Day: August 27, 2025

Bill’s time: 8m 06s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5A Genre for Blackpink or BTS : K-POP

Blackpink is a girl group from South Korea that was formed in 2016. By all accounts, Blackpink has gained more international success than any other female Korean act.

BTS is a boy band from South Korea with seven members. The initialism “BTS” stands for the phrase “Bangtan Sonyeondan”, which translates literally as “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”. It is the best-selling musical act in the history of South Korea.

9A N.B.A. or M.L.B. V.I.P.s : GMS

General manager (GM)

13A __ Sea, shrinking body of water that was once the world’s third-largest lake : ARAL

The Aral Sea is a great example of how humankind can have a devastating effect on the environment. In the early sixties the Aral Sea covered 68,000 square miles of Central Asia. Soviet irrigation projects drained the lake to such an extent that today the total area is less than 7,000 square miles, with 90% of the lake now completely dry. Sad …

14A Rock’s __ Maiden : IRON

Iron Maiden is a heavy metal band from London that has been around since 1975. Heavy metal – not really my cup of tea …

15A Wildlife that may nest on Hawaiian golf courses : 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.

17A Some absurdist art : 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.

Absurdism is a philosophy holding that the universe is meaningless and irrational. Further, it is the search for meaning that leads to individual and global conflict.

21A Poke bowl fish : AHI

Poke is a Native Hawaiian dish featuring diced raw fish. “Poke” is a Hawaiian word meaning “to slice”.

23A Basic couturier offering : BUTTON-UP

“Haute couture”, literally “high dressmaking” in French, is a name given to the creation of exclusive fashions. A couturier is someone who creates or sells such fashions.

28A Arthur who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom : ASHE

Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African-American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

31A Letters on some moisturizer bottles : SPF

In theory, the sun protection factor (SPF) is a calibrated measure of the effectiveness of a sunscreen in protecting the skin from harmful UV rays. The idea is that if you wear a lotion with say SPF 20, then it takes 20 times as much UV radiation to cause the skin to burn than it would take without protection. I say just stay out of the sun …

34A Philosophy followed by Benjamin Franklin : DEISM

Deism (from the Latin “deus” meaning god) is the belief that a supreme being created the universe, a belief based on observation and reason, and without the need for faith. Further, a deist does not accept divine intervention and rather believes that the supreme being, having created the universe, leaves the world to its own devices.

Benjamin Franklin came from a large family. He was his father’s fifteenth child (Josiah Franklin had seventeen children in all, with two wives). Benjamin was born in Boston in 1706. He had very little schooling, heading out to work for his father when he was ten years old. He became an apprentice printer to his older brother at the age of twelve. Benjamin did quite well with that limited education …

37A “Reputation” or “Midnights,” for Taylor Swift : ERA

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a journey through her musical career, with each stage of the show representing a different “era” or album. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Lover
2. Fearless
3. Evermore
4. Reputation
5. Speak Now
6. Red
7. Folklore
8. 1989
9. Midnights

47A Gary Oldman or Ian McKellen, e.g. : SIR

Gary Oldman is an English stage and screen actor. Like many English actors it seems, Oldman has played a lot of villains in Hollywood movies e.g. in “Air Force One” and “The Fifth Element”. My favorite Oldman performance is as Ludwig van Beethoven in “Immortal Beloved”. He also gave an outstanding, and Oscar-winning, portrayal of Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour”.

Sir Ian McKellen is a marvelous English actor, one who is comfortable playing anything from Macbeth on stage to Magneto in an “X-Men” movie. On the big screen, McKellen is very famous for playing Gandalf in “The Lord of Rings”. In the UK, Sir Ian is noted for being at the forefront of the campaign for equal rights for gay people, a role he has enthusiastically embraced since the eighties.

64A The Prancing Pony and the Admiral Benbow are fictional ones : INNS

The Prancing Pony is an inn at the center of the village of Bree in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.

The Admiral Benbow is an inn that appears at the very start of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island”.

67A Govt. group with cryptologists on staff : NSA

National Security Agency (NSA)

Down

1D S.F. transit option : MUNI

SF Muni is the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the name of the public transportation system in the city and surrounding area. SF Muni includes buses, light rail and, most famously, the city’s cable cars.

4D Sister goddesses who personify destiny : THE FATES

The three Fates of Greek mythology were white-robed deities, and were also called the Moirai. The three Fates were Clotho the spinner, Lachesis the allotter and Atropos the unturnable.

5D Hurricane that’s the subject of the 2006 documentary “When the Levees Broke” : KATRINA

“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” is a documentary by Spike Lee that was released in 2006. The film explores the devastation of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

10D Router hookup : MODEM

A modem is a device that is used to facilitate the transmission of a digital signal over an analog line. At one end of the line, a modem is used to “modulate” an analog carrier signal to encode digital information. At the other end of the line, a modem is used to “demodulate” the analog carrier signal and so reproduce the original digital information. This modulation-demodulation gives the device its name: a MOdulator-DEModulator, or “modem”.

In the world of computing, a router is a device that helps direct traffic, as it were. A router in a house is often found in combination with a modem, and directs traffic between the Internet and the computers in the home.

31D Flower part : SEPAL

In a flower, the sepals are the green, leaf-like structures that are “interleaved” with the petals, providing support. Prior to acting as support for the petals, the sepals protect the flower in bud.

40D Where to get some “Fresh Air” : NPR

“Fresh Air” is a marvelous radio talk show broadcast on NPR, and hosted by Terry Gross. The first broadcast of the program was made in 1975, with Judy Blank hosting. Terry Gross took over a few months later, and Gross has been presenting and producing the show ever since. I had the privilege of hearing Terry Gross give a talk here in my hometown some years ago. What a fascinating woman she is, full of great stories about her experiences interviewing so many interesting personalities.

47D Some computers and televisions : SONYS

Sony was founded by Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka as Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation). The two partners met in the Japanese Navy during WWII.

49D __ Canto” (Ann Patchett novel) : BEL

Ann Patchett is an author who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Her most famous work is probably her novel “Bel Canto”, published in 2001. In 2012, “Time” included Patchett in the magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world. Also, Patchett co-owns Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville

52D Roman goddess of fertility : DIANA

Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon and birthing. The Greek equivalent of Diana was the goddess Artemis. According to Roman mythology, Diana was the twin sister of Apollo, and the daughter of Jupiter and Latona.

56D Quechua speaker : INCA

Quechua was the Native-American language adopted by the Incan Empire and favored over other dialects. Today, Quechua is one of the official languages in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, alongside Spanish.

57D Prominent feature of an alpaca : NECK

Alpacas are like small llamas, but unlike llamas were never beasts of burden. They were bred specifically for the fleece. As such, there are no known wild alpacas these days, even in their native Peru.