Category: Andrea Carla Michaels

Bill’s time: 6m 01s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 The I.R.S.’s 1040, e.g. : FORM

Form 1040, issued by the IRS, is the “US Individual Income Tax Return”. It was originally created just for tax returns from 1913, 1914 and 1915, but it’s a form that just keeps on giving, or should I say “taking” …?

14 Solo at the Met : ARIA

The Metropolitan Opera (often simply “the Met”) of New York City is the largest classical music organization in the country, presenting about 220 performances each and every year. Founded in 1880, the Met is renowned for using technology to expand its audiences. Performances have been broadcast live on radio since 1931, and on television since 1977. And since 2006 you can go see a live performance from New York in high definition on the big screen, at a movie theater near you …

16 Schlep : CARRY

Our word “schlep” (sometimes “schlepp”) means “carry, drag”. “Schlep” comes from Yiddish, with “shlepen” having the same meaning.

17 Blabber continuously : TALK A BLUE STREAK

Someone talking a blue streak is speaking rapidly and continuously. The use of the term “blue streak” to mean “rapidly” dates back to 1803s America, and is a reference to a bolt of lightning.

20 Icy wet stuff : SLEET

Apparently, “sleet” is a term used to describe two different weather conditions. One is a shower of ice pellets that are smaller than hail, and the second is a mixture of rain and snow, with the snow melting as it falls.

21 Actress Dunham : LENA

Lena Dunham is a co-star in the HBO series “Girls”, and is also the show’s creator. Dunham garnered a lot of attention for herself during the 2012 US Presidential election cycle as she starred in an ad focused on getting out the youth vote. In the spot, she compared voting for the first time with having sex for the first time.

22 Actor Danny or Stubby of old Hollywood : KAYE

Actor Danny Kaye was a big hit in his native US, but also in France. Kaye was the first ambassador-at-large for UNICEF and the French awarded him the Legion of Honor in 1986 for his work.

23 Utah city that shares its name with a biblical kingdom : MOAB

Moab is a city in eastern Utah that attracts a lot of visitors each year, mainly those heading for Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, which are nearby.

In the Bible, Moab was the first son of Lot, and the founder of the Kingdom of Moab. Moab was located on a plateau above the Dead Sea.

32 George Harrison’s “All Those Years ___” : AGO

George Harrison is often referred to as the “quiet Beatle”, although he did have a profound influence on the direction taken by the Fab Four. It was Harrison who first became an admirer of Indian culture and led the rest of the group into the Indian way of life. Harrison went as far as embracing the Hindu religion.

34 1983 Peace Nobelist Walesa : LECH

Lech Walesa worked as an electrician in the Gdansk Shipyards in Poland. Walesa was active in the trade union movement in the days when unions were not welcome behind the Iron Curtain. His efforts resulted in the founding of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in Soviet-controlled territory. For his work, Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and in 1990 he became the first democratically elected President of Poland. He has lost support in Poland in recent years, but he is a very popular booking on the international speaking circuit.

36 Window or door component : JAMB

A door jamb or window jamb is the vertical portion of the frame. The term “jamb” comes from the French word “jambe” meaning “leg”.

38 “Cheers!,” in Stockholm : SKOAL!

“Skoal” (sometimes “skol”) is a Scandinavian toast that has roots in the old Norse word “skaal” meaning “cup”.

Stockholm is the capital of Sweden and the most populous city in the country. Over one fifth of all Swedish residents live in Stockholm.

41 Bandleader Puente : 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”.

42 Language related to Inuit : ALEUT

The Aleuts live on the Aleutian Islands of the North Pacific, and on the Commander Islands at the western end of the same island chain. The Aleutian Islands are part of the United States, and the Commander Islands are in Russia.

46 Rapper with a Harvard hip-hop fellowship named in his honor : NAS

Rapper Nas used to go by an earlier stage name “Nasty Nas”, and before that by his real name “Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones”. Nas released his first album “Illmatic” in 1994, and inventively titled his fifth studio album “Stillmatic”, released in 2001.

51 New Haven university : YALE

The city of New Haven, Connecticut was founded in 1638 by Puritan immigrants from England. Famously, it is home to Yale University. The city also initiated the first public tree planting program in the country. The large elms included in the program led to New Haven being called “the Elm City”.

58 Cedar Rapids native : IOWAN

Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in the state of Iowa. It is named for rapids on the Cedar River on which the city is located. The river itself was named for the red cedars growing along the river’s banks.

65 Toyota sedan : CAMRY

Toyota’s Camry takes its name from the Japanese word for “crown”. Toyota management likes the idea of naming their cars after the word “crown”, as they did with the Toyota Crown, followed by the Toyota Corona (Latin for “crown”) and the Toyota Corolla (Latin for “small crown”).

66 Giant-screen film format : IMAX

The IMAX Corporation, which is behind the IMAX film format, is a Canadian company. The impetus for developing the system came after Expo ’67 in Montreal. Back then large format screenings were accomplished using multiple projectors with multiple screens, with images basically stitched together. The team behind the IMAX technology set out to simplify things, and developed a single-camera, single-projector system.

67 Start of many a fairy tale : ONCE …

The stock phrase “Once upon a time …” has been used in various forms as the start of a narrative at least since 1380. The stock phrase at the end of stories such as folktales is often “and they all lived happily ever after”. The earlier version of this ending was “happily until their deaths”.

Down

1 Minnesota ___ (pool shark in “The Hustler”) : FATS

“Minnesota Fats” was the nickname adopted by professional pool player Rudolf Wanderone. The original Minnesota Fats was a character in the Walter Tevis novel “The Hustler”, played in the 1961 film adaptation by Jackie Gleason. Prior to the release of the film, Wanderone had been using the name “New York Fats”. A story emerged that the character “Fats” in the book and movie had been inspired by Wanderone, and so Wanderone stopped using “New York Fats” to become “Minnesota Fats”.

“The Hustler” is a 1961 movie about the dark side of the game of pool that is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. Paul Newman stars as small-time hustler Fast Eddie Felson, and Jackie Gleason as legendary player Minnesota Fats. Famously, Newman reprised the role of Fast Eddie in the 1986 film “The Color of Money”, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar.

5 Police alert, for short : APB

An All Points Bulletin (APB) is a broadcast from one US law enforcement agency to another.

12 “Eat, ___, Love” (2006 Elizabeth Gilbert memoir) : PRAY

“Eat, Pray, Love” is a 2006 memoir by novelist Elizabeth Gilbert. “Eat, Pray, Love” is a huge bestseller that received a boost with the release of a 2010 screen adaptation starring Julia Roberts.

18 Ring-shaped coral island : ATOLL

An atoll is a coral island that is shaped in a ring that encloses a lagoon. There is still some debate as to how an atoll forms, but a theory proposed by Charles Darwin while on his famous voyage aboard HMS Beagle still holds sway. Basically, an atoll was once a volcanic island that had subsided and fallen into the sea. The coastline of the island is home to coral growth which persists even as the island continues to subside inside the circling coral reef.

19 Wraparound garment of India : SARI

The item of clothing called a “sari” (also “saree”) is a strip of cloth, as one might imagine, unusual perhaps in that it is unstitched along the whole of its length. The strip of cloth can range from four to nine meters long (that’s a lot of material!). The sari is usually wrapped around the waist, then draped over the shoulder leaving the midriff bare. I must say, it can be a beautiful item of clothing.

24 Beverages that can be pale or stout : ALES

Pale ale is a beer made using mainly pale malt, which results in a relatively light color for a malted beer.

The term “stout” was first used for a type of beer in the 1600s when it was used to describe a “strong, stout” brew, and not necessarily a dark beer as it is today.

27 Marisa who won an Oscar for “My Cousin Vinny” : TOMEI

Marisa Tomei’s first screen role was in the daytime soap “As the World Turns”, but her break came with a recurring role in “The Cosby Show” spin-off “A Different World”. Tomei won an Oscar for her delightful performance in “My Cousin Vinny” in 1992.

“My Cousin Vinny” is a really fun film from 1992 starring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei. In 2008, the American Bar Association rated “My Cousin Vinny” as the #3 greatest legal movie of all time, after “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “12 Angry Men”!

28 “___ Line Is It Anyway?” : WHOSE

The American improv comedy TV show “Whose Line Is It Anyway” is a spin-off of a very successful British show of the same name. The British TV show is itself a spin-off of a BBC radio show that I well remember. Lots of fun …

30 Greek letter, or a tiny bit : IOTA

Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet, and one that gave rise to our letters I and J. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small, as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

31 God of romantic love : EROS

As always seems to be the case with Greek gods, Eros and Aphrodite have overlapping spheres of influence. Aphrodite was the goddess of love between a man and a woman, and Eros was the god who stirred the passions of the male. The Roman equivalent of Aphrodite was Venus, and the equivalent of Eros was Cupid.

32 Cracked open a little : AJAR

Our word “ajar” is thought to come from Scottish dialect, in which “a char” means “slightly open”.

39 City council member : ALDERMAN

The term “alderman” comes from English law, and is used for a member of a municipal assembly or council. Some cities in the US have a Board of Aldermen instead of a city council.

43 Darjeeling or Earl Grey : TEA

Darjeeling is a town in West Bengal in the east of India in the Lesser HImalayas. Today, Darjeeling is perhaps best known outside India for the black tea that bears its name. In the days of the British Raj, the cooler climate of Darjeeling made it a popular destination for British residents seeking respite from the summer heat at the lower elevations.

The Earl Grey blend of tea is supposedly named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey who was Prime Minister of the UK from 1830 to 1834. Earl Grey tea has a distinctive flavor that is largely due to the addition of oil from the rind of the bergamot orange.

48 Actor Guinness : ALEC

Sir Alec Guinness played many great roles over a long and distinguished career, but nowadays is best remembered (sadly, I think) for playing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”. He won his only Best Actor Oscar for playing Colonel Nicholson in the marvelous 1957 WWII movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Guinness did himself serve during the Second World War, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He commanded a landing craft during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

49 “Au ___” (“Until we meet again”) : REVOIR

“Au revoir” is a French phrase translating literally as “until seen again”, although the accepted usage is “goodbye”.

53 Loops in surreptitiously : BCCS

A blind carbon copy (bcc) is a copy of a document or message that is sent to someone without other recipients of the message knowing about that extra copy.

55 “Tickle Me” Muppet : ELMO

The Tickle Me Elmo toy was a sensational fad in the late nineties, with stores raising prices dramatically above the recommended retail price to take advantage of demand. Reportedly, prices as high as $1500 were paid at the height of the craze. The toy’s manufacturer, Tyco, originally planned to market the “tickle” toy as Tickle Me Tasmanian Devil (after the “Looney Tunes” character), but then went with “Elmo” after they bought the rights to use “Sesame Street” names.

57 Jane Austen novel that inspired “Clueless” : EMMA

Jane Austen’s novel “Emma” is the tale of Emma Woodhouse and the wonderful George Knightley. At the end of the story, Emma marries Knightley and her young friend Harriet marries Robert Martin, who had been trying to get Harriet’s attention practically from page one of the novel. Emma interfered in that troubled courtship.

The 1995 movie “Clueless” is apparently based on Jane Austen’s “Emma”, which is a favorite novel of mine. As a result, I am going to have to check out the film …

61 Russian refusal : NYET

The English word “no” translates into Russian as “nyet”, and into German as “nein”.