Day: June 22, 2023

Bill’s time: 9m 29s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Expression of false modesty from a texter : IMHO

In my humble opinion (IMHO)

5 Peacock’s home : NBC

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) has had a number of different logos in its history, including the famous peacock with which we are familiar today. The first peacock logo was introduced in the early days of color television and was designed to illustrate how wonderful color television would be, so go buy one! (NBC was owned by RCA, and so had a vested interest in sales of color television sets).

8 Sing “Scooby-dooby-doo,” perhaps : SCAT

Scat singing is a vocal improvisation found in the world of jazz. There aren’t any words as such in scat singing, just random nonsense syllables made up on the spot.

13 The “chum” of chumming : BAIT

The word “chum” meaning “fish bait”, is perhaps derived from the Scottish word “chum” meaning food.

15 ___ of Titus (Roman landmark) : ARCH

Titus Flavius Verspasianus was a successful military commander and Roman Emperor from 79 to 81 AD. It was Titus who laid siege to and destroyed the city and temple of Jerusalem, for which he was honored with the erection of the Arch of Titus that stands in Rome to this day. The Arch of Titus is the inspiration for many other famous arches around the world including the l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

16 First of the Jewish High Holy Days : ROSH HASHANAH

Rosh Hashanah is loosely referred to as “Jewish New Year”. The literal translation from Hebrew is “head of the year”.

20 Kitchen game? : CORNISH HEN

The Cornish game hen is a broiler chicken, and not a game bird. And, despite the designation “hen”, a Cornish game hen can be either male or female.

22 Co. that, in 1925, said of crosswords “The craze evidently is dying out fast” : NYT

“The New York Times” (NYT) has been published since 1851, and is sometimes referred to as “the Gray Lady”. These days a viable alternative to buying the paper is to read the news online. NYTimes.com is the most popular online newspaper website in the country.

Arthur Wynne is generally credited with the invention of what we now know as a crossword puzzle. Wynne was born in Liverpool, England and emigrated to the US when he was 19-years-old. He worked as a journalist and was living in Cedar Grove, New Jersey in 1913 when he introduced a “Word-Cross Puzzle” in his page of puzzles written for the “New York World”. The first book of crossword puzzles was published by Shuster & Shuster, in 1924. The collection of puzzles was a huge hit, and crosswords were elevated to the level of “a craze” in 1924 and 1925.

25 Smooth : SUAVE

The Latin word “suavis” translates as “agreeable, pleasant to the senses”. “Sauvis” is the root of the English word “suave” that describes someone who is gracious and sophisticated, and perhaps somewhat superficial. “Sauvis” also gave us the English word “sweet” meaning “pleasing to the taste”.

26 Org. that might have a beef with beef : USDA

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) classifies meat into eight different grades:

• Prime
• Choice
• Select
• Standard
• Commercial
• Utility
• Cutter
• Canner

27 Major gold exporter : MALI

The Republic of Mali is a landlocked country in western Africa located south of Algeria. Formerly known as French Sudan, the nation’s most famous city is Timbuktu. Mali is the third-largest producer of gold on the continent, after South Africa and Ghana.

29 Department store with a New York City flagship : SAKS

Saks Fifth Avenue is a high-end specialty store that competes with the likes of Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus. The original Saks & Company business was founded by Andrew Saks in 1867. The first Saks Fifth Avenue store was opened on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1924. There are now Saks Fifth Avenue stores in many major cities in the US, as well in several locations worldwide.

36 O.R. figs. : MDS

An operating room (OR) is somewhere one might find a medical doctor (MD).

43 Online marketplace since 2005 : ETSY

Etsy.com is an e-commerce website where you can buy and sell the kind of items that you might find at a craft fair.

44 Pioneer in atomic theory : BOHR

Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who won his 1922 Nobel Prize for his work on quantum mechanics and atomic structure. Later in his life, Bohr was part of the team working on the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb. Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein had a series of public debates and disputes in the twenties and thirties. Although the two respected each other very highly, they held very different views on quantum theory, different views on the laws of physics at the atomic level. The passage of time has shown that Bohr won out in those debates.

46 West Coast sch. with the mascot King Triton : UCSD

The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) is located in La Jolla. The school was founded in 1960 as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Appropriately enough, UCSD’s athletic teams are known as the Tritons, and the school mascot is King Triton.

48 Source of pink juice : GUAVA

51 ___ the Enchanter, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” character : TIM

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was released as a movie in 1975, and was a great success. Some thirty years later the film’s storyline was used as inspiration for the hit musical “Spamalot”. I saw “Spamalot” on stage not that long ago and wasn’t that impressed. But, mine was very much a minority opinion …

60 Big name in eyedrops : RENU

“ReNu” is a brand name of contact lens products sold by Bausch & Lomb.

61 Feature of “Monty Python” and “Peep Show” : BRITISH HUMOR

The zany comedy show called “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” first aired in 1969 on the BBC. The show ran for four seasons and finished up soon after John Cleese decided to leave the team and move onto other projects.

63 Ties often tied in bows : OBIS

The sash worn as part of traditional Japanese dress is known as an obi. The obi can be tied at the back in what is called a butterfly knot. The term “obi” is also used for the thick cotton belts that are an essential part of the outfits worn by practitioners of many martial arts. The color of the martial arts obi signifies the wearer’s skill level

65 Idiotic : INANE

Our word “inane” meaning “silly, lacking substance” comes from the Latin “inanitis” meaning “empty space”.

66 Name associated with speed : MACH

The Mach number of a moving object (like say an airplane) is its speed relative to the speed of sound. A plane traveling at Mach 2, for example, is moving at twice the speed of sound. The term “Mach” takes its name from the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach who published a groundbreaking paper in 1877 that even predicted the “sonic boom”.

67 Soccer superstar Hamm : MIA

Mia Hamm is a retired American soccer player. She played as a forward on the US national team that won the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991. Hamm scored 158 international goals, which was more than any other player in the world, male or female, until the record was broken in 2013. Amazingly, Hamm was born with a clubfoot, and so had to wear corrective shoes when she was growing up.

68 Pair nicknamed “dynamite” in Texas hold ’em : TENS

The official birthplace of the incredibly popular poker game of Texas hold ’em is Robstown, Texas where the game dates back to the early 1900s. The game was introduced into Las Vegas in 1967 by a group of Texan enthusiasts including Doyle Brunson, a champion often seen playing on TV today. Doyle Brunson published a poker strategy guide in 1978, and this really helped increase the popularity of the game. But it was the inclusion of Texas hold ‘em in the television lineup that really gave the game its explosive surge in popularity, with the size of the prize money just skyrocketing.

Down

5 In which Bulls lock horns with Bucks, for short : NBA

The Chicago Bulls have won six NBA championships in the life of the franchise, all of them in the nineties. They won in the 1991, 1992 and 1993 seasons (a so-called “three-peat”), and then again in 1996, 1997 and 1998 (a second “three-peat”).

The Bucks are the NBA team based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who joined the league as an expansion team in 1968. There was a fan contest held to choose the team’s name, and the winning entry was “Robins”, in honor of Wisconsin’s state bird. However, the judges opted for “Bucks”, the second-most popular choice and a reference to the state’s official wild animal, the white-tailed deer.

6 Seat in court : BANC

“Banc” is the French word for bench or seat.

7 Informal goodbyes : CIAOS

“Ciao” is Italian for “‘bye”. “Arrivederci” is more formal, and translates as “goodbye”.

9 Bit of X Games gear : CRASH HELMET

The X Games are annual events, with a Summer X Games held every year as well as a Winter X Games. It’s very much a commercial venture, with all aspects controlled by the TV station ESPN. The games focus on extreme action sports, like skateboarding and freestyle motocross in the summer and various extreme snowboarding events in the winter.

17 Claims it first : HAS DIBS

The phrase “to have dibs on” expresses a claim on something. Apparently, the term “dibs” is a contraction of “dibstone”, which was a knucklebone or jack used in a children’s game.

24 “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” rapper, informally : KANYE

Kanye West is a rap singer who was born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago. He also spent some time in Nanjing, China as a child, where his mother was teaching as part of an exchange program. West is married to reality star Kim Kardashian.

26 Connection option, in brief : USB

Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard dealing with how computers and electronic devices connect and communicate, and dealing with electrical power through those connections.

28 Midmonth time : IDES

There were three important days in each month of the old Roman calendar. These days originally depended on the cycles of the moon but were eventually “fixed” by law. “Kalendae” were the first days of each month, originally the days of the new moon. “Nonae” were originally the days of the half moon. And “idus” (the ides) was originally the day of the full moon, eventually fixed at the 15th day of a month. Actually, the ides were the 15th day of March, May, July and October. For all other months, the ides fell on the 13th. Go figure …

29 Some grid lines: Abbr. : STS

Street (st.)

30 Noted whale watcher : AHAB

Captain Ahab is the obsessed and far from friendly captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”. The role of Captain Ahab was played by Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston film adaptation. Patrick Stewart played Ahab in a 1998 miniseries in which Peck made another appearance, as Father Mapple.

31 Like a high-fat, low-carb diet : KETOGENIC

A ketogenic (also “keto”) diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. When a body consumes insufficient carbohydrates to meet the need for energy, then the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies in order to make up the energy deficit. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the bloodstream is known as “ketosis”, a term that gives rise to the name “ketogenic diet”. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe a ketogenic diet in order to control epilepsy in children. A condition of ketosis can reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures.

35 Composer Henry : MANCINI

Not only was Henry Mancini an amazing film composer, he was a very accomplished flautist. I once heard him play the challenging “Flight of the Bumblebee” on the flute on a British talk show. Very impressive …

39 Supernatural surroundings : AURAE

An aura (plural “aurae”) is an intangible quality that surrounds a person or thing, a “je ne sais quoi”. “Je ne sais quoi” is French for “I don’t know what”.

49 Airbnb alternative : VRBO

VRBO is an online marketplace for vacation rentals. The initialism stands for Vacation Rentals by Owner. VRBO was founded in 1995, and is headquartered in Austin.

Airbnb is a website-based service that matches people wanting to rent out short-term living quarters to people seeking accommodation. The company was founded in 2008 as AirBed & Breakfast. The original concept was renting out an “air bed” and providing “breakfast” to someone looking for cheap, temporary accommodation. Yeah, the “Air” in “Airbnb” has nothing to do with “air” travel …

50 Norm ___, longtime host of “This Old House” : ABRAM

Norm Abram is the master carpenter who appeared on the PBS show “This Old House”, and who later starred in the spinoff series called “The New Yankee Workshop”.

54 Sister of un oncle : MERE

In French, a “mère” (mother) bears an “enfant” (child).

56 McEntire of country : REBA

Reba McEntire is a country music singer and television actress. McEntire starred in her own sitcom “Reba” that aired on the WB and the CW cable channels from 2001 to 2007. She is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of Country”.

57 Phony personality? : SIRI

Siri was originally developed as a standalone app by a startup company of the same name. Apple acquired the company in 2010 and integrated the technology into their operating system.

62 Ones asking you to raise your hands, in brief? : TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the agency that employs the good folks who check passengers and baggage at airports.