Day: September 4, 2025

Bill’s time: 9m 36s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4 One means of going up a hill : T-BAR

A T-bar is a ski lift on which the skiers are pulled up the hill in pairs, with each pair standing (not sitting!) either side of a T-shaped metal bar. The bar is placed behind the thighs, pulling along the skiers as they remain standing on their skis (hopefully!). There’s also a J-bar, which is a similar device but with each J-shaped bar used by one skier at a time.

15 Reese Witherspoon’s role in “Legally Blonde” : ELLE

“LEGALLY blonde” is a 2001 comedy film starring Reese Witherspoon as a girlish sorority president who heads to Harvard to earn a law degree. “LEGALLY blonde” was successful enough to warrant two sequels as well as a spin-off musical that played most successfully in London’s West End (for 974 performances).

16 Fictional land of magic and talking animals : NARNIA

Apparently, it’s not certain how C. S. Lewis came to choose Narnia as the name of the fantasy world featured in his series of children’s books, including “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. There was an ancient city in Umbria that the Romans called Narnia, but there is no evidence of a link.

17 Baseball great who said “If I’d just tried for them dinky singles I could’ve batted around .600” : BABE RUTH

Baseball legend George Herman Ruth, Jr. had several nicknames, the best known being “Babe”. He was also called “the Bambino” and “the Sultan of Swat”.

23 Genre for “Sunset Boulevard” : NOIR

“Sunset Boulevard” is a classic film noir co-written and directed by the great Billy Wilder, and released in 1950. It’s a story about a faded film star (played by Gloria Swanson) who dreams about making a return to the screen. Andrew Lloyd Webber made a reasonably successful musical adaptation of the film using the same title, which opened in London in 1993.

39 World capital in central Anatolia : ANKARA

Ankara is the second largest city in Turkey, after Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). After WWI, the Ottoman Empire had been defeated and the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. The victors planned to break up most of Turkey, leaving native Turks just part of their country for their own. In the inevitable War of Independence that followed, the Turkish Nationalists used Ankara as their base. When the Nationalists emerged victorious, they declared Ankara the new capital of Turkey.

Asia Minor is also known as Anatolia. It is the geographic part of Asia that protrudes out into the west, towards Europe, and is roughly equivalent to modern-day Turkey.

43 Inits. for cinephiles : TMC

The Movie Channel is owned by Showtime, which in turn is a subsidiary of CBS. The channel’s name is often abbreviated to “TMC”, although this is informal usage.

51 Corn syrup brand : KARO

Karo is a brand of corn syrup, an industrially manufactured sweetener derived from corn. The brand was introduced in 1902 by the Corn Products Refining Company.

52 Book of Mormon book : ENOS

The Book of Mormon is a sacred text that was first published in 1830 by founder of the Latter Day Saint movement Joseph Smith. According to the book’s text, the Book of Mormon is a translation made by Smith of a collection of ancient writings engraved on golden plates and buried in a hill in present-day New York State, near where Smith himself was born.

53 Plant watcher, for short : OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

56 Helped temporarily, with “over” : TIDED …

Something is said to tide one over if it (often money) will see one through a rough patch. The idea behind the verb phrase “to tide over” is that a swelling tide can carry one over an obstacle without effort, as perhaps a reserve fund might keep the lenders from one’s door. The use of “tide” in this sense might come from some famous lines spoken by Brutus in the play “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

There is a Tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the Flood, leads on to Fortune

60 High-end suit : ARMANI

Giorgio “Gio” Armani is an Italian fashion designer and founder of the company that has borne his name since 1975. Although Armani is famous for his menswear, the company makes everything from jewelry to perfume.

63 Locale for a couples cruise? : NOAH’S ARK

Genesis 6:19-20 states that Noah was instructed to take two animals of every kind into the ark. Later, in Genesis 7:2-3 Noah was instructed to take on board “every clean animal by sevens … male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth”. Apparently, “extras” (7 rather than 2) were needed for ritual sacrifice.

65 Milieu for the Flying Wallendas : BIG TOP

The Flying Wallendas are a circus act noted for highwire routines that are performed without a net. The original Wallenda troupe was from Germany, and first performed in the US in Madison Square Garden in 1928. The safety net that was used by the act was lost in transit and so the Wallendas made their first American performance without a net to the delight of the crowd. Working without a net then became the act’s trademark. Despite many tragic incidents that have resulted in deaths, Wallenda family members are performing without a net to this day.

Nik Wallenda is an acrobat and daredevil, and a member of the famous Flying Wallendas family. Nik specializes in high-wire performances without a net. Among Nik’s many feats of daring (madness?) was a crossing of Niagara Falls on a wire in 2012, a crossing of the Grand Canyon in 2013, and a crossing between the roofs of two Chicago skyscrapers in 2014.

67 Reed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame : LOU

Lou Reed was best known as a rock musician and songwriter, and was especially associated with the fabulous 1973 hit “Walk on the Wildside”. Reed is less well known as a photographer, but he published two collections of his work. The first was released in 2003 under the title “Emotions in Action”, and the second in 2006 called “Lou Reed’s New York”. Reed passed away in 2013.

68 Celestial omens, to some : COMETS

Comets and asteroids are similar, both being relatively small celestial bodies orbiting the sun. Comets differ from asteroids in that they have a coma or tail, especially when they are close enough to the sun. The coma and tail are temporary fuzzy atmospheres that develop due to the presence of solar radiation. Comets are sometimes referred to as “dirty snowballs”, a reference to their composition: rock, dust, water ice and frozen gasses.

70 Mind meld? : ESP

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

Down

2 Where Davy Crockett died, with “the” : … ALAMO

Davy Crockett is often referred to as “King of the Wild Frontier”. He was from East Tennessee, and after serving in the local militia he entered politics and represented his state in the US House of Representatives from 1827 to 1831. Crockett disapproved of many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, which led to his defeat in the 1834 election for the House. The defeat prompted Crockett to leave Tennessee for Texas. Famously, he died there in 1836 at the Battle of the Alamo.

3 Athlete tackling El Capitan, e.g. : ROCK CLIMBER

El Capitan is a stunning vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park in California. The top of El Capitan has been used as the take-off point for many BASE jumps, parachute jumps made by diving off the top of the rock face. The National Park Service put a stop to the practice in 1999. Soon afterwards, a BASE jumper made an illegal jump to protest the ban. She died …

4 Relative of a gull : TERN

Terns are a family of seabirds. They are similar to gulls, but are more slender and more lightly built. Many species of tern are known for their long-distance migrations, with the Arctic tern migrating so far that it is believed to see more daylight in a year than any other animal.

12 “Deck the Halls” contraction : ‘TIS

The music for the Christmas song “Deck the Halls” is a traditional Welsh tune that dates back to the 16th century. The same tune was used by Mozart for a violin and piano duet. The lyrics with which we are familiar (other than the “fa-la-la”) are American in origin, and were recorded in the 19th century.

“’Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la la la la la!”

13 ___ Tiago, largest of the Cape Verde islands : SAO

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island nation in the Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. The country takes its name from Cap-Vert, a peninsula in Senegal and the most westerly point on the continent. Cape Verde was an uninhabited group of islands when it was colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century.

18 Problem solver’s cry : EUREKA!

“Eureka” translates from Greek as “I have found it”. The word is usually associated with Archimedes, uttered as he stepped into his bath one day. His discovery was that the volume of water that was displaced was equal to that of the object (presumably his foot) that had been submerged. He used this fact to determine volume (and density) of a crown, something he needed in order to determine if it was made of pure gold or was a forgery.

22 “___, that love, so gentle in his view, / Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!”: “Romeo and Juliet” : ALAS

William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” doesn’t end well for the title characters. Juliet takes a potion as a ruse to fool her parents, to trick them into thinking she is dead. The potion puts her in a death-like coma for 24 hours, after which Juliet plans to awaken and run off with Romeo. Juliet sends a message to Romeo apprising him of the plan, but the message fails to arrive. Romeo hears of Juliet’s “death”, and grief-stricken he takes his own life by drinking poison. Juliet awakens from the coma, only to find her lover dead beside her. She picks up a dagger and commits suicide. Nobody lives happily ever after …

24 N.Y. Rangers’ home : MSG

Madison Square Garden (MSG) is an arena in New York City used for a variety of events. In the world of sports it is home to the New York Rangers of the NHL, as well as the New York Knicks of the NBA. “The Garden” is also the third busiest music venue in the world in terms of ticket sales. The current arena is the fourth structure to bear the name, a name taken from the Madison Square location in Manhattan. In turn, the square was named for James Madison, the fourth President of the US.

27 One of the Addams family : GOMEZ

Gomez and Morticia (“Tish”) Addams were the parents in “The Addams Family”, a creation of cartoonist Charles Addams. In the sixties television show, Gomez was played by John Astin and Morticia was played by Carolyn Jones.

33 Dyeing technique : BATIK

Genuine batik cloth is produced by applying wax to the parts of the cloth that are not to be dyed. After the cloth has been dyed, it is dried and then dipped in a solvent that dissolves the wax. Although wax-resist dyeing of fabric has existed in various parts of the world for centuries, it is most closely associated historically with the island of Java in Indonesia.

34 Jungian archetype : ANIMA

The concepts of anima and animus are found in the Carl Jung school of analytical psychology. The idea is that within each male there resides a feminine inner personality called the anima, and within each female there is a male inner personality known as the animus.

35 Who popularized the proverb “With great power comes great responsibility” : SPIDER-MAN

Spider-Man is a creation of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and first appeared in comics in 1962. He was a somewhat groundbreaking character in that his alter ego was a teenage high school student (Peter Parker), which marked the first time that a young person featured front and center as the superhero.

54 Subs : HEROS

Heros? Not “heroes”? Even though we are talking about sandwiches, I thought that the “heroes” spelling still applied.

58 ___ in three : MATE

Checkmate in three moves.

59 Place offering a Rise ‘N Shine breakfast : IHOP

The International House of Pancakes (IHOP) was founded back in 1958. IHOP was originally intended to be called IHOE, the International House of Eggs, but that name didn’t do too well in marketing tests.

60 Epitome of simplicity : ABC

The more common meaning of “epitome” is “perfect example of a group, quality, type”. An epitome is also an abstract or summary of a book or article.

62 Lion keeper? : MGM

There has been a lion in the logo of the MGM studio since 1924. The original was an Irishman (!), a lion named Slats who was born in Dublin Zoo in 1919. However, it wasn’t until Jackie took over from Slats in 1928 that the roar was heard, as the era of silent movies was coming to an end. The current lion is called Leo, and he has been around since 1957.