Day: August 16, 2024

Bill’s time: 11m 01s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Locale for car chases in “Goldfinger” and “Quantum of Solace” : ALPS

“Goldfinger” is Ian Fleming’s seventh James Bond novel, and was first published in 1959. Fleming was in the habit of naming his characters after people in the real world. The novel’s colorful antagonist Auric Goldfinger was named after Hungarian-born British architect Ernő Goldfinger.

“Quantum of Solace” is a 2008 “James Bond” movie starring Daniel Craig as the celebrated spy. It is a direct sequel to Craig’s first Bond movie, “Casino Royale”. The film’s title is the name of a short story in the “For Your Eyes Only” collection by Ian Fleming.

5 Spiced tea : CHAI

Chai is a drink made from spiced black tea, honey and milk, with “chai” being the Hindi word for “tea”. We often called tea “a cup of char” growing up in Ireland, with “char” being our slang word for tea, derived from “chai”.

15 Skedaddle : SPLIT

“Skedaddle” is a slang term meaning “run away”, one that dates back to the Civil War.

17 Hunter on screen : HOLLY

Holly Hunter won her Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the 1993 film “The Piano”. Hunter is quite the pianist, and played all her piano pieces in the film herself.

18 English cathedral city : ELY

Ely Cathedral is a famous and beautiful church in the city of Ely in the English county of Cambridgeshire. There is a Gothic door on the north face of the cathedral that was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the man famous as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Christopher Wren had a personal link to the church, as his uncle was the Bishop of Ely.

19 Container for the Ten Commandments : ARK

In the Christian and Jewish traditions, the Ten Commandments are a set of principles relating to worship and ethics that the faithful should observe. Also known as the Decalogue, the Book of Exodus describes the revelation of the principles by God to Moses on Mount Sanai. Also according to Exodus, the Ten Commandments were inscribed by the finger of God onto a pair of stone tablets that were kept in a chest known as the Ark of the Covenant.

24 More spirited : SPUNKIER

We’ve been using the word “spunk” to mean “pluck, courage” since the late 1700s. Prior to that, it was a Scottish word meaning “spark” that we had absorbed into English.

26 Meals that traditionally include four cups of wine : SEDERS

The Passover Seder is a ritual feast that marks the beginning of the Jewish Passover holiday celebrating the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

30 Where lines may be drawn in the sand : ZEN GARDEN

Japanese Zen gardens are inspired by the meditation gardens of Zen Buddhist temples. Zen gardens have no water in them, but often there is gravel and sand that is raked in patterns designed to create the impression of water in waves and ripples.

38 Some 3.5 million quotations were gathered for it, for short : OED

The “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) contains over 600,000 “main” entries and 59 million words in total. The longest entry for one word in the second edition of the OED is the verb “set”. When the third edition was published in 2007, the longest entry for a single word became the verb “put”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most-quoted author in the OED is William Shakespeare, with his most quoted work being “Hamlet”. The most-quoted female author is George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans).

39 Italian menu word : ALLA

The phrase “in the style of” can be translated as “alla” in Italian and “à la” in French.

47 Tube travelers? : OVA

The Fallopian tubes stretch from the ovaries of female mammals to the uterus. They are named for the 16th-century Italian anatomist Gabriello Fallopio, who was the first to describe them.

55 Coin once known as the “piece of eight” : PESO

The peso is used in many Spanish-speaking countries around the world. The coin originated in Spain where the word “peso” means “weight”. The original peso was what we know in English as a “piece of eight”, a silver coin of a specific weight that had a nominal value of eight “reales”.

56 “Chain Reaction” singer, 1985 : ROSS

Diana Ross is one of the most prolific recording artists in history. She sang with the Supremes from 1959 to 1970 and then launched an incredibly successful solo career. Ross was listed in the 1993 edition of “The Guinness Book of World Records” as the most successful music artist ever, with eighteen #1 records.

Down

11 Czech brew : PILSENER

Pilsener (also “pilsner” or “pils”) is a pale lager. The name “pilsener” comes from the city of Pilsen, now in the Czech Republic. It was in Pilsen, in 1842, that the first bottom-fermented lager was produced. A bottom-fermented beer is much clearer than a top-fermented beer, and has a crisper taste. The “top” and “bottom” refers to where the yeast gathers during the brewing process.

15 Showrunner Rhimes : SHONDA

Shonda Rhimes is the creator and head writer of the TV shows “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal”. She also serves as executive producer for the crime shows “How to Get Away with Murder” and “The Catch”. Rhimes also runs her own production company called Shondaland.

21 Small towns : BURGS

“Burg” is an informal term used in the US for a smaller town that comes from the German word “burg” meaning “fortified city”.

25 Skedaddled : RAN

“Skedaddle” is a slang term meaning “run away”, one that dates back to the Civil War.

30 Film character who asks “Did you ever think that maybe there’s more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking?” : ZOOLANDER

“Zoolander” is a 2001 movie starring Ben Stiller, with Ben’s father, Jerry Stiller in a supporting role. Derek Zoolander is a male model, with the name coming from a melding of two real-life male models, Mark Vanderloo and Johnny Zander.

33 Leaf : FOLIO

We can use the word “folio” for a sheet of paper folded in half, one time. The term comes from the Latin “folium” meaning “leaf”.

35 Million ___ March (political event of 2000) : MOM

The Million Mom March was a rally held on Mother’s Day 2000. It took place mainly in Washington, DC, and promoted legislation to tighten gun control. The publicity surrounding the event attracted a counter-demonstration by a group that called themselves the Second Amendment Sisters, who advocated protection of gun rights.

37 Most densely populated country in Europe : MONACO

The Principality of Monaco is on the Mediterranean coast, and is otherwise surrounded by France, even though it is just under 10 miles from the Italian border. Monaco is the world’s most densely populated country, and the world’s second smallest country (the smallest being Vatican City). The principality has been very prosperous since the late 1800s, with the economy given a tremendous boost with the opening of several gambling casinos.

51 Text qualifier : IMO

In my opinion (IMO)

52 Word with felt or hot : … TIP

The felt-tip marking pen was patented in 1910. The marking pen was popularized when the Magic Marker brand was introduced in 1953.