Day: June 8, 2016

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
10. Former Israeli P.M. Barak : EHUD
Ehud Barak served as Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001. Barak left office after he called a special election for Prime Minister and lost the vote to Ariel Sharon. Barak resigned from the Knesset and took an advisory job with the US company Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and did some security-related work with a private equity company. In 2007, Barak took over leadership of Israel’s Labor Party.

14. Beef on the hoof : STEER
A steer is a male bovine that was castrated when young and is then raised for beef. The term comes from the Old English “steor” meaning “bullock”.

17. Military vehicle for actor William? : HOLDEN TANK (sounds like “holding tank”)
The actor William Holden won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a prisoner of war in the 1953 film “Stalag 17”. Holden was a good friend of fellow actor Ronald Reagan, and indeed served as best man at Reagan’s marriage to Nancy Davis in 1952. Sadly, Holden struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. Holden killed another driver in drink-driving accident in Italy in the sixties, for which he received an 8-month suspended sentence. And, he himself died from head injuries caused by a fall after a bout of heavy drinking.

20. Gibbons, e.g. : APES
Gibbons are referred to as lesser apes as they differ in size and behavior from the great apes e.g. chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans.

24. Makeup for actor Kevin? : BACON POWDER (sounds like “baking powder”)
Kevin Bacon is an actor from Philadelphia who appeared first on the big screen in the 1978 comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House”. That wasn’t to be the big break that Bacon needed though, which came with “Footloose” in 1984. A fun fact about him is that he is the subject of a popular trivia game called “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” in which players have to show that a particular actor can be related to Kevin Bacon in fewer than six links, with each link being a movie in which two actors appear together.

27. So last year : PASSE
“Passé” is a French word, meaning “past, faded”.

29. Burj Khalifa’s home: Abbr. : UAE
Burj Khalifa is a spectacular skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It is the tallest man-made structure in the world, and has been so since the completion of its exterior in 2009. The space in the building came onto the market at a really bad time, during the global financial crisis. The building was part of a US$20 billion development of downtown Dubai that was backed by the city government which had to go looking for a bailout from the neighboring city of Abu Dhabi. The tower was given the name Burj Khalifa at the last minute, apparently as a nod to the UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan who helped to broker the bailout.

36. Footwear for actor Ted? : DANSON SHOES (sounds like “dancing shoes”)
The actor Ted Danson is noted for in particular for three successful roles that he has played on television. He played Sam Malone on the sitcom “Cheers”, and the title role on the sitcom “Becker”. Danson is currently leading the cast on the drama series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”. Danson has been married to the lovely actress Mary Steenburgen since 1995.

38. Product that can maintain a bikini line : NAIR
Nair is a hair removal product that has some pretty harsh ingredients. The most important active constituents are calcium hydroxide (“slake lime”) and sodium hydroxide (“caustic soda”). Other Nair components seem to be there to soothe the skin after the harsher chemicals have done their job. The name “Nair” probably comes from combining “no” and “hair”.

41. She, in Lisbon : ELA
Lisbon is the capital of Portugal. Lisbon is the westernmost capital city in Europe, and indeed is the westernmost large city on the continent. It is also the oldest city in Western Europe and was founded hundreds of years before London, Paris and Rome.

43. Chalupa go-with : SALSA
A chalupa is a Mexican dish consisting of a tostada shaped into a “cup” and filled with various ingredients. “Chalupa” translates from Mexican Spanish as “small boat”.

47. Cudgel for actor Christopher? : WALKEN STICK (sounds like “walking stick”)
Christopher Walken won his Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actor category for his amazing performance in 1978’s “The Deer Hunter.

52. Texter’s reaction to a joke : LOL
Laugh out loud (LOL, in text-speak)

54. Xbox ___ : ONE
The XBox line of video game consoles is made by Microsoft. The original XBox platform was followed by XBox 360 and most recently by XBox One. Microsoft’s XBox competes directly with Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Wii.

57. Equipment for actor Michael? : LANDON GEAR (sounds like “landing gear”)
Actor Michael Landon’s big break came with his TV role as Little Joe Cartwright in the long-running Western show “Bonanza”. He continued his television success with leading roles in “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven”. One of Landon’s claims to fame is that in 1954 he threw a javelin over 193 feet, the longest javelin throw by a high schooler that year.

60. Krabappel of Springfield : EDNA
In “the Simpsons” television show, Bart Simpson’s teacher is one Edna Krabappel. Edna marries Ned Flanders, who is the next-door neighbor to the Simpson family.

61. City ESE of Turin : ASTI
Asti is a sparkling white wine from the Piedmont region of Italy, and is named for the town of Asti around which the wine is produced. The wine used to be called Asti Spumante, and it had a very bad reputation as a “poor man’s champagne”. The “Spumante” was dropped in a marketing attempt at rebranding associated with a reduction in the amount of residual sugar in the wine.

62. Proselytizer’s handout : TRACT
A tract is a political pamphlet, originally a discussion document. The name “tract” comes from the Latin verb “tractare” meaning “to discuss”.

A “proselyte” is a convert from one religious belief to another. We first used the term in English to describe a convert to Judaism.

65. Beefy-T brand : HANES
The Hanes brand of apparel was founded in 1901. A related brand was introduced in 1986 called Hanes Her Way.

Down
2. Perfect place : UTOPIA
The word “Utopia” was coined by Sir Thomas More for his book “Utopia” published in 1516 describing an idyllic fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. More’s use of the name Utopia comes from the Greek “ou” meaning “not” and “topos” meaning “place”. By calling his perfect island “Not Place”, More was apparently making the point that he didn’t think that the ideal could actually exist.

3. People people : CELEBS
There used to be a “People” page in each issue of “Time” magazine. This page was spun-off in 1974 as a publication of its own, which we now call “People” magazine. “People” is noted for its annual special editions with features such as “Best & Worst Dressed” and “Sexiest Man Alive”. The “Sexiest Man Alive” edition now appears at the end of November each year. The first choice for “Sexiest Man” was Mel Gibson, in 1985.

4. Sneakers that come in over a hundred designs : KEDS
Keds is a brand name of athletic shoe first introduced in 1916 by US Rubber. The shoe was originally marketed as a rubber-soled, canvas-topped sneaker.

6. Dormered area, maybe : ATTIC
A dormer window is a window in a dormer! A dormer is a roofed structure that protrudes from the slope of the main roof.

8. Color similar to Crayola’s Tumbleweed : TAN
In the year 2000 the Crayola company, very cleverly I think, held the “Crayola Color Census 2000” in which people were polled and asked for their favorite Crayola colors. President George W. Bush chose “Blue Bell” and Tiger Woods chose “Wild Strawberry”.

10. Supply, as a chair : ENDOW
In academia, a professorship can be referred to as a chair.

18. Draft org. : NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) was founded in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America. The NBA name was adopted in 1949. Of the four major sports leagues in North America, the NBA has the highest average annual salary per player.

22. Moriarty, to Holmes : FOE
Professor James Moriarty was the main villain who crossed swords with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s’ “Sherlock Holmes”. Moriarty is always cropping up in Sherlock Holmes television and radio plays and in movies, but if you go back to the original stories he isn’t around very much. He only turns up directly in two of the narratives, and was primarily introduced by Conan Doyle in order to “kill off” Sherlock Holmes in a brawl at the top of the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Both Holmes and Moriarty fell to their deaths. Well … public pressure on the author caused Conan Doyle to resurrect Holmes in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.

24. “Feel the ___” (2016 campaign slogan) : BERN
“Feel the Bern” is perhaps the best-known of several slogans used by the Bernie Sanders campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

Bernie Sanders has served as US Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist, and used to appear on the ballot as an independent. Prior to joining the Democratic Party in 2015, Sanders had been the longest-serving independent in the history of the US Congress.

26. Ottoman title : PASHA
A “pasha” was a high-ranking official in the Ottoman Empire, roughly equivalent to the English rank of “lord”.

32. Like Mongols : ASIAN
The Mongols are an ethnic group that is found today in modern Mongolia, in China and in Russia.

33. Patio grill accessory : TONGS
A pair of tongs is a tool with a scissor-like hinge used to pick up things, like meat cooking on a barbecue grill or ice from an ice bucket.

34. Two of nine? : ENS
There are two letters N (ens) in the word “nine”.

35. Badlands sight : MESA
Badlands may be “bad lands” for agriculture, but they can be beautiful. A badlands is an extensive area from which the topsoil has been eroded by wind and water, leaving exposed rock and very little vegetation. One of the most beautiful badlands areas in the US is preserved for the nation as South Dakota’s Badlands National Park.

37. Trans-Siberian Railway city : OMSK
Omsk is a city in southwest Siberia. It is located over 1400 miles from Moscow and was chosen as the destination for many internal exiles in the mid-1900s. Perhaps the most famous of these exiles was the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Siberia is a vast area in Northern Asia. The region’s industrial development started with the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway from 1891 to 1916, which linked Siberia to Russia in the west.

38. Practitioner of aromatherapy and astrology, maybe : NEW AGER
The New Age Movement is a western philosophy with roots that date back to the early 1800s. The movement focuses on achieving the highest human potential as an individual and embraces many traditionally eastern spiritual practices, but eschews all religious doctrines. New Age music is composed with the intent of supporting this philosophy. It tends to be very minimalistic, very tonal and harmonic. It is often used as a backdrop for relaxation or meditation.

39. How birthday cake may be served : A LA MODE
In French, “à la mode” simply means “fashionable”. In America, the term has also come to describe a way of serving pie, usually with ice cream, or as I recall from when I lived in Upstate New York, with cheese.

42. ___ Metro (bygone car) : GEO
Geos were small vehicles manufactured by General Motors mainly in the nineties. Geos were designed to compete head-to-head with the small imports that were gaining market share at the time in the US. Some Geo models that you might remember are the Metro, the Prizm and the Storm. The cars were actually built as joint-ventures with Japanese manufacturers. The Prizm was a GM/Toyota project, the Metro was GM/Suzuki, and the Storm was GM/Isuzu.

44. Competitor of The North Face : LLBEAN
L.L.Bean (note the lack of spaces in the company name) was founded back in 1912 in Freeport, Maine as a company selling its own line of waterproof boots. The founder, Leon Leonwood Bean, gave his name to the enterprise. Right from the start, L.L.Bean focused on mail-order and sold from a circular he distributed and then from a catalog. Defects in the initial design led to 90% of the first boots sold being returned, and the company made good on its guarantee to replace them or give back the money paid.

48. Big employer in Rochester, N.Y. : KODAK
George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company, named after the Kodak camera that he had invented four years earlier. He came up with the name of Kodak after careful consideration. Firstly he was a big fan of the letter “K”, calling it “strong, incisive”. He also wanted a word that was short, easy to pronounce and difficult to mispronounce, and a word that was clearly unique with no prior associations. “Kodak” fit the bill.

49. Classic TV sidekick : TONTO
On the television version of “The Lone Ranger”, Tonto was played by the actor Jay Silverheels. Famously, the Lone Ranger’s horse was called Silver and Tonto’s mount was named Scout. But in the early shows, Tonto rode a horse called White Feller.

50. Where Uttar Pradesh is : INDIA
(55D. Uttar Pradesh city : AGRA)
The city of Agra is located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (which translates into English as “Northern Province”).

51. Onetime title for Carly Fiorina : CEO
Carly Fiorino served as CEO of HP from 1999 to 2005, making her the first woman to head up a “Fortune” Top-20 company. Fiorino turned to politics after she was let go from HP, running unsuccessfully for the US Senate in 2010 and for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race.

57. “The ___ is a ass”: Dickens : LAW
Charles Dickens wrote the following lines in his novel “Oliver Twist” …

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Young fellow : BUCKO
6. Contrarian : ANTI
10. Former Israeli P.M. Barak : EHUD
14. Beef on the hoof : STEER
15. Go like heck : TEAR
16. Arnold, Ronald or Roland : NAME
17. Military vehicle for actor William? : HOLDEN TANK (sounds like “holding tank”)
19. Ballroom motions : DIPS
20. Gibbons, e.g. : APES
21. Part of a comedy routine : BIT
22. Strong suit : FORTE
23. Part of a certain cage : RIB
24. Makeup for actor Kevin? : BACON POWDER (sounds like “baking powder”)
27. So last year : PASSE
29. Burj Khalifa’s home: Abbr. : UAE
30. Nevertheless : YET
31. Much of the moon’s landscape : CRATERS
35. Department store department : MEN’S
36. Footwear for actor Ted? : DANSON SHOES (sounds like “dancing shoes”)
38. Product that can maintain a bikini line : NAIR
40. Tailoring measures : INSEAMS
41. She, in Lisbon : ELA
42. [That is so disgusting!] : GAG!
43. Chalupa go-with : SALSA
47. Cudgel for actor Christopher? : WALKEN STICK (sounds like “walking stick”)
52. Texter’s reaction to a joke : LOL
53. Playground retort : AM TOO!
54. Xbox ___ : ONE
55. Up to it : ABLE
56. Not too shabby : GOOD
57. Equipment for actor Michael? : LANDON GEAR (sounds like “landing gear”)
60. Krabappel of Springfield : EDNA
61. City ESE of Turin : ASTI
62. Proselytizer’s handout : TRACT
63. Need a bath badly : REEK
64. “Hey, take it easy!” : WHOA!
65. Beefy-T brand : HANES

Down
1. C’s equivalent : B-SHARP
2. Perfect place : UTOPIA
3. People people : CELEBS
4. Sneakers that come in over a hundred designs : KEDS
5. Metallurgist’s sample : ORE
6. Dormered area, maybe : ATTIC
7. “Fantabulous!” : NEATO!
8. Color similar to Crayola’s Tumbleweed : TAN
9. Bug big-time : IRK
10. Supply, as a chair : ENDOW
11. Salon supply : HAIR DYES
12. A zillion : UMPTEEN
13. Jumps ship : DESERTS
18. Draft org. : NBA
22. Moriarty, to Holmes : FOE
24. “Feel the ___” (2016 campaign slogan) : BERN
25. Tend to : NURSE
26. Ottoman title : PASHA
28. Sign of past trauma : SCAR
32. Like Mongols : ASIAN
33. Patio grill accessory : TONGS
34. Two of nine? : ENS
35. Badlands sight : MESA
36. Feature of a landline, but not a cellphone : DIAL TONE
37. Trans-Siberian Railway city : OMSK
38. Practitioner of aromatherapy and astrology, maybe : NEW AGER
39. How birthday cake may be served : A LA MODE
42. ___ Metro (bygone car) : GEO
44. Competitor of The North Face : LLBEAN
45. Comforting words : SOLACE
46. “Fore!” and others : ALERTS
48. Big employer in Rochester, N.Y. : KODAK
49. Classic TV sidekick : TONTO
50. Where Uttar Pradesh is : INDIA
51. Onetime title for Carly Fiorina : CEO
55. Uttar Pradesh city : AGRA
57. “The ___ is a ass”: Dickens : LAW
58. Baseball bat material : ASH
59. Ultimate degree : NTH

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