Day: August 13, 2024

Bill’s time: 7m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 Covered veranda often equipped with a ceiling fan : LANAI

A lanai is a type of veranda, and a design that originated in Hawaii. A kind blog reader tells me that the etymology of “lanai” seems unclear, but that the island name of “Lana’i” is not related.

19 1970 novel exploring racism’s effect on a young girl’s self-esteem : THE BLUEST EYE

“The Bluest Eye” is a 1970 novel by Toni Morrison, her first to be published. The book addresses directly some difficult subjects including incest, child molestation and racism. As a result, “The Bluest Eye” is often a target of book-banning movements.

23 Home for a queen : HIVE

A queen bee has a stinger, just like worker bees. When a worker bee stings, it leaves its stinger in its victim. The worker bee dies after losing its stinger as the loss rips out part of its insides. However, a queen bee can sting with impunity as her stinger’s anatomy is different.

28 Like Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” key-wise : IN G

“Shake It Off” is a 2014 song recorded and composed by Taylor Swift. The song’s title refers to Swift “shaking off” negative comments made by her detractors.

34 Deep-dish pizza chain, informally : UNO’S

The chain of pizza parlors known today as Uno Chicago Grill used to be called Pizzeria Uno, or just “Uno’s”. Apparently, Uno’s created the world’s first deep-dish pizza.

35 1977 novel whose title references a lyrical Old Testament book : SONG OF SOLOMON

“Song of Solomon” is a 1977 novel by Toni Morrison. It is one of the novels cited when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

41 Collaborations like those on “Ella and Louis” : DUETS

“Ella and Louis” was a studio album released in 1956. It was a collaboration between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with accompaniment by the Oscar Peterson Quartet. The pair worked together on two more albums: “Ella and Louis Again” and “Porgy and Bess”, both released in 1957.

42 1987 Pulitzer-winning novel about the haunting of a formerly enslaved family’s home : BELOVED

“Beloved” is a 1987 novel by Toni Morrison about a haunted family home in Cincinnati. The disturbing storyline was inspired by real events, and a real person. Margaret Garner was a former slave who escaped from Kuntucky to Ohio. US marshals tried to capture her in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act, and found her with her dead two-year-old daughter, and attempting to kill her remaining two children and herself. Garner committed those acts rather than see herself and her family returned to slavery. The title character in the novel is supposed to be the spirit of the daughter of a former slave killed by her mother to avoid returning to a life in slavery.

50 Backdrop for a shooting star : SKY

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body traveling through space. Once in the atmosphere, the meteoroid is referred to as a “meteor” or “shooting star”. Almost all meteoroids burn up, but if one is large enough to survive and reach the ground then we call it a meteorite. The word “meteor” comes from the Greek “meteōros” meaning “high in the air”.

55 Author who received the Nobel Prize in Literature on the basis of her first six novels, all featured in this puzzle : TONI MORRISON

Writer Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Amongst other things, Morrison is noted for coining the phrase “our first black President”, a reference to President Bill Clinton.

57 Clean up, as software : DEBUG

Back in 1947, famed computer programmer Grace Hopper noticed some colleagues fixing a piece of equipment by removing a dead moth from a relay. She remarked that they were “debugging” the system, and so Hopper has been given credit for popularizing the term “bug” in the context of computing.

60 Burkina ___ : FASO

Burkina Faso is an inland country in western Africa. The country used to be called the Republic of Upper Volta and was renamed in 1984 to “Burkina Faso”, meaning “the land of upright people”.

65 1973 novel set in “the Bottom,” a neighborhood slated to be demolished for a golf course : SULA

“Sula” is a 1973 novel by Toni Morrison. The title character is a young woman who returns to her hometown in Ohio. Sula’s return disrupts the community as she defies social norms.

66 ___ gin fizz : SLOE

The sloe is the fruit of the blackthorn bush, and the main flavoring ingredient in sloe gin. A sloe looks like a small plum, but is usually much more tart in taste.

Down

1 Request in the weight room : SPOT ME?

People at the gym who are doing weight-training will often “spot” for each other. This means that the person who is spotting assists in the lift, allowing the lifter to work with more weight than usual.

2 Kauai goodbyes : ALOHAS

The Hawaiian word “aloha” has many meanings in English: affection, love, peace, compassion and mercy. More recently, “aloha” has come to mean “hello” and “goodbye”, but only since the mid-1800s.

Because the Hawaiian island of Kauai is one of the wettest places on earth, all the rainfall has helped to carve out magnificent canyons and left superb waterfalls. The island is often used as a backdrop for movies. The facilities at the island’s Lihue Airport reflect the pleasant climate enjoyed by the Hawaiian Islands. Check-in takes place completely outdoors!

3 Earth-moving machines, informally : DOZERS

The largest bulldozer ever manufactured is the Acco Super Bulldozer, built in Italy. It weighs in at 183 tonnes, and has a dozer blade that is 7 meters wide and 2.7 meters high. Only one of these bulldozers was ever built, and it was intended for shipment to Libya in the early eighties. The machine never left Italy, as sanctions were placed on the Libyan regime run by Colonel Gaddafi.

7 Sticky note : POST-IT

The Post-it note was invented at 3M following the accidental discovery of a low-tack, reusable adhesive. The actual intent of the development program was to produce a super-strong adhesive.

8 Green gemstone : JADE

“Jade” is actually the name given to two different mineral rocks, both of which are used to make gemstones. The first is nephrite, a mineral with a varying degree of iron content, the more iron the greener the color. The second is jadeite, a sodium and aluminum-rich pyroxene. As well as being used for gemstones, both jade minerals can be carved into decorative pieces.

10 Heat in the microwave : ZAP

The first household microwave oven was introduced to the market in 1955, by the Tappan Stove Company in Ohio.

24 iPod model : NANO

The iPod Nano was the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There were seven versions of the Nano, until it was discontinued in 2017.

29 Looping animation file : GIF

The Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) is an image format developed in the 1980s by CompuServe (remember CompuServe?). GIF images are compressed, reducing the file size, but without losing information. So, the original image can be reconstructed perfectly from the compressed GIF version. But, and it’s a big but, GIF images use only 256 individual colors. This means that GIF is a relatively poor choice of compression for color photographs, while it is usually fine for logos with large blocks of single colors.

39 Furry swimmer : OTTER

The fur of the sea otter is exceptionally thick. It is the densest fur in the whole animal kingdom.

40 Scale units: Abbr. : LBS

The unit of mass that we know today as a pound is descended from the old Roman unit of weight known as a “libra”. That “libra” connection is why we abbreviate “pound” to “lb”. The name “pound” comes from the Latin “pondo” meaning “weight”. Our term “ounce” (abbreviated to “oz.”) comes from the Latin “uncia”, which was 1/12 of a Roman “libra”.

43 YouTube journals, essentially : VLOGS

A video blog is perhaps what one might expect, i.e. a blog that is essentially a series of video posts. The phrase “video logging” is often shortened to “vlogging”.

55 “Chicken of the sea” : TUNA

The Chicken of the Sea brand of tuna is named for a phrase once used by fishermen for the “meat” from white albacore tuna.

56 World capital on the same latitude as Tallinn and Stockholm : OSLO

Oslo, the capital of Norway, is an ancient city that was founded around 1048. The medieval city was destroyed by fire in 1624 and was rebuilt by the Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV and renamed to Christiania. In 1877 there was an official change of the spelling of the city’s name to “Kristiana”, and then more recently in 1925 the name was restored to the original Oslo. Things have almost gone full circle and now the center of Oslo, the area that would have been contained by the original medieval walls, has apparently been renamed to Christiania.

Tallinn is the largest city in the former Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) of Estonia, and is now the nation’s capital. Tallinn is sometimes referred to as the Silicon Valley of Europe, and indeed it was in Tallinn that the video chat service Skype was developed. It is also home to NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence that is sponsored by several NATO members, including the US.

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous city in the country. Over one fifth of all Swedish residents live in Stockholm.

58 Australia’s tallest bird : EMU

The emu has had a tough time in Australia since man settled there. There was even an “Emu War” in Western Australia in 1932 when migrating emus competed with livestock for water and food. Soldiers were sent in and used machine guns in an unsuccessful attempt to drive off the “invading force”. The emus were clever, breaking their usual formations and adopting guerrilla tactics, operating as smaller units. After 50 days of “war”, the military withdrew. Subsequent requests for military help for the farmers were ignored. The emus had emerged victorious …

59 “The Fresh Prince of ___-Air” : BEL

“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” sitcom originally ran from 1990 to 1996. It starred Will Smith as a teenager from Philadelphia who arrives in Bel Air to live in a mansion with his wealthy aunt and uncle.