0526-24 NY Times Crossword 26 May 24, Sunday

Bill’s time: 25m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Prefix with valent : AMBI-

The prefix “ambi-” that we use to mean “both” is a Latin word that actually means “around” or “round about”. “Ambivalence” was originally just a psychological term, describing “serious conflicting feelings”. Later it came to mean uncertainty about which course to follow.

5 Sound of rejection on a 1970s variety show : GONG

NBC’s “The Gong Show” was originally broadcast in the seventies and eighties, but it always seems to be showing somewhere on cable TV. I suppose the show was a forerunner of today’s “America’s Got Talent”, in that it was a talent show in which the acts can be cut off in mid-performance by the sounding of a gong (just like the 3 buzzers on “Talent”). Despite all the terrible acts that appeared, some famous names made it after the show e.g. Boxcar Willie, Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) and Andrea McArdle (played “Annie” on Broadway).

13 Academic résumés, for short : CVS

A curriculum vitae (“CV” or “vita”) is a listing of someone’s work experience and qualifications, and is used mainly in making a job application. The term “curriculum vitae” can be translated from Latin as “course of life”.

A résumé is a summary of a person’s job experience and education and is used as a tool by a job seeker. In many countries, a résumé is equivalent to a curriculum vitae. “Résumé” is the French word for “summary”.

16 “Embiggens” the English language : COINS A WORD

To embiggen, is to make bigger. Really, it is …

19 Composer Stravinsky : IGOR

Composer Igor Stravinsky’s most famous works were completed relatively early in his career, when he was quite young. His three ballets “The Firebird”, “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring” were published in 1910-1913, when Stravinsky was in his early thirties.

21 *”That rotted old log ain’t even fit for termite food!” : KNOCK ON WOOD

I’m not sure why there’s an asterisk at the start of this clue …

Termites are insects that are somewhat unique in that they can digest cellulose (as can ruminants such as cattle). Because of this diet, they cause a lot of trouble for human populations by feeding on wood in man-made structures.

23 Word on Charlotte’s web : SOME

In E. B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web”, The spider Charlotte weaves the words “SOME PIG” into her web, praising her friend Wilbur the pig.

24 Guillermo del ___ : TORO

Guillermo del Toro is a film director from Guadalajara in Mexico who has had success directing and producing American films. His best-known works are probably action movies like “Blade II” (2002) and “Hellboy” (2004). Del Toro won an Oscar for Best Director for the 2017 movie “The Shape of Water”.

26 Helvetica alternative : ARIAL

Helvetica and Arial are typefaces.

28 Country that surrounds Gambia : SENEGAL

Well, Senegal almost completely surrounds the Gambia. The Gambia’s eastern border is a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Republic of Senegal is a country on the far western coast of Africa. For many years Senegal was a French colony, gaining independence in 1960. The capital of Senegal is Dakar. Dakar is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, thus making it the westernmost capital on the African mainland.

The Republic of the Gambia is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country on the African mainland, and is almost completely surrounded by Senegal. The Gambia lies on the Gambia River, for which the nation is named.

30 Something to pump or bump : FIST

The fist bump is that tapping of fists together as a form of greeting. It is a more “hip” version of a handshake, and might be called a “pounding of flesh”.

33 Gospel singer Winans : CECE

CeCe Winans (real given name “Priscilla”) is a Gospel music singer. She is part of a duo with her brother, BeBe Winans (real name Benjamin).

34 Wimbledon surface : GRASS

The Wimbledon Championships of tennis are held at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club located in Wimbledon, a district of London. The Wimbledon Championships started in 1877, and have been played on grass since day one.

36 Studio for Astaire and Rogers : RKO

The RKO Pictures studio was formed when RCA (RADIO Corporation of America) bought the KEITH-Albee-ORPHEUM theaters (and Joe Kennedy’s Film Booking Offices of America). The RKO initialism then comes from the words “Radio”, “Keith” and “Orpheum”.

Dancer, actor and singer Fred Astaire never won a competitive Academy Award, and received just one nomination: for Best Supporting Actor in 1974’s “The Towering Inferno”. However, he was presented with an honorary Academy Award in the 1949 season “for his unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures”. That honorary Oscar was presented by his longtime film and dance partner Ginger Rogers.

I am a huge Ginger Rogers fan. She is famous as the on-screen and dancing partner of Fred Astaire. However, my favorite films are those romantic comedies she made later in her career, especially “The Major and the Minor” and “Monkey Business”. There is a musical stage show about Ginger Rogers’ life called “Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Musical” that debuted in 2007. The title is taken from a 1982 “Frank & Ernest” cartoon about Fred & Ginger” with the words:

Sure he was great, but don’t forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did – backwards and in high heels.

37 Czech or Pole : SLAV

The Slavic peoples are in the majority in communities covering over half of Europe. This large ethnic group is traditionally broken down into three smaller groups:

• the West Slavic (including Czechs and Poles)
• the East Slavic (including Russians and Ukrainians)
• the South Slavic (including Bulgarians, Croats and Serbs)

39 It’s bright when it’s full : MOON

The phases of the moon have been given the following names, in order:

• New moon
• Waxing crescent moon
• First quarter moon
• Waxing gibbous moon
• Full moon
• Waning gibbous moon
• Third quarter moon
• Waning crescent moon
• Dark moon

43 Actor Cage, familiarly : NIC

Actor Nicolas “Nic” Cage was born Nicolas Coppola. Cage is the nephew of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, both of whom are Nic Cage’s father’s siblings.

49 Band whose guitarist wears a schoolboy outfit : AC/DC

The Heavy Metal band known as AC/DC was formed by two brothers Malcolm and Angus Young in Australia. Malcolm and Angus chose the name “AC/DC” after their sister Margaret noticed them on a sewing machine (the abbreviation for alternating current/direct current). The group is usually called “Acca Dacca” down under.

50 Certain expensive suits : ARMANIS

Giorgio Armani is an Italian fashion designer and founder of the company that has borne his name since 1975. Although Armani is famous for his menswear, the company makes everything from jewelry to perfume.

51 Rank below marquess : EARL

A marquess (also “marquis”, from French) is a nobleman of high rank in the UK. The title ranks below a duke, and above an earl. The term “marquess” comes from Medieval Latin “marca” meaning “frontier”. Originally, a marquess ruled border territories.

55 “Brains” of tech : CPUS

The central processing unit (CPU) is the main component on the motherboard of a computer. The CPU is the part of the computer that carries out most of the functions required by a program. Nowadays you can get CPUs in everything from cars to telephones.

56 Avocados are rich in it : FAT

The wonderful avocado comes from a tree that is native to Mexico and Central America. The avocado fruit is sometimes called an avocado pear, because of its shape, even though it is not related to the pear at all. The fruit might also be referred to as an alligator pear, due to the roughness of the green skin of some avocado cultivars.

58 Mocking Jay : LENO

Jay Leno was born James Leno in New Rochelle, New York. Jay’s father was the son of Italian immigrants, and his mother was from Scotland. Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and actually dropped out of school on the advice of a high school guidance counselor. However, years later he went to Emerson College and earned a Bachelor’s degree in speech therapy. Leno also started a comedy club at Emerson in 1973. Today Jay Leno is a car nut and owns over 300 vehicles of various types. You can check them out on his website: www.jaylenosgarage.com.

59 “My dog could translate an ancient Mesopotamian tablet faster than you” : ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG

Mesopotamia was the land that lay between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, that flow through modern-day Iraq. The name “Mesopotamia” means “between the rivers”.

“Archaeology” is a word that looks like it’s British English, and one might be forgiven for using the spelling “archeology” in American English. Even though the latter spelling has been around for a couple of hundred years, the former is the standard spelling on both sides of the Atlantic.

63 Part of a thermostat : DIAL

The suffix “-stat” comes from the Greek “statos” meaning “standing, stationary”. It was first used in the mid-1700s in the term “heliostat”, which described an instrument that made the sun appear stationary. We still use “-stat” in the name of devices that stabilize or regulate. For example, a thermostat controls temperature and a rheostat uses resistance to control current flow in an electrical circuit.

64 The i’s have it : DOT

A tittle is a small diacritical mark used in writing. Examples are the cedilla and tilde used in some languages, and the dot over the lowercase letters i and j in English.

65 Church area : NAVE

In large Christian churches, the nave is the main approach to the altar, and is where most of the congregation are seated.

74 Skinny, so to speak : DOPE

Our use of the word “dope” to mean “inside information” probably comes from horse racing. The idea is that a bettor might have information about which horse has been drugged (doped) to influence its performance.

The use of the word “skinny”, meaning “information”, comes from WWII military slang for “the truth”. The term is probably a derivative of the expression “the naked truth”, which is evocative of “skinny-dipping”.

75 “Thou art a villainous knave” : BLAST FROM THE PAST

We’ve been using “knave” to mean “cad” since about 1200, and as an alternative name for the jack in a deck of cards since the mid-1500s. “Knave” comes from the Old English word “cnafa”, a “boy, male servant”.

82 Pop’s ___ Lipa : DUA

Dua Lipa is a singer-songwriter and fashion model from England. She was born in London to Albanian parents, and considers her native language to be Albanian. She also speaks English with a British accent.

83 Dude, in lingo : BRAH

“Brah” is an alternative to “bro”, with both being slang for “brother”.

86 Photoshop company : ADOBE

Photoshop is a wonderful piece of software used for editing graphics. When I first bought a copy of Photoshop, it was really expensive (about $300 in 1995), but now there are cost-effective, stripped-down versions available. Also, the full version of Photoshop is now only available as a monthly subscription service.

89 “Dear John, I’m writing you this letter to tell you — it’s not me. It’s 100% you” : PUT-DOWN ON PAPER

The expression “Dear John letter” originated in WWII among American troops who were serving abroad. The servicemen highly valued letters from girlfriends and wives back home, and almost invariably those missives started out with “Dearest”, or “My Darling” or some other expression of affection. A curt, “Dear John” set the tone for a letter which was likely to contain news of a new love interest in the life of the girlfriend or wife. The contemporary equivalent missive from a male to a female is a “Dear Jane letter”.

93 Nonmetric unit … or a metric unit : FOOT

In poetry, a foot is the natural unit of stressed and unstressed syllables which make up the work. For example, an iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

95 Five Pillars religion : ISLAM

Followers of the Muslim tradition believe in the Five Pillars of Islam, five obligatory acts that underpin Muslim life. The Five Pillars are:

1. The Islamic creed
2. Daily prayer
3. Almsgiving
4. Fasting during the month of Ramadan
5. The pilgrimage to Mecca (haj, hajj, hadj) once during a lifetime

98 It comes from the Greek for “indivisible” : ATOM

Our word “atom” comes from the Latin “atomus” meaning “indivisible particle”. In turn, the Latin term comes from the Greek “a-tomos” meaning “not-cut”.

99 Any of six Russian monarchs : IVAN

The first Russian tsar was Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible. He ruled from 1547 to 1584. The last Russian tsar was Nicholas II. He ruled from 1894 to 1917. Nicholas II and his family were executed in 1918.

106 Musical that reimagines “La Bohème” in Manhattan : RENT

The musical “Rent” by Jonathan Larson is based on the Puccini opera “La bohème”. “Rent” tells the story of struggling artists and musicians living in the Lower East Side of New York, and is set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic. The main character in both “La bohème” and “Rent” is named Mimi. In the former, Mimi is a seamstress suffering from tuberculosis. In the latter, Mimi is an erotic dancer with HIV.

“La bohème” by Giacomo Puccini is the second-most frequently performed opera in the US (after “Madama Butterfly”, also by Puccini). The lead female role in the piece is Mimì, a seamstress.

107 Sucrose, by another name : TABLE SUGAR

The sugar we consume as “table sugar” is mainly sucrose that is extracted from sugarcane and sugar beet. We also consume lactose, naturally occurring in milk, and fructose, naturally occurring in fruit. But most of the sugar we eat or drink tends to be prepared commercially, the most famous being high-fructose corn syrup, which is glucose that is industrially processed into a glucose/fructose mix. Don’t get me started on the politics of food …

108 Numero di colori in Neapolitan ice cream : TRE

Neapolitan ice cream is made up of blocks of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Perhaps stating the obvious, Neapolitan ice cream is assumed to be of Italian origin, from the city of Naples …

109 Bond villain with an island lair : 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. Julius No and Fu Manchu. By the way, the author Ian Fleming tells us that Julius No attended medical school in Milwaukee.

110 Condé ___ : NAST

Condé Nast is a mass media corporation that has a very large portfolio of publications, including “Vogue”, “GQ”, “House and Garden”, “Golf Digest”, “Wired”, “Vanity Fair” and “The New Yorker”.

Down

3 High-tech prosthetic : BIONIC ARM

Bionic limbs are in fact a reality, although a relatively small number of amputees have been fitted with them. Bionic limbs depend on the fact that the brain continues to send out messages to nerves that have been truncated through amputation. The nerve stub is redirected to a set of chest muscles, so when the person thinks “open the hand”, say, that causes a chest muscle to contract. Electrodes placed on the surface of the chest muscle detect its movement, and that signal is sent to the prosthetic limb, causing it to move. Science can be so wonderful …

5 British lockup : GAOL

Both “jail” and “gaol” are pronounced the same way, mean the same thing, and are rooted in the same Latin word for “cave”. The spelling “gaol” is seen quite often in the UK, although it is gradually being replaced with “jail”. The “gaol” spelling has Norman roots and tends to be used in Britain in more formal documentation.

11 Claim on a ramen packet : NO MSG

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the sodium salt of a naturally-occurring,non-essential amino acid called glutamic acid. It is used widely as a flavor enhancer, particularly in many Asian cuisines. Whether or not it is harmful seems to be still under debate. I say that something produced in a test tube shouldn’t be in our food …

Ramen is a noodle dish composed of Chinese-style wheat noodles in a meat or fish broth flavored with soy or miso sauce. Ramen is usually topped with sliced pork and dried seaweed. The term “ramen” is also used for precooked, instant noodles that come in single-serving, solid blocks.

12 Lead-in to horn or Hornet : GREEN …

A greenhorn is a young-horned animal. “Greenhorn” is also a term that is now applied to any inexperienced person.

The Green Hornet is a fictional crime fighter who made his debut on the radio in the thirties. The Green Hornet’s alter ego of newspaper publisher Brett Reid. The radio show was a companion to the successful series “The Lone Ranger”, and there were some links in the storylines. The Lone Ranger’s real name is John Reid, and his nephew is Dan Reid. Dan is Brett Reid’s father, making the Green Hornet the great-nephew of the Lone Ranger.

13 Charlie Chaplin started his career with this not-at-all-silent form of entertainment : CLOG DANCING

Charlie Chaplin earned the nickname “The Tramp” (also “Little Tramp”) from the much-loved character that he frequently played on the screen. Chaplin was much-respected as a performer. The great George Bernard Shaw referred to him as “the only genius to come out of the movie industry”.

22 Morse code click : DIT

Samuel Morse came up with the forerunner to modern Morse code for use on the electric telegraph, of which he was the co-inventor. Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. The most common letters are assigned the simplest code elements e.g. E is represented by one dot, and T is represented by one dash. When words are spelled aloud in Morse code, a dot is pronounced as “dit”, and a dash is pronounced as “dah”.

27 Counterpart of ventricular : ATRIAL

The heart has four chambers. The two upper chambers (the atria) accept deoxygenated blood from the body and oxygenated blood from the lungs. The atria squeeze those blood supplies into the two lower chambers of the heart (the ventricles), “priming” the pump, as it were. One ventricle pumps deoxygenated blood to the lungs, and the other pumps oxygenated blood to the rest of the body.

29 One of the Untouchables : NESS

Eliot Ness was the Treasury agent charged with the task of bringing down the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone. When Ness took on the job in 1930, Chicago law-enforcement agents were renowned for being corrupt, for being on the take. Ness handpicked 50 prohibition agents who he thought he could rely on, later reducing the group to a cadre of 15 and ultimately just 11 trusted men. That group of 11 earned the nickname “The Untouchables”, the agents who couldn’t be bought.

30 Leg bone : FEMUR

The thigh bone, the femur, is the longest and strongest bone in the human body.

31 “Citizen ___” : KANE

1941’s “Citizen Kane” was the first film made by Orson Welles, and is considered by many to be the finest movie ever made. It’s a remarkable achievement by Wells, as he played the lead and also produced and directed. Despite all the accolades for “Citizen Kane” over the decades, the movie was far from a commercial success in its early run and actually lost money at the box office.

33 Island country sometimes called “El Cocodrilo” for its shape : CUBA

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).

34 Card game cry : GO FISH!

Go Fish is a very simple card game, one usually played by children:

Q. Do you have any queens?
A. No.
Q. Go fish!

39 Fetter : MANACLE

A manacle is a device for constraining the hands, like handcuffs. The term comes from the Latin “manicula” which means “handle” or literally “little hand”.

A fetter is a chain or shackle for the feet. Less literally, the term “fetter” describes anything that restrains or confines To be unfettered is to be unrestrained.

42 Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders, in brief : NGO

Oxfam was founded in 1942 in Oxford, England, and was originally called the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief. The original mission of Oxfam was to persuade the British government to allow food into Greece during WWII in the days the country was occupied by the Axis Powers. The name OXFAM was adopted in 1965. Prior to that date, OXFAM was quite simply the organization’s telegraph address (remember telegraphs?).

“Médecins Sans Frontières” (Doctors Without Borders) is an international aid organization that was founded in France in 1971. The organization is usually referred to as Doctors Without Borders here in North America, but goes by the initialism “MSF” in much of the world.

44 “Born on the Bayou” band, in brief : CCR

Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) was a rock band from San Francisco that played in a Southern rock style, with hits such as “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Down on the Corner” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain”.

48 Brother of Fidel : RAUL

Raul Castro is the younger brother of Fidel Castro. Raul took over as President of Cuba in 2008, when Fidel stepped aside. Raul resigned his position in 2018, and retired from politics.

56 Police, slangily : FIVE-O

“Five-O” has become urban slang for a police officer, or the police force in general. The term is rooted in the 1970s TV Show “Hawaii Five-O”. Hawaii Five-O was a totally fictional police force created for the television show. The name recognizes that Hawaii was the 50th state to join the union. Steve McGarrett in the original show was played by Jack Lord, and “Danno” Williams was played by James MacArthur.

59 JFK, for one : AIRPORT CODE

The Idlewild Golf Course was taken over by the city of New York in 1943 and construction started on a new airport to serve the metropolis and relieve congestion at LaGuardia. The Idlewild name still persists, even though the airport was named after Major General Alexander E. Anderson from the first days of the project. When the facility started operating in 1948 it was known as New York International Airport, Anderson Field. It was renamed to John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in 1963, one month after the President was assassinated.

60 Discombobulate : ADDLE

To discombobulate is to faze, disconcert, to confuse.

61 Teri of “Young Frankenstein” : GARR

Actress Teri Garr had a whole host of minor roles in her youth, including appearances in nine Elvis movies. Garr’s big break came with the role of Inga in “Young Frankenstein”, and her supporting role in “Tootsie” earned Garr an Academy Award nomination. Sadly, Teri Garr suffers from multiple sclerosis. She is a National Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

I am not really a big fan of movies by Mel Brooks, but “Young Frankenstein” is the exception. I think the cast has a lot to do with me liking the film, as it includes Gene Wilder (Dr. Frankenstein), Teri Garr (Inga), Marty Feldman (Igor) and Gene Hackman (Harold, the blind man).

67 Common file type : PDF

Portable Document Format (PDF)

69 Razor sharpeners : STROPS

A strop is a strip of leather used to sharpen a razor.

71 Queen song from which a pop icon took her name : RADIO GA GA

“Radio Ga Ga” is a 1984 song by Queen that is a commentary on the demise of radio in favor of television. Singer Stefani Germanotta chose her stage name “Lady Gaga” from “Radio Ga Ga”.

72 Astronaut’s blackout preventer : G SUIT

A G suit is needed when astronauts and aviators are subject to high accelerations. Such acceleration can cause blood to pool in the lower part of the body, reducing the supply to the brain and possibly leading to a blackout. A G suit is basically a special pair of tight-fitting pants that are fitted with inflatable bladders. The bladders inflate during high accelerations (high g forces), tightening around the legs and abdomen, reducing the amount of blood pooling. So, a “G suit” is more correctly referred to as an “anti-G suit”.

76 Part of A.D. : ANNO

The designations Anno Domini (AD, “year of Our Lord”) and Before Christ (BC) are found in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The dividing point between AD and BC is the year of the conception of Jesus, with AD 1 following 1 BC without a year “0” in between. The AD/BC scheme dates back to AD 525, and gained wide acceptance soon after AD 800. Nowadays a modified version has become popular, with CE (Common/Christian Era) used to replace AD, and BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) used to replace BC.

78 Terrain in “Wuthering Heights” : MOOR

“Wuthering Heights” is the only novel written by Emily Brontë, and one that she published using the pen name Ellis Bell. It was published in December of 1847, a date chosen to take advantage of the wave of success enjoyed by Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” that had been published just two months earlier.

84 Author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” : ADAMS

English writer and dramatist Douglas Adams is best known for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” started out life as a comedy series on BBC radio in 1978, but it certainly had legs. It was adapted into stage shows, five books, a television series, computer game and a 2005 film.

86 “Things Fall ___” (Chinua Achebe novel) : APART

“Things Fall Apart” is a 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is set in Nigeria and deals with the changes that came with the invasion of Nigeria by Europeans, primarily from Britain. “Things Fall Apart” is regarded today as a seminal work, and is read and studied all over Africa and around the world. It is the most widely read book in the whole of African literature. The title is a quotation from the poem “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats.

89 Drummer Neil of Rush : PEART

Rush is a Canadian rock band that has been around since 1968. The band has three members: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart.

90 Like the three sisters of “Macbeth” : WEIRD

The Three Witches in William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” are referred to in the text as the “weird sisters”. They cook up an ugly brew in their cauldron:

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

92 Sitcom extraterrestrial : ALF

“ALF” is a sitcom that aired in the late eighties. The title character is a hand-puppet, and supposedly an alien named Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac. The alien crash-landed into the house of amateur radio enthusiast Willie Tanner. Tanner renamed the intruder “ALF”, standing for “alien life form”.

93 Some Christmas trees : FIRS

Firs are evergreen coniferous trees, with several species being popular as Christmas trees. The most commonly used species during the holidays are the Nordmann fir, noble fir, Fraser fir and balsam fir. We also see a lot of Douglas fir trees at Christmas, but they’re not actually true firs.

96 Common sports injury sites, for short : ACLS

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of four major ligaments that support the knee. It is located in the center of the knee and connects the femur (thigh bone) to the tibia (shin bone).

100 New England’s Cape ___ : ANN

Cape Ann is located 30 miles north of Boston and is on the northernmost edge of Massachusetts Bay. The Cape was first mapped by the explorer John Smith. Early in his adventurous life Smith had been captured and enslaved by the Ottoman Empire. His “owner” in his days of slavery was a woman called Tragabigzanda, and apparently the slave and owner fell in love. Smith originally called Cape Tragabigzanda in her memory, but King Charles I changed the name to Cape Ann in honor of his own mother, Anne of Denmark.

103 Bluesy instrument, for short : SAX

The saxophone was invented by Belgian musician Adolphe Sax, hence the name. Sax developed lip cancer at one point in his life, and one has to wonder if his affliction was related to his saxophone playing (I am sure not!). I had the privilege of visiting Sax’s grave in the Cemetery of Montmartre in Paris a few years ago.

104 Prefix with valent : TRI-

An atom’s valence is the number of electrons that it loses, adds or shares when bonding with other atoms.