Day: December 19, 2025

Bill’s time: 9m 43s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Fashion designer Schiaparelli : ELSA

Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian fashion designer, and a great rival of the perhaps more famous Coco Chanel. Schiaparelli was most successful between the two World Wars, but her business closed in 1954 as she failed to adapt to changing tastes after WWII.

15A Some arthritis : GOUT

Gout is caused by an elevation of the levels of uric acid in the blood. As a result of the high concentrations, the uric acid can crystallize out in tissue causing extreme discomfort. What we tend to call gout occurs when the crystals are deposited in the big toe. Gout is sometimes referred to as “the disease of kings” or “the rich man’s disease”, as it is associated with a traditionally opulent diet.

16A Climbed without ropes : FREE-SOLOED

When free solo climbing, a climber ascends the rock face without the use of protective equipment such as ropes or harnesses. If you’d like to spend a couple of terrifying hours in the comfort of your family room, I recommend viewing the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary film “Free Solo”.

20A Jewish honorific : REB

The honorific “reb”, often used in Orthodox Jewish communities, is an abbreviated form of “rebbe”, a Yiddish term meaning “teacher” or “master.”

23A Big Apple athlete : KNICK

The New York Knickerbockers (“Knicks”) team is one of only two founding members of the original National Basketball Association that still plays in its original home city. The other is the Boston Celtics.

Apparently, the first published use of the term “Big Apple” to describe New York City dates back to 1909. Edward Martin wrote the following in his book “The Wayfarer in New York”:

Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.

Over ten years later, the term “big apple” was used as a nickname for racetracks in and around New York City. However, the concerted effort to “brand” the city as the Big Apple had to wait until the seventies and was the work of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau.

27A Home ___ : DEPOT

The Home Depot is the largest home improvement retail chain in the US, ahead of Lowe’s. Home Depot opened their first two stores in 1979. The average store size is just over 100,000 square feet. The largest Home Depot outlet is in Union, New Jersey, and it is 225,000 square feet in size. That’s a lot of nuts and bolts …

29A Summer Olympics event : EPEE

There are three fencing events in the modern Olympics, with each distinguished by the weapon used:

• Foil
• Épée
• Sabre

35A Silver of the Silver Bulletin : NATE

Nate Silver is a statistician who gained celebrity by developing a forecasting system that predicted the future performance of baseball players. He then made a name for himself in the world of politics by predicting the outcome of the 2008 US presidential race on his website FiveThirtyEight.com. Silver successfully predicted the outcome of the election in 49 of the 50 states, missing out on Indiana, which Barack Obama won by less than 1% of the vote. FiveThirtyEight was less successful in predicting the specifics of the 2012 presidential election, but came closer than almost all other pollsters. In 2016, FiveThirtyEight predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton, but with a much lower probability than other poll aggregators. And, they all got it wrong. Oh, and why the name FiveThirtyEight.com? Because there are 538 electors in the US electoral college.

37A L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights activist Windsor : EDIE

Edith Windsor was the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case “US v. Windsor”. The court ruled that a section of the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and that the federal government could not deny federal benefits and protections to married lesbian and gay couples.

38A Suddenly kicks the bucket : DROPS DEAD

A bucket list is a list of things one wants to achieve before dying, before “kicking the bucket”. The expression hasn’t been used in this context for very long, only a decade or so, but was popularized by the 2007 film “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.

41A “Opportunity,” per Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : AGE

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was famous for his own work, like “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “The Song of Hiawatha”, but he was also the first American to translate Dante’s epic poem called the “Divine Comedy”.

48A Golden ratio symbol : PHI

The golden ratio, sometimes called the “golden mean” and denoted by the Greek letter phi, is a mathematical constant that often turns up in the world of art. Phi is approximately equal to 1.61, and is represented by the two distances, a and b, where (a+b)/a = a/b. Somehow we perceive the ratio of 1.61 as “pleasing” so it appears in many works of art and in building design. For example, many aspects of the Parthenon in Athens have a ratio of 1.61 (width compared to height). Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man also illustrates the golden ratio in the proportions of the human body, where he shows that the distance from the foot to the navel, compared to the distance from the navel to the head, is 1.61.

50A Rx dosages : MGS

Milligram (mg)

54A Their talent may not be as important as their last names : NEPO BABIES

Nepotism is the practice of giving relatives preferential treatment. The term originated during the Middle Ages with favoritism shown by Roman Catholic bishops and popes. The ministers of the church had taken vows of chastity, and some gave preferred positions to their nephews, as they didn’t have sons of their own to favor. The term “nepotism” derives from the Latin “nepos” meaning “nephew”.

62A High-fat diet, informally : KETO

A ketogenic (also “keto”) diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. When a body consumes insufficient carbohydrates to meet the need for energy, then the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies in order to make up the energy deficit. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the bloodstream is known as “ketosis”, a term that gives rise to the name “ketogenic diet”. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe a ketogenic diet in order to control epilepsy in children. A condition of ketosis can reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures.

Down

1D Annual mystery award : EDGAR

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards (“Edgars”) are presented annually by the Mystery Writers of America. There are several categories of awards. For example, the Ellery Queen Award honors “writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”. The Raven Award is presented to non-writers, who contribute to the mystery genre.

4D Prosecco relative : ASTI

Prosecco still and sparkling wines are named for the village of Prosecco in the province of Trieste in northeastern Italy.

6D Yard sale? : ALE

A yard of ale is a very tall glass, one that is just under a yard (three feet) long. It holds about 60 fluid ounces of beer. I’ve tried drinking out of one, and it is extremely difficult. There is a bulb at the bottom of the glass. When you get towards the end of the drink, that bulb causes a kind of airlock and the remainder of the beer rushes to the top of the glass, splashing you in the face.

8D Swim with the fishes? : SNORKEL

Our word “snorkel” comes from German navy slang “Schnorchel” meaning “nose, snout”. The German slang was applied to an air-shaft used for submarines, due to its resemblance to a nose, in that air passed through it and it made a “snoring” sound. “Schnorchel” comes from “Schnarchen”, the German for “snore”.

9D Larry ___, longtime owner of the Cleveland Guardians : DOLAN

The Cleveland baseball franchise started out in 1869 as the Forest Citys, named after Forest City, the nickname for Cleveland. After a number of transitions, in 1914 the team took on the name “Indians”. The media came up with the name “Indians” after being asked for suggestions by the team owners. “Indians” was inspired by the successful Boston team of the day, the Boston Braves. In 2021, the team dropped the insensitive “Indians” moniker and renamed itself to the Guardians. The “Guardians” name is a reference to four pairs of Art Deco statues on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge known as the Guardians of Traffic.

10D Grande opening? : RIO

The Rio Grande (Spanish for “big river”) is a waterway that forms part of the border between Mexico and the United States. Although we call the river the Rio Grande on this side of the border, in Mexico it is called the Río Bravo or Río Bravo del Norte (Spanish for “furious river of the north”).

11D Fair ___ (concept in copyright law) : USE

The term “copyright” really derives from the concept of giving another party the “right to copy”. Usually “copyright” gives the holder the power to financially benefit from any copies made. Copyright was invented in essence soon after the development of the printing press, with the first legal statutes put in place in Britain in the early 18th century.

16D Diktat : FIAT

A fiat is an arbitrary rule that is imposed. The verb “fiat” is Latin for “let it be done”.

“Diktat” is a German word meaning “dictate” that we have absorbed into English. We use “diktat” to describe a decree or authoritative statement, particularly one that is harsh or punitive.

18D Repeated role for Chris Hemsworth : THOR

Australian actor Chris Hemsworth had a prominent role in the Australian TV series “Home and Away” that became a stepping stone to a successful career in Hollywood. HIs first major role was playing the title character in the superhero movie “Thor”. Chris is the younger brother of fellow actors Luke and Liam Helmsworth, and is married to Spanish actress Elsa Pataky.

22D Word with dating or skating : SPEED

Speed dating is a matchmaking process in which single people meet a relatively large number of potential partners in a short period of time. The first speed-dating event took place in Beverly Hills in 1998 at a Peet’s Café.

The competitive sport of speed skating has been enjoyed for a long, long time. When the International Skating Union was formed in 1892 to govern speed skating, it was the world’s first international governing body for a winter sport.

25D Fictional companion of Thing One and Thing Two : CAT IN THE HAT

“The Cat in the Hat” is a 1957 book penned by Dr. Seuss (aka Theodor Geisel). Written to teach young children how to read, Geisel stated in 1983, “It is the book I’m proudest of because it had something to do with the death of the “Dick and Jane” primers.”

28D Easter basket treat : PEEP

Peeps are marshmallow candies, usually in the shapes of chicks and bunnies, primarily sold around the Easter holiday. Peeps were introduced in 1952 by a Russian immigrant called Sam Born whose company “Just Born” makes the candies to this day. The original candies were yellow and hand-shaped to look like little chicks, hence the name “Peeps”.

33D Like He and Xe : INERT

An inert gas can be different from a noble gas. Both are relatively non-reactive, but a noble gas is an element. An inert gas might be a compound, i.e. made up of more than one element.

Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and the element symbol “He”. It is a gas, lighter than air, and is the second-most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen). Helium was first detected in 1868 as an unknown yellow spectral line during a solar eclipse. As such, the gas was named for “Helios”, the Greek god of the Sun.

The element xenon was the first of the noble gases to be made into a compound, which was somewhat remarkable in that the noble gases were thought by many to be completely inert, unreactive.

34D Windy City exchange, in brief : MERC

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the “Merc”) started its life as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board in 1898. The Merc is the site for exchange of commodities, among other things.

It seems that the derivation of Chicago’s nickname “Windy City” isn’t as obvious as I would have thought. There are two viable theories. Firstly, that the weather can be breezy with wind blowing in off Lake Michigan. The effect of the wind is exaggerated by the grid-layout adopted by city planners after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The second theory is that “windy” means “being full of bluster”. Sportswriters from the rival city of Cincinnati were fond of calling Chicago supporters “windy” in the 1860s and 1870s, meaning that they were full of hot air in their claims that the Chicago White Stockings were superior to the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

39D Expo take-home : SWAG BAG

Swag is loot, stolen property, and a term that started out as criminal slang in England in the 1830s. “Swag” is also the name given to the promotional freebies available at some events. That said, there’s an urban myth that the promotional version of “swag” is an acronym standing for “stuff we all get”.

45D D.I.Y. dessert item : 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!

49D Source of motivation, informally : INSPO

“Inspo” is an informal term describing something or someone serving as “inspiration”.

55D Grp. with geologists and biologists : EPA

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

56D Piece in the game Battleship : PEG

Battleship is a surprisingly fun guessing game that I used to play as a child. Back then, we would play it just using pencil and paper. These days, kids are more likely to play an electronic version of the game.

57D Genre for Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie : BOP

“Bop” is a shortened form of “bebop”, the name of a jazz style that dates back to the early 1940s. “Bebop” probably came from “Arriba! Arriba!”, which were words of encouragement uttered by Latin-American bandleaders to their musicians.

Jazz musician Miles Davis was born into a relatively affluent family, so he had plenty of music lessons as a child. After high school, Davis studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York but he dropped out before finishing his studies. He stated later that the Juilliard classes focused too much on European and “white” music, but he acknowledged that the school gave him a foundation in music theory that helped him in later life.

Dizzy Gillespie was a musician from Cheraw, South Carolina who was best known as a jazz trumpeter. Gillespie was also known for playing a “bent” trumpet, one with the bell projecting upwards at a 45-degree angle. The unusual configuration of the instrument came about accidentally, when a pair of dancers fell on it during a birthday party. The damage to the instrument caused a change in the tone which Gillespie liked, so he left it as is.