Day: April 25, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
1. Catchphrase of announcer Harry Caray : CUBS WIN
The announcer Harry Caray was famous for exclaiming “Holy cow!” during baseball games, and used the same phrase for the title of his autobiography.

8. Early French settler : ACADIAN
The great explorer Verrazzano gave the name “Arcadia” to the coastal land that stretched from north of present day Virginia right up the North American continent to Nova Scotia. The name Arcadia was chosen as it was also the name for a part of Greece that had been viewed as “idyllic” from the days of classical antiquity. The “Arcadia” name quickly evolved into the word “Acadia” that was used locally here in North America. Much of Acadia was settled by the French in the 1600s, and then in 1710 Acadia was conquered by the British. There followed the French and Indian War after which there was a mass migration of French Acadians, often via the French colony of Saint-Dominique (present-day Haiti) to the French colony of Louisiana. The local dialectic pronunciation of the word “Acadian” was “Cajun”, giving the name to the ethnic group for which Louisiana has been home for about 300 years.

15. Locale in a 1964 Stan Getz hit : IPANEMA
Ipanema is a beach community in the south of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The name Ipanema is a local word meaning “bad water”, signifying that the shore is bad for fishing. The beach became famous on release of the song “The Girl from Ipanema” written in 1965.

Stan Getz was a jazz saxophonist. His playing style earned him the nickname “The Sound”.

16. Toyota model : COROLLA
More cars have been sold under the Toyota Corolla brand name than any other brand name in history, even outstripping sales of the VW Beetle in 2007. There has been an average of one Corolla manufactured every 40 seconds for there past 40 years. “Corolla” is Latin for “small crown”, part of a pattern in naming Toyota cars (“Corona” is Latin for crown, and “Camry” sounds like the Japanese for crown).

17. *Football club that plays at San Siro : 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 is owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

18. *First soft drinks sold in cans : RC COLAS
“Nehi Corporation” was the nickname for the Chero-Cola/Union Bottle Works that introduced the Nehi drink in 1924. Years later the company developed a new brand, Royal Crown Cola (also known as RC Cola). By 1955, RC Cola was the company’s flagship product, so the “Nehi Corporation” became the “Royal Crown Company”. In 1954, RC Cola became the first company to sell soft drinks in cans.

19. *Green Lantern company : DC COMICS
DC Comics takes its name from what used to be a highly popular series called “Detective Comics”. The main competitor to DC Comics is Marvel Comics, and between the two companies, they command 80% of comic sales in the US market. Nowadays of course, a lot of company income comes from movies that use the most popular characters from the original printed publications.

The Green Lantern is a comic book superhero who has had a number of alter egos through the life of the character. The Green Lantern is a member of the Justice League of America superhero team. Other members of the League include Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

22. Former Toyota model : PASEO
The Paseo is a compact car sold in the US by Toyota from 1991 to 1997. “Paseo” is Spanish for “walk, stroll”.

25. Big name in ice cream : EDY
Dreyers’ ice cream sells its products under the name Dreyers in the Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states. The company’s founders were William Dryer and Joseph Edy.

26. Word of choice : EENY

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch the tiger/monkey/baby by the toe.
If it hollers/screams let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, you are it!

28. Painters’ degs. : MFAS
Master of Fine Arts (MFAs).

31. Bygone sports org. for which Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura was a TV analyst : XFL
The XFL was an American Football league that only survived for one season. The intention of the league was to provide football fans with something to watch in the off-season, but the fans didn’t bother …

Jesse Ventura is a former professional wrestler turned state governor. When Ventura retired from wrestling he ran for mayor in the city of Brooklyn Park in Minnesota, and won the race by beating the 25-year incumbent. In 1998, Ventura built on his 4-year experience as a mayor and won the race for Governor of the state, beating out candidates representing the two big parties in a major upset.

33. *He said “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with” : WC FIELDS
W. C. Fields worked hard to develop the on-screen image of a pretty grumpy old man. In his real life he was fairly grumpy too, and fond of protecting his privacy. He was famous for hiding in the shrubs around his house in Los Angeles and firing a BB gun at the legs of tourists who intruded on his property. Also Fields often played the drunk on-screen. In real life, Fields didn’t touch alcohol at all when he was younger, partly because he didn’t want to do anything to impair his skill as a juggler. But later in life he took to heavy drinking, so much so that it affected his health and interfered with his ability to perform.

35. Space launch vehicle : ATLAS
Atlas boosters launched the first four US astronauts into space. The Atlas rocket design was originally developed in the late fifties and was deployed for several years as it was intended, as an intercontinental ballistic missile.

39. Contemporary of Luther : ERASMUS
Desiderius Erasmus was a Dutch priest and theologian. Erasmus was a very prolific and successful writer, and in the 1530s his written works accounted for 10-20% of all book sales in the world. A famous quotation accredited to Erasmus is, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”.

43. *Big clothing retailer : JC PENNEY
JC Penney’s department stores started out as the Golden Rule Store, founded by James Cash Penney and two partners in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming. That first store is still operating today in Kemmerer. Sam Walton used to work for Penney’s in Des Moines, Iowa, before moving on to found the Walmart empire.

46. Prefix with magnetic : AERO-
The science of aeromagnetics is the study of the Earth’s magnetic characteristics from the air, using equipment mounted in aircraft.

51. Cousin of a dune buggy, for short : ATV
An all-terrain vehicle (ATV).

55. Santa ___ : ANA
Santa Ana is the county seat of Orange County, California and takes its name from the Santa Ana River that runs through the city. The Santa Ana winds are the very dry air currents that sweep offshore late in the year in Southern California. Because they are so dry, they are noted for their influence over forest fires in the area, especially in the heat of the fall. The winds arise from a buildup of air pressure in the Great Basin that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Under the right conditions, that air spills over the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and basically “falls” down the side of the Sierra range, heading for the ocean. As the air falls it becomes drier and heats up, so that relative humidity can fall to below 10% by the time it hits the coast.

56. *Baggy pants popularizer in the 1980s : MC HAMMER
Rapper MC Hammer (aka Hammer and Hammertime) was born Stanley Kirk Burrell, and was very popular in the 80s and 90s. Being around that early, MC Hammer is considered to be one of the forefathers of rap. Nowadays, MC Hammer is a preacher, and uses the initials MC to stand for “Man of Christ”.

59. *The Wolfpack, informally : NC STATE
The sports teams of North Carolina State are known as the Wolfpack, with the female teams called the Lady Wolfpack. The Wolfpack name was adopted in 1922 after it was coined by a fan who was actually disgruntled at the time. He described the fans at a sports event behaving “like a wolf pack”, and the name stuck.

61. Punny title for this puzzle that’s a hint to the answers to the starred clues : SEVEN CS
The phrase “the seven seas” has been used for centuries by many different peoples. The actual definition of what constitutes the collection of seven has varied depending on the period and the culture. Nowadays we consider the seven largest bodies of water as the seven seas, namely:

– The North Pacific Ocean
– The South Pacific Ocean
– The North Atlantic Ocean
– The South Atlantic Ocean
– The Indian Ocean
– The Southern Ocean
– The Arctic Ocean

65. Mrs. ___ cow : O’LEARY’S
The Great Chicago Fire blazed for almost three full days in October of 1871. By the time it was extinguished, hundreds of people had died and four square miles of the city had been destroyed. It is known that the fire started in or near a small barn owned by an Irish immigrant, a Mrs. Catherine O’Leary. A reporter called Michael Ahern wrote in the “Chicago Tribune” that the fire was ignited when a cow in the barn kicked over a lantern. Years later, Ahern admitted that he made up the story about the cow and the lantern, as he felt it made colorful copy. Supposedly Mrs. O’Leary died a heart-broken woman as she spent the rest of her life with the public blaming her on the tragic loss of life and property.

68. “Gigi” novelist : COLETTE
The best known work of French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is “Gigi”, the source material for the wonderful film starring Leslie Caron in the title role. The novel that brought Colette celebrity was published in 1920, called “Cheri”. “Gigi” followed much later, in 1944. “Cheri” was adapted into a screen version starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Colette led a very colorful life. She had three marriages, an affair with her stepson, and many affairs with other women.

Down
1. The Company, for short : CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the successor to the Office of Strategic Services formed during WWII, and was chartered by the National Security Act of 1947.

2. Lines at a store, for short : UPC
The first UPC-marked item to get scanned in a store was on June 26, 1974 at 08:01 a.m. at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum …

6. G3, G4 or G5 : IMAC
The iMac is a desktop computer platform from Apple introduced in 1998. One of the main features of the iMac is an “all-in-one” design, with the computer console and monitor integrated.

7. Product from the maker of the 6-Down : NANO
The iPod Nano is the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There have been five versions of the Nano to date and the current Nano as well as playing tunes is an FM player, records voice memos, and even has a pedometer!

9. Tailbone : COCCYX
The human coccyx is what is left of a tail that our evolutionary ancestors possessed.

13. French actor Delon : ALAIN
Alain Delon is an award-winning French actor, once called “the male Brigitte Bardot”. He hit the news in 1968 when one of his bodyguards was found shot in the head outside Delon’s home. Delon found himself held for questioning, but the crime was attributed to a Corsican crime family.

22. Smallish bird : PEWEE
A pewee is a small bird, so called because of the “pee wee” sound that it makes.

23. Capital of Ghana : ACCRA
Accra sits on Ghana’s coast and is a major seaport as well as the country’s capital city. The name “Accra” comes from a local word “Nkran” meaning “ants”, a name chosen because of the large number of anthills found in the area when the city was founded.

The name “Ghana” means “warrior king” in the local language. The British established colony they called Gold Coast in 1874, later to become Ghana, as part of the scramble by Europeans to settle as much of Africa as they could. One of Ghana’s most famous sons is Kofi Annan, the diplomat that served as General Secretary of the UN for ten years until the beginning of 2007.

24. Where houseguests may sleep : SOFAS
“Sofa” is a Turkish word meaning “bench”.

26. John of London : ELTON
Elton John’s real name is Reginald Dwight. John was knighted in 1998, not for his music but for his charitable work. He founded his own Elton John AIDS Foundation back in 1992.

29. Swine ___ : FLU
There was a 2009 outbreak of swine flu in humans that has been blamed for 17,700 deaths worldwide.

36. Crescent shapes : LUNES
By definition a “lune” is a figure formed by the intersection of two arcs of two circles. Such an intersection creates the shape of a crescent moon. The name “lune” comes from the Latin word for the moon, “luna”.

37. Regarding : ANENT
“Anent” is a preposition meaning “regarding, concerning”.

41. Some chest-thumping, for short : CPR
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has for decades involved the simultaneous compression of the chest to pump blood using the heart, and artificial respiration by blowing air into the lungs. Nowadays emergency services are placing more emphasis on heart compressions, and less on artificial respiration.

43. World’s most populous island : JAVA
Java is a large island in Indonesia, and home to the country’s capital, Jakarta. With a population of over 130 million, Java is the most populous island in the world, with even more people than Honshu, the main island of Japan.

45. “Innocent,” but not “guilty” : DACTYL
In poetry, a dactyl is a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. An example of a word with such a meter is “inn-o-cent”.

48. “Jane Eyre” locale : MANOR
“Jane Eyre” is of course the novel written by Charlotte Bronte under the pen name Currer Bell. Over the years, I’ve shared here on the blog that “Jane Eyre” storyline is a little too dark and Gothic for my taste, but a very persuasive blog reader convinced me to look more at the romantic side of the story and give it a second chance. I watched a wonderful 4-hour television adaptation of the novel made by the BBC a while back, and I have to say that because I was focused on the relationship between Jane and Rochester, I was able to push past the Gothic influences (that depress me) so I really enjoyed the performance. I thoroughly recommend this 2006 BBC adaptation of the novel.

49. Paul McCartney’s Albert, e.g. : UNCLE
“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” was a number one hit for Paul and Linda McCartney, released in 1971. Uncle Albert was Paul’s own uncle, and Admiral Halsey was the American William “Bull” Halsey.

50. Zaps, in a way : TASES
Victor Appleton wrote a novel for young adults called “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle”. The company that developed the TASER electroshock weapon named its product as a homage to the novel, with TASER standing for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle”. Interesting, eh?

54. Rocky ridge : ARETE
An arete is ridge of rock defining the border between two parallel valleys that have been formed by glaciation. If this ridge is rounded, it is called a “col”. However, if it is “sharpened”, with rock falling way due to successive freezing and thawing, then it is called an “arete”. “Arête“ is the French word for “fish bone”.

56. Figure in a crèche : MARY
Crèche is a French word, meaning “crib”.

57. Fraction of a min. : MSEC
A msec is a millisecond, one thousandth of a second. However, the more correct abbreviation for millisecond is “ms”.

58. “Love ___” : ME DO
“Love Me Do” is a song written by Paul McCartney on a day he was playing hooky from school when he just 16 years of age.

60. Gang identifier, for short : TAT
The word “tattoo” was first used in English in the writings of the famous English explorer Captain Cook. In his descriptions of the indelible marks adorning the skin of Polynesian natives, he anglicized the Tahitian word “tatau” into our “tattoo”.

64. Véronique, e.g.: Abbr. : STE
Saint Veronica was a woman from Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. She took pity on Jesus as he carried the cross and gave him her veil to wipe his forehead, and the image of his face is said to have been left on the veil as a result.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Catchphrase of announcer Harry Caray : CUBS WIN
8. Early French settler : ACADIAN
15. Locale in a 1964 Stan Getz hit : IPANEMA
16. Toyota model : COROLLA
17. *Football club that plays at San Siro : AC MILAN
18. *First soft drinks sold in cans : RC COLAS
19. *Green Lantern company : DC COMICS
21. Comedy routine : BIT
22. Former Toyota model : PASEO
25. Big name in ice cream : EDY
26. Word of choice : EENY
27. Green prefix : ECO-
28. Painters’ degs. : MFAS
31. Bygone sports org. for which Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura was a TV analyst : XFL
33. *He said “Start every day off with a smile and get it over with” : WC FIELDS
35. Space launch vehicle : ATLAS
39. Contemporary of Luther : ERASMUS
40. Report : ACCOUNT
42. G.P.A. booster : EASY A
43. *Big clothing retailer : JC PENNEY
44. Airport announcement, for short : ETD
46. Prefix with magnetic : AERO-
47. Phoenix-to-Albuquerque dir. : ENE
48. Unregistered sort : MUTT
51. Cousin of a dune buggy, for short : ATV
53. Observes a religious holiday, in a way : FASTS
55. Santa ___ : ANA
56. *Baggy pants popularizer in the 1980s : MC HAMMER
59. *The Wolfpack, informally : NC STATE
61. Punny title for this puzzle that’s a hint to the answers to the starred clues : SEVEN CS
65. Mrs. ___ cow : O’LEARY’S
66. Remove, as an unnecessary line : EDIT OUT
67. Give a makeover : RESTYLE
68. “Gigi” novelist : COLETTE

Down
1. The Company, for short : CIA
2. Lines at a store, for short : UPC
3. Whack! : BAM
4. Indirectly derogatory : SNIDE
5. Sign of hospitality : WELCOME MAT
6. G3, G4 or G5 : IMAC
7. Product from the maker of the 6-Down : NANO
8. Bad-smelling : ACRID
9. Tailbone : COCCYX
10. Jump shots have them : ARCS
11. Whoop-de-___ : -DOO
12. “That’s amazing!” : I’LL BE
13. French actor Delon : ALAIN
14. Vicious, as the weather : NASTY
20. What a slob leaves : MESS
22. Smallish bird : PEWEE
23. Capital of Ghana : ACCRA
24. Where houseguests may sleep : SOFAS
26. John of London : ELTON
29. Swine ___ : FLU
30. Parts of some campaigns : ADS
32. Villainy personified : FACE OF EVIL
34. “The best ___ to come” : IS YET
36. Crescent shapes : LUNES
37. Regarding : ANENT
38. Eyelid problems : STYES
40. Crackerjack : ACE
41. Some chest-thumping, for short : CPR
43. World’s most populous island : JAVA
45. “Innocent,” but not “guilty” : DACTYL
48. “Jane Eyre” locale : MANOR
49. Paul McCartney’s Albert, e.g. : UNCLE
50. Zaps, in a way : TASES
52. “Who are ___ people?!” : THESE
54. Rocky ridge : ARETE
56. Figure in a crèche : MARY
57. Fraction of a min. : MSEC
58. “Love ___” : ME DO
60. Gang identifier, for short : TAT
62. Word after waste or want : NOT
63. Well-muscled, informally : CUT
64. Véronique, e.g.: Abbr. : STE

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