Day: May 13, 2013

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
5. Plant with fronds : FERN
Ferns are unlike mosses, in that they have xylem and phloem, making them vascular plants. They also have stems, leaves and roots, but they do not have seeds and flowers, and reproduce using spores. Spores differ from seeds in that they have very little stored food.

9. Book after Jonah : MICAH
The Book of Micah is one of twelve books in the Bible written by the so called minor prophets. The name “Micah” translates into English from Hebrew as “Who is like God?”

18. Last ones in the pool, say : ROTTEN EGGS
Last one out of the pool is a rotten egg!

20. Chicago Cubs spring training site : MESA, ARIZONA
The city of Mesa, Arizona is in effect a suburb of Phoenix. The original settlement of non-Native Americans was founded by Daniel Webster Jones who led a Mormon group from St. George, Utah. The settlement was first called Jonesville, then Fort Utah and eventually Lehi. A second group of Mormons arrived and formed a settlement on top of a nearby mesa. It was this use of a mesa that eventually gave the city its current name.

The Chicago Cubs is one of only two charter members of the baseball’s National League who are still playing, the other being the Atlanta Braves. The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, which is a long time ago. In fact, the Cubs have the longest championship drought of any professional sports team in North America.

23. Actress Thurman : UMA
Robert Thurman was the first westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Robert raised his children in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and called his daughter “Uma” as it is a phonetic spelling of the Buddhist name “Dbuma”.

26. “Rag Mop” hitmakers, 1950 : AMES BROTHERS
The Ames Brothers were a singing quartet who were active in the 1950s. The “brothers” (actually three brothers and a cousin) started out as an act called the Amory Brothers. After the quartet disbanded in 1961, Ed Ames went on to have a successful solo singing career, and became a familiar television actor. Ed played “Mingo”, the sidekick to the title character on “Daniel Boone” that ran in the sixties.

34. Lawbreaker, in police lingo : PERP
“Perp” is short for “perpetrator”.

38. E.P.A.-proscribed compound, for short : PCB
Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)

39. New Jersey’s capital : TRENTON
The city of Trenton, New Jersey was first settled in 1679 by Quakers. The settlement was named Trent-towne in 1719 in honor of William Trent, who was one of the biggest landowners in the area. The name “Trent-towne” was later shortened to Trenton. The city was the site of George Washington’s first military victory in the Revolutionary War, in 1776. Because of the Battle of Trenton, the New Jersey capital is sometimes called the “Turning Point of the Revolution”.

51. 1986 Tom Cruise/Val Kilmer action film : TOP GUN
“Top Gun” is an entertaining action movie released in 1986 starring Tom Cruise and the lovely Kelly McGillis. The movie is all about pilots training at the US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School. A lot of footage was shot on board the Navy’s carrier the USS Enterprise during flight operations. At one point in a day’s shooting, the commander of the Enterprise changed course as needed for normal operations, but this altered the light for the cameras that were filming at the time. Director Tony Scott asked for the course to be changed back, but was informed that a course change would cost the Navy $25,000. Scott wrote out a check there and then, and he got another five minutes of filming with the light he needed.

54. ___ de cologne : EAU
Back in 1709, an Italian perfume-maker moved to Cologne in Germany. There he invented a new fragrance that he named Eau de Cologne after his newly adopted town. The fragrance is still produced in Cologne, using a secret formulation. However, the terms “Eau de Cologne” and “cologne”, are now used generically.

66. Philosopher John who posited a theory of social contract : LOCKE
John Locke was the English philosopher who postulated that the mind is a blank slate (or “tabula rasa”) when we are born, and that we fill that slate with our experiences and observations.

The “social contract” in political philosophy is the concept that individuals surrender some specific freedoms to a ruler or magistrate in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.

68. Mrs. Charlie Chaplin : OONA
Oona O’Neill dated J. D. Salinger and Orson Welles in her teens, but ended up marrying Charlie Chaplin. Oona was still pretty young when she married Chaplin, much to the dismay of her famous father, the playwright Eugene O’Neill. After the marriage Eugene disowned Oona as he was pretty upset about 54-year-old Chaplin marrying his 18-year-old daughter.

70. Library ID : ISBN
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was invented by one Gordon Foster who is now a professor at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. The code was originally developed for booksellers, so that they had a unique number (and now a barcode) for each publication.

71. Flat-bottomed boat : SCOW
A scow is a flat-bottomed boat with squared-off ends that’s often used for transportation, usually pushed or pulled by a barge. Often a scow can be seen carrying junk or garbage.

Down
1. Chicago mayor Emanuel : RAHM
The current Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, was an Illinois representative in the US House before resigning to take up President Obama’s offer to become the White House Chief of Staff.

2. “The Andy Griffith Show” boy : 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 …

3. Panhandles : BEGS
“To panhandle” is “to beg”. The term has been in use since the very early 1900s and probably comes from the sticking out of one’s hand and arm, like the handle of a pan.

5. ___, Straus and Giroux (book publisher) : FARRAR
The publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux has been around since 1946. Included in the company’s list of authors it has published are T. S. Eliot, William Golding and Elie Wiesel, all Nobel Prize winners.

6. “The Time Machine” people : ELOI
In the 1895 novel by H. G. Wells called “The Time Machine”, there are two races that the hero encounter in his travels into the future. The Eloi are the “beautiful people” who live on the planet’s surface. The Morlocks are a race of cannibals living underground who use the Eloi as food.

7. “Puttin’ on the ___” : RITZ
As well as being the title to a 2009 biography of Fred Astaire, “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is a song written by Irving Berlin in 1929 for the musical film of the same name. Back in the twenties, the expression “puttin’ on the Ritz” was used to mean “dressing very fashionably”, well enough for a visit to the Ritz Hotel …

8. Western mil. alliance : NATO
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was founded not long after WWII in 1949 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The first NATO Secretary General was Lord Ismay, Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during WWII. Famously, Lord Ismay said the goal of NATO was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

9. QB Steve who won a Payton Award : MCNAIR
Steve McNair was a quarterback who played most of his professional career with the Tennessee Titans. Sadly, McNair was shot and killed in 2009 at the age of only 36 years by his mistress, who then turned the gun on herself and committed suicide.

13. Hermann who wrote “Steppenwolf” : HESSE
Hermann Hesse was not only a novelist, but also a poet and a painter. Hesse’s best known work is probably his 1927 novel “Steppenwolf”.

19. Intestinal prefix : ENTERO-
The Greek word for “intestine” is “enteron”.

21. Circumference : AMBIT
An ambit is an outer boundary or limit, a circumference. The term can also be used to mean the sphere or scope of influence. “Ambit” comes from the Latin “ambire” meaning “to go around”.

25. Mind reader’s ability, briefly : ESP
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

28. Exile isle for Napoleon : ELBA
I had a lovely two-week vacation in Tuscany once, including what was supposed to be a two-night stay on the island of Elba. I had envisioned Elba as a place full of history, and maybe it is, but it is also overrun with tourists who use it as a beach getaway. We left after one day and we won’t be going back again …

30. Kemo Sabe’s sidekick : TONTO
On the television version of “The Lone Ranger”, Tonto was played by the actor Jay Silverheels.

“Kemosabe” is a term used by the Tonto character in the iconic radio and television program “The Lone Ranger”. “Kemosabe” doesn’t really mean anything outside of the show, and in fact was written as “ke-mo sah-bee” in the original radio show scripts. The term was created by longtime director of “The Lone Ranger”, Jim Jewell. To come up with the term, Jewell used the name of a boy’s camp that his father-in-law established called Kamp Kee-Mo Sah-Bee.

31. Equivalent of five houses in Monopoly : HOTEL
The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman called Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

35. Basso Pinza : EZIO
Ezio Pinza was an opera singer from Italy. Pinza performed for many years with the Metropolitan Opera in New York before retiring from the Met in 1948. He then launched a career on Broadway and in Hollywood.

40. McCain : 2008 :: ___ : 2012 : ROMNEY
Mitt Romney was born Willard Mitt Romney in 1947 in Detroit, Michigan. Romney’s parents named him after J. Willard Marriott (the hotel magnate) who was the father’s best friend, and after Milton “Mitt” Romney who was the father’s cousin and quarterback for the Chicago Bears.

44. Where the Knicks play in N.Y.C. : MSG
Madison Square Garden is an arena in New York City used for a variety of events. In the world of sports it is home to the New York Rangers of the NHL, as well as the New York Knicks of the NBA. “The Garden” is also the third busiest music venue in the world in terms of ticket sales.

49. Jane who wrote “Pride and Prejudice” : AUSTEN
Jane Austen is a favorite author of mine, and I have been lucky enough to have visited many of the sites in England that have been associated with her life. Favorite of these is a large cottage in the village of Chawton in Hampshire, England. Austen moved to Chawton from Bath, and there wrote and published her most famous novels, including “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Mansfield Park”.

51. Small Indian drum : TABLA
A tabla is a percussion instrument used in the Indian subcontinent. The tabla consists of a pair of hand drums and is similar to bongos.

52. Nabisco cookies : OREOS
The National Biscuit Company was formed in 1898 with the merger of three existing bakery businesses. The company name today is Nabisco, an abbreviated form of National Biscuit Company.

57. Italian wine area : ASTI
Asti is in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. The region is perhaps most famous for its Asti Spumante sparkling white wine.

58. Conductance units : MHOS
Conductance (measured in mhos) is the inverse of resistance (measured in ohms). The mho has been replaced by the SI unit called the siemens.

60. Camaro ___-Z : IROC
The IROC-Z is a model of Camaro, introduced in 1978. The IROC-Z takes its name from a famous stock car race, the International Race of Champions.

64. Luau instrument, informally : UKE
The ukulele originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.

Nowadays the word “luau” denotes almost any kind of party on the Hawaiian Islands, but to the purist a luau is a feast that always includes a serving of “poi”, the bulbous underground stems of taro baked with coconut milk.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Judge’s garment : ROBE
5. Plant with fronds : FERN
9. Book after Jonah : MICAH
14. Zenith : APEX
15. Et ___ (and others) : ALIA
16. Machine at a construction site : CRANE
17. Lofty : HIGH
18. Last ones in the pool, say : ROTTEN EGGS
20. Chicago Cubs spring training site : MESA, ARIZONA
22. Hosp. areas for accident victims : ERS
23. Actress Thurman : UMA
24. Pattern for many 1960s T-shirts : TIE-DYE
26. “Rag Mop” hitmakers, 1950 : AMES BROTHERS
32. Prefix with task : MULTI-
33. Unmannered sort : BOOR
34. Lawbreaker, in police lingo : PERP
38. E.P.A.-proscribed compound, for short : PCB
39. New Jersey’s capital : TRENTON
42. Menagerie : ZOO
43. Hoax : SHAM
45. Bone: Prefix : OSTE-
46. Chinese or Japanese : ASIAN
48. You’ve heard it many times before : SAME OLD STORY
51. 1986 Tom Cruise/Val Kilmer action film : TOP GUN
54. ___ de cologne : EAU
55. “You ___ what you eat” : ARE
56. Metal-joining technique : SEAM WELDING
63. Salon : BEAUTY SHOP
65. Clothes presser : IRON
66. Philosopher John who posited a theory of social contract : LOCKE
67. Unabridged dictionary, e.g. : TOME
68. Mrs. Charlie Chaplin : OONA
69. White from fright, say : ASHEN
70. Library ID : ISBN
71. Flat-bottomed boat : SCOW

Down
1. Chicago mayor Emanuel : RAHM
2. “The Andy Griffith Show” boy : OPIE
3. Panhandles : BEGS
4. Deplete : EXHAUST
5. ___, Straus and Giroux (book publisher) : FARRAR
6. “The Time Machine” people : ELOI
7. “Puttin’ on the ___” : RITZ
8. Western mil. alliance : NATO
9. QB Steve who won a Payton Award : MCNAIR
10. Fury : IRE
11. Like animals in a 42-Across : CAGED
12. Furious : ANGRY
13. Hermann who wrote “Steppenwolf” : HESSE
19. Intestinal prefix : ENTERO-
21. Circumference : AMBIT
25. Mind reader’s ability, briefly : ESP
26. Concert blasters : AMPS
27. “Thank you very ___” : MUCH
28. Exile isle for Napoleon : ELBA
29. Seriously overweight : OBESE
30. Kemo Sabe’s sidekick : TONTO
31. Equivalent of five houses in Monopoly : HOTEL
35. Basso Pinza : EZIO
36. Lion’s sound : ROAR
37. Smallish equine : PONY
40. McCain : 2008 :: ___ : 2012 : ROMNEY
41. ___ decongestant : NASAL
44. Where the Knicks play in N.Y.C. : MSG
47. Small apartments : STUDIOS
49. Jane who wrote “Pride and Prejudice” : AUSTEN
50. Become more intense : DEEPEN
51. Small Indian drum : TABLA
52. Nabisco cookies : OREOS
53. Fruit with a pit : PEACH
57. Italian wine area : ASTI
58. Conductance units : MHOS
59. Where a baby develops : WOMB
60. Camaro ___-Z : IROC
61. Something you might get your hand slapped for doing : NO-NO
62. Chew like a beaver : GNAW
64. Luau instrument, informally : UKE

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Posted by Bill Butler
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