Day: June 4, 2013

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Mr. Spock’s rank: Abbr. : CMDR
Leonard Nimoy played the logical Mr. Spock in the original “Star Trek” television series. Spock has to be the most popular character on the show, and he keeps popping up in “Star Trek” spin offs to this day. Nimoy first worked alongside William Shatner (Captain Kirk) in an episode of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (I loved that show!), with Nimoy playing a bad guy and Shatner playing an U.N.C.L.E. recruit.

5. Rosie of “The Jetsons,” for one : ROBOT
On “The Jetsons” animated TV show, the character Rosie the Robot was voiced by Jean Vander Pyl. Vander Pyl was also the voice actress behind Wilma Flintstone in “The Flintstone in “The Flintstones”

“The Jetsons” is an animated show from Hanna-Barbera that had its first run in 1962-1963, and then was recreated in 1985-1987. When it was debuted in 1963 by ABC, “The Jetsons” was the network’s first ever color broadcast.

10. Compressed video format : MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was established in 1988 to set standards for audio and video compression. The standards they’ve come up with use the acronym MPEG.

14. Lascivious sort : ROUE
“Roue” is a lovely word, I think, describing a less than lovely man. A roue could otherwise be described as a cad, someone of loose morals. “Roue” comes from the French word “rouer” meaning “to break on a wheel”. This describes the ancient form of capital punishment where a poor soul was lashed to a wheel and then beaten to death with cudgels and bars. I guess the suggestion is that a roue, with his loose morals, deserves such a punishment.

15. Archie’s sitcom wife : EDITH
Archie Bunker’s wife, Edith, was played by Jean Stapleton on the 1970s sitcom “All in the Family”. By 1980, Stapleton was growing tired of playing the role and appeared in fewer and fewer episodes. When the show’s spin-off series “Archie Bunker’s Place” premiered, the storyline revealed that Archie Bunker had just lost his wife, setting the tone for the new show.

16. Simon & Garfunkel’s “___ Rock” : I AM A
“I Am a Rock” is a lovely song written by Paul Simon that appears on the Simon and Garfunkel album “Sounds of Silence”.

17. Some Wall St. traders : ARBS
“Arb” is short for an arbitrageur, one who profits from the purchase of securities in one market and the subsequent sale in another, hence taking advantage of price discrepancies across markets.

19. Shoot with Novocain, say : NUMB
Novocain is actually a brand name, for the local anesthetic called procaine.

20. Highland slopes : BRAES
“Brae” is a lowland Scots word for the slope or brow of a hill.

22. Comb maker : BEE
Honey bees create a structure within their nests called a honeycomb that is used to contain their larvae and also to store honey and pollen. The honeycomb is made up of hexagonal cells made from wax.

23. Puerto Rico y Cuba : ISLAS
In Spanish, Cuba, for example (por ejemplo) is an island (isla).

Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern Caribbean (in the Atlantic Ocean), east of the Dominican Republic. The name “Puerto Rico” is Spanish for “rich port”. The locals often call their island Borinquen, the Spanish form of “Boriken”, the original name used by the natives.

Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean. The exact etymology of the name “Cuba” seems a little unclear. Most believe “Cuba” to be derived from the Taíno terms for “where fertile land is abundant” (cubao) or “great place” (coabana).

24. He drove the serpents from Ireland, in legend : SAINT PATRICK
There is a fair amount known about St. Patrick, some of which comes from two letters written in his own hand. St. Patrick lived in the fifth century, but was not born in Ireland. He was first brought to Ireland at about 16 years of age from his native Britain, by Irish raiders who made him a slave for six years. Patrick managed to escape and returned to his homeland where he studied and entered the Church. He went back to Ireland as a bishop and a missionary and there lived out the rest of his life. There seems to be good evidence that he died on March 17th (now celebrated annually as St. Patrick’s Day), although the year is less clear. The stories about shamrock and snakes, I am afraid they are the stuff of legend.

27. Jethro ___ : TULL
Jethro Tull is a rock band from the UK, formed in 1967 and still going strong today.

28. Sold-out sign : SRO
Standing Room Only (SRO)

29. Medicine-approving org. : FDA
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was in effect created by the Food and Drug Act signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

38. Diamond Head setting : OAHU
Diamond Head on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu was given its name by British sailors in the 1800s. These sailors found calcite crystals in the rock surrounding the volcanic tuff cone and mistook the crystals for diamonds.

39. ___ of Tranquillity : SEA
The Moon’s Mare Tranquillitatis (Latin for “Sea of Tranquility”) was named in 1651 by astronomers Francesco Grimaldi and Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Famously, the first manned landing on the Moon was in the Sea of Tranquility, when the Apollo 11 Lunar Module named Eagle touched down there in 1969. However, the first man-made vehicle to reach the Sea of Tranquility arrive four years earlier. the Ranger 8 spacecraft was deliberately crashed there in 1965, sending back thousands of photographs to Earth in the last 23 minutes of its mission.

41. Mathematician John who was the subject of “A Beautiful Mind” : NASH
The wonderful 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind” is of course based on a true story, but it is also a screenplay adapted from a very successful book of the same name written by Sylvia Nasar. Both book and film tell the life story of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe on the big screen). Nash is a mathematician and Nobel Laureate who struggles with paranoid schizophrenia.

42. Marcos of the Philippines : IMELDA
Imelda Marcos is the widow of former Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, and is a former politician in her own right. Imelda fled the Philippines with her husband and family in 1986, ending up in exile in Hawaii. She was allowed to return in 1991, and set up residence in an apartment block in Manila. One of my personal claims to fame is that I lived for two years in an apartment block right next door to Imelda Marcos when I lived in Manila …

45. Britain’s Arthur Wellesley, with “the” : IRON DUKE
Arthur Wellesley was nicknamed “the Iron Duke” and is best-known today as the 1st Duke of Wellington. It was Irish-born Wellesley who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Wellesley also served as Prime Minister of Britain for two terms.

48. Band with the multiplatinum albums “Out of Time” and “Monster” : REM
R.E.M. was a rock band from Athens, Georgia formed in 1980. The name “R.E.M.” was chosen randomly from a dictionary, apparently.

49. P, to Pythagoras : RHO
Rho is the Greek letter that looks just like our Roman letter “p”.

Pythagoras of Samos is remembered by most these days for his work in mathematics, and for his famous Pythagorean theorem that states that in any right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Although there is very little of Pythagoras’s own work that survives, much has been written by his successors that shows how great his influence was above and beyond mathematics, in the fields of philosophy and religion in particular. In fact, it is believed that Pythagoras coined the word “philosophy”, coming from the Greek for “loving wisdom or knowledge”. On a “timeline” of famous Greek philosophers, Pythagoras was doing his work over a hundred years before Socrates, who was followed by Plato and then Aristotle.

51. K.G.B. concern : MOLE
The Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB) was the national security agency of the Soviet Union until 1991. The KGB was dissolved at that time after the agency’s chairman led a failed attempt at a coup d’état designed to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.

52. Indian pipe player, maybe : SNAKE CHARMER
Snake charmers don’t actually hypnotize their cobras, but they do train them. The snake is trained to “follow” the movement of end of the pungi, the instrument that the charmer uses in the act. The snake presents no danger to the charmer or the audience, as it is typically defanged or has it’s mouth partially stitched up so that only the tongue can be moved in and out. Not a very nice practice …

57. Uno + cuatro : CINCO
In Spanish, one (uno) + four (cuatro) = five (cinco)

60. Santa ___ winds : ANA
The Santa Ana winds are the very dry air currents that sweep offshore late in the year in Southern California. Because these air currents 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.

61. Butcher’s string : TWINE
The light string known as twine might be used by a butcher to bind a cut of meat.

62. Eastern nurse : AMAH
“Amah” is an interesting word in that we associate it so much with Asian culture and yet it actually comes from the Portuguese “ama” meaning “nurse”. Ama was imported into English in the days of the British Raj in India when a wet-nurse became known as an amah.

63. Jeff of the Electric Light Orchestra : LYNNE
Jeff Lynne is a singer-songwriter best known as the leader of the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). Lynne went on to form the Traveling Wilburys supergroup, along with George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty.

68. Malaria symptom : AGUE
Malaria is a disease passed onto humans by mosquitoes. As a result of the disease, a parasite invades human red blood cells and multiplies causing fever and possibly coma or death. Over 750,000 people died from malaria in 2009, out of 225 million cases reported.

70. Critical times of attack : D-DAYS
The most famous D-Day in history was June 6, 1944, the date of the Normandy landings in WWII. The term “D-Day” is used by the military to designate the day on which a combat operations are to be launched, especially when the actual date has yet to be determined. What D stands for seems to have been lost in the mists of time although the tradition is that D just stands for “Day”. In fact, the French have a similar term, “Jour J” (Day J), with a similar meaning. We also use H-Hour to denote the hour the attack is to commence.

Down
2. “How Are Things in Glocca ___?” (1947 hit song) : MORRA
“How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” is a song from the stage musical “Finian’s Rainbow”. “Glocca Morra” is the name of a fictional village in Ireland that was made up by Burton Lane, the composer who wrote the music for the show. The village’s name was probably inspired by a 1912 book called “The Crock of Gold” by James Stephens, which refers to “Gort na Gloca Mora” (“the field of the big rock” in Irish).

3. Most populous of the United Arab Emirates : DUBAI
Dubai is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

4. Like Cain, toward Abel : RESENTFUL
Adam and Eve’s children were Cain and Abel, two estranged brothers.

5. Actor Stephen : REA
Stephen Rea is an Irish actor, whose most famous role was that of the “retired” IRA man in the brilliant 1992 film “The Crying Game”. He also starred in the chilling movie “Stuck”, a 2007 film that is based on a true story about a woman who commits a hit and run on a homeless man. The woman leaves the scene of the crime with the victim still “stuck” in her windshield. The woman leaves the man to die in her garage. Chilling, eh? But as I said, a true story …

7. Lavatory fixture : BIDET
“Bidet” is of course a French word that we imported into English. In French, the word “bidet” originally described a small horse or a pony. What we know as a bidet was so called because one can straddle it like a horse in order to use it.

10. Capital of Belarus : MINSK
Minsk is the capital of Belarus, formerly known as the Belorussion Soviet Socialist Republic.

11. Simon of Simon & Garfunkel : PAUL
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed together as “Simon & Garfunkel”, as I am sure we all know. The friends started singing together way back in the fifties when they were still in school together. The name of their act at that time was “Tom & Jerry”.

12. Actress Stone of “The Help” : EMMA
The actress Emma Stone really came to prominence with her performance in the 2010 high school movie called “Easy A”. My favorite film in which Stone appears is 2011’s “The Help”.

“The Help” is a 2009 novel by Kathryn Stockett and a drama film released in 2011. “The Help” tells of a young white woman in the South who writes a book about the racism faced by black housemaids in the early 1960s,

13. Chews the fat : GABS
Back in the day, a wealthy man would “bring home the bacon” and sit around with guests and “chew the fat”.

21. Double ___ Oreos : STUF
Double Stuf Oreo was introduced in 1975, and it has twice the normal amount of white cream filling as the original cookie.

25. Mideast grp. : PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964. The PLO’s early stated goal was the liberation of Palestine, with Palestine defined as the geographic entity that existed under the terms of the British Mandate granted by the League of Nations back in 1923. The PLO is recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by over one hundred countries, and was granted observer status (i.e. no voting rights) at the United Nations in 1974.

29. Herr’s honey : FRAU
In Germany, the lady of the house (haus) is the wife (frau).

31. 1980s U.S. Davis Cup captain : ASHE
Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979 Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

The Davis Cup tournament is the most prestigious international event in men’s tennis, an annual contest between teams competing for their country. The first Davis Cup event was held in 1900 with only two teams competing, from the United States and “the British Isles”. One of the four American players from Harvard designed the format of that first competition and supplied the trophy. This Dwight D. Davis loaned his name to the event.

35. Opus ___ : DEI
Opus Dei is Roman Catholic institution that was founded in Spain in 1928, and officially approved by the church in 1950. In 2010, Opus Dei had over 90,000 members, mostly lay people. The institution’s mission is to promote certain aspects of the Roman Catholic doctrine. Opus Dei was portrayed as a sinister organization by Dan Brown in his novel “The Da Vinci Code”.

37. Drawers in drawers : UNDERWEAR
Underwear known as “drawers” are so called as they are “drawn on”, pulled on.

43. Early Bond foe : DR NO
“Dr. No” may have been the first film in the wildly successful James Bond franchise, but it was the sixth novel in the series of books penned by Ian Fleming. Fleming was inspired to write the story after reading the Fu Manchu tales by Sax Rohmer. If you’ve read the Rohmer books or seen the films, you’ll recognize the similarities between the characters Dr. No and Fu Manchu.

47. GPS above-the-Equator fig. : N LAT
North latitude (N. Lat)

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. The modern GPS system that we use today was built by the US military who received the massive funding needed because of fears during the Cold War of the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. We civilians all round the world owe a lot to President Ronald Reagan because he directed the military to make GPS technology available to the public for the common good. President Reagan was moved to do so after the Soviet Union shot down KAL flight 007 carrying 269 people, just because the plane strayed accidentally into Soviet airspace.

53. Nine: Prefix : ENNEA-
“Ennead” is the Greek word for “the nine”.

54. No-see-um : MIDGE
“No-see-um” is a familiar term used in North America for the small flies known as biting midges. We called them “midgies” in Ireland, and they got me at the beach yesterday …

56. Spanish kings : REYES
In Spanish, a king (rey) might wear a crown (una corona).

57. South Africa has a famous one : CAPE
The Cape of Good Hope in South Africa is not, as I believed, the most southerly point of Africa. That honor goes to Cape Agulhas, which lies just under a hundred miles further south. The first European to reach “the Cape” was Bartolomeu Dias in 1448, and he called the headland the Cape of Storms. It was renamed by John II, King of Portugal, as the Cape of Good Hope as discovery of the Cape led to a spirit of optimism with the opening of a sea route from Europe to India and beyond.

59. “Great” detective of children’s literature : NATE
The ‘Nate the Great” series of children’s novels was written (mainly) by Marjorie Sharmat. Nate is like a young Sherlock Holmes, with a dog for a sidekick called Sludge. Some of the books have been adapted for television.

63. It may be dropped when one trips : LSD
LSD (colloquially known as “acid”) is short for lysergic acid diethylamide. A Swiss chemist called Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 in a research project looking for medically efficacious ergot alkaloids. It wasn’t until some five years later when Hofmann ingested some of the drug accidentally that its psychedelic properties were discovered. Trippy, man …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Mr. Spock’s rank: Abbr. : CMDR
5. Rosie of “The Jetsons,” for one : ROBOT
10. Compressed video format : MPEG
14. Lascivious sort : ROUE
15. Archie’s sitcom wife : EDITH
16. Simon & Garfunkel’s “___ Rock” : I AM A
17. Some Wall St. traders : ARBS
18. Beef up : ADD TO
19. Shoot with Novocain, say : NUMB
20. Highland slopes : BRAES
22. Comb maker : BEE
23. Puerto Rico y Cuba : ISLAS
24. He drove the serpents from Ireland, in legend : SAINT PATRICK
27. Jethro ___ : TULL
28. Sold-out sign : SRO
29. Medicine-approving org. : FDA
32. Painter’s support : SCAFFOLD
36. Accustoms : ENURES
38. Diamond Head setting : OAHU
39. ___ of Tranquillity : SEA
41. Mathematician John who was the subject of “A Beautiful Mind” : NASH
42. Marcos of the Philippines : IMELDA
45. Britain’s Arthur Wellesley, with “the” : IRON DUKE
48. Band with the multiplatinum albums “Out of Time” and “Monster” : REM
49. P, to Pythagoras : RHO
51. K.G.B. concern : MOLE
52. Indian pipe player, maybe : SNAKE CHARMER
57. Uno + cuatro : CINCO
60. Santa ___ winds : ANA
61. Butcher’s string : TWINE
62. Eastern nurse : AMAH
63. Jeff of the Electric Light Orchestra : LYNNE
65. Drain feature : EDDY
66. Comb-over’s locale : PATE
67. Bird feeder fill : SEEDS
68. Malaria symptom : AGUE
69. Checked out : EYED
70. Critical times of attack : D-DAYS
71. Count in a weight room : REPS

Down
1. Cantankerous folks : CRABS
2. “How Are Things in Glocca ___?” (1947 hit song) : MORRA
3. Most populous of the United Arab Emirates : DUBAI
4. Like Cain, toward Abel : RESENTFUL
5. Actor Stephen : REA
6. Strange birds : ODDBALLS
7. Lavatory fixture : BIDET
8. Bewhiskered frolickers : OTTERS
9. However, briefly : THO’
10. Capital of Belarus : MINSK
11. Simon of Simon & Garfunkel : PAUL
12. Actress Stone of “The Help” : EMMA
13. Chews the fat : GABS
21. Double ___ Oreos : STUF
23. A browser has one : ICON
25. Mideast grp. : PLO
26. Red-hot feeling : IRE
29. Herr’s honey : FRAU
30. Information ___ : DESK
31. 1980s U.S. Davis Cup captain : ASHE
32. Evening in Paris : SOIR
33. Checked in, say : CAME
34. [May I have your attention?] : AHEM!
35. Opus ___ : DEI
37. Drawers in drawers : UNDERWEAR
40. Companion who’s a knockout : ARM CANDY
43. Early Bond foe : DR NO
44. “Gotcha!” : AHA!
46. Word before “That’s gotta hurt!” : OOH!
47. GPS above-the-Equator fig. : N LAT
50. Approved : OKAYED
52. Timetable: Abbr. : SCHED
53. Nine: Prefix : ENNEA-
54. No-see-um : MIDGE
55. Turn out to be : END UP
56. Spanish kings : REYES
57. South Africa has a famous one : CAPE
58. Polite words after “if” : I MAY
59. “Great” detective of children’s literature : NATE
63. It may be dropped when one trips : LSD
64. Hook shape : ESS

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