Category: Michael Lieberman

Bill’s time: 10m 23s

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10 Greek god that sounds like 66-Across : ARES
[66A Zodiac sign that sounds like 10-Across : ARIES]

The Greek god Ares is often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, but originally he was regarded as the god of bloodlust and slaughter. Ares united with Aphrodite to create several gods, including Phobos (Fear), Deimos (Terror) and Eros (Desire). Ares was the son of Zeus and Hera, and the Roman equivalent to Ares was Mars.

Aries the Ram is the first astrological sign in the Zodiac, and is named after the constellation. Your birth sign is Aries if you were born between March 21 and April 20, but if you are an Aries you would know that! “Aries” is the Latin word for “ram”.

15 Chess piece with the second-highest value : ROOK

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.

16 Mardi Gras follower : LENT

In Latin, the Christian season that is now called “Lent” was termed “quadragesima” (meaning “fortieth”), a reference to the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry. When the church began its move in the Middle Ages towards using the vernacular, the term “Lent” was introduced. “Lent” comes from “lenz”, the German word for “spring”.

“Mardi Gras” translates from French as “Fat Tuesday”, and gets its name from the practice of eating rich foods on the eve of the fasting season known as Lent. Lent starts on the next day, called Ash Wednesday.

20 CPR pro : EMT

An emergency medical technician (EMT) might administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

21 M&M’s color replaced by blue : TAN

Forrest Mars, Sr. was the founder of the Mars Company. Forrest invented the Mars Bar while living over in England and then developed M&M’s when he returned to the US. Mars came up with the idea for M&M’s when he saw soldiers in the Spanish Civil War eating chocolate pellets. Those pellets had a hard shell of tempered chocolate on the outside to prevent them from melting. Mars got some of the funding to develop the M&M from William Murrie, the son of the president of Hershey’s Chocolate. It is the “M” and “M” from “Mars” and “Murrie” that give the name to the candy.

27 They might be pitched by the Rockies : TENTS

North America’s Rocky Mountains stretch from the very north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the US. The length of the range is over 3,000 miles. The highest point is Mount Elbert in Colorado, which has an elevation of 14,440 feet.

28 Sandwich with wild rice : MONTE CRISTO (includes wild “RICE”)

The Monte Cristo sandwich is a ham and cheese sandwich that has been fried. The cheese used is Swiss, more properly Emmental or Gruyère. The Monte Cristo is a variant of the French open-faced sandwich made with the same ingredients, the croque-monsieur.

31 “Why, what an ___ am I!”: Hamlet : ASS

The full title of William Shakespeare’s play that we tend to call “Hamlet” is “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”. It is the most performed of all Shakespeare’s plays and it is also his longest, the only one of his works comprising over 4,000 lines. That’s about a 4-hour sitting in a theater …

33 Actress De La Garza of “FBI” : ALANA

Alana De La Garza is an actress from Columbus, Ohio. De La Garza is perhaps best known for her recurring role as Connie Rubirosa on television’s “Law & Order”.

36 “The Bare Necessities” bear : BALOO

“The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling was originally published in 1894, and is a collection of adventure stories or fables featuring the animals of the jungle and a young boy named Mowgli. Baloo is a sloth bear that teaches the cubs of a wolf pack the Law of the Jungle. Baloo’s most challenging pupil however is no lupine, but rather the man-cub Mowgli.

38 Stud alternative : DRAW

“Stud poker” is the name given to many variants of poker, all of which are characterized by the dealer giving each player a mix of cards face-down and face-up. The cards facing upwards are called “upcards”. The cards facing downwards are called “hole cards”, cards only visible to the individual who holds that particular hand. This gives rise to the phrase “ace in the hole”, a valuable holding that only the player with the ace is aware of.

42 “Get Out” director Jordan : PEELE

Jordan Peele is a former cast member of the sketch comedy show “Mad TV”. Peele created his own sketch comedy show “Key & Peele” with fellow-Mad TV alum Keegan-Michael Key. Peele started hosting and producing the revival of “The Twilight Zone” in 2019.

“Get Out” is a 2017 horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. I don’t do horror, but I do hear that this one is well made …

45 End of a two-player Harlem Globetrotters play : -OOP

Abe Saperstein founded and coached the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team in 1926. In the early days, the team was focused on touring to play other teams, and making a little money from their share of the gate. But even back then, the Globetrotters were showmen, and liked to show off their ball-handling skills. One of Saperstein’s claim to fame is that he’s the shortest male member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, at 5 ft. 3 in.

48 Desserts with split peas : PEACH MELBAS (includes split “PE-AS”)

Peach Melba is a dessert comprising peaches and raspberry sauce with vanilla ice cream. The dish was the creation of chef Auguste Escoffier, who introduced it at the Savoy Hotel in London in the 1890s in honor of Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba. Escoffier later developed Melba toast, also in honor of the singer.

51 “Top Chef” network : BRAVO

“Top Chef” is a reality television show on the Bravo channel. It’s basically a cooking competition.

56 One channel that airs “NCAA March Madness,” with “TV” : TRU-

truTV is a Turner Broadcasting cable network that launched in 1991 as Court TV. The name, and programming, was changed to truTV in 2008.

“March Madness” is the name given to the NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship (among others), that is held in the spring each year. Another name is “the Big Dance”.

60 Egg dish with a lemon turnover : WESTERN OMELETTE (includes “LEMON” turnover)

A Western omelet (sometimes “omelette”) is also known as a Southwest omelet or a Denver omelet. The usual ingredients include diced ham, onions and green bell peppers.

64 ___ code : AREA

Area codes were introduced in the 1940s. Back then, the “clicks” one heard when dialing a number led to mechanical wear on various pieces of equipment. In order to minimize overall mechanical wear, areas with high call volumes were given the most efficient area codes (lowest number of clicks). That led to New York getting the area code 212, Los Angeles 213 and Chicago 313.

65 Home of Timbuktu : MALI

The Republic of Mali is a landlocked country in western Africa located south of Algeria. Formerly known as French Sudan, the nation’s most famous city is Timbuktu. Mali is the third-largest producer of gold on the continent, after South Africa and Ghana.

67 Where one needs GPS to find The Gap? : NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) can give some quite descriptive ticker symbols to companies, for example:

• Anheuser-Busch (BUD, for “Budweiser”)
• Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP, as in “beer tap”)
• Steinway Musical Instruments (LVB, for “Ludwig van Beethoven”)
• Sotheby’s (BID, for the auction house)

68 Opposite of sans : AVEC

In French, “avec” (with) and “sans” (without) are opposites.

Down

1 ___ Didrikson Zaharias, Olympic gold medalist in track and field who went on to win 10 L.P.G.A. major championships : BABE

Babe Didrikson Zaharias was one of the greatest all-round athletes to compete in US sports. Most famous as a champion golfer and Olympic track-and-field athlete, Didrikson also played at the highest levels in basketball and baseball. She even competed in sewing, and recorded several records as a singer and harmonica player!

2 First lady’s husband : ADAM

According to the Bible, God created Adam from “the dust of the ground”. Eve was created as Adam’s companion, from Adam’s rib.

3 Square snack items : SALTINES

F. L. Sommer & Company of St. Joseph, Missouri started to produce wafer thin soda crackers in 1876. The crackers were later marketed as “Saltines”, due to the baking salt that was a key ingredient. The company subsequently lost trademark protection of the term “saltine”.

4 Binge-watching units, for short : EPS

Episode (ep.)

7 D.C. “Squad” member : AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a politician who is often referred to by her initials “AOC”. A Democrat, she was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018, representing part of the Bronx, Queens and Rikers Island in New York City. When she took office in 2019 at the age of 29, AOC became the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress.

In the US Congress, the term “the Squad” was applied to four House Representatives elected in 2017, and who represent the more progressive side of the Democratic Party. The four original Squad members are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan). Soon after election day, the four took a group photo together after a live-streamed interview. Ocasio-Cortez published the picture on Instagram, and used the caption “Squad”. The label seems to have stuck since then.

8 End of a White House address : GOV

The .gov domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

• .com (commercial enterprise)
• .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
• .mil (US military)
• .org (not-for-profit organization)
• .gov (US federal government entity)
• .edu (college-level educational institution)

10 Naproxen brand : ALEVE

“Aleve” is a brand name used for the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug Naproxen sodium.

11 Saskatchewan’s capital : REGINA

The Canadian province of Saskatchewan (Sask.) takes its name from the Saskatchewan River. The river in turn takes its name from the Cree name, which translates as “swift flowing river”. The capital of Saskatchewan is Regina, although the biggest city in the province is Saskatoon.

18 Jacobs of fashion : MARC

Marc Jacobs is an American fashion designer from New York City with his own line of clothing. He is also the creative director for the French design house, Louis Vuitton.

25 Shanghainese, e.g. : DIALECT

Shanghai is a major city on the east coast of China that is home to the busiest container port in the world. The name “Shanghai” translates as “Upon-the-Sea”.

26 Capital that was once part of Denmark : OSLO

Oslo, the capital of Norway, is an ancient city that was founded around 1048. The medieval city was destroyed by fire in 1624 and was rebuilt by the Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV and renamed to Christiania. In 1877 there was an official change of the spelling of the city’s name to “Kristiana”, and then more recently in 1925 the name was restored to the original Oslo. Things have almost gone full circle and now the center of Oslo, the area that would have been contained by the original medieval walls, has apparently been renamed to Christiania.

29 60 minuti : ORA

In Italian, there are “sessanta minuti” (sixty minutes) in an “ora” (hour).

30 Chinese path : TAO

The name of the Chinese character “tao” translates as “path”, but the concept of Taoism signifies the true nature of the world.

34 “Hello” singer : ADELE

“Hello” is a 2015 song by English singer Adele that won her three Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance.

43 Lyric poem : EPODE

An epode is a lyric poem made up of couplets in which the first line is long, and the second line much shorter. The form was invented by the Greek poet Archilochus, and was most famously used by the Roman poet Horace.

44 Alternative to high-octane : REGULAR

The difference between a premium and regular gasoline is its octane rating. The octane rating is a measure of the resistance of the gasoline to auto-ignition i.e. its resistance to ignition just by virtue of being compressed in the cylinder. This auto-ignition is undesirable as multiple-cylinder engines are designed so that ignition within each cylinder takes place precisely when the plug sparks, and not before. If ignition occurs before the spark is created, the resulting phenomenon is called “knocking”. We sometimes use the adjective “high-octane” to mean “intense, dynamic, high-powered”

45 Mentor of Anakin and Luke : OBI-WAN

Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of the more beloved of the “Star Wars” characters. Kenobi was portrayed by two fabulous actors in the series of films. As a young man he is played by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor, and as an older man he is played by Alec Guinness.

46 Cantankerous : ORNERY

Back in the early 1800s, the word “ornery” was an informal contraction for the word “ordinary”, and meant commonplace, but with a sense of “poor quality, coarse, ugly” as opposed to “special”. Towards the end of the century, the usage “ornery” had evolved into describing someone who was mean or cantankerous.

49 Source of a scandalous comment : HOT MIC

One of my favorite hot-mic moments took place in 2005, when Paris and London were vying to host the 2012 Olympics. French President Jacques Chirac compared Paris and London in that context while chatting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Chirac said, over a hot mic:

The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease … You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine.

52 The “V” in C.V. : VITAE

A curriculum vitae (“CV” or “vita”) is a listing of someone’s work experience and qualifications, and is used mainly in making a job application. The term “curriculum vitae” can be translated from Latin as “course of life”.

55 Bombeck who said “Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time” : ERMA

Erma Bombeck wrote for newspapers for about 35 years. She produced more than 4,000 witty and humorous columns under the title “At Wit’s End”, with all describing her home life in suburbia.

58 Editor’s “my bad,” maybe : STET

“Stet” is a Latin word meaning “let it stand”. In editorial work, the typesetter is instructed to disregard any change previously marked by writing the word “stet” and then underscoring that change with a line of dots or dashes.

59 Gas company with toy trucks : HESS

Hess Corporation is an oil company based in New York City. In 1964, the company started selling toy trucks with the Hess logo on them, in Hess gas stations. The company has been selling them ever since, bringing out new models just before Christmas. Hess toy trucks have become quite collectible and the old ones can fetch a pretty penny.

61 Sat ___ (GPS in the U.K.) : NAV

A global positioning system (GPS) is known as a satellite navigation system (Sat Nav) in Britain and Ireland.