Day: July 26, 2025

Bill’s time: 10m 17s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Pop singer Rexha : BEBE

Bebe Rexha is a singer-songwriter from New York City. Her given name at birth was “Bleta”, which is Albanian for “bee”. Folks started to use the nickname “Bebe”, which stuck.

9A Group that got Sweden its first Eurovision win : ABBA

We have a big event across Europe every year called the Eurovision Song Contest. Each nation enters one song in competition with each other, and then voters across the whole continent decide on the winner. That’s how ABBA got their big break when they won in 1974 with “Waterloo”.

13A Sautéing option with a high smoke point : AVOCADO OIL

“Sauté” is a French word. The literal translation from the French is “jumped” or “bounced”, a reference to the tossing of food while cooking it in a frying pan.

17A Poisonous plant rumored to have killed the emperor Augustus : BELLADONNA

The nightshade family of plants, also known as Solanaceae, is a diverse group of plants that includes many popular crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and eggplants. However, other members of the nightshade family are known for their poisonous or psychoactive properties. For example, the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) contains a toxin that can cause hallucinations, delirium, and even death if ingested in sufficient quantities.

As the first Emperor of Rome, Octavian was given the name Caesar Augustus. The month of August, originally called “Sextilis” in Latin, was renamed in honor of Augustus.

22A Dictionaries have many of these: Abbr. : PGS

Page (pg.)

25A Lots and lots : BUSHELS

In the imperial system of weights and measures, a bushel is a unit of dry volume made up of 4 pecks. In the US system, a bushel is a dry volume of 8 gallons. We have used the term “bushel” to mean “large quantity” since the 14th century.

31A Squash, e.g. : GAME

Squash is a racket sport that is similar to racquetball, with the latter being more common here in the US. Squash is derived from the older sport of racquets, and was introduced around 1830 by students at Harrow School in London. It was originally called squash racquets as the first ball used was a racquets ball that was punctured. It was very, very squashable and much softer than that used in the parent game.

32A Period coinciding with the growth of the internet : DOT-COM BOOM

A dot-com is a company that primarily makes it money by providing products and services using its online presence.

35A Chicken ___ king : A LA

A dish prepared “à la king” (usually chicken or turkey), is prepared in a cream sauce with mushrooms, pimentos, green peppers and sherry.

36A When you’re in it, you’re in hot water : JACUZZI

“Jacuzzi” is one of those brand names that has become so much associated with the product that it is often assumed to be a generic term. The Jacuzzi company was founded in 1915 by the seven(!) Jacuzzi brothers in Berkeley California. The brothers, who were Italian immigrants, pronounced their name “ja-coot-si”, as one might suspect when one realizes the name is of Italian origin. The company started off by making aircraft propellers and then small aircraft, but suspended aircraft production in 1925, when one of the brothers was killed in one of their planes. The family then started making hydraulic pumps, and in 1948 developed a submersible bathtub pump so that a son of one of the brothers could enjoy hydrotherapy for his rheumatoid arthritis. The “hydrotherapy product” took off in the fifties with some astute marketing towards “worn-out housewives” and the use of celebrity spokesman Jack Benny.

37A Sch. that’s home to the Mountaineers : WVU

West Virginia University (WVU) was founded in 1867 as the Agricultural College of West Virginia. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Mountaineers.

44A Alternative to a bow : CURTSY

The word “curtsy” (or “curtsey”) is a variant of “courtesy”. The term has been used to describe the bending of the knee and lowering of the body since the 1570s. However, back then it was men who were curtsying as well as women.

56A Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan, to an economist : ASIAN TIGER

In the world of global finance, the so-called Asian Tigers are the economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong.

61A Casual hangout : SESH

Session (abbreviated to “sess.” formally, and “sesh” informally)

62A Composer Satie : ERIK

Erik Satie was a French composer best known for his beautiful composition, the three “Gymnopédies”. I have tried so hard to appreciate other works by Satie but I find them so very different from the minimalist simplicity of the lyrical “Gymnopédies”.

Down

1D Rum-soaked cake : BABA

Rum baba (also “baba au rhum” in French) is a small yeast cake saturated in rum, and sometimes filled with whipped cream. Rum baba is derived from the recipe for the tall “babka” yeast cake that was introduced to the world by the Polish communities. The Polish words “baba” and “babka” mean “old woman” or “grandmother” in English. I guess someone must have thought that all grandmothers were saturated in rum!

6D Quarters : ROOM

We use the term “quarters” for a place of abode, especially housing for military personnel. Back in the late 16th century, quarters were a portion (quarter) of a town reserved for a military force.

8D Rishi Sunak was the first one to become a British prime minister : HINDU

Conservative politician Rishi Sunak was born to parents of Indian descent, and became the UK’s first British-Asian prime minister in 2022. He was only 42 years of age when he moved into Number 10, making him the youngest prime minister since 1812. Sunak studied at Stanford University, where he met his future wife Akshata Murty. Murty is an Indian heiress, and a very rich woman.

23D Street racer, usually : SEDAN

The American sedan car is the equivalent of the British and Irish saloon car. By definition, a sedan car has two rows of seating and a separate trunk (boot in Britain and Ireland), although in some models the engine can be at the rear of the car.

28D Flummox : STUMP

Back in the early 1400s, to “stump” was to stumble over an obstacle, like a “tree-stump”. By the early 1800s, the verb “to stump” was used more generally, to mean “to baffle, bring to a halt by presenting obstacles”.

30D Denizens of the Great Victoria Desert : EMUS

The large flightless birds called emus make sounds by manipulating inflatable neck-sacs. The sac is about a foot long, has a thin wall and allows the bird to emit a booming sound. The type of sound emitted is the easiest way to differentiate between male and female emus.

36D Lawn recreation with a portmanteau name : JARTS

Jarts is a brand of lawn darts.

Lawn darts is a game played on lawns in which participants toss large darts towards horizontal targets laid out on the grass. After many injuries, and several deaths, lawn darts were banned in the US and Canada. A modified version of lawn darts that uses projectiles with blunt tips can now be purchased in the US.

39D Germs of ideas : KERNELS

Our contemporary word “kernel” comes from the Old English word “cyrnel,” which meant “seed”, and more literally “little corn”. Today, we still refer to the kernel of a nut or corn. We also refer to the kernel of an idea, the most important part of the idea.

43D “Get your ___ first and then you can distort them as much as you please”: Mark Twain : FACTS

“Samuel Langhorne Clemens” was the real name of the author Mark Twain. Twain wasn’t the only pen name used by Clemens. Early in his career he signed some sketches as “Josh”, and signed some humorous letters that he wrote under the name “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”. The name of Mark Twain came from the days when Clemens was working on riverboats on the Mississippi. A riverboatman would call out “by the mark twain” when measuring the depth of water. This meant that on the sounding line, according to the “mark” on the line, the depth was two (“twain”) fathoms, and so it was safe for the riverboat to proceed.

49D Common guacamole ingredient : LIME

Guacamole is one of my favorite dishes. It is prepared by mashing avocados and perhaps adding the likes of tomato, onion and lime juice. The guacamole recipe dates back as early as the 16th century, to the time of the Aztecs. “Guacamole” translates as “avocado sauce”.

52D Vegan alternative to gelatin : AGAR

Agar (also “agar-agar”) is a jelly extracted from seaweed that has many uses. Agar is found in Japanese desserts, and can also be used as a food thickener or even as a laxative. In the world of science, it is the most common medium used for growing bacteria in Petri dishes.

Gelatin is a foodstuff that is used as a gelling agent in cooking, and for the shells of pharmaceutical capsules. Over 800 million pounds of gelatin are produced every year worldwide. It is produced from by-products of the meat and leather industries. Gelatin is basically modified collagen derived from pork skins and the bones of cattle, pigs and horses. So, vegans usually avoid things like gummy bears and marshmallows.

53D ___ Institute, home to the Carl Sagan Center : SETI

“SETI” is the name given to a number of projects searching for extraterrestrial life. The acronym stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence”. One of the main SETI activities is the monitoring of electromagnetic radiation (such as radio waves) reaching the Earth in the hope of finding a transmission from a civilization in another world.

Carl Sagan was a brilliant astrophysicist, and a great communicator. He was famous for presenting obscure concepts about the cosmos in such a way that we mere mortals could appreciate. Sagan also wrote the novel “Contact” that was adapted into a fascinating 1997 film of the same name starring Jodie Foster.

54D Avenue for early learning, in brief : PRE-K

Pre-kindergarten (pre-K)