Category: Laura Dershewitz

Bill’s time: 5m 25s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Lasagna-hitting-the-floor sound : SPLAT!

“Lasagna” was originally the name of a cooking pot, but the term came to mean a dish that was cooked in it. “Lasagna” also became the name of the flat noodle used in the dish. If you order lasagna on the other side of the Atlantic, you’ll notice the “lasagne” spelling, the plural of “lasagna”. The plural is used as there is more than one layer of pasta in the dish.

10 Tupperware tops : LIDS

Back in the 1930s, Earl Tupper was working at the DuPont Chemical Company, and from DuPont obtained inflexible pieces of polyethylene slag. Tupper purified the slag and shaped it into unbreakable containers. He added airtight lids with a “burping seal” that provided tight seals similar to that provided by the lids on paint cans. He called his new product Tupperware.

15 Org. defending individual rights : ACLU

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

18 Blueprint : PLAN

Blueprints are reproductions of technical or architectural drawings that are contact prints made on light-sensitive sheets. They were introduced in the 1800s and the technology available dictated that the drawings were reproduced with white lines on a blue background, hence the name “blue-print”.

19 Opera set in Egypt : AIDA

“Aida” is a celebrated opera by Giuseppe Verdi that is based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Mariette also designed the costumes and stages for the opening performance. The opera was first staged in 1871 in an opera house in Cairo. In the storyline, Aida is an Ethiopian princess brought into Egypt as a slave. Radamès is an Egyptian commander who falls in love with her, and then complications arise!

29 Prickly plant : BRIAR

“Briar” (sometimes “brier”) is a generic name describing several plants that have thorns or prickles, including the rose. Famously, Br’er Rabbit lives in a briar patch.

36 Optometrists check them : EYES

Starting in the mid-1700s, a device known as an optometer was used for measuring prescriptions for eyeglasses. Over time, a professional using an optometer came to be known as an optometrist.

37 Goddess of the dawn : EOS

In Greek mythology, Eos was the goddess of the dawn who lived at the edge of the ocean. Eos would wake each morning to welcome her brother Helios the sun. The Roman equivalent of Eos was Aurora. Rather delightfully, Homer referred to Eos as “rosy-fingered dawn” in both “Iliad” and “Odyssey”.

38 Lady ___ (“Shallow” singer) : GAGA

“Lady Gaga” is the stage name of Stefani Germanotta. Germanotta is a big fan of the band Queen, and she took her stage name from the marvelous Queen song titled “Radio Ga Ga”.

46 Naval fleet : ARMADA

“Armada” is a Spanish (and Portuguese) word meaning “naval fleet”.

50 Sticky yellow squares … or a description of the circled letters and what they follow? : POST-IT NOTES

The Post-it note was invented at 3M following the accidental discovery of a low-tack, reusable adhesive. The actual intent of the development program was to produce a super-strong adhesive.

58 Stone Age diet, familiarly : PALEO

The paleolithic (or “paleo, caveman”) diet is a fad diet that became popular in the 2000s. The idea is to eat wild plants and animals that would have been available to humans during the Paleolithic era (roughly the Stone Age). This period precedes the introduction of agriculture and the domestication of animals. As a result, someone on the diet avoids consuming grains, legumes, dairy and processed foods. The diet consists mainly of lean meat (about 45-65% of the total calorie intake), non-starchy vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts.

60 “Young Frankenstein” assistant : IGOR

In the world of movies, Igor has been the assistant to Dracula, Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein among others. Igor is almost invariably portrayed as a hunchback.

I am not really a big fan of movies by Mel Brooks, but “Young Frankenstein” is the exception. I think the cast has a lot to do with me liking the film, as it includes Gene Wilder (Dr. Frankenstein), Teri Garr (Inga), Marty Feldman (Igor) and Gene Hackman (Harold, the blind man).

61 Like all leap years : EVEN

I wasn’t sure of the origin of the term “leap year”, and when I checked I found it to be fairly obvious. As a reference, let’s use March 25, 2007, a Sunday. The year before, in 2006, March 25th fell one weekday earlier on a Saturday. That follows the rule that any particular date moves forward in the week by one day, from one year to the next. However, the next year (2008) has an extra day, February 29th. So March 25, 2008 falls on a Tuesday, “leaping” two weekdays forward, not one, as 2008 is a “leap” year. I think I am more confused now than when I started this paragraph …

62 Bird that’s still getting wise to the world? : OWLET

A baby owl is an owlet. The term “owlet” can also be used for the adults of the smaller species of owls.

The Greek goddess Athena (sometimes “Athene”) is often associated with wisdom, among other attributes. In many representations. Athena is depicted with an owl sitting on her head. It is this linkage of the owl with the goddess of wisdom that led to today’s perception of the owl as being “wise”. Athena’s Roman counterpart was Minerva.

63 What the KonMari Method leaves you with : LESS

Marie Kondo (also known as “Konmari”) runs a very successful organizing consulting business that she founded when she was 19 years old, and while a student at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. She wrote an extremely successful book titled “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” that was first published in 2011. I’ve read it, and acted on at least some of the advice given therein …

Down

2 Corn cake : PONE

“Pone” is another name for corn bread, and comes from the Powhatan term “apan” meaning “something baked”.

5 Springsteen, to fans : THE BOSS

Bruce Springsteen is a rock singer and songwriter who is famously from New Jersey. A lot of Springsteen’s works are centered on his home state and the American heartland. His most famous album is “Born in the USA”, which was released in 1984. Springsteen lives in New Jersey, with his wife Patti Scialfa and their children.

7 The Bruins of the N.C.A.A. : UCLA

The Bruins are the athletic teams representing the University of California, Los Angeles. When the school was founded in 1919, as the Southern Branch of the University of California, the nickname “Cubs” was used by the football team. The “Cubs” name was chosen as the school was regarded as the younger partner of the California Bears in the existing University of California, Berkeley. That name was changed to “Grizzlies” in 1923, and finally to Bruins in 1926.

8 Harsh criticism : FLAK

“Flak” was originally an acronym standing for the German term for an aircraft defense cannon (FLiegerAbwehrKanone). “Flak” then became used in English as a general term for antiaircraft fire and ultimately a term for verbal criticism, as in “to take flak”.

9 Northernmost country in Africa : TUNISIA

Present-day Tunisia is roughly equivalent to the Roman province known as “Africa Proconsularis”, which gave its name to the whole continent.

28 R&B singer with the 2006 #1 hit “So Sick” : NE-YO

“Ne-Yo” is the stage name of R&B singer Shaffer Chimere Smith. He began his career as a songwriter, penning hits for artists such as Mario, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. In 2006, he released his debut album “In My Own Words”, which launched Ne-Yo’s career as a solo artist.

32 Place for un béret : TETE

In French, one wears a “chapeau” (hat), a “béret” (beret) perhaps, on one’s “tête” (head).

34 Wrinkly-skinned fruit : UGLI

The ugli fruit is a hybrid of an orange and a tangerine that was first discovered growing wild in Jamaica where most ugli fruit comes from today. “UGLI” is a trademark name that is a variant of “ugly”, a nod to the fruit’s unsightly wrinkled rind.

35 Marvin of Motown : GAYE

Marvin Gaye was a singer-songwriter from Washington, D.C. who came to be known as “Prince of Soul” and “Prince of Motown”. Some of Gaye’s biggest hits are “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (1968), “What’s Going On?” (1971), “Let’s Get It On” (1973) and “Sexual Healing” (1982). Famously, Gaye was shot dead by his father while Marvin was sitting on his mother’s bed just talking to her. Marvin had given the gun to his father as a Christmas gift.

46 Earth Day month : APRIL

Earth Day was founded in the US, where it was introduced by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Earth Day was designed to increase awareness and appreciation of our planet’s natural environment. The original Earth Day was on April 22nd, 1970. Decades later, the day is observed in over 175 countries.

47 Makeup used to color the cheeks : ROUGE

Although the cosmetic called rouge (also “blush”) uses the French word for “red”, modern “rouge” might be brown, pink or perhaps orange. Contemporary rouge is usually a talcum-based, colored powder.

48 Early PC platform : MS-DOS

MS-DOS (short for “Microsoft Disk Operating System”) was the main operating system used by IBM-compatible PCs in the eighties and for much of the nineties. Microsoft introduced the Windows operating environment in 1985 to sit above MS-DOS as a graphical user interface (GUI). That move was made in response to the success of Apple’s GUI released with the Lisa and Macintosh platforms. A court case ensued, one that was eventually settled in court in favor of Microsoft.

49 Artery opener : STENT

In the world of surgical medicine, a stent is an artificial tube inserted inside a vessel in the body, say an artery, in order to reduce the effects of a local restriction in the body’s conduit.

51 Smoked salmon : NOVA

Nova lox is salmon that has been cured with a mild brine and then cold-smoked. The term “nova” originally applied to salmon from Nova Scotia.

59 Reaction to seeing the Northern Lights, perhaps : AWE

The adjective “boreal” means “northern”, as in “aurora borealis” (northern lights) for example. The term comes from “Boreas”, the Greek god of the north wind.