Month: May 2026

Bill’s time: 9m 38s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Cliff formed by a fault : SCARP

A scarp is a steep slope or a line of cliffs, especially one created by erosion. An alternative name for the same feature is “escarpment”.

6A Avoided a tag, say : SLID

That would be baseball …

10A Penultimate Greek letter : PSI

Psi is the 23rd and penultimate letter of the Greek alphabet, and the one that looks a bit like a trident or a pitchfork.

14A Taste perception first identified in 1908 : UMAMI

“Umami” is a loanword from Japanese, literally meaning “pleasant savory taste”. It was first scientifically identified as a distinct taste in 1908 by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, who discovered that the amino acid glutamate was responsible for the unique taste (umami) of kombu seaweed.

15A Physics unit named for a physicist : OHM

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied (V=IR), a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

18A Confucian “way” : TAO

The name of the Chinese character “tao” translates as “path”, but the concept of Taoism signifies the true nature of the world.

The sayings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (anglicized from “K’ung Fu-Tse”) are collected in a work called “The Analects” or “Lunyu”. It wasn’t Confucius who wrote down his thoughts though, but rather his pupils, some 40 or so years after his death in 479 BC.

19A Prime breeding environment for mosquitoes : STANDING WATER

Mosquitoes have a relatively short life cycle. Males live a matter of days, and females just a few weeks. In order to reproduce, male mosquitoes form large swarms, usually late in the day. Female mosquitoes fly into the swarm when ready to mate.

22A Puente of “The Mambo Kings” : TITO

After serving in the Navy in WWII for three years, musician Tito Puente studied at Juilliard, where he got a great grounding in conducting, orchestration and theory. Puente parlayed this education into a career in Latin jazz and mambo. He was known as “El Rey” as well as “The King of Latin Music”.

30A Rationalist’s theology : 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.

31A Decree : FIAT

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

34A Lovestruck : SMITTEN

“Smitten” is the past participle of “to smite”, meaning “to inflict a heavy blow”. We tend to use “smitten” to mean “affected by love, love-struck”.

38A Biblical locale guarded by a flaming sword : EDEN

According to the Bible’s Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden in order to prevent them from eating the fruit of the tree of life. Cherubim were assigned to guard the garden, and a flaming sword was installed to protect the path to the tree of life.

40A Direction to bow, in music : ARCO

“Arco” is a musical direction instructing a string player to return to normal bowing technique after a passage played using some other technique (perhaps pizzicato).

46A Ruthless Athenian lawgiver : DRACO

Constitutional law was brought to Athens and ancient Greece by a legislator called Draco. The legal code that Draco developed was relatively harsh, which is why we use the term “draconian” to describe unforgiving rules.

55A Broadcasting giant with hundreds of stations : IHEARTRADIO

iHeartRADIO is an Internet radio broadcaster. The iHeart.com website provides access to over 800 radio stations that can all be played on a computer or mobile device.

57A ___ Friday : GAL

In Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel “Robinson Crusoe”, the castaway encounters a companion that Crusoe calls “Friday”, because the two first met on that day. Friday soon becomes his willing servant. This character is the source of our terms “Man/Guy Friday” and “Girl/Gal Friday”, which are used to describe a particularly competent and loyal assistant.

61A Former small-sized G.M. cars : GEOS

Geos were small vehicles manufactured by General Motors, mainly in the nineties. They were designed to compete head-to-head with the small imports that were gaining market share at the time in the US. Some Geo models that you might remember are the Metro, the Prizm and the Storm. The cars were actually built as joint-ventures with Japanese manufacturers. The Prizm was a GM/Toyota project, the Metro was GM/Suzuki, and the Storm was GM/Isuzu.

62A Compound with a caret-shaped molecule, as depicted by this puzzle’s circled letters : WATER

A water molecule is composed of an oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms on roughly opposite sides (at about a 104.5-degree angle). So, sometimes the molecule is represented by “HOH”, although more usually by “H₂O”.

Down

3D Palindrome on an Italian restaurant menu : ALLA

The phrase “in the style of” can be translated as “alla” in Italian and “à la” in French.

4D September to April, in the oyster industry : R MONTHS

There is a traditional warning that one shouldn’t eat shellfish in a month without an R i.e. May through August. That’s because these are the warmer months here in the northern hemisphere when algae blooms can spread toxins that are soaked up by clams, mussels and oysters. Personally, I only eat shellfish in months containing a Q … that would be never …

5D Alternatives to hourly wages : PER DIEMS

“Per diem” is the Latin for “by the day”. We tend to use the term for a daily allowance for expenses when traveling for work.

6D Ecological concern : SMOG

The word “smog” is a portmanteau coined in 1905 by Dr. Henry Antoine Des Voeux to describe a mixture of smoke and fog, initially referring to the thick, polluted air in London. The infamous “Great Smog of London” in December 1952 caused thousands of deaths and led to significant environmental legislation.

7D Trellis piece : LATH

The words “lath” and “lattice” have the same root in Old French. Laths are thin strips of wood that are nailed across a frame forming a backing to which plaster can be applied to finish a wall. The term is also used for the main elements in a trellis, or the lengths of wood in a roof to which shingles are nailed.

8D “If u ask me” : IMO

In my opinion (IMO)

9D Gossip about, informally : DISH ON

To dish the dirt is to talk about someone or something without regard to veracity. The phrase comes from “dish” (in the sense of dishing out food) and “dirt” (in the sense of negative information). To be dishy is to be given to gossip.

11D Prolifically posting about one’s kids online, in a neologism : SHARENTING

A neologism is a new word or phrase, or a new meaning or usage for an existing word.

21D Certain tax-free bond, informally : MUNI

A municipal bond (“muni”) is one that is issued by a city or local government, or some similar agency. Munis have an advantage over other investments in that any interest earned on the bond is usually exempt from state and federal income taxes.

23D Velocity, e.g. : RATE

In physics, a scalar is a one-dimensional quantity, whereas a vector has two dimensions. For example, speed is a scalar. On the other hand, velocity is a vector as it is defined by both speed and direction.

28D “The Elder” or “The Younger” Roman : CATO

Cato the Elder was a Roman statesman, known historically as “the elder” in order to distinguish him from his great-grandson, Cato the Younger. Cato the Elder’s ultimate position within Roman society was that of Censor, making him responsible for maintaining the census, and for supervising public morality.

Cato the Younger was a politician in the late Roman Republic. He was noted for his moral integrity, and his ability as an orator. He is also remembered for an extended conflict that he had with Julius Caesar.

35D Hand, at a hacienda : MANO

In Spanish, the term “hacienda” is often used for a large estate.

42D Seven-stringed instrument that gave the guitar its name : KITHARA

A kithara (also “cithara”) was a lyre-like instrument in ancient Greece. Our word “guitar” is ultimately derived from “kithara”. Indeed, “kithara” is the modern Greek word for “guitar”.

44D Ancient book of divination : I CHING

“I Ching” is an ancient Chinese text dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. The text deals with aspects of cosmology and divination, and perhaps served as a guide for making predictions of the future. The statements in the “I Ching” consist of 64 hexagrams, sets of six lines composed in horizontal stacks.

45D Member of a sluglike “Star Wars” species : HUTT

Jabba the Hutt is the big blob of an alien that appears in the “Star Wars” movie “The Return of the Jedi”. Jabba’s claim to fame is that he enslaved Princess Leia.

48D Meaty pasta sauce : RAGU

The Ragú brand of pasta sauce was introduced in 1937. The name ”Ragù” is the Italian word for a sauce used to dress pasta, however the spelling is a little off in the name of the sauce. In Italian, the word is “Ragù” with a grave accent over the “u”, but if you look at a jar of the sauce on the supermarket shelf it is spelled “Ragú” on the label, with an acute accent. Sometimes I think we just don’t try …

49D Long lunch? : HERO

A hero is a submarine sandwich. It originated in New York City in the 1800s among Italian immigrants who wanted an Italian sandwich that reminded them of home. The name “hero” was coined in the 1930s, supposedly by a food critic in the “New York Herald Tribune” when he wrote that “one had to be a hero” to finish the gigantic sandwich. Hero is a prevalent term to this day in New York City, reserved for a submarine sandwich with an Italian flavor.