Day: July 30, 2025

Bill’s time: 7m 51s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Dallas baller : MAV

The Mavericks (also “Mavs”) are an NBA franchise in Dallas, Texas. The team was founded in 1980, and the Mavericks name was chosen by fan votes. The choice of “Mavericks” was prompted by the fact that the actor James Garner was a part-owner of the team, and Garner of course played the title role in the “Maverick” television series.

14A Sch. whose mascot is Tim the Beaver : MIT

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in 1861 and first offered classes in 1865, in the Mercantile building in Boston. Today’s magnificent campus on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge opened in 1916.

15A Zugspitze, for one : ALP

The Zugspitze is an Alpine peak, and the highest mountain in Germany.

17A Grishnákh or Gothmog in “The Lord of the Rings” : ORC

According to Tolkien, Orcs are small humanoids that live in his fantasy world of Middle-earth (also called “Mordor”). They are very ugly and dirty, and are fond of eating human flesh.

18A Got ready to post on Insta, say : TOOK A PIC

Instagram (often abbreviated to “Insta”, or “IG”) is a photo-sharing application.

23A Word after sand or speed : … TRAP

Sand traps on a golf course are referred to as bunkers on the other side of the Atlantic.

28A Beverage served alongside the treats in this puzzle : MILK

There is an “official” competition involving Oreo cookies, in case anyone is interested in participating. A competitor has to take several steps to finish an OREO Lick Race:

1. Twist open the cookie.
2. Lick each half clean of creme.
3. Show the clean cookie halves to the fellow competitors.
4. Dunk the cookie halves in a glass of milk.
5. Eat the cookie halves.
6. Drink the milk.
7. Ready, set, go …

35A Extra-thick Nabisco treats, hinted at four times in this puzzle : DOUBLE STUF OREOS

Double Stuf Oreos were introduced in 1975, and have twice the normal amount of white cream filling as the original cookie. Nabisco really went big in 2013, introducing the Mega Stuf Oreo that has even more white cream filling.

42A Bunny with a Brooklyn accent : BUGS

Cartoon legend Bugs Bunny owes a couple of the iconic elements of his persona to the superb 1934 film “It Happened One Night”. In the movie, Clark Gable has a celebrated scene in which his character munches on raw carrots. He also utters the lines “I, uh, didn’t mean anything, Doc.”and “No offense, Doc.” When Bugs made his debut in the 1940 cartoon “A Wild Hare”, he was munching on carrots, and spouting the line “What’s up, Doc?”

47A Monomaniacal sea captain of literature : AHAB

Captain Ahab is the obsessed and far from friendly captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”. The role of Captain Ahab was played by Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston film adaptation. Patrick Stewart played Ahab in a 1998 miniseries in which Peck made another appearance, as Father Mapple.

50A Scrumptious camp treat : S’MORE

S’mores are treats peculiar to North America that are usually eaten around a campfire. A s’more consists of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. The earliest written reference to the recipe is in a 1927 publication called “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts”. Girl Scouts always did corner the market on cookies and the like!

51A 15 to 29, for “American Idol” : AGE LIMIT

“American Idol” is a spin-off show that was created after the amazing success of the British television show “Pop Idol”. Aired on Fox from 2002 to 2016, the show “jumped ship” and moved to ABC starting in the 2018 season.

59A Tech ___ (stereotypical Silicon Valley sort) : BRO

The Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, is better known as “Silicon Valley”. The term “Silicon Valley” dates back to 1971 when it was apparently first used in a weekly trade newspaper called “Electronic News” in articles written by journalist Don Hoefler.

Down

1D Exam for a prospective osteopath : MCAT

Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)

3D Trail left by a jet : VAPOR

We talk so often about global warming these days but there is another fascinating phenomenon that is related, and known as “global dimming”. Global dimming is the reduction in the amount of heat that radiates daily from the planet due to the insulating effect of pollution and vapor trails (contrails) from aircraft that are present in the atmosphere. The effect has been touted as a theory for decades but dramatic empirical data became available in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Planes were grounded and the skies over America were clear for three days. There was a stark change in the temperature range measured across the US for these three days, demonstrating the impact that air travel has on our climate.

4D Sigmatism : LISP

A sigmatism is a lisp, a difficulty in pronouncing the letter S. The term comes from “sigma” (S) and “ism”.

5D When Elphaba and Glinda sing “Defying Gravity” in Broadway’s “Wicked” : ACT I

“Defying Gravity” is a song from the musical “Wicked”, famously sung by the character Elphaba. Aptly enough, it was chosen as a wake-up song for a Space Shuttle mission on the day that astronaut Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger was scheduled to carry out a spacewalk.

7D Money in Laos : KIP

The kip has been the unit of currency in Laos since 1952. One kip is divided into 100 att.

9D Writes off over time : AMORTIZES

In a literal sense, the verb “to amortize” means “to make dead”, coming from the Latin “ad” meaning “to” and “mortus” meaning “dead”. We use “amortizing” to describe the gradual writing off of the value of an asset, “killing off” the value over time.

10D Stink eye : DIRTY LOOK

The phrase “stink eye”, meaning “dirty look”, dates back to the early 1970s. A suggestion is that the term comes from Hawaiian slang.

19D Shish ___ : KABOB

The term “kebab” (also “kabob”) covers a wide variety of meat dishes that originated in Persia. In the West, we usually use “kebab” when talking about shish kebab, which is meat (often lamb) served on a skewer. “Shish” comes from the Turkish word for “skewer”.

20D God rejected by Daphne in myth : APOLLO

Daphne was one of the Naiads of Greek mythology, a female nymph living near freshwater fountains and springs. She was a particularly beautiful Naiad and so was pursued by the god Apollo. Fearing Apollo’s advances, Daphne turned to her mother Gaia for help. Gaia transformed her into a laurel tree. As a result, the laurel became sacred to Apollo.

25D Land of llamas and Llosa : PERU

The llama is a camelid mammal very much associated with the Andean cultures. Despite the association with South America, it is thought that the ancestors of the modern llama migrated south from the Great Plains of North America about 40 million years ago.

Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer of renown, and one of the most significant authors from Latin America by all accounts. Llosa is also very active politically, and in 1990 ran unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency.

33D Like a body temperature of around 98.6°F : NORMAL

When Gabriel Fahrenheit first defined his temperature scale he set 0 degrees as the temperature of a mixture of ice, water and salt. He defined 100 degrees as the temperature under his wife’s armpit! Using this scale he determined that water boiled at 210 degrees. Later refinements moved the boiling point of water up to 212 degrees, and as a result “body temperature” was shifted downwards to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

36D Schadenfreude source : ENVY

Our word “schadenfreude” comes from German. “Schaden” means harm or adversity, and “Freude” means joy. So, schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

37D Riff like Ella Fitzgerald : SCAT

Scat singing is a vocal improvisation found in the world of jazz. There aren’t any words as such in scat singing, just random nonsense syllables made up on the spot.

38D ___ Sunak, former British P.M. : RISHI

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.

46D Fashion icon Wang : VERA

Vera Wang’s first choice for a career was figure skating. Although she is a very capable skater, Wang failed to make the 1968 US Olympics team. She switched to the world of fashion, and is now famous for her designs of wedding dresses … and also costumes for figure skaters.

48D Substance in which many insects have been fossilized : AMBER

Amber’s technical name is “resinite”, reflecting its composition and formation. Amber starts out life as soft sticky tree resin but then under high temperature and pressure from overlying layers of soil, it fossilizes. The sticky resin can trap organisms or other plant matter, and this material can sometimes remain virtually intact inside the amber fossil giving us a unique gift from the past.

49D Tree with papery bark : BIRCH

The bark of birch trees (known as “birchbark”) is a useful material that has been used since prehistoric times as a building, crafting and writing material. It is readily cut, bent and sewn and resembles cardboard, although unlike cardboard, it is also water-resistant. Birchbark was a popular material with Native Americans, used for making canoes, wigwams, scrolls and maps.

50D Onetime Persian title : SHAH

The last Shah of Iran was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The post-revolution government sought the extradition of the Shah back to Iran while he was in the United States seeking medical care (he had cancer). His prolonged stay in the United States, recovering from surgery, caused some unrest back in Iran and resentment towards the United States. Some say that this resentment precipitated the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the resulting hostage crisis.

53D Place in both the Quran and the Bible : EDEN

According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in a garden “in” Eden, with Eden being geographically located by reference to four rivers, including the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some scholars hypothesize that Eden was located in Mesopotamia, which encompasses much of modern-day Iraq.

54D Famous film pooch : TOTO

Toto is Dorothy’s dog in the film “The Wizard of Oz”, and in the original book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. Toto was played in the movie by a dog called Terry, but Terry’s name was soon changed to Toto in real life due to the success of the film.