Day: March 22, 2025

Bill’s time: 17m 49s

Bill’s errors: 2

• ZYNGA (Zinga)
• PSILOCYBIN (psilocibin)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Style of Duchamp’s so-called “readymades” : DADA

Dadaism thrived during and just after WWI, and was an anti-war, anti-bourgeois and anti-art culture. The movement was launched in Zurich, Switzerland by a group of artists and writers who met to discuss art and put on performances in the Cabaret Voltaire. The same group frequently expressed disgust at the war that was raging across Europe.

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose works are associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. One of his most celebrated “works” is simply what he called “readymade” art, a urinal which he titled “Fountain”. Even though this work is considered to be “a major landmark in 20th century art”, the original that was submitted for exhibition was never actually displayed and had been lost forever. Replicas were commissioned by Duchamp, and are on display in many museums around the world. I have no further comment …

14 ___ blue (original team color of the Chelsea Football Club) : ETON

Eton blue is the school color that has been used by the Sports teams of Eton College in England since the early 1800s.

Chelsea Football Club is a soccer team based in London that was founded in 1905. Since day one, the team has played in the London borough of Fulham, although it uses the name of the neighboring borough of Chelsea. That’s because there already was a Fulham Football Club in existence (founded in 1879).

15 Royal adversary : TWIN

The Minnesota Twins baseball team was founded as the Kansas City Blues in 1894, before becoming the Washington Senators in 1901. The team arrived in Minneapolis in 1961.

The Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball team was founded in 1969. The team takes its name from the American Royal, a livestock show and rodeo held annually in Kansas City since 1899.

20 Elevated, as a ballet movement : ON TOE

Ballet is a type of dance that originated in Italy during the Renaissance. The term “ballet” ultimately derives from the Greek “ballizo” meaning “to dance”.

21 Long-lived being in Buddhist cosmology : DEVA

In the Hindu transition, the devas are benevolent deities. The female form of “deva” is “devi”.

22 Dish sometimes served with lomi-lomi salmon : POI

Lomi-lomi salmon is a salad dish in Hawaiian cuisine that is made using raw salted salmon.

I am a big fan of starch (being an Irishman I love potatoes). That said, I think that poi tastes horrible! Poi is made from the bulbous tubers (corm) of the taro plant by cooking the corm in water and mashing it until the desired consistency is achieved.

23 Telepathic connections : MIND MELDS

Mr. Spock was the first to show us the Vulcan mind meld, in the original “Star Trek” series. Vulcans have the ability to meld with the minds of other Vulcans, and indeed humans, in order to see what’s “going on” in the other individual’s mind.

31 Modern initialism for Black dialect : AAVE

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)

37 “Colors” rapper (1988) : ICE-T

Rapper Ice-T must be tired of having his name come up as an answer in crossword puzzles (I know I am!). Born Tracy Marrow, Ice-T has been interested in acting for decades and made his film debut in the 1984 movie about breakdancing called “Breakin’”. He has also played Detective Fin Tutuola in the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” starting the year 2000.

39 Classic Langston Hughes poem quoted on a wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture : I, TOO

Langston Hughes was a poet active in the Harlem Renaissance, and someone who helped develop the literary form known as “jazz poetry”. His poem “I, Too, Sing America” was published in 1925.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–

I, too, am America.

42 Like the Muddy Waters album “At Newport 1960” : LIVE

Muddy Waters was the stage name used by McKinley Morganfield, a musician from Mississippi who was nicknamed the “father of modern Chicago blues”. His grandmother gave him the nickname “Muddy” as he used to play in a nearby muddy creek as a child. Muddy Waters’ signature tune is 1950’s “Rollin’ Stone”, an interpretation of an older Delta blues song called “Catfish Blues”. Both “Rolling Stone” magazine and the English rock group the Rolling Stones are named for the Muddy Waters song.

44 Ornate water heater : SAMOVAR

The samovar originated in Russia. It is a water boiler, one usually used for making tea. As such, there is often an attachment on top of a samovar to keep a teapot warm.

46 The Wildcats of the Big 12 Conf. : KSU

The athletic teams of Kansas State University (KSU) are called the Wildcats. The Wildcats official “colors” are just one: the color royal purple.

48 Massive hockey arena in St. Petersburg, Russia : ICE PALACE

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and served as the capital of the Russian Empire for over 200 years. The city is often referred to as the “Venice of the North” due to its numerous canals and bridges, and is home to many beautiful historic buildings, including the Winter Palace and the Hermitage Museum, which houses one of the world’s largest art collections.

51 PC discourse? : IMS

Instant message (IM)

53 Company that owns Words With Friends : ZYNGA

Zynga is a game developer based in San Francisco. The company’s most famous product is CityVille, a game similar to SimCity in look and feel, but it is “stand alone” i.e. doesn’t require an installation on one’s hard drive and is played in a browser window. Cityville attracts about 14 million game-players every day!

“Words With Friends” (WWF) is a word game application that can be played on smartphones and other electronic devices. “Words With Friends” is basically Scrabble under a different name, or so I hear.

61 Cream alternative : ECRU

The color ecru is a grayish, yellowish brown. The word “ecru” comes from French and means “raw, unbleached”. “Ecru” has the same roots as our word “crude”.

62 Angled for attention?: Abbr. : ITAL

Italic type leans to the right, and is often used to provide emphasis in text. The style is known as “italic” because the stylized calligraphic form of writing originated in Italy, probably in the Vatican.

63 Collection in an herbarium, say : SEEDS

A herbarium is a collection of dried plants, or the room in which the collection is stored. A herbarium that specializes in the collection of wood specimens is known as a xylarium. A collection limited to plants that are cultivated is known as a hortorium.

65 Bird whose diet includes berries that grow on lava : NENE

The nene is a bird that is native to Hawaii, and is also known as the Hawaiian goose. The name “nene” is an imitation of its call. When Captain Cook landed on the islands in 1778, there were 25,000 nene living there. By 1950, the number was reduced by hunting to just 30 birds. Conservation efforts in recent years have been somewhat successful. The nene was named State Bird of Hawaii in 1957.

Down

1 Style influenced by Cubism, informally : DECO

Art Deco is a style of design and architecture of the 1920s that actually had its roots in Belgium and then spread throughout Europe before arriving in North America. Celebrated examples of Art Deco architecture are the magnificent Chrysler Building in New York City completed in 1930, and the GE Building that sits in the middle of New York City’s Rockefeller Center with the address of “30 Rock”.

In the art movement known as Cubism, objects that are the subject of a painting are broken up and reassembled in an abstract form. The pioneers of the Cubist movement were Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

4 ___ of Bourbon, grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots : ANTOINETTE

The House of Bourbon is a royal house in Europe that ruled France right up until the French Revolution. Famous French kings such as Louis XIV and Louis XVI all belonged to the House of Bourbon.

Mary, Queen of Scots ruled over Scotland from 1542 until 1567, even though she spent most of that reign in France where she had grown up. 16-year-old Mary married 9-year-old Francis, the Dauphin of France in 1558, and the following year became queen consort when her husband acceded to the throne. Francis only ruled for a year before dying of natural causes. The young widow returned to Scotland, the country of her birth, in 1561. In 1567, Mary was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in favor of her one-year-old son James, after an uprising against Mary and her third husband, the Earl of Bothwell. Mary fled south to seek the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. As Mary had once claimed Elizabeth’s throne as her own, Elizabeth had Mary imprisoned. Mary was held in confinement for over 18 years and eventually beheaded in 1587, having been found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth.

5 Car seen in the opening scene of “Dazed and Confused” : GTO

The initialism “GTO” was used on several touring cars (including a famous Pontiac) and stands for “Gran Turismo Omologato”. Italian car manufacturers started the tradition of calling their luxury performance cars “Gran Turismo”, and calling those cars they approved for racing “Gran Turismo Omologato”. The phrase “gran turismo omologato” translates as “grand touring homologated”, “homologated” being a technical term signifying official approval.

7 “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” poet : WILDE

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer who led a very public life in his adopted home of London. Although he was a prolific writer of many forms of literature, Wilde penned only one novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. He was perhaps more renowned in his own time as a dramatist. Several of his plays are performed regularly today, including “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Wilde’s last work was a poem titled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which recounted his time in prison after being convicted of homosexual offenses in 1895 and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Oscar Wilde died in 1900 at the age of 46 in Paris, destitute.

8 Show obeisance, in a way : KNEEL

Obeisance is an attitude of deference usually marked by gestures of respect such as a bow or curtsey.

13 Australian actress Davis : ESSIE

Essie Davis is an actress from the island of Tasmania in Australia.

18 The Aces of Triple-A baseball : RENO

Aces Ballpark opened in 2009, and is home to the Triple-A baseball team in the Nevada city of Reno, the Reno Aces.

19 Early Netflix offering : DVD RENTAL

Netflix was founded in Los Gatos, California in 1997 as a DVD rental company that sent out titles by mail. The company delivered its billionth DVD in 2007. I presume the renter wasn’t charged for that movie …

24 Annual Atlanta gathering of sci-fi/gaming fans : DRAGON CON

Dragon Con is a convention held annually in Atlanta that attracts fans of science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. The first Dragon Con, in 1987, attracted about 1400 attendees and was held in the Pierremont Plaza Hotel. More recent Dragon Cons have attracted about 80,000 attendees, with events spread over five hotels in downtown Atlanta.

25 One of la familia : MADRE

In Spanish, a “madre” (mother) is a member of “la familia” (the family).

27 Bébé’s breakfast : LAIT

In French, “un bébé” (a baby) needs “lait” (milk).

30 The “magic” in some mushrooms : PSILOCYBIN

Psilocybin is a compound found in many fungi species that converts to a psychedelic (psilocin) when metabolized. Absorbing psilocybin results in mind-altering effects similar to those produced by mescaline and LSD.

34 Wife of Mikhail Gorbachev : RAISA

Raisa Gorbacheva was the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. There’s no doubt that Raisa’s charm and personality helped her husband as he worked to change the image of the Soviet Union.

35 Cosmic explosion : NOVA

A nova (plural “novae”) is basically a star that suddenly gets much brighter, gradually returning to its original state weeks or even years later. The increased brightness of a nova is due to increased nuclear activity causing the star to pick up extra hydrogen from a neighboring celestial body. A supernova is very different from a nova. A supernova is a very bright burst of light and energy created when most of the material in a star explodes. The bright burst of a supernova is very short-lived compared to the sustained brightness of a nova.

54 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover : G-MAN

J. Edgar Hoover was the controversial director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from the time of its founding in 1935 until his death in 1972. While being given the credit for establishing the FBI as a first-class crime-fighting organization, he was also criticized by many for exceeding his authority. In particular, he came into conflict with Presidents Truman and Kennedy, both of whom considered dismissing him. Neither took that step however, fearing the political fallout.

59 Close-lipped : MUM

The phrase “mum’s the word” has been around since the early 1700s. “Mum” has been used to mean “silent” for centuries, the idea being that “mum” is the sound made when the lips are tightly sealed.