Day: June 12, 2013

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Puerto Rican port : PONCE
Ponce is the second largest city in Puerto Rico. The famous conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon first landed on the island in 1508, with Spanish settlers following soon after. Among the earliest settlers was Juan Ponce de Leon’s great-grandson, Juan Ponce de León y Loayza. The great-grandson was politically savvy and was instrumental in getting a royal permit to establish the settlement that became today’s Ponce. Ponce is named after Juan Ponce de Leon y Loayza rather than his more famous great-grandfather.

15. Super Bowl XXXIV winners : RAMS
The St. Louis Rams has only won the Super Bowl once, in 1999, against the Tennessee Titans. The Rams were based in Cleveland from 1936-45, Los Angeles from 1946-94 and St. Louis from 1995 to the present day.

17. Fashion designer with a signature scent : COCO CHANEL
Coco Chanel was a French fashion designer. Perhaps because I am a man, clothes design is not my forte, however, if I had to pick a designer whose clothes I really liked, it would be Chanel. She had a way of creating simpler designs that looked so elegant on a woman.

19. Way of comporting oneself : MIEN
One’s mien is one’s bearing or manner. “Mien” shares the same etymological root as our word “demeanor”.

21. Thor’s father : ODIN
In Norse mythology, Odin was the chief of the gods. Odin’s wife Frigg was the queen of Asgard whose name gave us our English term “Friday” (via Anglo-Saxon). Odin’s son was Thor, and his name gave us the term “Thursday”.

31. Hangman turn : GUESS
The word guessing game called Hangman seems to have first been played in Victorian England. At one time it was known as “Birds. Beasts and Fishes” as the words to be guessed had to be types of animal.

32. Singer who said “Thanks for listenin'” : KATE SMITH
The singer Kate Smith was best-known for her stirring renditions of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”.

36. Dame ___ Everage : EDNA
Dame Edna Everage is the outrageous character created and played by Australian comedian Barry Humphries. I saw him/her perform live in a San Francisco theater, and what a great show it was.

37. Priests who teach the dharma : LAMAS
In the context of Buddhism, dharma can mean the collection of teachings and doctrines of the faith. The term is also used to describe proper and correct behavior that maintains the natural order of things.

38. Novel subtitled “A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas” : OMOO
Herman Melville mined his own experiences when writing his novels. Melville sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1841 on a whaler heading into the Pacific Ocean (a source for “Moby Dick”). Melville ended up deserting his ship 18 months later and lived with natives on a South Pacific Island for three weeks (a source for “Typee”). He picked up another whaler and headed for Hawaii, where he joined the crew of a US navy frigate that was bound for Boston (a source for “Omoo”).

39. Part of a three-monkey phrase : SEE NO EVIL
The old adage “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” originated in the 17th century. The phrase comes as an interpretation of a wood carving over a door in a shrine in Nikko, Japan. The carving depicts the “Three Wise Monkeys”:

– Mizaru, covering his eyes
– Kikazaru, covering his ears
– Iwazaru, covering his mouth

42. Piece to lounge on : DIVAN
Ottomans and divans are essentially couches without backs or arms.

47. “This was ___ finest hour”: Churchill : THEIR
Soon after Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister of the UK in 1940, he delivered some stirring speeches that rallied the country in the face of German victories right across Europe. The first of these was his “Blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech as he reported the formation of a new coalition government designed to unite the country in time of war. The second was his “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, as he reported the successful evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. The third speech concluded with, “This was their finest hour”, words delivered to Parliament just as France fell, and Churchill pledged that the British Commonwealth would fight on, alone if necessary. The last lines of this third speech, from this magnificent orator, were:

… But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.

55. Rapper ___ Dogg : NATE
Nate Dogg was the stage name of rapper Nathaniel Hale from Clarksdale,Mississippi. Nate Dogg is no longer with us as he died at the age of 41 after suffering multiple strokes.

56. “Annie’s Song” singer : JOHN DENVER
Singer John Denver’s real name was Henry John Deutchendorf, Jr. Denver was a great singer and he had many other passions. He was an excellent photographer, and an avid skier and golfer. He also loved flying and collected vintage biplanes. He flew himself to concerts in his own Learjet and had a handful of other planes that he would take out for spin when he could. One of his planes was an Experimental Rutan Long-EZ, a homebuilt aircraft noted for its fuel efficiency and tremendous range. Denver took the Rutan Long-EZ up in the middle of October 1997 not having much experience with the plane, even though he had logged over 2,700 hours of flying time in other aircraft. The plane crashed into the ocean near Pacific Grove, California in an accident that Denver did not survive.

John Denver wrote “Annie’s Song” in just over ten minutes, as he was travelling up a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado. The song is a tribute to his then wife Annie Martell Denver.

58. Moreno of “West Side Story” : RITA
The Puerto Rican singer, dancer and actress Rita Moreno is one of the few performers to have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony. Moreno got her big break, and won her Oscar, for playing Anita in the 1961 screen adaption of “West Side Story”.

60. Rock with bands : AGATE
Agate is a micro-crystalline form of quartz (so is related to sand/silica). Some agate samples have deposited layers that give a striped appearance, and these are called “banded agate”.

61. Utah Valley University city : OREM
Orem, Utah was originally known as “Sharon” (a Biblical name), then “Provo Bench”, and in 1914 it was given the family name of a local railroad operator called “Orem”. Orem gave itself the nickname “Family City USA” and sure enough in 2010, “Forbes” rated Orem the 5th best place in the country to raise a family.

Down
3. Like guys who finish last, per Durocher : NICE
Baseball player and manager Leo Durocher was noted for being outspoken, and was given the nickname “Leo the Lip”. In 1946, while he was manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Durocher expressed the opinion that teams like his successful Dodgers would always do better that teams replete with personable individuals (naming Mel Ott in particular). He used his most memorable phrase to encapsulate the sentiment … “nice guys finish last”.

5. Key next to F1 : ESC
The escape key was originally used to control computer peripherals. It was a key that allowed the computer operator to stop what the peripheral was doing (cancel a print job, for example). Nowadays the escape key is used for all sorts of things, especially in gaming programs.

8. Closing word : AMEN
The word “amen” is translated as “so be it”. “Amen” is said to be of Hebrew origin, but it is likely to be also influenced by Aramaic and Arabic.

9. Broadband letters : DSL
DSL originally stood for Digital Subscriber Loop, but is now accepted to mean (Asymmetric) Digital Subscriber Line. DSL is the technology that allows Internet service be delivered down the same telephone line as voice service, by separating the two into different frequency signals.

11. Erie Canal city : UTICA
Today, Utica in New York is known as “Second Chance City” due to the recent influx of refugees from war-torn parts of the world, and from Bosnia in particular. These immigrants have helped revitalize the area and reverse a trend of population loss.

The Erie Canal runs from Albany to Buffalo in the state of New York. What the canal does is allow shipping to proceed from New York Harbor right up the Hudson River, through the canal and into the Great Lakes. When it was opened in 1825, the Erie Canal had immediate impact on the economy of New York City and locations along its route. It was the first means of “cheap” transportation from a port on the Atlantic seaboard into the interior of the United States. Arguably it was the most important factor contributing to the growth of New York City over competing ports such as Baltimore and Philadelphia. It was largely because of the Erie Canal that New York became such an economic powerhouse, earning it the nickname of the Empire State.

13. Skater Harding : TONYA
Tonya Harding won the US Figure Skating Championships in 1991. Harding’s reputation was greatly tarnished in the run up to the 1994 Olympics, when her former husband and her bodyguard contracted someone to attack Harding’s main competitor, Nancy Kerrigan. During a practice session for the US Championship, a hired thug assaulted Kerrigan with police baton, attempting to break her leg. Kerrigan was forced to withdraw, and Harding won the championship. Both Harding and Kerrigan were selected for the Olympic team, and despite attempts to get Harding removed, both skated at the Games in Lillehammer. Harding finished in eighth place, and Kerrigan won the silver medal. Harding admitted that she helped cover up the attack when she found out about it, and was stripped of her US Championship title.

22. They may be measured by the pound : DOGS
A dog might have height and weight measured at the pound.

24. ___ Smith’s Pies : MRS
The company known as Mrs. Smith’s Pies was founded by Amanda Smith and her son in the 1920s. The Smiths started the company to take advantage of increasing demand for her own fruit pies that she sold at a local YMCA lunch counter in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

25. Works of Horace : ODES
One of Ancient Rome’s leading lyric poets was Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or “Horace” as we tend to know him.

26. Yellows or grays, say : AGES
Some things turn yellow or gray when they age, like I did perhaps …

28. Pulitzer-winning journalist Weingarten : GENE
Pulitzer Prize winner Gene Weingarten is a journalist and author best known for his syndicated column “Below the Beltway”. “Below the Beltway” is a humor column that Weingarten writes for the “Washington Post”.

32. Polynesian beverage : KAVA
Kava is a plant found in the western Pacific. Its roots are used to make an intoxicating drink also called kava, which acts as a sedative.

41. ___ Lanka : SRI
The name Sri Lanka translates from Sanskrit into English as “venerable island”. Before 1970, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name given to the country during British rule. The lion on the country’s national flag symbolizes the fight against British colonialism.

44. Saki’s real surname : MUNRO
Hector Hugh Munro was a British writer, actually born in Burma. Munro was famous for his short stories, which he published using the pen name “Saki”. His most well-known story is “The Open Window”, which ends with the great line “Romance at short notice was her specialty”.

45. Carrier name until 1997 : USAIR
From 1953, what today is US Airways was called Allegheny Airlines. In the seventies, customers became very dissatisfied with the company’s service levels as it struggled to manage a rapid expansion in its number of flights. These problems earned the airline the nickname “Agony Air”. Allegheny tried to leave the “agony” behind in 1979 and changed its name to USAir. In 1997, the name was again changed, to US Airways.

46. Number of hills of Roma : SETTE
In Italian, Rome (Roma) is built on seven (sette) hills.

50. PBS science series : NOVA
“Nova” is an excellent science television series on PBS. “Nova” was created back in 1974, and was inspired by a very similar BBC show called “Horizon”, a show that I grew up with. Many “Nova” episodes are actually co-productions with the BBC with an American narrator used for the PBS broadcasts and a British narrator for the BBC broadcasts.

52. Author Turgenev : IVAN
Ivan Turgenev was a Russian novelist and playwright. Turgenev’s most famous works are a collections of short stories called “A Sportsman’s Sketches” (1852) and the novel “Fathers and Sons” (1862).

53. Brooklyn team since 2012 : NETS
The NBA’s Brooklyn Nets until relatively recently were the New Jersey Nets based in Newark. Prior to 1977, the team was known as the New York Nets and played in various locations on Long Island. Ten years earlier, the Nets were called the New Jersey Americans and were headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey.

56. Improvise, as a band : JAM
The use of “jam”, to mean an improvised passage performed by a whole jazz band, dates back to the late twenties. This gave rise to “jam session”, a term used a few years later. The use of “jam” in this context probably stems from the meaning of “jam” as something sweet, something excellent.

57. “___ my shorts!”: Bart Simpson : EAT
“Eat my shorts” is a catch phrase oft spoken by Bart Simpson on the television show “The Simpsons”.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Puerto Rican port : PONCE
6. Spot on a small screen : TV AD
10. The hots : LUST
14. “See ya!” : ADIOS!
15. Super Bowl XXXIV winners : RAMS
16. “Break ___ me gently” : IT TO
17. Fashion designer with a signature scent : COCO CHANEL
19. Way of comporting oneself : MIEN
20. Thousand-mile journey, say : TREK
21. Thor’s father : ODIN
22. Reason to drill : DECAY
23. Press on : IMPEL
25. “C’est magnifique!” : OO LA LA!
26. Brings to a boil? : ANGERS
29. Spot for a window box : LEDGE
31. Hangman turn : GUESS
32. Singer who said “Thanks for listenin'” : KATE SMITH
36. Dame ___ Everage : EDNA
37. Priests who teach the dharma : LAMAS
38. Novel subtitled “A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas” : OMOO
39. Part of a three-monkey phrase : SEE NO EVIL
41. Saw wood, so to speak : SNORE
42. Piece to lounge on : DIVAN
43. Investment pro : BROKER
44. Bulked up like a weightlifter : MUSCLY
47. “This was ___ finest hour”: Churchill : THEIR
49. Rehab candidates : USERS
50. Final Four org. : NCAA
51. Informal contraction : AIN’T
55. Rapper ___ Dogg : NATE
56. “Annie’s Song” singer : JOHN DENVER
58. Moreno of “West Side Story” : RITA
59. Devoted : AVID
60. Rock with bands : AGATE
61. Utah Valley University city : OREM
62. Gas station freebies, once : MAPS
63. Needing a massage, maybe : TENSE

Down
1. Diplomatic goal : PACT
2. Fish market emanation : ODOR
3. Like guys who finish last, per Durocher : NICE
4. Single scoop : COOKIES AND CREAM
5. Key next to F1 : ESC
6. Commerce : TRADE
7. Double scoop : VANILLA MINT-CHIP
8. Closing word : AMEN
9. Broadband letters : DSL
10. Triple scoop : LIME LEMON ORANGE
11. Erie Canal city : UTICA
12. Make off with : STEAL
13. Skater Harding : TONYA
18. Brewery supply : HOPS
22. They may be measured by the pound : DOGS
24. ___ Smith’s Pies : MRS
25. Works of Horace : ODES
26. Yellows or grays, say : AGES
27. Like some sunbathers : NUDE
28. Pulitzer-winning journalist Weingarten : GENE
30. Bibliography abbr. : ET AL
32. Polynesian beverage : KAVA
33. “Everything’s fine, thanks” : I’M OK
34. Drove like mad : TORE
35. Many a gardener at work : HOER
37. Tax : LEVY
40. Traditional paintings : OILS
41. ___ Lanka : SRI
43. Necklace piece : BEAD
44. Saki’s real surname : MUNRO
45. Carrier name until 1997 : USAIR
46. Number of hills of Roma : SETTE
48. Analog clock features : HANDS
50. PBS science series : NOVA
52. Author Turgenev : IVAN
53. Brooklyn team since 2012 : NETS
54. ___-hugger : TREE
56. Improvise, as a band : JAM
57. “___ my shorts!”: Bart Simpson : EAT

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