Day: July 8, 2025

Bill’s time: 9m 09s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5A Holders of squid ink : SACS

Octopodes and squid have the ability to release a dark pigment into the water as a means of escape. The dark pigment is called cephalopod ink (the squid and octopus belong to the class cephalopoda) and is stored in an ink sac. The dark color is created by melanin, the same substance that acts as a pigment in human skin.

16A Airport that Captain Sully departed from : LAGUARDIA

Fiorello La Guardia was the Mayor of New York from 1934 to 1945, racking up three full terms in office. The famous airport that bears La Guardia’s name was built at his urging, stemming from an incident that took place while he was in office. He was taking a TWA flight to “New York” and was outraged when the plane landed at Newark Airport, in the state of New Jersey. The Mayor demanded that the flight take off again and land at a small airport in Brooklyn. A gaggle of press reporters joined him on the short hop and he gave them a story, urging New Yorkers to support the construction of a new commercial airport within the city’s limits. The new airport, in Queens, opened in 1939 as New York Municipal, often called “LaGuardia” as a nickname. The airport was officially relabeled as “LaGuardia” (LGA) in 1947.

The phrase “Miracle on the Hudson” is used to describe the 2009 ditching of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after the plane lost all engine power soon after take-off. The loss of power happened when the plane flew through a flock of Canada geese. Pilots Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and Jeffrey “Jeff” Skiles managed to put the plane down with no loss of life. The two pilots were portrayed by Tom Hanks and Aaron Eckhart in the feature film “Sully” that was released in 2016.

18A Fusilli or fettuccine : PASTA

Fusilli is a corkscrew-shaped pasta. The term “fusilli” comes from the Italian word “fuso” meaning “spindle”.

Fettuccine is a popular type of pasta in Italy, particularly in Rome. It is a flat noodle similar to the smaller tagliatelle that is more popular in Bologna. The most common dish made with fettuccine in North America is Fettuccine Alfredo.

19A Channel with a yellow rectangle logo, informally : NAT GEO

The National Geographic Channel (Nat Geo) was launched in 2001. Nat Geo has a sister channel known as National Geographic Wild (Nat Geo Wild) that focuses on programming about wildlife.

20A British celebrity restaurateur Gordon ___ : RAMSAY

Gordon Ramsay is a celebrity chef from Scotland who appears more on US television now than he does on British TV. Personally, I think the man is pretty obnoxious …

21A Animation studio behind “Scooby-Doo” : HANNA-BARBERA

William Hanna was an animator who is best known for his collaborations with Joseph Barbera. After creating “Tom and Jerry” for MGM, the partners founded the Hanna-Barbera studio that produced such classics as “The Flintstones”, “The Huckleberry Hound Show”, “The Jetsons”, “Scooby-Doo”, “The Smurfs” and “Yogi Bear”.

“Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!” is a series of cartoons produced for Hanna-Barbera Productions, first broadcast in 1969. The title character is a great Dane dog owned by a young male called Shaggy Rogers. The character’s name was inspired by the famous “doo-be-doo-be-doo” refrain in the Frank Sinatra hit “Strangers in the Night”. Shaggy was voiced by famed disk jockey Casey Kasem. Shaggy and Scooby’s friends are Velma, Fred and Daphne.

24A Speaker of Arabic or Hebrew : SEMITE

The word “Semitic” comes from the Greek for “Shem”, one of the three sons of Noah. A Semite is one of a large list of peoples, from the Assyrians and Babylonians to the Hebrews. The term “anti-Semite” however, almost always refers to anti-Jewish sentiment.

28A What colors on opposite ends of the color wheel can do : CLASH

A color wheel is a visual device that illustrates the relationship between various colors and hues.

30A Nine months, typically, for a human pregnancy : TERM

The normal gestation period for humans is 280 days, a little over 9 months. The gestation period can be a little shorter, or longer. Back in 1945, a pregnancy was confirmed at 375 days, which is just over 12 months.

38A Insects whose queens are fed royal jelly : BEES

Royal jelly is a glandular secretion from worker honey bees. It is used to feed all bee larvae. Most of the larvae are fed royal jelly for just three days, and these larvae develop into drones (males) and workers (sterile females). When the existing queen honey bee grows old or tired, the workers replace her by choosing several small larvae to feed with copious amounts of royal jelly. This triggers the development of a new queen, with fully developed ovaries for the laying of eggs.

45A Cheddar, dough, bacon or cabbage : MOOLAH

Lettuce, cabbage, kale, dough, bread, scratch, cheddar, simoleons, clams and moola(h) are all slang terms for money.

49A “La Traviata” and “La Bohème” : OPERAS

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” was originally titled “Violetta” after the main character in the piece. The title “La Traviata” translates into “The Woman Gone Astray”, reflecting Violetta’s life as a courtesan.

“La bohème” by Giacomo Puccini is the second-most frequently performed opera in the US (after “Madama Butterfly”, also by Puccini). The lead female role in the piece is Mimì, a seamstress.

50A Capital of Canada : OTTAWA

Ottawa is the second-largest city in the Province of Ontario (after Toronto) and is the capital city of Canada. The name “Ottawa” comes from an Algonquin word “adawe”, which means “to trade”.

57A Windows : Microsoft :: ___ : Apple : MAC OS

I think of an operating system (OS) as that piece of software that sits between the hardware on my computer and the programs that I choose to run. Developers of application programs don’t really have to worry about being able to “talk to” the countless different types of hardware found in the wide variety of computers that are manufactured, they just need to talk to the handful of operating systems that are out there, like Windows, Android, MAC and Unix. The operating system takes care of the rest.

59A Body part covered by a cap : KNEE

The patella is the kneecap. The bone’s Latin name “patella” is a diminutive form of “patina”, the word for “pan”. The idea is that the kneecap is pan-shaped.

Down

2D Tennis great Lendl : IVAN

Ivan Lendl is a former professional tennis player from Czechoslovakia. He appeared in eight consecutive US Open finals in the eighties, a record that stands to this day. After retiring from tennis, Lendl took up golf, and eventually became a scratch player. Three of Lendl’s five daughters followed their father into golf, all playing for their college golf teams.

3D Japanese video game giant : SEGA

Sega is a Japanese video game company headquartered in Tokyo. Sega actually started out in 1940 as Standard Games and was located in Honolulu, which at that time was a city in the US Territory of Hawaii. The owners moved the operation to Tokyo in 1951 and renamed the company to Service Games. The name “Sega” is a combination of the first two letters of the words “Se-rvice” and “Ga-mes”.

7D Some video effects, in brief : CGI

Computer-generated imagery (CGI)

9D Generator of junk mail : SPAMBOT

Spambots are nasty little computer programs that send out spam emails and messages, often from fake accounts. This blog gets about 500 spam comments a day that I have to delete, almost all of which are written by spambots.

17D Mystery writer Christie : AGATHA

Agatha Christie (née Miller) is the best-selling novelist of all time, having sold about 4 billion copies worldwide in total. The only books to have sold in higher volume are the works of William Shakespeare and the Bible.

20D No-name : RANDO

“Rando” is a slang term describing a “random person”. It tends not to be used flatteringly.

22D Bad-mouth : ASPERSE

To asperse is to spread false charges or make insinuations. The more common expression is “to cast aspersions”. “To asperse” comes from the Latin “aspergere” meaning “to sprinkle”. So, “to asperse” is also the term used when sprinkling holy water.

31D Pop singer Ora : RITA

Rita Ora is a British singer who was born Rita Sahatçiu in Pristina, Yugoslavia to Albanian parents. The family name “Sahatçiu” comes from a Turkish word meaning “watchmaker”. Rita’s parents changed their name to make it easier to pronounce. So, the family name morphed from “watchmaker” to “time”, which is “ora” in Albanian.

35D Rock out on stage? : CHRIS

Chris Rock is a great stand-up comedian. Interestingly, Rock cites his paternal grandfather as an influence on his performing style. Grandfather Allen Rock was a preacher.

42D Spiky hairdos : MOHAWKS

Here is another example of a difference in terminology on either side of the Atlantic. What we call the Mohawk hairstyle in the US is known as a Mohican in Britain and Ireland. The Mohawk hairstyle is named after the Mohawk nation, who wore their hair in the same fashion. The Mohawk style has been around for a long time elsewhere in the world. There was a well-preserved male body found in a bog near Dublin in Ireland in 2003. The body is about 2,000 years old, and has a Mohawk haircut.

46D Set of tenets : DOGMA

A dogma is a set of beliefs. The plural of “dogma” is “dogmata” (or “dogmas”, if you’re not a pedant like me!)

A tenet is an article of faith, something that is “held” to be true. “Tenet” is Latin for “he/she/it holds”.

47D Celebrity who sometimes put gifts under her audience members’ seats : OPRAH

What can you say about Oprah Winfrey that hasn’t been said already? Born into poverty to a single mother and with a harrowing childhood, Oprah is now the greatest African-American philanthropist the world has ever known. Oprah’s name was originally meant to be “Orpah” after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth, and that’s how it appears on her birth certificate. Apparently folks had trouble pronouncing “Orpah”, so she’s now “Oprah”.

48D John who married Pocahontas : ROLFE

John Rolfe was one of the early English settlers in America. He is perhaps best remembered for marrying the Native American Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan. For a few months before her death, Pocahontas lived with Rolfe in England. The couple had actually boarded a ship to return them to Virginia when Pocahontas became ill and had to be brought ashore on the south coast of England, where she soon passed away.

55D “The Raven” poet : POE

The first verse of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” is:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”