Day: February 2, 2015

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Egg size larger than large : JUMBO
James Anthony Bailey collaborated with P. T. Barnum to establish Barnum and Bailey’s Circus. It was Bailey who negotiated the deal to buy a famous elephant from London Zoo in 1882, the one called “Jumbo”. It was the exposure that Jumbo got in the circus that brought into common usage our term “jumbo” meaning “huge”.

10. Big inits. in financial news : WSJ
“The Wall Street Journal” (WSJ) is a daily newspaper with a business bent that is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company. The WSJ has a larger US circulation than any other newspaper, with “USA Today” coming in second place.

13. French ___ soup : ONION
To cook “au gratin” is to prepare something in a shallow dish with a crust of bread or cheese on top. In America we tend to think mainly of potatoes prepared this way, but the technique can be used for many different dishes. Notably, what we call French onion soup is called a “gratinée” in France, an onion soup with some bread and cheese baked on top.

14. Prime draft classification : ONE-A
The US government maintains information on all males who are potentially subject to military conscription, using what is called the Selective Service System(SS). In the event that a draft was held, men registered would be classified into groups to determine eligibility for service. Class 1-A registrants are those available for unrestricted military service. Other classes are 1-A-O (conscientious objector available for noncombatant service), 4-A (registrant who has completed military service) and 4-D (Minister of religion).

16. “Some Like It Hot” actor : TONY CURTIS
The actor Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, New York. Curtis played a wide variety of roles over a 50-year career, but I most enjoyed his romantic-comedy roles, especially in “Some Like It Hot” and “Operation Petticoat”, both released in 1959.

“Some Like it Hot” is such a fun movie, released in 1959 and directed by Billy Wilder. The big three in the cast are Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. Several years ago a stage version of “Some Like It Hot” was playing in San Francisco, with Tony Curtis in the cast. This time he played the older man who was wooing the Jack Lemmon character in the movie.

18. The Parthenon or Machu Picchu : RUIN
The Parthenon is the ruined temple that sits on the Athenian Acropolis. Although the Parthenon was dedicated to the goddess Athena as a sacred building in the days of the Athenian Empire, it was actually used primarily as a treasury. In later centuries, the Parthenon was repurposed as a Christian Church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and was used as a mosque after Ottoman conquest.

Machu Picchu is known as “The Lost City of the Incas”, and it can be visited on a mountain ridge in Peru, 50 miles northwest of the city of Cuzco in the southeast of the country. The name Machu Picchu means “old peak”. The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu originates about 50 miles from Cuzco on the Urubamba River in Peru. It can take travelers about 5 days to trek the full length of the trail, passing through many Incan ruins before reaching the Sun Gate on Machu Picchu mountain. The trail was becoming greatly overused, forcing the Peruvian government to limit the number of people on the trail each day to 500. Book early …

26. Wool variety : MOHAIR
Angora wool comes from the Angora rabbit. On the other hand, the Angora goat produces the wool known as mohair.

31. Indonesian tourist destination : BALI
Bali is the most important tourist destination in Indonesia and is an island lying east of Java. In recent years, Bali’s tourist industry has been badly hit in the aftermath of two terrorist bombings. The first one, in 2002, killed 202 people, mainly foreign tourists in a nightclub.

34. Empire State Building locale … or a hint to three letters in 16-, 19-, 52- and 57-Across : THE BIG APPLE
Apparently the first published use of the term “Big Apple” to describe New York City dates back to 1909. Edward Martin wrote the following in his book “The Wayfarer in New York”:

“Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.”

Over ten years later, the term “big apple” was used as a nickname for racetracks in and around New York City. However, the concerted effort to “brand” the city as the Big Apple had to wait until the seventies and was the work of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau.

40. Thick Japanese noodle : UDON
Udon noodles are made from wheat flour and are very popular in Japanese cuisine like tempura.

41. Get tangled up : RAVEL
While “ravel” can mean to get tangled up, the term is usually used to mean “unravel, disentangle”. Yep, “ravel” and “unravel” mean the same thing!

47. Aioli, mostly : VOWELS
All except for the L, the letters in the word “aioli” are all vowels.

To the purist, especially in Provence in the South of France, the “home” of aioli, aioli is prepared just by grinding garlic with olive oil. However, other ingredients are often added to the mix, particularly egg yolks.

52. Indictment for a serious offense : FELONY CHARGE
The US Federal government defines a felony as any crime punishable by more than a year in prison, or death. Any crime punishable by a prison term of a year or less is classified as a misdemeanor.

56. “This skull has ___ in the earth …”: “Hamlet” : LAIN
“This skull has lain in the earth three-and-twenty years.” is a line from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. The skull in questions is Yorick’s.

In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, there is a scene when Prince Hamlet holds in his hand the skull of the deceased court jester Yorick. Hamlet starts into a famous monologue at this point:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is …
The opening line is often misquoted as “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well.”

61. Rubik who invented Rubik’s Cube : ERNO
What was originally called the “Magic Cube” became better known as Rubik’s Cube, named for its inventor Ernő Rubik. Rubik’s Cube is the world’s biggest selling puzzle game, with over 350 million sold in just over 30 years.

62. Margarine : OLEO
Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France announced a competition to develop a substitute for butter, a substitute that would be more accessible to the lower classes and more practical for the armed forces. In 1869, a French chemist called Hippolyte Mege-Mouries came up with something that he called oleomargarine, which was eventually manufactured under the trade name “margarine”. The name “oleomargarine” also gives us our generic term “oleo”.

Down
2. Tre minus due : UNO
“One, two, three” in Italian is “uno, due, tre”.

4. William who played Hopalong Cassidy in old westerns : BOYD
In the original stories written by Clarence E. Mulford in the early 1900s, Hopalong Cassidy was a bit of a brute, not at all like the heroic character who appeared on the silver screen and television. The role of Hopalong Cassidy was famously played by William Boyd, a role that he made his own by playing it in an incredible series of 66 (!) movies.

7. Bit of tomfoolery : ANTIC
In Middle English, in the middle of the 14th century, a mentally deficient man would be called a Thom Foole, sort of a nickname. We retain the name today in our word “tomfoolery” meaning “clowning around”.

11. Meara’s partner in comedy : STILLER
Jerry Stiller is an actor and comedian, most associated with the role of Frank Costanza on “Seinfeld”. For many years he was part of the comedy team Stiller and Meara along with his wife, Anne Meara. And of course, Stiller and Meara are the parents of the actors Ben Stiller and Amy Stiller.

12. Actor on “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Chicago P.D.” : JON SEDA
Jon Seda plays Detective Paul Falsone on the cop show “Homicide: Life on the Street”. I remember Seda for playing Marine John Basilone on “The Pacific”, the followup to “Band of Brothers”.

15. Brand for clearing a clogged pipe : DRANO
To clean out drains we might buy Crystal Drano which is sodium hydroxide (lye) mixed with sodium nitrate, sodium chloride (table salt) and aluminum. The contents of Drano work in concert to clear the clog. The lye reacts with any fats creating soap which may be enough to break up the clog. Also, the finely-divided aluminum reacts with water creating tremendous heat so that that mixture boils and churns, then any hair or fibers are cut by the sharp edges of the nitrate and chloride crystals. Having said all that, I find that boiling water poured down the drain almost always does the job …

20. Home to L.A. and S.F. : CAL
California (Cal.) is home to Los Angeles (L.A.) and San Francisco (S.F.).

21. Tan who wrote “The Joy Luck Club” : AMY
Amy Tan lives not too far from here, in Sausalito just north of San Francisco. Tan is an American writer of Chinese descent whose most successful work is “The Joy Luck Club”. “The Joy Luck Club” was made into a movie produced by Oliver Stone in 1993. The novel and movie tell of four Chinese-American immigrant families in San Francisco who start the Joy Luck Club, a group playing Mahjong for money and eating delicious food.

23. TV show that popularized the phrase “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” : WHAT’S MY LINE?
I only discovered the wonderful old American TV show “What’s My Line?” a few years ago. I was familiar with the show’s British adaptation, but hadn’t spotted the US version until relatively recently in reruns. I fell in love with the beautiful Arlene Francis watching those reruns. She was a regular panelist on the show, and the embodiment of elegance. Host of the show was the erudite and genteel John Daly, a much-respected journalist and broadcaster. Daly became the son-in-law of Chief Justice Earl Warren when he married Warren’s daughter, Virginia.

28. Suffix with Manhattan : -ITE
The island we know as Manhattan was inhabited by the Lenape Indians when the first Europeans explorers arrived in the area. According to the logbook of one of the officers on explorer Henry Hudson’s yacht, the island was called “Manna-hata” in the local language, from which the modern name derives.

29. Turing who was portrayed in “The Imitation Game” : ALAN
Alan Turing was an English mathematician. He was deservedly well-respected for his code-breaking work during WWII at Bletchley Park in England. However, despite his contributions to cracking the German Enigma code and other crucial work, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He agreed to chemical castration, treatment with female hormones, and two years later he committed suicide by taking cyanide. Turing’s life story is told in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead. I thoroughly enjoyed that film …

31. “Two no-trump” and others : BIDS
That would be a bid made in the card game of bridge.

35. Kind of film exemplified by “Lethal Weapon” : BUDDY-COP
The “Lethal Weapon” series of film features Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the lead roles. All four films in the series were directed by Richard Donner.

38. Dimpled breakfast items : WAFFLES
You can’t get a Belgian waffle in Belgium, and the nearest thing is probably a Brussels waffle. Brussels waffles were introduced to the world in 1958, and arrived in the US in 1962 at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle. The name “Brussels” was changed to “Bel-Gem” for the US market, which evolved into “Belgian”.

42. QB Manning : ELI
Eli Manning plays as quarterback for the New York Giants. Eli’s brother Peyton Manning is quarterback for the Denver Broncos. Eli and Peyton’s father is Archie Manning, who was also a successful NFL quarterback.

43. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” drug : LSD
“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” is a phrase popularized in the sixties by Timothy Leary, the psychologist and writer. Leary was an icon of the sixties counterculture, a promoter of the use of LSD. On his death, some of his ashes were “buried” in space, launched aboard a rocket that contained the ashes of 24 other people including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.

45. University of Maine’s home : ORONO
The town of Orono is home to the University of Maine, founded in 1862. The college is actually located on an island (Marsh island) lying between the Penobscot and Stillwater rivers. The town of Orono is named after Joseph Orono, a chief of the Penobscot Nation.

46. Oui’s opposite : NON
“Oui” is “yes” in French, and “non” is “no”.

47. Wang of fashion : VERA
Vera Wang’s first choice for a career was figure skating. Although she a very capable skater, Wang failed to make the 1968 US Olympics team. She switched to the world of fashion, and is now famous for her designs of wedding dresses … but also costumes for figure skaters.

50. Mob bosses : CAPOS
More properly called a “caporegime”, a “capo” is high-ranking member of the Mafia (Cosa Nostra).

53. Pepsi-___ : COLA
The Pepsi-Cola formulation was developed by one Caleb Bradham who made the drink at home and sold it as “Brad’s Drink”. Bradham’s aim was to provide a drink that was pleasant to taste, that would aid digestion and boost energy. Included in the formula were pepsin (a digestive enzyme) and kola nuts. These two ingredients inspired the brand name we use today: Pepsi-Cola.

55. Brontë’s “Jane ___” : EYRE
“Jane Eyre” is the celebrated novel written by Charlotte Brontë, under the pen name Currer Bell. Over the years, I’ve shared here on my blogs that the “Jane Eyre” story line is a little too dark and Gothic for my taste, but a very persuasive blog reader convinced me to look more at the romantic side of the story and give it a second chance. I watched a wonderful 4-hour television adaptation of the novel made by the BBC a while back and I have to say that because I was focused on the relationship between Jane and Rochester, I was able to push past the Gothic influences (that depress me) so I really enjoyed the story. I thoroughly recommend the 2006 BBC adaptation to fans of the novel.

58. British runner Sebastian : COE
Sebastian Coe is a retired middle distance runner from the UK who won four Olympic medals including golds in the 1500m in 1980 and 1984. After retiring from athletics, Coe went into politics and served as a Member of Parliament from 1992 to 1997. He headed up London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Egg size larger than large : JUMBO
6. Remove, as a potato peel : PARE
10. Big inits. in financial news : WSJ
13. French ___ soup : ONION
14. Prime draft classification : ONE-A
15. Inflict upon : DO TO
16. “Some Like It Hot” actor : TONY CURTIS
18. The Parthenon or Machu Picchu : RUIN
19. “I must do this” : DESTINY CALLS
21. “How adorable!” : AWW!
24. Key for exiting full-screen mode : ESC
25. Item on a birthday cake : CANDLE
26. Wool variety : MOHAIR
29. Permitted : ALLOWED
30. What a baker gets a rise out of? : YEAST
31. Indonesian tourist destination : BALI
33. Notable time : ERA
34. Empire State Building locale … or a hint to three letters in 16-, 19-, 52- and 57-Across : THE BIG APPLE
38. Existed : WAS
40. Thick Japanese noodle : UDON
41. Get tangled up : RAVEL
44. Marzipan nuts : ALMONDS
47. Aioli, mostly : VOWELS
48. Bit of sports equipment with a reel : FLY ROD
49. King or queen beater : ACE
51. Clear (of) : RID
52. Indictment for a serious offense : FELONY CHARGE
56. “This skull has ___ in the earth …”: “Hamlet” : LAIN
57. Executive’s free “wheels” : COMPANY CAR
61. Rubik who invented Rubik’s Cube : ERNO
62. Margarine : OLEO
63. Enticing smell : AROMA
64. NNW’s opposite : SSE
65. Bottoms of paws : PADS
66. Given to crying : WEEPY

Down
1. Write quickly : JOT
2. Tre minus due : UNO
3. 60 secs. : MIN
4. William who played Hopalong Cassidy in old westerns : BOYD
5. “I’ll only say this ___ …” : ONCE
6. Places with wharves : PORTS
7. Bit of tomfoolery : ANTIC
8. Bridle strap : REIN
9. Unhurried pace : EASY CLIP
10. Eager reply to “You guys want to come?” : WOULD WE EVER!
11. Meara’s partner in comedy : STILLER
12. Actor on “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Chicago P.D.” : JON SEDA
15. Brand for clearing a clogged pipe : DRANO
17. Druggie : USER
20. Home to L.A. and S.F. : CAL
21. Tan who wrote “The Joy Luck Club” : AMY
22. “___ is me!” : WOE
23. TV show that popularized the phrase “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” : WHAT’S MY LINE?
27. Cigar residue : ASH
28. Suffix with Manhattan : -ITE
29. Turing who was portrayed in “The Imitation Game” : ALAN
31. “Two no-trump” and others : BIDS
32. In the past : AGO
35. Kind of film exemplified by “Lethal Weapon” : BUDDY-COP
36. Expert : PRO
37. Statute : LAW
38. Dimpled breakfast items : WAFFLES
39. Hanging on every word : ALL EARS
42. QB Manning : ELI
43. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” drug : LSD
45. University of Maine’s home : ORONO
46. Oui’s opposite : NON
47. Wang of fashion : VERA
49. Arabic man’s name meaning “highly praised” : AHMED
50. Mob bosses : CAPOS
53. Pepsi-___ : COLA
54. Chew like a rat : GNAW
55. Brontë’s “Jane ___” : EYRE
58. British runner Sebastian : COE
59. Increase, with “up” : AMP
60. Beam of light : RAY

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