Day: January 24, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
1. Brown, Penn or Harvard : IVY
The term “Ivy League” originally defined an athletic conference, but now it is used to describe a group of schools of higher education that are associated with both a long tradition and academic excellence. The eight Ivy League Schools are: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale.

4. Locale of Guantánamo Bay : CUBA
The Guantánamo Bay Naval Base is often referred to by using abbreviation “GTMO” or simply “Gitmo”.  Gitmo is the oldest overseas base operated by the navy and dates back to the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903, at which time the US leased the facility as a fueling station. A perpetual lease was offered by Tomas Estrada Palma, the first President of Cuba, after the US took over control of Cuba from Spain following the Spanish-American War of 1898.

14. “The Good Shepherd” org. : CIA
“The Good Shepherd” is a spy movie released in 2006, directed by Robert De Niro. The lead roles are played by Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The film is a fictional account of real events that led to the birth of counter intelligence within the CIA. This is normally my kind of plotline but somehow I missed seeing this one. I’ll have to put it on the list …

15. Omani or Yemeni : ARAB
Oman lies on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula, neighbored by the OAE, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The capital city of Muscat has a strategic location on the Gulf of Oman and has a history of invasion and unrest. Centuries of occupation by the Persians ended in 1507 when the Portuguese took the city in a bloody attack. The Portuguese held Muscat for much of the next one hundred years until finally ousted by local Omani forces in 1648. A Yemeni tribe invaded the area in 1741 and set up a monarchy that has been in place ever since.

Yemen is located on the Arabian Peninsula, lying just south of Saudi Arabia and west of Oman. Yemen is the only state on the peninsula that is a republic (its official name is the Republic of Yemen). Everyone over the age of 18 gets to vote, but only Muslims can hold elected office.

18. He played Jin-Soo Kwon on “Lost” : DANIEL DAE KIM
Daniel Dae Kim is an American actor, famous for playing Jin-Soo Kwon on “Lost”. He now plays one of the leads on the CBS remake of “Hawaii Five-O”, portraying the character Chin Ho Kelly.

20. “Through the Looking-Glass” character : TWEEDLEDEE
Tweedledee and Tweedledum are characters who appear in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There”. Carroll didn’t invent the characters though, as they were already part of a well-known nursery rhyme:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel.

22. Move, in real-estate ads : RELO
Relocation (Relo.).

24. “King” serpents : COBRAS
The king cobra isn’t a cobra at all and rather belongs to its own genus. The king cobra is the world’s longest venomous snake and can grow to over 18 feet in length.

29. Site of Haleakala National Park : MAUI
If you visit Maui, a visit to the Haleakala National Park is a must. One section of the park features the spectacular Haleakala Crater, where you would swear you are on the moon. The second part of the park is the Kipahula section, which features the very picturesque pools accessed along the Road to Hana. When we visited (quite a few years ago), the Road to Hana was a tad undeveloped and rental car companies would not allow you to drive their cars there. Funnily enough, the only cars you’d meet on the Road to Hana were rental cars …

40. ___ Speedwagon : REO
The REO Speed Wagon (note the space between “speed” and “wagon”) is the vehicle. REO Speedwagon is the American rock band.

41. 1941 Frank Capra film : MEET JOHN DOE
“Meet John Doe” is a wonderful Frank Capra film released in 1941. It falls into the comedy-drama genre, and features Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck in the lead roles.

I can’t tell you how many of Frank Capra’s movies are on my list of all-time favorites. He directed such classics as “It Happened One Night”, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”, “Lost Horizon”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Meet John Doe”, “Arsenic and Old Lace” and the holiday favorite “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Capra also did his bit during WWII, enlisting just a few days after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Given his great talent, and the fact that he enlisted at the relatively advanced age of 44, the US Army put him to work directing 11 documentary war films in the “Why We Fight” series, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

55. Cornerstone of the American legal system : DUE PROCESS
“Due process” calls for the state to respect the legal rights of the individual. The concept was first articulated in the historic English charter known as the Magna Carta in 1215. Due process is incorporated into the US Constitution, although the words “law of the land” are used instead of “due process”, but with the same meaning.

63. Writer of sad poems : ELEGIST
An elegy is a mournful poem or funeral song, also known as a dirge. Perhaps the most famous elegy in the English language is that written by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750. His “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is the source of many oft-quoted phrases, including:

– Celestial fire
– Far from the Madding Crowd
– Kindred spirit

65. Instrument for Clarence Clemons : SAX
Clarence Clemons was a tenor saxophonist who played with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Down
1. “Cop Killer” singer who went on to play a cop on TV : ICE-T
Rapper Ice-T must be sick of having his name come up as an answer in crossword puzzles. Maybe he should have stuck to his real name, Tracy Marrow. Then again, maybe not …

3. Alma mater for Bill and Hillary Clinton : YALE
President Bill Clinton was born not as a Clinton, but as William Jefferson Blythe. His father was killed in a car accident just three months before he was born. His mother remarried a few years later, to Roger Clinton. Bill didn’t formally adopt the Clinton name until he was fourteen years old, although he used it as he was growing up.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton was appointed US Secretary of State, she became the first former First Lady to serve in a president’s cabinet. Hillary met her husband, President Bill Clinton, when the two were studying at Yale law school.

4. Golfer’s assistant : CADDIE
“Caddie” is a Scottish word, as one might expect given the history of the game of golf. “Caddie” is a local word derived from the French “cadet”, meaning a younger son or brother, and also a student officer in the military.

5. They divide Europe and Asia : URALS
The eastern side of the Ural Mountains in Russia is generally regarded as the natural divide between the continents of Europe and Asia.

8. Caesar of comedy : SID
Sid Caesar achieved fame in the fifties on TV’s “Your Show of Shows”, but to be honest, I know him mainly from the fun film version of “Grease” in which he played Coach Calhoun.

11. Al of “Today” : ROKER
Al Roker is best known as the meteorologist on the “Today” show on NBC. He has successfully branched out from that platform though, and even co-wrote a novel called “The Morning Show Murders”, about a celebrity chef and TV host who get entangled in mystery. Topical stuff …

12. “There you have it!” : VOILA
“Et voilà” is French for, “and there it is!”

13. St. ___ fire : ELMO’S
St. Elmo is the patron saint of sailors. He lends his name to the electrostatic weather phenomenon (often seen at sea) known as St. Elmo’s fire. The “fire” is actually a plasma discharge caused by air ionizing at the end of a pointed object (like the mast of a ship), often observed during electrical storms.

19. Some tech grads : EES
Electrical Engineers (EEs).

21. TV award : EMMY
The Emmy Awards are the television equivalent of the Oscars in the world of film, the Grammy Awards in music and the Tony Awards for the stage. Emmy Awards are presented throughout the year, depending on the sector of television being honored. The most famous of these ceremonies are the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards. The distinctive name of “Emmy” is a softened version of the word “immy”, the nickname given to the video camera tubes found in old television cameras.

24. Social class : CASTE
Many creatures organize themselves into a social structure, a phenomenon known as “eusociality”. Examples of such creatures would be ants, bees and wasps, where there are queens, workers and soldiers. The groups within such a hierarchical structure are known as castes. The word “caste” was borrowed from the class divisions in Indian society (although the word and concept was actually introduced by the Portuguese).

25. Unsafe? : OUT
In baseball if you’re not “safe” then you’re “out”.

28. ___ of Man : ISLE
The Isle of Man is a large island located in the middle of the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. I used to spend a lot of time there in my youth, and a very interesting place it is indeed. The Isle of Man is classed as a British Crown Dependency and isn’t part of the United Kingdom at all. It is self-governing and has its own parliament called the Tynwald. The Tynwald was created in AD 979 and is arguably the oldest continuously-running parliament in the world. The inhabitants of the island speak English, although they do have their own language as well called Manx that is very similar to Irish Gaeilge and Scottish Gaelic. And then there are those Manx cats, the ones without any tails. I’ve seen lots of them, and can attest that they are indeed found all over the island.

31. Some expensive dresses : DIORS
Christian Dior was a French fashion designer. As WWII approached, Dior was called up by the French military, drawing a temporary halt to his career in fashion. He left the army in 1942 and for the duration of the war designed clothes for wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators. After the war his designs became so popular that he helped reestablish Paris as the fashion center of the world.

32. Modest “Methinks,” online : IMHO
In my humble opinion (IMHO).

42. U2 guitarist : THE EDGE
The Edge is the stage name of U2 band member David Evans.

43. 767, e.g. : JET
The Boeing 767 was introduced in 1982 and was Boeing’s first wide-bodied, twin-engined jet. It has many similar features to the 757, the narrow-bodied, twin-engined jet that Boeing developed in parallel with the 767. The successor aircraft to the 767 is the 787 Dreamliner.

44. Pear type : BOSC
Bosc is a cultivar of the European Pear grown in the northwest of the United States. The Bosc is that pear with a skin the color of a potato, with a long neck. I always seem to use the potato as my point of reference. How Irish am I …?

48. Punishment for Napoleon : EXILE
Napoleon was sent into exile twice. A coalition of European powers sent him to the island of Elba in Tuscany in 1814, only for him to escape after a year and return to power. After Wellington defeated him at Waterloo, Napoleon was dispatched to the British-owned island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic where he spent the last six years of his life.

51. Madrid’s ___ Sofia Museum : REINA
The Sofia in Madrid is Spain’s national museum of 20th century art. It is named for the current queen of Spain, the wife of King Juan Carlos I. The museum’s collection includes works by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, the most famous of Spain’s 20th century masters. The most celebrated painting in the Sofia is Picasso’s “Guernica”.

52. Noted talk show retiree of 2011 : OPRAH
What can you say about Oprah? Born into poverty to a single mother, and with a harrowing childhood, Oprah is now the greatest African American philanthropist the world has ever known. Oprah’s name was originally meant to be “Orpah” after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth, and that’s how it appears on her birth certificate. Apparently folks had trouble pronouncing “Orpah”, so she’s now “Oprah”.

55. Mar.-to-Nov. hours : DST
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.

60. Yang’s counterpart : YIN
The yin and the yang can be explained using many different metaphors. In one, as the sun shines on a mountain, the side in the shade is the yin and the side in the light is the yang. The yin is also regarded as the feminine side, and the yang the masculine.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Brown, Penn or Harvard : IVY
4. Locale of Guantánamo Bay : CUBA
8. Go without food : STARVE
14. “The Good Shepherd” org. : CIA
15. Omani or Yemeni : ARAB
16. Use a fan on : AIR-COOL
17. It twists underwater : EEL
18. He played Jin-Soo Kwon on “Lost” : DANIEL DAE KIM
20. “Through the Looking-Glass” character : TWEEDLEDEE
22. Move, in real-estate ads : RELO
23. Swings that result in strikes : MISSES
24. “King” serpents : COBRAS
26. Doorbell sound : CHIME
29. Site of Haleakala National Park : MAUI
30. Pinkish : ROSY
31. Some collectible toys : DIE-CAST CARS
38. Everything : ALL
39. “That is to say …” : I MEANT
40. ___ Speedwagon : REO
41. 1941 Frank Capra film : MEET JOHN DOE
44. Animal that can stand upright : BEAR
45. One who saves the day : HERO
46. Lose it : GO APE
47. Puts back to zero, say : RESETS
50. Displays appetite, in a way : DROOLS
54. Wheels’ connector : AXLE
55. Cornerstone of the American legal system : DUE PROCESS
59. Some hippie wear : TIE-DYE SHIRTS
62. Had a bite : ATE
63. Writer of sad poems : ELEGIST
64. Slangy turndowns : NAHS
65. Instrument for Clarence Clemons : SAX
66. Show contrition : REPENT
67. “Hey, sailor!” : AHOY
68. Give a go : TRY

Down
1. “Cop Killer” singer who went on to play a cop on TV : ICE-T
2. Outlook : VIEW
3. Alma mater for Bill and Hillary Clinton : YALE
4. Golfer’s assistant : CADDIE
5. They divide Europe and Asia : URALS
6. Bugaboos : BANES
7. Endure : ABIDE
8. Caesar of comedy : SID
9. ___-la-la : TRA
10. Biting : ACERBIC
11. Al of “Today” : ROKER
12. “There you have it!” : VOILA
13. St. ___ fire : ELMO’S
16. Drink sometimes indicated in comics by “XXX” : ALE
19. Some tech grads : EES
21. TV award : EMMY
24. Social class : CASTE
25. Unsafe? : OUT
26. Stay up all night before a test, say : CRAM
27. Darned thing : HOLE
28. ___ of Man : ISLE
29. José’s hand : MANO
31. Some expensive dresses : DIORS
32. Modest “Methinks,” online : IMHO
33. Poetic time after dusk : E’EN
34. Heel : CAD
35. 1/2 base x height, for a triangle : AREA
36. Gather in the field : REAP
37. Peeved : SORE
42. U2 guitarist : THE EDGE
43. 767, e.g. : JET
44. Pear type : BOSC
46. Photo finish? : GLOSSY
47. Olympics judge, e.g. : RATER
48. Punishment for Napoleon : EXILE
49. Catch 40 winks : SLEEP
50. “Well, obviously!” : DUH
51. Madrid’s ___ Sofia Museum : REINA
52. Noted talk show retiree of 2011 : OPRAH
53. Straight: Prefix : ORTHO-
55. Mar.-to-Nov. hours : DST
56. Sunup direction : EAST
57. Play the lead role : STAR
58. Alluring : SEXY
60. Yang’s counterpart : YIN
61. Superlative suffix : -EST

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