Category: Hanh Huynh

Bill’s time: 8m 53s

Bill’s errors:

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4 “First Blood” tough guy : RAMBO

“First Blood” was the original of the four “Rambo” films starring Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a troubled Vietnam War veteran. I thought “First Blood” was a pretty good film actually, but the sequels were terrible, and way too violent for me. But, action all the way …

12 Soft drink rival of Mug : BARQ’S

When the Barq Brothers decided to go into the root beer business around 1900, they were faced with a dilemma as the Hires Root Beer Company was attempting to trademark the term “root beer”. So, the Barqs produced their beverage and called it simply Barq’s. They did indeed keep things simple, with an early advertising slogan of “Drink Barq’s. It’s good.” As the trademark issue dissipated, the company then introduced a slogan “Is it root beer?” before finally “coming out” and calling their drink “Barq’s root beer”.

15 Brand of beverage sourced from the Alps : EVIAN

Évian-les-Bains (or simply “Évian”) is in the very east of France, on the shores of Lake Geneva directly across the lake from Lausanne, Switzerland. As one might imagine, Évian is the home of Évian mineral water, the most successful business in town. Personally, I can’t stand the distinctive taste of Évian water …

16 Fifth-century invader of Europe : HUN

The Huns were a nomadic people who originated in Eastern Europe in the 4th century. Under the command of Attila the Hun they developed a unified empire that stretched from modern-day Germany across to the steppes of Central Asia. The whole of the Hunnic Empire collapsed within a year of Attila’s death in 453 AD.

17 Big attraction at MoMA : THE STARRY NIGHT

“The Starry Night” (“La Nuit Étoilée” in French) is a Van Gogh masterpiece depicting what the artist could see from the window of his room in a sanitarium near the village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is a lovely piece, and was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1941 …

19 Xenomorphs in “Alien vs. Predator,” e.g. : ETS

The antagonists in the “Alien” series of films are extraterrestrials, described at one point in the script as “xenomorphs”. The term “xenomorph” was coined for the screen using the Greek roots “xeno-” (other, strange) and “-morph” (shape).

“Alien vs. Predator” is a whole franchise of movies and video games built around a 2004 film. The movie itself had its roots in the earlier features “Alien” (excellent!) and “Predator” (awful!).

20 Solution to a computer problem, often : REBOOT

The verb “to boot”, as used in the world of computers, comes from the phrase “pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps”. The idea is that the software that has to be loaded before a computer can do anything useful is called a “bootstrap load”.

26 Lead-in to many a side thought, informally : PAREN

Parenthesis (paren.)

27 Where an angler may show off a great catch : PIER

We use the verb “to angle” to mean “to fish” because “angel” is an Old English word meaning “hook”.

31 Coll. military program : ROTC

Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC)

32 App with “Reels,” informally : INSTA

Reels is a facility introduced by Instagram in 2020. Essentially, it is a feature that competes with TikTok.

34 Hounds with fine, silky hair : AFGHANS

The Afghan hound is a dog with a thick hairy coat. The breed originated in Afghanistan in cold areas where all that insulation was an advantage.

39 Tight-fitting caps : BEANIES

A beanie is a knitted, close-fitting hat with no brim. The name probably comes from the slang term “bean” meaning “head”.

42 Heavyweight athletes : SUMOS

Sumo is a sport that is practiced professionally only in Japan, the country of its origin. There is an international federation of sumo wrestling now, and one of the organization’s aims is to have the sport accepted as an Olympic event.

47 Egg tart filling : CUSTARD

Our word “custard” evolved from the Middle French “croustade” meaning “meat or fruit pie with a crust”. Over time, the letter R fell away from “croustade” leading to “custard”, possibly due to the influence of the other food item “mustard”.

48 Using cursive and writing thank you notes, e.g. : LOST ARTS

Cursive handwriting is often referred to as “longhand” or “script”, although when I was learning it at school we knew it as “joined-up writing”. The term “cursive” ultimately comes from the Latin verb “currere” meaning “to run”. The idea is that the letters of words are written with a “running” hand.

52 Lofty space : ATTIC

An attic or loft is a room or space located below the roof of a building. The term “attic” is a shortened form of “attic story”, the uppermost story or level of a house. This term “attic story” originally applied to a low, decorative level built on top of the uppermost story behind a building’s decorative facade. This use of decoration at the top of buildings was common in ancient Greece, and was particularly important in the Attica style. That Attica style was so called because it originated in the historical region of Attica that encompassed the city of Athens. And that’s how our attics are linked to ancient Greece.

54 Triple jump component : HOP

The track and field sport sometimes called the “hop, skip and jump” is more correctly termed “triple jump”. The triple jump dates back as an event to the ancient Olympic Games. When the modern Olympics were introduced in 1896, the triple jump consisted of two hops on the same foot followed by a jump. Today’s triple jump consists of a hop, a bound and then a jump.

59 Broadway’s Lin-___ Miranda : MANUEL

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a composer and playwright from New York City, and the creator and star of the hit Broadway musicals “Hamilton” and “In the Heights”. Miranda also co-wrote the songs for the 2016 Disney animated feature “Moana”. He started composing early, and wrote jingles as a child. One of those jingles was later used by Eliot Spitzer in his 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

61 Org. established by Congress in 2001 : TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks. TSA personnel carry out the baggage and body searches at US airports.

62 Ill-fated … or a hint to six squares in this puzzle : STAR-CROSSED

Two lovers who are star-crossed are ill-fated, thwarted by the stars. The term “star-crossed” was coined by William Shakespeare in the prologue to his play “Romeo and Juliet”

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life

66 Country singer Tucker : TANYA

Country singer Tanya Tucker’s first hit was “Delta Dawn”, which she recorded in 1972 at only 13 years of age.

67 Cook in a wok, perhaps : SAUTE

“Sauté” is a French word. The literal translation from the French is “jumped” or “bounced”, a reference to the tossing of food while cooking it in a frying pan.

68 Dallas-to-Nashville dir. : ENE

It’s not really certain how the Texas city of Dallas got its name. One theory suggests that it is named for US Vice President George M. Dallas, who served under President James K. Polk. Another theory suggests that it was named for the Scottish village of Dallas, in the north-east of the country.

The Tennessee city of Nashville was founded in 1779 near a stockade in the Cumberland River valley called Fort Nashborough. Both the settlement and the fort were named for General Francis Nash, a war hero who died in combat during the American Revolution.

69 Unpleasant forecast : 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.

70 #23 of 24 : 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.

Down

1 Market checkout option, for short : EBT

Electronic benefit transfer (EBT)

2 Country ruled by the al-Khalifa royal family since 1783 : BAHRAIN

Bahrain is an island nation located off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Bahrain is connected to Saudi Arabia by a series of causeways and bridges that were constructed in the eighties.

4 Words on a U-Haul storage container : RENT ME

The U-Haul company was started by married couple Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty in Ridgefield, Washington in 1945. The Shoens used $5,000 of seed money to build trailers in their garage, and then cleverly recruited gas station owners as franchisees with whom they would split the rental revenue. There are now about 15,000 U-Haul dealers across the country.

5 Prefix with fauna : AVI-

“Avifauna” is the collective name for birds of a specific region. An older term for the same thing is “ornis”, which has the same root as “ornithology”.

6 Certain “Top Gun” jets : MIGS

The Russian fighter jets that we know as “MiGs” are so called because they were designed by the Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau, and MiG is an acronym for “Mikoyan-and-Gurevich” in Russian.

“Top Gun” is an entertaining action movie released in 1986 starring Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. The movie is all about pilots training at the US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School. A lot of footage was shot on board the Navy’s carrier the USS Enterprise during flight operations. At one point in a day’s shooting, the commander of the Enterprise changed course as needed for normal operations, but this altered the light for the cameras that were filming at the time. Director Tony Scott asked for the course to be changed back, but was informed that a course change would cost the Navy $25,000. Scott wrote out a check there and then, and he got another five minutes of filming with the light he needed.

7 Bangkok bank deposit : BAHT

The baht is the currency of Thailand. One baht is subdivided into 100 satang.

13 1980s arcade game with a cube-jumping character : Q*BERT

Q*bert is an arcade game that dates back to 1982. In the game, Q*bert is a character who starts at the top of a pyramid of cubes, and who is then moved around the pyramid by the player.

14 Full house letters : SRO

Standing room only (SRO)

22 Olympic skater Lipinski : TARA

When American skater Tara Lipinski won the figure skating gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics, she was only 15 years old. To this day, Lipinski is the youngest person to win an individual gold at the Winter Games.

23 Printer resolution spec : DPI

Dots per inch (DPI) is a term usually reserved for printing resolution, a measure of the density of individual ink dots that can be positioned on the printed surface. Screen resolution is measured in pixels per inch (PPI), a measure of how closely individual pixels can be placed in a digital display.

25 Show with the most-watched episode in scripted TV history : M*A*S*H

The final episode of the TV show “M*A*S*H” had a running time of 2½ hours, making it a “TV movie”. It was a much-anticipated event, and CBS capitalized on the anticipated viewing numbers. 30-second commercial blocks sold for a higher price than equivalent slots during that year’s (1983’s) Super Bowl. It turned out to be the most-watched scripted TV episode in US history.

33 Andy’s toy sibling : ANN

Raggedy Ann is a rag doll that was created by Johnny Gruelle in 1915 for his daughter, Marcella. He decided to name the doll by combining the titles of two poems by James Whitcomb Riley, “The Raggedy Man” and “Little Orphan Annie”. Gruelle introduced Raggedy Ann in a series of books three years later. Sadly, Marcella died at 13 years of age with her father blaming a smallpox vaccination she was given at school. Gruelle became very active in the movement against mass vaccination, for which Raggedy Ann became a symbol.

Raggedy Andy was introduced as the brother to Raggedy Ann in the 1920 book “Raggedy Andy Stories”.

35 Smash hits: Abbr. : HRS

Home run (HR)

38 Agent Smith’s foe in “The Matrix” : NEO

The 1999 movie sensation “The Matrix” was meant to be set in a nondescript urban environment. It was actually shot in Australia, as one of the co-producers of the film was the Australian company, Village Roadshow Pictures. You can pick up all sorts of clues about the location when watching the film, including a view of Sydney Harbour Bridge in a background shot. Also, traffic drives along on the left and there are signs for the “lift” instead of an “elevator”.

40 Online investment firm founded in 1991 : E*TRADE

E-Trade is mainly an online discount brokerage. It was founded in 1982 in Palo Alto, California, and I used to drive by its headquarters almost every day. The company is now run out of New York City. E-Trade used to produce those famous Super Bowl ads with the talking babies staring into a webcam.

41 1998 Sarah McLachlan hit : ADIA

Sarah McLachlan is a singer/songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia who lives in Vancouver. In 1997, McLachlan married Ashwin Sood, the drummer in her band. The 1998 hit song “Adia”, which she co-wrote and recorded, was intended as an apology to her best friend … for stealing her ex-boyfriend and then marrying him!

45 Brunch fare : OMELETS

Our word “brunch” is a portmanteau of “breakfast” and “lunch”. The term was coined as student slang in Oxford, England in the late 1890s. However, “brunch” described a combined meal closer to the breakfast hour, and the term “blunch” was used for a meal closer to lunchtime.

47 Corner piece : CASTLE

The corner piece in the game of chess is called a “rook”, a word coming from the Persian “rokh” meaning a “chariot”. The rook has also been called, perhaps incorrectly, the castle, tower, marquess and rector.

49 Certain “Top Gun” jet : TOMCAT

The F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy’s primary fighter from 1974 to 2006, and was the airplane that featured in the movie “Top Gun”.

50 Practice taekwondo, say : SPAR

Taekwondo is the national sport of Korea. “Tae” means “to strike or break with foot”; “kwon” means “to strike or break with fist”; “do” means “way” or “art”. Along with judo, taekwondo is one of only two martial arts included in the Olympic Games.

58 Great ___ : DANE

The Great Dane breed of dog isn’t actually from Denmark, and rather is from Germany. Great danes were originally bred to hunt wild boar, and were also used for protection and as guard dogs.

63 Ingredient in an old-fashioned : RYE

An Old Fashioned cocktail is usually made from whiskey muddled with sugar and AROMATIC bitters, with a twist of citrus rind. I offer, humbly, my version: bourbon, maple syrup, grapefruit or orange bitters, a couple of cocktail cherries as a garnish, and a spoonful of the syrup from cocktail cherries allowed to float to the bottom of the glass. And oh yes, best served with clear ice in a crystal glass. I’ll be right back …

64 Agnus ___ : DEI

“Agnus Dei” is Latin for “Lamb of God”, The expression is used in Christian traditions to describe Jesus Christ, hence symbolizing his role as a sacrificial offering (sacrificial lamb) to atone for the sins of man.