NESSIE
30. Distressed : ATE AT
32. Impact point for a spoons player : KNEE
33. “Dear me!” : EGAD
37. 1976 Broadway musical based on Henry VIII’s life : REX
38. “Henry & June” author : NIN
42. Banker’s recommendation, for short : IRA
44. TV show with the most Emmy nominations, informally : SNL
46. Pet sound : PURR
47. Torrent : SPATE
49. Part of NBC: Abbr. : NATL
50. Takes to the cleaners : FLEECES
51. Off-___ (sturdy bikes) : ROADERS
52. Natalie Portman’s birthplace : ISRAEL
53. Heat generator? : IRE
54. Grad sch. composition : DISS
55. Overused plot device : CLICHE
57. Chaim Potok’s “My Name Is Asher ___” : LEV
59. Winter protection? : FLU SHOT
60. TD Garden team : CELTICS
61. Curtis of hair care : HELENE
62. Chilling, say : IDLE
63. Set of channels? : SEAWAY
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