Day: April 30, 2025

Bill’s time: 9m 17s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Leafy vegetable with a lot of vitamin K : KALE

Vitamin K is actually a group of vitamins that are essential to the process of blood coagulation. A form of vitamin K is also involved in photosynthesis in plants, so green leafy vegetables are the best source of the vitamin for humans.

8 Lard and tallow, for two : FATS

Fat, when extracted from the carcass of an animal, is called suet. Untreated suet decomposes at room temperature quite easily so it has to be rendered, purified to make it stable. Rendered fat from pigs is what we call lard. Rendered beef or mutton fat is known as tallow.

12 Where pandas are native : ASIA

The giant panda is a bear, and so has the digestive system of a carnivore. However, the panda lives exclusively on bamboo, even though its gut is relatively poorly adapted to extract nutrients from plants per se. The panda relies on microbes in its gut to digest cellulose, and consumes 20-30 pounds of bamboo each day to gain enough nourishment.

18 Like a 1,000-piece monochromatic jigsaw puzzle : HARD

Jigsaws are saws designed for the cutting of irregular curves by hand. The original jigsaw puzzles were created by painting a picture on a sheet of wood and then cutting the picture into small pieces using a jigsaw, hence the name. Today, almost all jigsaw puzzles are pictures glued onto cardboard. The puzzle pieces are now die-cut, and so there’s no jigsaw involved at all.

22 Actress de Armas : ANA

Ana de Armas is an actress from Cuba. Having attended the National Theater School of Cuba, she moved to Spain at the age of 18. Thre, she made a name for herself in a Spanish TV series called “El Internado”. De Armas moved to Los Angeles in 2014, after which her performance opposite Ryan Gosling in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049” earned her critical acclaim.

23 Hamiltons : TENNERS

The obverse of the US ten-dollar bill features the image of Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury. As such, ten-dollar bills are sometimes called “Hamiltons”. By the way, the $10 bill is the only US currency in circulation in which the portrait faces to the left. The reverse of the ten-dollar bill features the US Treasury Building.

26 Chance to see the big game? : SAFARI

“Safari” is a Swahili word meaning “journey” or “expedition”.

30 Alternative to a blur or pixelation : CENSOR BAR

One way of censoring an image is to pixelate the area to be hidden, in a process known as “pixelization” (which is different from “pixelation”). For example, we often see license plates and faces blurred out on television news shows. That’s pixelization. On the other hand, pixelation is an effect noticed when digital photographs are enlarged to an extent that individual pixels can be discerned.

34 Pawn : HOCK

The phrase “in hock” is an American invention. Back in the mid-19th century “in hock” meant both “in debt” and “in prison”. The word “hock” comes from the Dutch “hok” meaning “jail”.

I remember the bad old days growing up in Dublin, Ireland, when my mother had to go to the pawnshop (bad times!). I’d wait outside with my brother, looking up at the pawnbroker’s sign, three gold balls hanging down from a metal bar. This traditional sign used by pawnbrokers is said to date back to the Medici family as the sign had symbolic meaning in the province of Lombardy where the Medici family reigned supreme. Because of this connection, pawnshop banking was originally called Lombard banking.

36 El Paso-to-Oklahoma City dir. : ENE

Although there have been human settlements in the El Paso area for thousands of years, the first European settlement was founded in 1659 by the Spanish. That first community was on the south bank of the Rio Grande, and was called El Paso del Norte (the North Pass). Most of the urban development under Spanish rule took place on the south side of the river, with El Paso del Norte acting as the center of governance for the Spanish for the territory of New Mexico. The Rio Grande was chosen as the border between Mexico and the US in 1848, so most of the city of El Paso del Norte became part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua (and is now called Ciudad Juárez ). The area north of the river developed as a US military post, eventually becoming the modern city of El Paso, Texas.

Oklahoma City is the largest city in Oklahoma, and the state capital. Although it is only the 29th most-populous city in the country, Oklahoma City is the eighth-largest by land area. Sadly, the city suffered the nation’s worst act of domestic terrorism, the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that caused the death of 168 people.

41 Anderson who directed “Fantastic Mr. Fox” : WES

“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a children’s novel by Roald Dahl. It was adapted into a 2006 animated film directed by Wes Anderson.

Film director Wes Anderson’s most famous movie is probably “The Royal Tenenbaums” that was released in 2001, and is not my favorite film by any stretch. However, Anderson’s 2007 release “The Darjeeling Limited”; that I enjoyed.

45 “Saturday Night Fever” music genre : DISCO

“Saturday Night Fever” was a phenomenal movie in its day, but to be honest, I don’t think it has aged well. I still love the soundtrack, which is the third-best selling movie soundtrack of all time (number one is “The Bodyguard” and number two is “Purple Rain”, would you believe?). “Saturday Night Fever” was the first film for which the soundtrack was launched before the movie itself, in a cross-marketing exercise designed to hype the movie before its release.

47 Obama-era policy whose last three letters spell a different Obama-era law : DACA

The acronym “DACA” stands for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”, which is a US immigration policy giving some relief to illegal immigrants brought into the country as children. Essentially, DACA provides such persons with a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation, during which time an applicant becomes eligible for a work permit. The policy was introduced by President Obama in 2012.

The correct name for what has been dubbed “Obamacare” is the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (ACA).

48 Some printable files : PDFS

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents can be shared between users and read using many different applications and platforms, making them more universally accessible than documents saved by one particular program.

51 Form of much of the dialogue of 2021’s “CODA,” in brief : ASL

American Sign Language (ASL)

“CODA” is a 2021 movie, a remake of the 2014 French-Belgian film “La Famille Bélier”. The English-language version stars Emilia Jones as the only hearing member of a deaf family struggling with a fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts. “CODA” was the first film distributed by a streaming service (Apple TV+) to win a Best Picture Oscar. The title “CODA” is an acronym standing for “child of deaf adults”.

54 Inbox abbr. : FWD

Forward (fwd.)

63 Caveman’s covering : PELT

A pelt is the skin of a furry animal.

64 Heart test, for short : EKG

An EKG measures the electrical activity in the heart. Back in my homeland of Ireland, an EKG is known as an ECG (for electrocardiogram). We use the German name in the US, Elektrokardiogramm, giving us EKG. Apparently the abbreviation EKG is preferred, as ECG might be confused (if poorly handwritten, I guess) with EEG, the abbreviation for an electroencephalogram.

65 Meat-and-potatoes diner dish : HASH

Hash, beef and vegetables mashed together, is a very American dish and one that really surprised me when I first came across it. “Hash” just seems like such an unappetizing item, but I soon found out how delicious it was. The name “hash” in this context comes from the French “hacher” meaning “to chop”. Back in the early 1900s the dish called “hashed browned potatoes” was developed, which quickly morphed into “hash browns”. From there the likes of corned beef hash was introduced.

Down

1 Blade sheathed in a saya : KATANA

A katana is a curved sword worn by the samurai of Japan. It is sometimes referred to as a “samurai sword”.

2 ___ Ghani, former Afghan president : ASHRAF

Hamid Karzai is a former President of Afghanistan, coming to power in 2004 after the Taliban were overthrown. Karzai remained in office for two five-year terms, being replaced in 2014 by Ashraf Ghani.

3 Prevaricated : LIED

To prevaricate is to stray from the truth. The term “prevaricate” comes from a Church Latin word meaning “walk crookedly”.

4 Chow down on : EAT

“Chow” is a slang term for “food” that originated in California in the mid-1800s. “Chow” comes from the Chinese pidgin English “chow-chow” meaning “food”.

5 ___ Novarro, Hollywood sex symbol of the 1920s : RAMON

Ramón Novarro was a Mexican actor who made it big in Hollywood in the Silent Era. He often played the “Latin lover” and was noted for his good looks. His most successful film was in the 1925 version of “Ben-Hur”, in which he caused quite a sensation by wearing very revealing costumes. Novarro was gay, something that caused him a lot of trouble in his career given the times. In 1968 he hired two young men through an agency to come to his L.A. home for sex, but the two brothers tortured Novarro for hours in the belief that he had a large sum of money in the house. Novarro choked to death on his own blood after the brutal beating, and the murderers left with just twenty dollars in cash.

7 Wonderland interloper : ALICE

The title character in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is based on a child named Alice Liddell. Lewis Carroll (real name “Charles Lutwidge Dodgson”) met the Liddell family while he was photographing Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, after which he befriended the Liddells. Carroll told the three Liddell sisters (including Alice) a story about a little girl named Alice and her adventures, in order to entertain the children while on a boating trip on the River Isis in Oxford. He elaborated on the story for the girls on a subsequent boat trip, and agreed to write down the tale as the children loved it so much. Carroll’s writings became a full-fledged manuscript, including the author’s own illustrations. It was first published in 1865, three years after that boat trip.

8 First prez to appoint a woman to the cabinet : FDR

The US Department of Labor (DOL) was founded as the Bureau of Labor in 1889 under the Department of the Interior. The Bureau’s status was elevated to Cabinet level by President William Howard Taft in 1913, with a bill he signed on his last day in office. The DOL has been headquartered in the Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C. since 1975. The building was named for Frances Perkins who served as Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945 and who was the first female cabinet secretary in US history.

9 Like the environment in many reptile terrariums : ARID

A terrarium (plural “terraria”) is a contained environment used to house land animals. The term “terrarium“ comes from the equivalent “aquarium”, a tank for holding mainly fish. In general, a contained environment for keeping live animals or plants is known as a “vivarium”

11 Certain form-fitting swimsuit : SPEEDO

Speedo brand swimwear was first produced in Australia in 1928, by a hosiery company that wanted to diversify. The brand name was chosen after a slogan competition among employees was won by “Speed on in your Speedos”. It was a long time ago, I guess …

29 Three-note chords : TRIADS

A triad is a group of three and, specifically in music, a chord made up of three notes.

31 Stitchers’ gathering : SEWING BEE

Back in 18th-century America, when neighbors would gather to work for the benefit of one of their group, such a meeting was called a bee. The name “bee” was an allusion to the social nature of the insect. In modern parlance, a further element of entertainment and pleasure has been introduced, for example in a quilting bee, or even a spelling bee.

33 Sheltie from a shelter, e.g. : RESCUE DOG

The Shetland sheepdog (often just “sheltie”) is a herding dog from the Scottish Shetland Islands. It is a relatively small dog, and looks like a miniature rough collie.

43 Lollygag : DAWDLE

To lollygag (also “lallygag”) is to dawdle, to dally.

45 One of two in Monopoly : DIE

The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman named Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

56 Neighbor of N.J. : DEL

The state of Delaware takes its name from Virginia’s first colonial governor, Englishman Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr. Delaware is known as “the First State” as it was the first to ratify the US Constitution, in 1787.

59 “Breaking Bad” investigatory grp. : DEA

The AMC drama “Breaking Bad” is a well-written show about a high school teacher stricken by lung cancer who turns to a life of crime to make money. It turns out that the teacher has a talent for making high-quality crystal meth. The show was created by Vince Gilligan who had spent many years as a producer and writer of “The X-Files”. There is a “Breaking Bad” spin-off show running on AMC called “Better Call Saul” that focuses on the life of lawyer Saul Goodman. If I’m honest, I enjoyed “Better Call Saul” even more than the original show …