Category: Michael J. Doran

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. First instrument heard in the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” : HARP
“She’s Leaving Home” is a 1967 song released by the Beatles on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album. None of the four members of the band play an instrument in this song, and instead the music is played by a small string orchestra. The lyrics are performed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon. In fact, George Harrison and Ringo Starr weren’t even in the studio at the time of the recording.

5. Marathoner’s concern : PACE
The marathon commemorates the legendary messenger-run by Pheidippides from the site of the Battle of Marathon back to Athens, and is run over 26 miles and 385 yards,. The actual distance run today was decided in 1921, and matches the length of the modern-day Marathon-Athens highway.

9. Bulb units : WATTS
James Watt was a Scottish inventor, a man who figured prominently in the Industrial Revolution in Britain largely due to the improvements he made to the fledgling steam engine. The SI unit of power is called the watt, named in his honor.

14. Miscellany : OLIO
“Olio” is a term meaning a hodgepodge or a mixture, coming from the mixed stew of the same name. The stew in turn takes its name from the Spanish “olla”, the clay pot used for cooking.

15. 1982 sci-fi film with a 2010 sequel : TRON
Released in 1982, Disney’s “Tron” was one of the first mainstream films to make extensive use of computer graphics. The main role in the movie is played by Jeff Bridges. The original spawned a 2010 sequel called “Tron: Legacy”, as well as a 2012 TV show called “Tron: Uprising”.

19. Places to buy furniture to assemble : IKEAS
The IKEA furniture stores use the colors blue and yellow for brand recognition. Blue and yellow are the national colors of Sweden, where IKEA was founded and is headquartered.

20A. *Turnpike : TOLL ROAD (toll house & roadhouse)
A tollhouse is a building used for the collection of tolls, perhaps at a toll road or a canal lock. Many tollhouses traditionally included accommodation for the toll collector.

22. Actress Thurman : UMA
Robert Thurman was the first westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Robert raised his children in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and called his daughter “Uma” as it is a phonetic spelling of the Buddhist name “Dbuma”. Uma’s big break in movies came with her starring role in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 hit “Pulp Fiction”. My favorite Uma Thurman film is the wonderful 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”.

23. Queen of the Jungle, in comics : SHEENA
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is a comic book heroine who first appeared in print in 1938 (in the US, 1937 in the UK). Sheena was the first female character to get her own comic book, with Wonder Woman following in 1941.

25. Pumas and panthers : BIG CATS
The mountain lion is found in much of the Americas from the Yukon in Canada right down to the southern Andes in South America. Because the mountain lion is found over such a vast area, it has many different names applied by local peoples, such as cougar and puma. In fact, the mountain lion holds the Guinness record for the animal with the most number of different names, with over 40 in English alone.

The big cats known as black panthers are found in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The black panthers of Asia and Africa are black leopards. Those in the Americas are black jaguars.

29. Lawyer: Abbr. : ATT
Attorney (att.)

34. Tale of adventure : CONTE
“Conte” is the French word for “tale”. There is an idiomatic phrase in France “conte de bonne femme” which translates literally as “tale of the good woman”. We would use the equivalent phrase “old wive’s tale”.

37. Kipling’s “Follow Me ___” : ‘OME
“Follow Me ‘ome” is a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

Rudyard Kipling was a British poet and writer famous for his tales of the British Raj, the rule of the British Empire in India. Kipling was actually born in Bombay, but returned with his family to England when he was very young. After being educated in England, he returned to India and from there traveled the world. Kipling’s most famous works are the stories “The Jungle Book”, “Just So Stories”, “The Man Who Would Be King”, and the poems “Mandalay”, “Gunga Din” and “If-”.

38. Asian body of water that’s now largely dried up : ARAL SEA
The Aral Sea is a great example of how man can have a devastating effect on his environment. In the early sixties the Aral Sea covered 68,000 square miles of Central Asia. Soviet Union irrigation projects drained the lake to such an extent that today the total area is less than 7,000 square miles, with 90% of the lake now completely dry. Sad …

40. Sallie ___ : MAE
“Sallie Mae” is a nickname for SLM Corporation, created in 1972 by the US government as the Student Loan Marketing Association. By 2004 the government had severed all its ties with Sallie Mae, and today SLM is basically a profit-focused lender.

41. Cent gent? : ABE
The US one-cent coin has borne the profile of President Abraham Lincoln since 1909, the centennial of Lincoln’s birth. Fifty years later, a representation of the Lincoln Memorial was added to the reverse side.

42. Name repeated before “Wherefore art thou” : ROMEO
In William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”, the lovers discuss the sad fact that they have been born into two feuding families in the famous balcony scene. Juliet says:

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Romeo’s reply includes the famous lines:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

43. Innocent sort : NAIF
A naïf is someone who is naive, as “naïf” is the French word for “naive”.

44. Gift on a 10th anniversary : TIN
Some traditional gifts for wedding anniversaries are:

• 5th: wooden
• 10th: tin
• 15th: crystal
• 20th: china
• 25th: silver
• 30th: pearl
• 40th: ruby
• 50th: gold
• 60th: diamond

49. Nielsen of “Airplane!” : LESLIE
The 1980 movie “Airplane!” has to be one of the zaniest comedies ever made. The lead roles were Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) and Elaine Dickinson (played by Julie Hagerty). But it was Leslie Nielsen who stole the show, playing Dr. Barry Rumack. That’s my own humble opinion of course …

52. Rice or Curry : TIM
Tim Rice is most famous as a lyricist, with his most celebrated collaborations being with Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber and Rice together wrote the hit musicals “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”, “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita”.

Tim Curry is a marvelous actor from England who is perhaps best known on this side of the Atlantic for playing Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the 1975 movie “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. Curry also played the title role in the original Broadway play “Amadeus”.

60. ___-Saxon : ANGLO
Germanic tribes invaded Great Britain from the early 5th century and created the nation that we now call England. The Anglo-Saxons (sometimes simply “Saxons”), as these tribes came to be called, held sway in the country until 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxons were descendants of three Germanic tribes:

61. Realtor’s big day … or what each word in the answers to the starred clues can do : OPEN HOUSE
“Real estate agent” is a general, generic term. “Realtor” is the name given to a member of the trade association known as the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The NAR has gone so far as the trademark the term “Realtor” in the US.

62. Surgeon’s supply in the old days : ETHER
Ethers are a whole class of organic compounds, but in the vernacular “ether” is specifically diethyl ether. Diethyl ether was once very popular as a general anesthetic.

63. Wall Street inits. : NYSE
The roots of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) go back to 1792 when a group of 24 stock brokers set up the New York Stock & Exchange Board. They did so in an agreement signed under a buttonwood tree outside 68 Wall Street. That document became known as the Buttonwood Agreement. Today, the NYSE is located in National Historic Landmark building with the address 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

64. Minuscule div. of a minute : NSEC
“Nanosecond” is more correctly abbreviated to “ns”, and really is a tiny amount of time: one billionth of a second.

65. Petrol unit : LITRE
Petrol is the same thing as gasoline. “Petrol” comes via French from the Latin “petroleum”, itself derived from “petra” meaning “rock” and “oleum” meaning “oil”.

66. Winter Palace resident : TSAR
The Winter Palace is a magnificent building in St. Petersburg in Russia, home to the Russian tsars (and tsarinas). The Winter Palace houses the famous Hermitage Museum. I was lucky enough to visit the Palace and museum some years ago, and I have to say that I have rarely been more impressed by a historical building.

67. SFO postings : ETDS
Estimated time of departure (ETD)

San Francisco International Airport (SFO) serves as the main base of operations for Virgin America (recently sold to Alaska Airlines), and is also the maintenance hub for United Airlines.

Down
3. Capital of Iran : RIAL
“Rial” is the name of the currency of Iran (as well as Yemen, Oman, Cambodia and Tunisia).

5. W.W. II naval craft : PT BOAT
PT boats were motor torpedo boats: small speedy vessels that used torpedoes as their primary weapon against large surface ships. The “PT” stands for “Patrol Torpedo”. The most famous PT boats that served during WWII were probably PT-41 that carried General Douglas MacArthur and his family from Corregidor to Mindanao in his escape from the Philippines, and PT-109 that was commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, future President of the United States.

6. Las Vegas casino with a musical name : ARIA
Aria is one of the newer casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. “Popular Mechanics” magazine described Aria as “the most technologically-advanced hotel ever built”.

7. Ribbed pants, informally : CORDS
There’s a myth that the name of textile known as “corduroy” comes from the French “corde du roi” (the cord of the king). It’s more likely that “corduroy” comes from a melding of “cord” and “duroy” (a coarse fabric that used to be made in England).

9D. *Highly antioxidant beverage : WHITE TEA (White House & teahouse)
The White House in Washington, DC was designed by an Irishman, I am proud to say. James Hoban from County Kilkenny emigrated to the US in his twenties, and won the design competition for the White House in 1792.

10. Pulitzer-winning poet Conrad : AIKEN
Conrad Aiken was a novelist and poet. Aiken was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1950.

11D. *Sloth, for one : TREE ANIMAL (giving tree house & “Animal House”))
All four of the extant species of three-toed sloths are native to South and Central America. Cousins of the three-toed sloths are the two-toed sloths, of which there are two species still living.

13. Meeting of Congress: Abbr. : SESS
The US Congress is described “bicameral” in that it is divided into two separate assemblies, namely the Senate and the House of Representatives. The term “bicameral” comes from the prefix “bi-” meaning “two”, and the Latin “camera” meaning “chamber”.

18. Humorist Bombeck : ERMA
Erma Bombeck wrote for newspapers for about 35 years, producing more than 4,000 witty and humorous columns describing her home life in suburbia.

21. Number of hills in Roma : SETTE
In Italian, “Roma” (Rome) was built on “sette” (seven) hills.

Supposedly, there were seven separate settlements on the top of seven hills east of the River Tiber, prior to the founding of the city of Rome. Tradition dictates that Romulus founded Rome on one of these hills, Palatine Hill, and the city came to encompass all seven existing settlements. The most famous hill in modern-day Rome is probably Vatican Hill, but it lies outside of walled ancient city.

24. “MMMBop” band : HANSON
Hanson is a pop rock boy band from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hanson’s biggest hit is the 1997 song “MMMBop”.

26. “Whose woods these are I think I know” has four : IAMBI
An iamb is a metrical foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” consists of lines made up of four sequential iambs e.g. “Whose woods / these are / I think / I know”. With a sequence of four iambs, the poem’s structure is described as iambic tetrameter.

28. Garlic lover’s dish, maybe : SCAMPI
The Italian dish known as “scampi” is a serving of shrimp in garlic butter and dry white wine.

48. Many a Punjabi : SIKH
Sikhism is a religion that was founded in the Punjab region, which straddles the India-Pakistan border. Even though Sikhism was established relatively recently, it is now the fifth-largest organized religion in the world. Sikhism was founded in the 15th century by Guru Nanak.

50. Conger catcher : EELER
Conger eels can grow to be very, very large, perhaps up to 10 feet in length.

51. Annual sports prizes : ESPYS
The ESPY Awards are a creation of the ESPN sports television network. One difference with similarly named awards in the entertainment industry is that ESPY winners are chosen solely based on viewer votes.

53. Erse speaker : GAEL
A Gael is anyone of a race that speaks or spoke one of the Erse tongues. There are actually three Erse languages. Irish, Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) and Scots Gaelic. In their own tongues, these would be Gaeilge (in Ireland), Gaelg (on the Isle of Man) and Gaidhlig (in Scotland).

56. Grand Canyon sight : MESA
“What’s the difference between a butte and a mesa?” Both are hills with flat tops, but a mesa has a top that is wider than it is tall. A butte is a much narrower formation, taller than it is wide.

The Grand Canyon is in Arizona. The canyon continues to be carved out of layers of rock by the Colorado River. The Grand Canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and over a mile deep.

58. Like many Craigslist items : USED
Craigslist is an online network of communities that features classified advertisements organized geographically. Craigslist was started by Craig Newmark in 1995, originally as an email distribution list for his friends who lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area.

61. Neighbor of Mich. : ONT
The Canadian province of Ontario takes its name from the Great Lake. In turn, Lake Ontario’s name is thought to be derived from “Ontari:io”, a Huron word meaning “great lake”. Ontario is home to the nation’s capital of Ottawa as well as Toronto, Canada’s most populous city (and the capital of the province).

Michigan is the only US state that comprises two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula is mitten-shaped, and it is separated from the Upper Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac. My wife is from the “U.P”, and is proud to call her herself a Yooper (from “UPer”).

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across

1. First instrument heard in the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home” : HARP

5. Marathoner’s concern : PACE

9. Bulb units : WATTS

14. Miscellany : OLIO

15. 1982 sci-fi film with a 2010 sequel : TRON

16. One who’s new on board : HIREE

17. *Carolina wren, for South Carolina : STATE BIRD (statehouse & birdhouse)

19. Places to buy furniture to assemble : IKEAS

20. *Turnpike : TOLL ROAD (giving “toll house”)

21. Has control of the wheel : STEERS

22. Actress Thurman : UMA

23. Queen of the Jungle, in comics : SHEENA

25. Pumas and panthers : BIG CATS

29. Lawyer: Abbr. : ATT

30. Collar : NAB

33. Carefree adventure : LARK

34. Tale of adventure : CONTE

36. “___ had enough!” : I’VE

37. Kipling’s “Follow Me ___” : ‘OME

38. Asian body of water that’s now largely dried up : ARAL SEA

40. Sallie ___ : MAE

41. Cent gent? : ABE

42. Name repeated before “Wherefore art thou” : ROMEO

43. Innocent sort : NAIF

44. Gift on a 10th anniversary : TIN

45. Something worth waiting for? : TIP

46. How people with colds may speak : NASALLY

49. Nielsen of “Airplane!” : LESLIE

52. Rice or Curry : TIM

53. High spirits : GAIETY

55. *Force from a hiding place : SMOKE OUT (smokehouse & outhouse)

60. ___-Saxon : ANGLO

61. Realtor’s big day … or what each word in the answers to the starred clues can do : OPEN HOUSE

62. Surgeon’s supply in the old days : ETHER

63. Wall Street inits. : NYSE

64. Minuscule div. of a minute : NSEC

65. Petrol unit : LITRE

66. Winter Palace resident : TSAR

67. SFO postings : ETDS

Down

1. Deer, to a tick : HOST

2. Member of a mixed quartet : ALTO

3. Capital of Iran : RIAL

4. Dinner at which everyone does the dishes? : POT LUCK

5. W.W. II naval craft : PT BOAT

6. Las Vegas casino with a musical name : ARIA

7. Ribbed pants, informally : CORDS

8. Adjourn : END

9. *Highly antioxidant beverage : WHITE TEA (White House & teahouse)

10. Pulitzer-winning poet Conrad : AIKEN

11. *Sloth, for one : TREE ANIMAL (giving tree house & “Animal House”))

12. Sign of sadness : TEAR

13. Meeting of Congress: Abbr. : SESS

18. Humorist Bombeck : ERMA

21. Number of hills in Roma : SETTE

24. “MMMBop” band : HANSON

25. Cause to swell : BLOAT

26. “Whose woods these are I think I know” has four : IAMBI

27. *Approve : GREEN LIGHT (greenhouse & lighthouse)

28. Garlic lover’s dish, maybe : SCAMPI

31. Be of use : AVAIL

32. Like many bar bouncers : BEEFY

35. “Bravo!” : OLE!

38. *Place to buy paint : ART STORE (art house & storehouse)
39. Turbulent : ROILY
43. “Give me an example” : NAME ONE
47. Penitent person : ATONER
48. Many a Punjabi : SIKH
50. Conger catcher : EELER
51. Annual sports prizes : ESPYS
53. Erse speaker : GAEL
54. Voting against : ANTI
56. Grand Canyon sight : MESA
57. Send packing : OUST
58. Like many Craigslist items : USED
59. Private eyes, in slang : TECS
61. Neighbor of Mich. : ONT

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