Day: August 16, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Swiss ___ : CHARD
Chard is a lovely leafy vegetable, in my humble opinion. Chard is the same species as the garden beet, but chard is grown for the leaves, and beet is grown for the roots.

10. Multimillion-selling band from Australia : AC/DC
The Heavy Metal band known as AC/DC was formed by two brothers in Australia. The group is usually called “Acca Dacca” down under.

14. Sacré-___ (Paris landmark) : COEUR
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Basilique de Sacré-Coeur) is that gorgeous white structure that sits at the top of the hill known as “butte Montmartre” in Paris, the highest point in the city. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited Sacré-Coeur several times, and find it to be a much more stunning building inside than out.

16. Actress ___ Flynn Boyle : LARA
The actress Lara Flynn Boyle plays Donna Hayward on “Twin Peaks”, and Helen Gamble on “The Practice”.

17. Aetna competitor : CIGNA
The health care management company known as CIGNA was formed in 1982 by a merger of two insurance companies. One was Connecticut General (CG) and the other Insurance Company of North America (INA).

When the health care management company known as Aetna was founded, the name was chosen to evoke images of Mt. Etna, the European volcano.

26. Healthful cooking option : CANOLA
Canola is a type of rapeseed, and Canola oil is made from the seeds. The particular cultivar used in oil production was developed in Canada, and the name “Canola” in fact comes from “CANadian Oil, Low Acid”. Canola is considered to be a relatively healthy oil to consume as it is low in saturated fat.

29. D.O.J. heads : AGS
Attorneys General (AGs) head up the Department of Justice (DOJ). When the office of the Attorney General was created in 1789 it was a part-time job, with no departmental support. The Department of Justice came into being in 1870.

30. Hipster Capitol Hill worker after collapsing? : ALT PAGE DOWN
Apparently “alt bro” is a contemporary slang term for someone who is a “hip buddy”. New to me …

37. “… might ___ quietus make”: Hamlet : HIS
The words “… might his quietus make” come from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy that begins “To be, or not to be, that is the question”.

38. Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show” : OPIE
Ron Howard sure has come a long way since playing Opie Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show”. Howard has directed some fabulous movies, including favorites of mine like “Apollo 13”, “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code”. And today, “Opie” is a grandfather …

44. E-mail suffix once required to join Facebook : EDU
If you’ve seen the movie “The Social Network”, you’ll know that Facebook started off as “Facemash”, a site created by Mark Zuckerberg while he was attending Harvard. Facemash became Thefacebook and membership was opened to students beyond Harvard, initially including Ivy League schools and then most colleges across North America.

46. Klemperer of “Hogan’s Heroes” : WERNER
On the sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes”, Colonel Klink was the Camp Commandant, played by Werner Klemperer. Klemperer was born in Cologne in Germany, and fled the country with his family in 1935 due to Nazi persecution of Jews. Later, Klemperer joined the US Army and ended up using his show business talent to entertain the troops in the Pacific.

48. Company that introduced coin-slide washers in laundromats : MAYTAG
The Maytag Washing Machine Company was founded in 1893 by Frederick Maytag, in Newton, Iowa. Over time, the company developed a reputation for reliability, and did a great job marketing the concept. One move they made was to change the address of the corporate headquarters in Newton to “One Dependability Square”. The Maytag repairman in the famous advertising campaign was known as “Ol’ Lonely”, the guy who was never called out because Maytag washers and dryers never broke down. Whirlpool bought Maytag in 2006 and basically shut down all Maytag operations, and now just put the Maytag label on Whirlpool appliances.

52. Restyle a bit of a D.C. hockey player’s hair? : SHIFT CAPS LOCK
The Washington Capitals hockey team is based in Arlington, Virginia. The team was founded in 1974.

56. Taylor of “Say Anything …” : LILI
The actress Lili Taylor had supporting roles in films like “Mystic Pizza”, “The Haunting” and “Rudy”, and she had a recurring role in the HBO series “Six Feet Under”.

60. Heraldic band : ORLE
In heraldry, an orle is a decorative band that lies close to the edge of the front surface of a shield. With such a design, the orle necessarily takes on the shape of the shield.

63. Singer with the 1986 #1 album “Promise” : SADE
Sade’s real name is Helen Folasade Adu. Although she was born in Nigeria, Sade grew up and lives in the UK. She was the lead vocalist for the English group Sade, and adopted the name of the band for herself.

64. It’s not meant to be used on nails : PEEN
The peen of a hammer is on the head, and is the side of the hammer that is opposite the striking surface. Often the peen is in the shape of a hemisphere (a Ball-peen hammer), but usually it is shaped like a claw (mainly for removing nails).

Down
1. New Deal work program, for short : CCC
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program that was part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. The idea behind the program was to provide employment for young men who could not find work elsewhere. These young men provided manual labor for the conservation and development of natural resources owned by various levels of government.

2. ___ polloi : HOI
“Hoi polloi” is a Greek term, literally meaning “the majority, the many”. In English it has come to mean “the masses” and is often used in a derogatory sense.

3. Cyclades setting : AEGEAN SEA
The Cyclades are a group of islands in the Aegean Sea lying southeast of the Greek mainland. There are about 200 islands in the group, almost all of which are the peaks of a submerged mountain range. Ios is one of the larger islands, 11 miles long and 6 miles wide.

5. Speaker of the line “Listen to them – the children of the night” : DRACULA
“Dracula” is a novel written by the Irish author Bram Stoker, and first published in 1897. Dracula wasn’t the first vampire of literature, but he certainly was the one who spawned the popularity of vampires in theater, film and television, and indeed more novels. Personally, I can’t stand vampire fiction …

7. Preschooler : TYKE
“Tyke” has been used playfully to describe a young child since at least 1902, but for centuries before that a tyke was a cur or mongrel, or perhaps a lazy or lower-class man.

11. Core members : CADRE
A “cadre” is most commonly a group of experienced personnel at the core of a larger organization that the small group trains or heavily influences. “Cadre” is a French word meaning a “frame”. We use it in the sense that a cadre is a group that provides a “framework” for the larger organization.

13. Nickelodeon title girl : CARLY
“iCarly” is a sitcom for teens that has been airing on Nickelodeon since 2007. The show is all about a girl called Carly Shay who makes a regular web broadcast called “iCarly” with her friends.

21. Asia’s ___ Sea : ARAL
The Aral Sea is a great example of how man can have a devastating effect on the environment. In the early sixties the Aral Sea covered 68,000 square miles of Central Asia. Soviet Union irrigation projects drained the lake to such an extent that today the total area is less than 7,000 square miles, with 90% of the lake now completely dry. Sad …

23. Chicken pox result, often : SCARS
Chicken pox is a viral infection, a classic disease of childhood most commonly caught by 4-10 year olds. There is a complication that can arise later in life as the virus sometimes reactivates to cause shingles.

34. Prefix with -pathy : NEURO-
Neuropathy is an abnormality in the nervous system.

36. Unpunished : SCOT FREE
Some believe that the term “scot free” originated with the famous American slave Dred Scott, but apparently this isn’t true. “Scot” is a Scandinavian word for a tax or a payment, and so to get off “scot free” was to do so without having to make a payment.

40. Quod ___ faciendum : ERAT
“Quod erat faciendum” (QEF) is similar to the phrase “quod erat demonstrandum” (QED), both of which were used by Euclid in his theorems. “Quod erat faciendum” means “what was to have been done”, and is used at the end of a proposition that was not intended as a proof, but rather as a construction.

42. Not reporting, maybe : AWOL
The Military Police (MPs) go after personnel who are Absent With-Out Leave (AWOL).

48. Windows forerunner : MS-DOS
MS-DOS was the main operating system used by IBM-compatible PCs in the eighties and for much of the nineties.

49. Now, in Nicaragua : AHORA
“Ahora” is the Spanish for “now”.

Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America, lying between Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The etymology of the name “Nicaragua” is not very certain. One suggestion is that it is a melding of the name “Nicarao” and “agua”, the Spanish for “water”. Nicarao was the name of the largest city in the area when the Spanish arrived, and it is thought that “agua” refers to the country’s two large lakes: Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua.

50. Investor’s info : YIELD
In the world of finance and investing, the yield curve for a particular investment is the relation between the interest rate that can be locked in, and the length of time the loan will be in place. Typically, the longer you are willing to lend your money (say by buying a government security), then the higher interest rate the borrower is willing to pay. So, the yield tends to move upwards over time.

51. Two-finger salute : V-SIGN
One has to be careful making a V-sign with one’s fingers depending where one is in the world. Where I came from, the V for victory (or peace) sign has to be made with the palm facing outwards. If the sign is made with the palm facing inwards, it’s a very obscene gesture.

54. “Swan Lake” move : PLIE
The French word for “bent” is “plié”, and in the ballet move known as a plié, the knees are bent.

“Swan Lake” is such a delightfully light and enjoyable ballet. It tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by a sorcerer. The ballet also features Odile, Odette’s “evil twin”. Odile is disguised to look like Odette with the goal of tricking the prince to fall in love with her. In the ballet, the roles of Odette and Odile are played by the same ballerina.

59. England’s Isle of ___ : ELY
The Isle of Ely in England isn’t an island as we would usually know it, and instead is the name of the area surrounding the city of Ely. Centuries ago however, the region was in fact an island surrounded by a fen, a type of swamp. The name is said to derive from “Island of Eels”, a reference to the large number of eels caught in the area’s rivers.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Swiss ___ : CHARD
6. Derive (from) : STEM
10. Multimillion-selling band from Australia : AC/DC
14. Sacré-___ (Paris landmark) : COEUR
15. Syringe : HYPO
16. Actress ___ Flynn Boyle : LARA
17. Aetna competitor : CIGNA
18. Blood-sharing? : AKIN
19. Bloodhound’s lead : ODOR
20. Prison guard system? : ESCAPE CONTROL
23. Level of achievement : STATURE
25. These days : LATELY
26. Healthful cooking option : CANOLA
27. “Let’s see that again in ___” : SLO-MO
29. D.O.J. heads : AGS
30. Hipster Capitol Hill worker after collapsing? : ALT PAGE DOWN
35. Sighs over, say : RUES
37. “… might ___ quietus make”: Hamlet : HIS
38. Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show” : OPIE
39. Bill at the “Star Wars” cantina? : SPACE BAR TAB
44. E-mail suffix once required to join Facebook : EDU
45. Make grand statements : ORATE
46. Klemperer of “Hogan’s Heroes” : WERNER
48. Company that introduced coin-slide washers in laundromats : MAYTAG
51. Gives a thumbs-down : VOTES NO
52. Restyle a bit of a D.C. hockey player’s hair? : SHIFT CAPS LOCK
55. Not just a talker : DOER
56. Taylor of “Say Anything …” : LILI
57. Click or clack : NOISE
60. Heraldic band : ORLE
61. “That’s cool, man” : I DIG
62. Unbeatable : IDEAL
63. Singer with the 1986 #1 album “Promise” : SADE
64. It’s not meant to be used on nails : PEEN
65. Quick to flip : TESTY

Down
1. New Deal work program, for short : CCC
2. ___ polloi : HOI
3. Cyclades setting : AEGEAN SEA
4. Totals : RUNS TO
5. Speaker of the line “Listen to them – the children of the night” : DRACULA
6. Outline : SHAPE
7. Preschooler : TYKE
8. More awesome than awesome : EPIC
9. Late-night talk show feature : MONOLOG
10. Much work ahead : A LOT TO DO
11. Core members : CADRE
12. Mouth watering? : DROOL
13. Nickelodeon title girl : CARLY
21. Asia’s ___ Sea : ARAL
22. Kind of recognition : NAME
23. Chicken pox result, often : SCARS
24. Go back before proceeding : TAG UP
27. Skyline feature : SPIRE
28. In the cellar : LAST
31. All ___ : THAT
32. Like a policy allowing unfettered air traffic : OPEN SKIES
33. Ream : WIDEN
34. Prefix with -pathy : NEURO-
36. Unpunished : SCOT FREE
40. Quod ___ faciendum : ERAT
41. Twist-tie alternative : BAG CLIP
42. Not reporting, maybe : AWOL
43. “You can be sure” : BET ON IT
47. Alter, as a program : RECODE
48. Windows forerunner : MS-DOS
49. Now, in Nicaragua : AHORA
50. Investor’s info : YIELD
51. Two-finger salute : V-SIGN
53. Gofer : AIDE
54. “Swan Lake” move : PLIE
58. Didn’t sell : SAT
59. England’s Isle of ___ : ELY

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