Category: Gia Bosko

Bill’s time: 7m 45s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Egyptian reptile that’s a symbol of royalty : ASP

The Egyptian cobra (Naja haje) is also known as the asp. That said, the term “asp” can apply to several species of snake, including the Egyptian cobra. Legend has it that Cleopatra committed suicide by enticing an asp to bite her. If that’s true, then that asp was probably an Egyptian cobra.

8 Doofus : TWIT

“Doofus” (also “dufus”) is student slang that has been around since the sixties. Apparently the word is a variant of the equally unattractive term “doo-doo”.

14 Actress Christine of “The Blacklist” : LAHTI

Christine Lahti is an actress probably best known for playing Dr. Kate Austen on the TV medical drama “Chicago Hope”. If you read “The Huffington Post” you might run across her as well, as Lahti is a contributing blogger.

“The Blacklist” is an entertaining, albeit a little formulaic, crime drama TV show starring James Spader and Megan Boone. Spader plays a successful criminal who surrenders to the FBI in order to help catch a “blacklist” of high-profile criminals.

19 Actress Falco of “Nurse Jackie” : EDIE

“Nurse Jackie” is a comedy-drama series centered on an emergency room nurse at a hospital in New York City. The lead character is played by Edie Falco, who also played Tony Soprano’s wife on “The Sopranos”. I binge-watched “Nurse Jackie” a while back and found it to be a very well-written show …

20 “Listen up!,” in Lima : OYE!

Lima is the capital city of Peru. It was founded in 1535 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who named it “la Ciudad de los Reyes” (the City of Kings). He chose this name because the decision to found the city was made on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany that commemorates the visit of the three kings to Jesus in Bethlehem. Lima is home to the oldest university in all of the Americas, as San Marco University was founded in 1551 during the days of Spanish colonial rule.

26 Wall Street index, with “the” : … DOW

Dow Jones & Company was founded as a publishing house in 1882 by three newspaper reporters, Charles Dow, Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Today, the company’s most famous publication has to be “The Wall Street Journal”. In 1884, Charles Dow started reporting the average dollar value of the stock of eleven companies, an index which spawned a whole host of metrics that carry the Dow Jones name to this day. The most famous of these metrics is the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), also known as “the Dow 30” or simply “the Dow”.

27 Club ___ : MED

Club Méditerranée is usually referred to as “Club Med”. It is a French company that started in 1950 with a resort on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. It was originally a “club” with annual membership dues. Now it is an operator of numerous all-inclusive resorts located all over the world.

28 Plot element in “Romeo and Juliet” : TRYST

In the most general sense, a tryst is a meeting at an agreed time and place. More usually we consider a tryst to be a pre-arranged meeting between lovers. The term comes from the Old French “triste”, a waiting place designated when hunting. Further, a tryst taking place at lunchtime is sometimes referred to as a nooner.

William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is all about the love between the two title characters, which is forbidden as the pair come from two families who are sworn enemies. Early in the play, Romeo (a Montague) sneaks into a masquerade ball being held by the Capulets in the hope of meeting a Capulet girl named Rosaline. Instead, he meets and falls for Juliet, also a Capulet. Tragedy ensues …

33 Chinese steamed bun : BAO

A baozi (also “bou, bao”) is a steamed, filled bun in Chinese cuisine.

44 Director DuVernay : AVA

Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker who became the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, a feat she achieved in 2012 for her feature film “Middle of Nowhere”. “Middle of Nowhere” tells the story of a woman who drops out of medical school to focus on her husband when he is sentenced to 8 years in prison. DuVernay also directed the 2014 film “Selma” about the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

47 March 14 observance that might be celebrated with dessert in math class : PI DAY

The first three digits of the mathematical constant pi are 3.14. Pi Day has been celebrated on March 14th (3/14) every year since 1988, when it was inaugurated at the San Francisco Exploratorium. In countries where the day is usually written before the month, Pi Day is July 22nd, reflecting the more accurate approximation of pi as 22/7. Interestingly, March 14th is also Albert Einstein’s birthday.

49 Gothic novelist Shelley : MARY

Not only did Mary Shelley pen the famous novel “Frankenstein”, she also edited the works of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was her husband.

51 Wood for a baseball bat : ASH

The wood of the ash tree is hardwood, although it is relatively elastic. Famously, ash is the wood of choice for baseball bats. It is also the wood of choice for hurleys, the wooden sticks used in the Irish sport of hurling.

53 Opposition to the removal of … : ANTIDISESTABLI- 57 … state support from the church : -SHMENTARIANISM

Disestablishment is the process by which a church is removed from a privileged position, creating a secular state. Opponents to such a move, supporters of retaining an established church, are known as antidisestablishmentarians. “Antidisestablishmentarianism” is one of the longest words in the English language.

58 Marsupial that sleeps 18-22 hours a day : KOALA

Koalas are not bears, but are marsupials, which means they carry their young in a pouch.They are known for their diet of eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic to most other animals. To cope with this, koalas have a special digestive system that allows them to break down the toxins and extract the nutrients from the leaves. Koalas are one of the sleepiest animals in the world, sleeping up to 20 hours a day. This is because eucalyptus leaves provide very little energy.

59 Bloke : GENT

“Bloke” is British slang for “fellow”. The etymology of “bloke” seems to have been lost in the mists of time.

Down

5 ___ gras (French delicacy) : FOIE

Pâté is a rich spreadable paste made from a mixture of ground meat and fat to which various vegetables, herbs and spices may be added. The most famous version of the paste is pâté de foie gras, which is made from the fattened livers of geese (“foie gras” means “fat liver” in French).

7 Like a Cyclops : ONE-EYED

Cyclops was a one-eyed giant in Greek and Roman mythology. Cyclops lived inside Mount Etna, the Sicilian volcano.

8 Anklebone : TALUS

The collection of seven bones in the foot just below the ankle are known collectively as the tarsus. One of those bones is the talus (plural “tali”), more commonly called “ankle bone”. The talus is the lower part of the ankle joint and articulates with the lower ends of the tibia and fibula in the lower leg.

9 Johnny Walker or Jim Beam : WHISKEY

Hmm … Johnny Walker is a Scotch “whisky” (note the spelling), so not a “whiskey”, pedantically speaking.

Jim Beam is the world’s highest-selling brand of bourbon. Jim Beam whiskey has roots going back to around 1795 when Jacob Beam sold his first corn whiskey. The whiskey took on the name “bourbon”, possibly after Bourbon County in Kentucky.

10 Type that leans right : ITALICS

Italic type leans to the right, and is often used to provide emphasis in text. The style is known as “italic” because the stylized calligraphic form of writing originated in Italy, probably in the Vatican.

14 Language of Vientiane : LAO

Vientiane is the capital city of Laos, and is situated on the Mekong River. The city was originally called the “city of sandalwood” by Buddhist monks, naming it after the valued trees that grew in the area. The French took the Pali words for “city of sandalwood” and rewrote it as the French-sounding “Vientiane”.

16 Big name in swabs : Q-TIP

Cotton swabs were originally marketed under the name “Baby Gays”. This was changed in 1926 to “Q-Tips”, with the Q standing for “quality”.

22 Vaccine-regulating org. : FDA

Immunization is the process used to boost an individual’s immune system making it less likely to succumb to a particular disease. Before we learned to intervene, the immune system was bolstered only by contracting the disease and surviving it. Inoculation was developed specifically for the prevention of smallpox, and involves the introduction of small samples of diseased tissue into the body resulting in a mild case of the disease, and significant boost to the immune system. The related process of vaccination involves the introduction of a benign form of the microorganism or virus into the body so that a boost to the immune system can occur without catching the disease itself.

27 Studio with “Ars gratia artis” in its logo : MGM

It seems that the phrase “art for art’s sake” has its origins in France in the nineteenth century, where the slogan is expressed as “l’art pour l’art”. The Latin version “Ars gratia artis” came much later, in 1924. That’s when MGM’s publicist chose it for the studio’s logo, sitting under Leo the lion. Who’d a thunk it?

29 Hogwash : ROT

“Hogwash” means “rubbish, of little value”. “Hogwash” was originally the name of swill fed to pigs.

31 Word before pop or T : ICE-

The term “ice pop” has largely been supplanted in the US by “popsicle”, as the Popsicle brand of ice pop became so popular. We still use “ice pop” in Ireland, and in the UK the same thing is called an “ice lolly”, and in Australia it’s an “ice block”.

Rapper Ice-T must be tired of having his name come up as an answer in crossword puzzles (I know I am!). Born Tracy Marrow, Ice-T has been interested in acting for decades and made his film debut in the 1984 movie about breakdancing called “Breakin’”. He has also played Detective Fin Tutuola in the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” since the year 2000.

39 Reversible woven fabrics : DAMASKS

Damask was originally a weaving technique associated with the Byzantine and Islamic weaving centers of the Middle Ages. “Damask” comes from the name of Damascus, which was a major trading city at that time.

40 Sir Walter Scott novel set in the Middle Ages : IVANHOE

“Ivanhoe” is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott that is set in 12th-century England. Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) wrote a very successful operatic interpretation of the story that played for an unprecedented 155 consecutive performances after it opened in London in 1891. Sullivan asked his long-time collaborator W. S. Gilbert to supply the libretto for “Ivanhoe” but he declined. As “Ivanhoe” was a grand opera, he felt that the librettist’s role was too subordinate to that of the composer, and he preferred the more “equal” relationship afforded by their operetta projects.

41 “South Park” kid with a blue-and-yellow beanie : CARTMAN

“South Park” is an adult-oriented cartoon series on Comedy Central. I don’t do “South Park” …

47 Latke ingredient : POTATO

A latke is a delicious potato pancake (I’m Irish, so anything made with potatoes is delicious, to be honest).

50 Stock market calculation : YIELD

In the world of finance and investing, the yield curve for a particular investment is the relation between the interest rate that can be locked in, and the length of time the loan will be in place. Typically, the longer you are willing to lend your money (say by buying a government security), then the higher interest rate the borrower is willing to pay. So, the yield tends to move upwards over time.

54 Double-helix molecule : DNA

Rosalind Franklin was a chemist who specialized in X-ray crystallography. It was work by Franklin and her student that produced the famous “Photo 51” that was key to the determination of the structure of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick used the photo as they constructed their model of the double-helix structures of DNA. The photo had been shared with Watson and Crick by Maurice Wilkins, who worked with Franklin, without Franklin’s consent. A few years after Franklin died (at the age of 37), Watcon, Crick and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on DNA. As Franklin received very little recognition for her contribution, she is sometimes referred to as the “dark lady of DNA” and the “wronged heroine”.

55 When said three times, classic Benny Goodman tune : SING

“Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” is a 1936 song composed by Louis Prima. Most famously, “Sing, Sing, Sing” was recorded as an instrumental by Benny Goodman, in 1937.