Category: Hemant Mehta

Bill’s time: 10m 50s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Presider over weddings, in Greek myth : HERA

In Greek mythology, Hera was the wife of Zeus and the goddess of women, marriage, family and childbirth. She was noted for her jealous and vengeful nature, particularly against those who vied for the affections of her husband. The equivalent character to Hera in Roman mythology was Juno. Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea.

8 Jackie’s predecessor in the White House : MAMIE

Mamie Eisenhower was surely one of the most charming of all the First Ladies of the United States. Ms. Eisenhower suffered from an inner ear complaint called Ménière’s disease which caused her to lose her balance quite often. Because she was unsteady on her feet there were unfounded rumors floating around Washington that Ms. Eisenhower had a drinking problem. People can be very unkind …

14 The “glitter of the snack world,” per Ellen DeGeneres : CHEETO DUST

Cheetos snacks were developed by the same guy who created Fritos, hence the similarity in name. On the market since 1948, up until the turn of the century the name was written as “Chee-tos”. Oh, and Cheetos contain pork enzymes, so vegetarians beware!

16 ___-in-waiting : LADY

A lady-in-waiting is usually a noblewoman who attends a woman of a higher rank. She would not be considered a servant, but more of a companion.

17 Focus of a get-rich-quick scheme? : LOTTO BALLS

Originally, lotto was a type of card game, with “lotto” being the Italian for “a lot”. We’ve used “lotto” to mean a gambling game since the late 1700s.

20 Onetime collector of bizarre facts : RIPLEY

“Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” is a huge franchise on television that is affiliated to a worldwide chain of museums. The franchise started out as a cartoon feature appearing in newspapers in 1918.

23 Cologne first launched by Fabergé : BRUT

Brut is a brand of men’s grooming products launched by Fabergé in 1964. The folks marketing Brut use the slogan “the Essence of Man”.

24 Home of the Green Wave : TULANE

Tulane University is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Tulane was founded in 1834 as the Medical College of Louisiana. The university was privatized with the aid of an endowment from philanthropist Paul Tulane in 1884, and as a result the school’s name was changed to Tulane University. The school’s sports teams use the name Tulane Green Wave, and the team mascot is Riptide the Pelican.

34 ___ Abbott, longtime role on “The Young and the Restless” : TRACI

“The Young and the Restless” is a soap opera that has been on the air since 1973. It is a sister show to the soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful”, and so the two series share some actors and characters.

39 Dom Perignon’s winery, informally : MOET

Dom Pérignon is a prestige label of champagne from Moët et Chandon, the French winery. The label’s name honors the Benedictine monk, Dom Pérignon, who helped to improve the quality and production of champagne in the early 18th century. Although Dom Pérignon made major contributions to champagne production, many of the stories in which he figures are just myths. He did not “invent” champagne, nor sparkling wine in general. Nor did he say the famous words, “Come quickly, I am drinking the stars!”. That lovely line first appeared in a print advertisement in the late 1800s!

51 Request from Oliver Twist : MORE

“Please, sir. I want some more” are words spoken by the title character in the novel “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens. . Oliver is addressing Mr. Bumble, asking for an extra helping of gruel in the workhouse.

53 Major opening? : URSA …

The constellation Ursa Major (Latin for “Larger Bear”) is often just called “the Big Dipper” because of its resemblance to a ladle or dipper. Ursa Major also resembles a plow, and that’s what we usually call the same constellation back in Ireland, “the Plough”.

54 Candy mogul Harry : REESE

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were invented by Harry Burnett “HB” Reese. Peanut Butter Cups were originally called penny cups, reflecting the price at which they were sold. Then inflation took over, and maybe that’s why they were broken into smaller “Pieces” …

55 Canvas finish? : TKO

Technical knockout (TKO)

56 Sent a private note, in brief : DM’ED

Direct message (DM)

Down

1 Hello, in Honduras : HOLA

Honduras is a country in Central America that used to be known as Spanish Honduras, in order to differentiate it from British Honduras that is now called Belize. “Honduras” is the Spanish word for “the depths”, which is probably a reference to deep coastal waters.

3 Common receptacle in beer pong : RED SOLO CUP

The Solo Cup was introduced in 1930, and was the creation of a former employee of the Dixie Company. The first Solo Cup was a paper cone that founder Leo Hulseman made at home and sold to companies that distributed bottled water. Apparently, Solo’s red plastic cups sell very well, and are used by college students playing beer pong.

The game of beer pong is also known as “Beirut”. It apparently originated as a drinking game in the fraternities of Dartmouth College in the fifties, when it was played with paddles and a ping pong net on a table. The origin of the “Beirut” name is less clear, but it probably was coined while the Lebanese Civil War was raging in the late seventies and eighties.

5 Knockoff : PHONY

Something or someone described as phony (sometimes “phoney”) is not genuine or real. There is a suggestion that the term “phony” comes from “fawney”, which was a gold-plated brass ring used by swindlers in place of a one made of pure gold.

7 Part of a jacuzzi : JET

“Jacuzzi” is one of those brand names that has become so much associated with the product that it is often assumed to be a generic term. The Jacuzzi company was founded in 1915 by the seven(!) Jacuzzi brothers in Berkeley California. The brothers, who were Italian immigrants, pronounced their name “ja-coot-si”, as one might suspect when one realizes the name is of Italian origin. The company started off by making aircraft propellers and then small aircraft, but suspended aircraft production in 1925, when one of the brothers was killed in one of their planes. The family then started making hydraulic pumps, and in 1948 developed a submersible bathtub pump so that a son of one of the brothers could enjoy hydrotherapy for his rheumatoid arthritis. The “hydrotherapy product” took off in the fifties with some astute marketing towards “worn-out housewives” and the use of celebrity spokesman Jack Benny.

8 One-sided curiosities : MOBIUS STRIPS

A Möbius strip is a surface that has only one side. One is easily made by taking a strip of paper and joining the ends together, but with a twist so that it isn’t a regular “band”.

10 Ruminate on : MULL

Ruminants are animals that “chew the cud”. Ruminants eat vegetable matter but cannot extract any nutritional value from cellulose without the help of microbes in the gut. Ruminants collect roughage in the first part of the alimentary canal, allowing microbes to work on it. The partially digested material (the cud) is regurgitated into the mouth so that the ruminant can chew the food more completely, exposing more surface area for microbes to do their work. We also use the verb “to ruminate” in a figurative sense, to mean “to muse, ponder, chew over”.

11 Jersey or Guernsey : ISLE

Jersey and Guernsey are two of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy in France. They are “Crown dependencies”, self-governing possessions of the Crown for which the UK is responsible even though they are not part of the UK. The American state of New Jersey is named for the island in the English Channel.

12 Site with the categories “Bags & Purses” and “Bath & Beauty” : ETSY

Etsy.com is an e-commerce website where you can buy and sell the kind of items that you might find at a craft fair.

22 Performed light surgery on? : LASED

The term “laser” is an acronym standing for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. It has been pointed out that a more precise name for laser technology is “light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation”, but the resulting acronym isn’t quite so appealing, namely “loser”.

24 Partially plastered : TIPSY

The term “tipsy” comes from the verb “to tip” meaning “to overturn, knock over”, and has been meaning “drunk” since the late 1500s.

25 Slack off : DOG IT

To dog it is to not expend the effort necessary to accomplish a task. Folks tell me that the expression is quite common, but I must confess that I personally haven’t heard it used outside of crosswords. I’ll have to listen more carefully in the future …

27 Ascot, e.g. : RACECOURSE

Ascot Racecourse is used for thoroughbred horse racing, and is located in the town of Ascot, Berkshire in England. The course is located just six miles from Windsor Castle, and is often visited by members of the royal family. Royal Ascot is the name given to the most famous race meeting in the year, at which members of the royal family attend each day, arriving in horse-drawn carriages amidst great ceremony.

28 Keats or Shelley : ODIST

English poet John Keats died in Rome in 1821, and is buried there in the Protestant Cemetery. His last wish was that his grave be marked with a tombstone bearing just the words “”Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water”, and no name nor a date. Keats’ friends honored his request to some extent, as the words were included on the stone and no name is given. The full epitaph reads:

This Grave
contains all that was Mortal
of a
Young English Poet
Who
on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these Words to be
engraven on his Tomb Stone:
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.
24 February 1821

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an English Romantic poet. Shelley had strong views on vegetarianism. He was dedicated to the cause of all sentient beings, believing that the slaughter of animals by humans for the use of food was a barbaric practice. He wrote a famous essay on the subject called “A Vindication of Natural Diet” in 1813.

36 Chronic pest : NOODGE

“To noodge” is a slang verb meaning “to nag”. It comes into English from the Yiddish word “nudyen” meaning “to bore, be tedious”.

40 “Veni, vidi, vici,” e.g. : BOAST

The oft-quoted statement “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”) is believed by many to have been written by Julius Caesar. The words date back to 47 BCE and refer to the short war between Rome and Pharnaces II of Pontus.

41 Panini purveyors : DELIS

In Italy, a sandwich made from sliced bread is called a “tramezzino”, while sandwiches made from non-sliced breads are called “panini” (singular “panino”). We’ve imported the plural term “panini” into English to describe a single pressed and toasted sandwich.

42 Head for the sun? : HELIO-

Helios was the god of the Sun in Greek mythology, and is the reason that we use the prefix “helio-” to mean “sun”. He was the brother of Selene, the goddess of the moon, and Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Helios drove his chariot of the sun across the sky during the day, returning to the East at night by traveling through the ocean. The Roman equivalent to Helios was Sol.

44 0, for 180 : SINE

The most familiar trigonometric functions are sine, cosine and tangent (abbreviated to “sin, cos and tan”). Each of these is a ratio: a ratio of two sides of a right-angled triangle. The “reciprocal” of these three functions are cosecant, secant and cotangent. The reciprocal functions are simply the inverted ratios, the inverted sine, cosine and tangent. These inverted ratios should not be confused with the “inverse” trigonometric functions e.g. arcsine, arccosine and arctangent. These inverse functions are the reverse of the sine, cosine and tangent.