Day: August 28, 2024

Bill’s time: 8m 38s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14 Lover boy : ROMEO

William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is all about the love between the two title characters, which is forbidden as the pair come from two families who are sworn enemies. Early in the play, Romeo (a Montague) sneaks into a masquerade ball being held by the Capulets in the hope of meeting a Capulet girl named Rosaline. Instead, he meets and falls for Juliet, also a Capulet. Tragedy ensues …

15 Bronx politician with a noted 2018 upset, familiarly : AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a politician who is often referred to by her initials “AOC”. A Democrat, she was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018, representing part of the Bronx, Queens and Rikers Island in New York City. When she took office in 2019 at the age of 29, AOC became the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress.

16 Clay figure in Jewish folklore : GOLEM

“Golem” is Yiddish slang for “dimwit”. In Jewish folklore, a golem is an anthropomorphic being made out of inanimate matter, and is somewhat like an unintelligent robot.

18 Onetime studio with a broadcast tower in its logo : 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”.

21 Participants in a 140.6-mile race : IRONMEN

An Ironman Triathlon is a race involving a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a marathon run of just over 26 miles. The idea for the race came out of a debate between some runners in the 1977 Oahu Perimeter Relay. They were questioning whether runners, swimmers or bikers were the most fit athletes. The debaters decided to combine three local events to determine the answer, inviting athletes from all three disciplines. The events that were mimicked in the first triathlon were the Waikiki Roughwater swim (2.4 miles), the Around-Oahu Bike Race (115 miles) and the Honolulu Marathon (26.2 miles). The idea was that whoever finishes first would be called “the Iron Man”. The first triathlon was run in 1978, with fifteen starters and only twelve finishers. The race format is used all over the world now, but the Hawaiian Ironman is the event that everyone wants to win.

23 Prenatal diagnostic, in brief : AMNIO

Amniocentesis (“amnio” for short) is the prenatal test which involves the removal of a small amount of the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus using a hypodermic needle. The fluid naturally contains some fetal cells, the DNA of which can then be tested to determine the sex of the child and to check for the presence of genetic abnormalities.

41 “Star Tre_” _ _ _ _ _ _ot heard on the original series : KLINGON [“Star Trek” lingo not heard on the original series]

Klingons are a warrior race often featured in the “Star Trek” franchise of shows. Back in the first “Star Trek” movie, the actor James Doohan (who played “Scottie”) put together some Klingon dialogue that was used in the film. For subsequent movies, the American linguist Marc Okrand was commissioned to develop a working Klingon language, which he duly did, using the original words from Doohan as its basis.

44 Snap back? : PEE

The back/end of the word “snap” is a letter P (pee).

46 Famous failures of the ’50s : EDSELS

The Edsel brand of automobile was named for Edsel, son of Henry Ford. Sadly, the name “Edsel” has become synonymous with “failure”, which was no fault of Edsel himself who had died several years before the Edsel line was introduced. When the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel on 4 September 1957, Ford proclaimed the day to be “E Day”.

47 Maker of Aspire laptops : ACER

Acer’s Aspire line is a series of personal computers, both desktops and laptops, that were introduced in 1999.

48 Another word fo_ _ _ _ _ _awag : RASCAL [Another word for a scalawag]

“Scallywag” is a term we use in Ireland to describe a rogue, usually one who is harmless, and it comes from the Irish word “sgaileog” meaning “farm servant”. The American use of “scalawag” as a rogue was originally borrowed as a nickname for southern white people who supported reconstruction after the Civil War.

51 “Being and Nothingness” author : SARTRE

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the philosophical treatise “L’Etre et le neant” in 1943. The title translates as “Being and Nothingness”.

57 Tuscan city on the Arno River : PISA

The Arno is the principal river in the Tuscany region of Italy, and passes through the cities of Florence and Pisa. Famously the Arno flooded in 1966, the worst flood in the region for centuries. There were numerous deaths and extensive destruction of priceless art treasures, particularly in Florence.

66 Going places? : JOHNS

The use of “john” as a slang term for a toilet is peculiar to North America. “John” probably comes from the older slang term of “jack” or “jakes” that had been around since the 16th century. In Ireland, in less polite moments, we still refer to a toilet as “the jacks”.

68 Title role of 1966 and 2004 : ALFIE

There have been two versions of the movie “Alfie”. The original, and for my money the best, was made in 1966 with Michael Caine. The remake came out in 2004 and stars Jude Law in the title role. The theme song was performed by Cher in the 1966 movie, but it was Dionne Warwick’s cover version from 1967 that was the most successful in the charts.

69 It’_ _ _ _ _n on a vampire hunt : STAKE [It’s taken on a vampire hunt]

Legends about vampires were particularly common in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans in particular. The superstition was that vampires could be killed using a wooden stake, with the preferred type of wood varying from place to place. Superstition also defines where the body should be pierced. Most often, the stake was driven through the heart, but Russians and northern Germans went for the mouth, and northeastern Serbs for the stomach.

70 Like many autumn leaves : RED

Leaves are green because of the presence of the pigment chlorophyll. There is so much chlorophyll in a leaf during the growing season that it masks out the colors of any other pigments. The amount of chlorophyll falls off in the autumn so that other pigments, present all year, become evident. These pigments are carotenoids which are orange-yellow in color, and anthocyanins which are red-purple.

71 Tempe_ _ _ _ _onsoon, e.g. : STORM [Tempest or monsoon]

The term “monsoon” was first used in India in the days of the British Raj, when it described the seasonal winds that brought rain from the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea from June to September. “Monsoon” is derived from the Portuguese “monção”, which in turn comes from the Arabic “mawsim” meaning “season”.

Down

1 Counselor on the Enterprise : TROI

Deanna Troi is a character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” who is played by the lovely Marina Sirtis. Sirtis is a naturalized American citizen and has what I would call a soft American accent on the show. However, she was born in the East End of London and has a natural accent off-stage that is more like that of a true Cockney.

3 Texter’s qualifier : IMHO

In my humble opinion (IMHO)

4 Actress Davis : GEENA

Hollywood actress Geena Davis established the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2004 after noticing the lack of female characters on television shows while watching with her young daughter. According to Davis:

The fact is women are seriously underrepresented in nearly all sectors of society across the globe, not just on screen, but, for the most part, we are simply not aware to this reality, and media images exert a powerful influence in perpetuating our unconscious bias.

5 Opposite of vert. : HOR

Remember the “horizontal hold” (HOR) and “vertical hold” (VER) on old TV sets? Our kids have no idea what we had to go through …

6 Spanish-speaking neighborhood : BARRIO

“Barrio” is the name given to an urban district in Spanish-speaking countries.

7 Half of the couple on the iconic Rolling Stone cover of 1/22/81 : YOKO ONO

Annie Leibovitz is an outstanding photographer who is best known for her portraits of celebrities. Perhaps her most famous image is one taken of John Lennon and Yoko Ono for the cover of “Rolling Stone” magazine. It features Ono and Lennon lying together on the floor, with a nude Lennon kissing the cheek of a fully clothed Ono. Five hours after the photo was taken, Lennon was murdered outside the Dakota Building in Manhattan, where he lived.

8 Subj. for Milton Friedman : ECON

Milton Friedman was a noted American economist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. Friedman was an advisor to President Ronald Reagan and was very much an advocate of a free market system with limited intervention by governments.

9 Nash who wrote “A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of” : OGDEN

Ogden Nash was a poet from Rye, New York who is remembered for his light and quirky verse. He had over 500 such works published between 1931 and 1972.

10 Units of X-ray exposure : ROENTGENS

The contemporary standard radiation dosage unit is the “roentgen equivalent in man”, abbreviated to “rem”.

X-rays were first studied comprehensively by the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (also “Roentgen”), and it was he who gave the name “X-rays” to this particular type of radiation. Paradoxically, in Röntgen’s native language of German, X-rays are routinely referred to as “Röntgen rays”. In 1901, Röntgen’s work on X-rays won him the first Nobel Prize in Physics that was ever awarded.

13 Texter’s “Unbelievable” : SMH

Shaking my head (SMH)

24 Broadway “Auntie” : MAME

The musical “Mame” opened on Broadway in 1966, with Angela Lansbury in the title role. The musical is based on the 1955 novel “Auntie Mame” written by Patrick Dennis.

27 Neighbor of Zambia and Namibia : ANGOLA

Angola is a country in south-central Africa on the west coast. It is the fourth largest diamond exporter in Africa, after Botswana, the Congo and South Africa. Such a valuable export hasn’t really helped the living standard of the country’s citizens as life expectancy and infant mortality rates are among the poorest on the continent.

The landlocked nation of Zambia in Southern Africa was ruled by the British for many years as a colony known as Northern Rhodesia. Northern Rhodesia finally gained independence in 1964, adopting the name Zambia. The new name comes from the Zambezi river, which forms much of the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The famous Victoria Fall lies on the Zambezi, on that border.

The Republic of Namibia is a country in southern Africa on the Atlantic coast. The Namibian War of Independence fought from 1966 to 1988 eventually resulted in independence for Namibia from South Africa, and a transition from white minority apartheid rule.

30 Ivy League city surrounded by more than 150 waterfalls : ITHACA

The city of Ithaca sits right at the southern tip of Cayuga Lake in New York State. Named for the Greek island, Ithaca is famous as home to Cornell University, which is located just south of the city.

31 Fury : CHOLER

Choler is anger, irritability. Choler (also “cholera”) was one of the body’s four basic substances of medieval science, the so-called four humors. All diseases were caused by these four substances getting out of balance. The four humors were:

• Black bile (melancholia)
• Yellow bile (cholera)
• Phlegm (phlegma)
• Blood (sanguis)

33 Animal with a bugle-like mating call : ELK

Male elks are called bulls, and females are known as cows. Bull elks are known for their very loud screaming, which is called bugling. Cow elks are attracted to bulls that bugle more often and most loudly.

49 Checked the IDs of : CARDED

Identity document (ID)

54 Like the proverbial milk : SPILT

The milk I spilled when I was growing up in Ireland was “spilt”, whereas the milk I spilled here in the US was “spilled” …

58 411 : INFO

Several large US cities started using the telephone number “411” in the 1930s for local directory assistance. “411” was used in markets where the Bell System of telephone companies was prevalent. The number “113” served the same purpose on markets dominated by GTE and other telephone companies, with the last such usage of “113” disappearing in the 1980s. The term “4-1-1” is now used in North America as slang for “information”.

65 Grammy winner for Best Rap Album in 2021 : NAS

Rapper Nas used to go by an earlier stage name “Nasty Nas”, and before that by his real name “Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones”. Nas released his first album “Illmatic” in 1994, and inventively titled his fifth studio album “Stillmatic”, released in 2001.