Day: November 12, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. One-named soccer legend : PELE
Pelé is the nickname of Edson de Nascimento, a soccer player who has used the name Pelé for most of his life. Pelé is now retired, and for my money was the world’s greatest ever player of the game. He is the only person to have been part of three World Cup winning squads, and is a national treasure in his native Brazil.

9. Gary Oldman or Paul Newman : ACTOR
Gary Oldman is an English stage and screen actor. Like many English actors it seems, Oldman has played a lot of villains in Hollywood movies e.g. in “Air Force One” and “The Fifth Element”. My favorite Oldman performance is as Ludwig van Beethoven in “Immortal Beloved”.

Paul Newman was an actor from Shaker Heights, Ohio. Newman won his only Best Actor Oscar for his role in “The Color of Money”, a Martin Scorsese film. Off screen Newman was a very successful racing driver and won several national championships. He also founded a food company called Newman’s Own which donates its profits to charity, an amount that now exceeds $300 million.

17. City with a boardwalk on Monterey Bay : SANTA “CRUZ”
Santa Cruz is a city on Monterey Bay in Northern California. The city is home to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk which is the state’s oldest amusement park. The Boardwalk is designated as a State Historic Landmark.

21. Candy from a dispenser : PEZ
PEZ is an Austrian brand name for a particular candy sold in a mechanical dispenser. The name PEZ comes from the first, middle and last letters of “Pfefferminz”, the German word for “peppermint”.

22. Florida theme park : EPCOT
EPCOT Center (now just called Epcot) is the theme park beside Walt Disney World in Florida. EPCOT is an acronym for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and is a representation of the future as envisioned by Walt Disney. Walt Disney actually wanted to build a living community for 20,000 residents at EPCOT, but he passed away before that vision could be realized.

23. Viewing point at the Grand Canyon : RIM
The Grand Canyon is in Arizona. The canyon continues to be carved out of layers of rock by the Colorado River. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and over a mile deep.

27. General Motors sedan : CHEVROLET “CRUZE”
The original Chevrolet Cruze was manufactured in Japan by Suzuki as part of a joint venture. The Chevrolet Cruze that has been sold since 2008 is a completely different design of car, and is manufactured in the US.

34. “Yabba dabba ___!” : DOO
“Yabba dabba doo!” is one of Fred Flintstone’s catchphrases.

I once had the privilege of spending an afternoon in the room (Bill Hanna’s den) where Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera came up with the idea of “The Flintstones” …

35. Sicilian volcano : ETNA
Mt. Etna is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy. Mt Etna is about 2 1/2 times the height of its equally famous sister, Mt. Vesuvius.

37. Rombauer who wrote “Joy of Cooking” : IRMA
Irma Rombauer was the author of the famous cookbook “The Joy Of Cooking”. Rombauer self-published the book back in 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri. She and her family continued to publish privately as demand was high, until a commercial printing house picked it up in 1936. “The Joy of Cooking” has been in print continuously ever since.

45. Radon or radium: Abbr. : ELEM
Radon is a radioactive gas, a byproduct produced when uranium decays naturally in the earth. Radon gas can collect and accumulate in buildings and rooms that are particularly well insulated with very little air exchange. The danger is very real, as radon is listed as the second most frequent cause of lung cancer after cigarette smoke.

The element radium was first discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie, in 1898.

49. Vacation on the Caribbean, maybe : CARNIVAL “CRUISE”
The Carnival Cruise Line was founded in 1972, and now has over 20 vessels in operation. Three of those Carnival ships were chartered by the US government in the wake of Hurricane Katrina so that they could provided temporary housing for families displaced by the storm.

54. “Beau ___” : GESTE
“Beau Geste” is a 1924 novel by the British writer P. C. Wren. The hero of the piece is Michael “Beau” Geste, an upper-class Englishman who joins the French Foreign Legion and embarks on a life of adventure and intrigue.

57. Mekong Valley native : LAO
The official name for the country of Laos is the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In the Lao language, the country’s name is “Meuang Lao”. The French ruled Laos as part of French Indochina, having united three separate Lao kingdoms. As there was a plural of “Lao” entities united into one, the French added the “S” and so today we tend to use “Laos” instead of “Lao”.

60. Arctic home : IGLOO
The Inuit word for “house” is “iglu”, which we usually write as “igloo”. The Greenlandic (yes, that’s a language) word for “house” is very similar: “igdlo”.

64. Fashion designer Perry : ELLIS
Perry Ellis was a fashion designer from Portsmouth, Virginia. Ellis was noted for his sportswear creations.

67. San Antonio mission : ALAMO
The famous Alamo in San Antonio, Texas was originally known as Mission San Antonio de Valero. The mission was founded in 1718 and was the first mission established in the city. The Battle of the Alamo took place in 1836, a thirteen-day siege by the Mexican Army led by President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Only two people defending the Alamo Mission survived the onslaught. One month later, the Texian army got its revenge by attacking and defeating the Mexican Army in the Battle of San Jacinto. During the surprise attack on Santa Anna’s camp, many of the Texian soldiers were heard to cry “Remember the Alamo!”.

68. One-named New Age singer : ENYA
Enya’s real name is Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin, which can translate from Irish into Enya Brennan. Her Donegal family (in the northwest of Ireland) formed a band called Clannad, which included Enya. In 1980 Enya launched her very successful solo career. She sure does turn up a lot in crosswords!

69. Poet ___ St. Vincent Millay : EDNA
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright, the third woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in 1923 for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver”). As well as for her work, Millay was noted for the open arrangement that she and her husband had in their marriage. Millay took many lovers, including the poet George Dillon for whom she wrote a number of sonnets.

70. Poe bird : RAVEN
“The Raven” is a narrative poem by Edgar Allen Poe that tells of a student who has lost the love of his life, Lenore. A raven enters the student’s bedchamber and perches on a bust of Pallas. The raven can talk, to the student’s surprise, but says nothing but the word “nevermore”. As the student questions all aspects of his life, the raven taunts him with the same comment, “nevermore”. Finally the student decides that his soul is trapped beneath the raven’s shadow and shall be lifted “nevermore” …

Down
3. Olin of “Enemies, a Love Story” : LENA
The lovely Lena Olin is a Swedish actress, clearly someone who had acting in her blood. Olin’s mother was the actress Britta Holmberg and her father the actor and director Stig Olin. Lena Olin had a very successful career in Sweden, often working with the great Ingmar Bergman. Olin’s breakthrough international and English-speaking role was playing opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” released in 1988. Way back in 1974, the lovely Miss Olin was crowned Miss Scandinavia in a beauty pageant for Nordic women held in Helsinki, Finland.

6. “The World According to ___” : GARP
John Irvine’s 1978 novel “The World According to Garp” is somewhat biographical. In fact, Irvine’s mother found parts of the novel difficult to read, recognizing elements of herself in Garp’s mother.

10. Mumbo-jumbo : CLAPTRAP
“Claptrap” these days means nonsense talk. It was originally a term used on the stage meaning a trick to attract applause, hence the name “clap trap”.

11. Powder on a puff : TALC
Talc is a mineral, actually hydrated magnesium silicate. Talcum powder is composed of loose talc, although these days “baby powder” can also be cornstarch.

24. 1980s actor with a mohawk : MR T
Mr. T’s real name is Laurence Tureaud. Mr. T is famous for many things, including the wearing of excessive amounts of jewelry. He started this habit when he was working as a bouncer, wearing jewelry items that had been left behind by customers at a nightclub so that the items might be recognized and claimed. It was also as a bouncer that he adopted the name Mr. T. His catch phrase comes from the movie “Rocky III”. In the film, before he goes up against Rocky Balboa, Mr. T says, “No, I don’t hate Balboa, but I pity the fool”. He parlayed that line into quite a bit of success. He had a reality TV show called “I Pity the Fool”, and produced a motivational video called “Be Somebody … or Be Somebody’s Fool!”.

26. With 18-Down, exclamation in “Frankenstein” : IT’S
18. See 26-Down : ALIVE
Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel has the full title of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus”. The subtitle underscores one of the themes of the book, a warning about man’s expansion into the Industrial Revolution.

27. Jazz pianist Chick : COREA
Chick Corea is an American jazz pianist. He is noted for his work in the area of jazz fusion, and for his promotion of Scientology.

29. Singer Yoko : ONO
Yoko Ono was born into a prosperous Japanese family, and is actually a descendant of one of the emperors of Japan. Ono’s father moved around the world for work and Yoko lived the first few years of her life in San Francisco. The family returned to Japan before moving on to New York, Hanoi and back to Japan just before WWII. There Yoko lived through the great fire-bombing of Tokyo in 1945. Immediately after the war the family was far from prosperous. While Yoko’s father was being held in a prison camp in Vietnam, her mother had to resort to begging and bartering to feed her children. When her father was repatriated, life started to return to normal and Yoko was able to attend university. She was the first woman to be accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University.

31. Bay State sch. : UMASS
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) is the largest public university in New England. UMass was founded back in 1863, although it took a while to get the school into service. Construction work was delayed and the college went through two presidents before William S. Clark took charge. He cracked the whip, completed the construction and enrolled the first students in the same year that he took over the reins, in 1867. As a result, although Clark was the third President of UMass, he is regarded by most as the school’s founding father.

32. Congo, formerly : ZAIRE
The African nation once called Zaire is a neighbor of Rwanda. The genocide and war in Rwanda spilled over into Zaire in 1996, with the conflict escalating into what is now called the First Congo War. As part of the war’s fallout there was a regime change, and in 1997 Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo.

34. Tiddlywink or Frisbee : DISC
Tiddlywinks is a game played by children, and sometimes competitively by adults. The idea is to propel “winks” into a pot using a “squidger”.

The Frisbee concept started back in 1938 with a couple who had an upturned cake pan that they were tossing between each other on Santa Monica Beach in California. They were offered 25 cents for the pan on the spot, and as pans could be bought for 5 cents, the pair figured there was a living to be earned.

44. Little ___, who sang “Do the Loco-Motion with me” : EVA
Carole King and her longtime partner Gerry Goffin have been writing hit songs since the early sixties. Carole and Gerry had a babysitter, one Eva Narcissus Boyd, who was always bopping around the house in an unusual dance style. They wrote a song about her dance and they called it “The Loco-Motion”. Then they gave it to the babysitter to record. Ms. Boyd chose as a stage name a character in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” called Little Eva …

47. The “M” of MTV : MUSIC
The most successful branding campaign for MTV was centered on the slogan “I want my MTV”. The campaign was launched in 1982 and the slogan became so well-known that it was actually incorporated into the lyrics of the 1985 song by “Money for Nothing” recorded by Dire Straits.

55. Scat queen Fitzgerald : ELLA
Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

56. Eastern European : SLAV
The Slavic peoples are in the majority in communities covering over half of Europe. This large ethnic group is traditionally broken down into three smaller groups:

– the West Slavic (including Czechs and Poles)
– the East Slavic (including Russians and Ukrainians)
– the South Slavic (including Bulgarians and Serbs)

59. African antelope : ORYX
The oryx is a large antelope species, mainly found in Africa but also in the Arabian Peninsula. One species was introduced by man into the White Sands Missile Range. As a result, the oryx is now considered an invasive species in the neighboring White Sands National Monument.

61. Helen of Troy’s mother : LEDA
In Greek mythology, Leda was the beautiful Queen of Sparta who was seduced by Zeus when he took the form of a swan. She produced two eggs from the union. One egg hatched into the beautiful Helen, later to be known as Helen of Troy, over whom the Trojan War was fought. The other egg hatched into the twins Castor and Pollux. Castor and Pollux had different fathers according to the myth. Pollux was the son of Zeus and was immortal, while Castor was the son of Leda’s earthly husband, and so he was a mortal. William Butler Yeats wrote a famous sonnet called “Leda and the Swan” in 1924.

63. “The Star-Spangled Banner” opener : O SAY
“The Star Spangled Banner” was written by Francis Scott Key. The lyrics were written first as a poem by Key, inspired by witnessing the bombardment by the British of the American forces at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814. The words were then set to the tune of a popular British drinking song penned by John Stafford Smith called “The Anacreontic Song”, with the Anacreontic Society being a men’s club in London.

66. Krazy ___ : KAT
“Krazy Kat” was a successful comic strip that ran from 1913-1944, drawn by George Herriman.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. One-named soccer legend : PELE
5. “Holy guacamole!” : EGAD
9. Gary Oldman or Paul Newman : ACTOR
14. Plow animals : OXEN
15. It’s a long story : SAGA
16. Sound over a subway’s public address system, e.g. : BLARE
17. City with a boardwalk on Monterey Bay : SANTA “CRUZ”
19. Retail activity : SALES
20. Online messages : EMAIL
21. Candy from a dispenser : PEZ
22. Florida theme park : EPCOT
23. Viewing point at the Grand Canyon : RIM
25. Fabric fluff : LINT
27. General Motors sedan : CHEVROLET “CRUZE”
34. “Yabba dabba ___!” : DOO
35. Sicilian volcano : ETNA
36. Hand on deck : SEAMAN
37. Rombauer who wrote “Joy of Cooking” : IRMA
39. Choose, with “for” : OPT
41. Took care of, as bills : PAID
42. Do a slow burn : SEETHE
45. Radon or radium: Abbr. : ELEM
48. 12th graders: Abbr. : SRS
49. Vacation on the Caribbean, maybe : CARNIVAL “CRUISE”
52. Kind of testimony : ORAL
53. Thick ___ brick : AS A
54. “Beau ___” : GESTE
57. Mekong Valley native : LAO
60. Arctic home : IGLOO
64. Fashion designer Perry : ELLIS
65. Chain gangs, e.g. : WORK CREWS
67. San Antonio mission : ALAMO
68. One-named New Age singer : ENYA
69. Poet ___ St. Vincent Millay : EDNA
70. Poe bird : RAVEN
71. Phone-to-phone communication : TEXT
72. “Calm down!” : EASY

Down
1. Sit for a photo : POSE
2. Typical semester finish : EXAM
3. Olin of “Enemies, a Love Story” : LENA
4. Total : ENTIRE
5. Emergency PC key : ESC
6. “The World According to ___” : GARP
7. Fever fit : AGUE
8. Bowl over : DAZZLE
9. Failure to appear : ABSENCE
10. Mumbo-jumbo : CLAPTRAP
11. Powder on a puff : TALC
12. Cookie that can be readily stacked : OREO
13. One of the R’s of R&R : REST
18. See 26-Down : ALIVE
24. 1980s actor with a mohawk : MR T
26. With 18-Down, exclamation in “Frankenstein” : IT’S
27. Jazz pianist Chick : COREA
28. Four-bagger : HOMER
29. Singer Yoko : ONO
30. Place for a flag pin : LAPEL
31. Bay State sch. : UMASS
32. Congo, formerly : ZAIRE
33. Termini : ENDS
34. Tiddlywink or Frisbee : DISC
38. Never : AT NO TIME
40. Pampering, for short : TLC
43. Gets a job : HIRES ON
44. Little ___, who sang “Do the Loco-Motion with me” : EVA
46. Memorable time : ERA
47. The “M” of MTV : MUSIC
50. Completely wrong : ALL WET
51. “Amen!” : I AGREE
54. Tent, sleeping bag, hiking shoes, etc. : GEAR
55. Scat queen Fitzgerald : ELLA
56. Eastern European : SLAV
58. Top-flight : A-ONE
59. African antelope : ORYX
61. Helen of Troy’s mother : LEDA
62. Holds the deed to : OWNS
63. “The Star-Spangled Banner” opener : O SAY
66. Krazy ___ : KAT

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