Category: Mike Knobler

Bill’s time: 11m 39s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1. Christmastime purchases : FIRS

Firs are evergreen coniferous trees, with several species being popular as Christmas trees. The most commonly used species during the holidays are the Nordmann fir, noble fir, Fraser fir and balsam fir. We also see a lot of Douglas fir trees at Christmas, but they’re not actually true firs.

5. Vessel that’s 1% full? : YACHT

I’m not sure if I understand this one or not. Maybe the idea is that the elite, the 1%, are the kind to own yachts?

10. American ally in W.W. II : USSR

At the outset of WWII in 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression treaty. When the Germans invaded Poland, the Russians did the same thing a few weeks later, helping to complete the defeat of the Polish military. Soon after, the Soviets invaded Finland, a move that angered France and the UK who deemed that the USSR was entering the war on the side of the Nazis. There followed a trade pact between Germany and the Soviet Union. When Japan, Italy and Germany formally established the Axis Powers, they declared that an attack on any of the three members by any country other than the USSR would be an act of war against all three. In 1940, Hitler made perhaps the worst decision of the war for Nazi Germany, by ordering German military forces to invade Russia. The resulting Eastern Front of WWII saw the 30 million deaths, out of a total of 70 million for the whole conflict.

15. God, to many : ALLAH

The name “Allah” comes from the Arabic “al-” and “ilah”, meaning “the” and “deity”. So “Allah” can be translated as “God”.

16. ___ Minderbinder, lieutenant in “Catch-22” : MILO

Milo Minderbinder is the mess officer in Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel “Catch-22”. In the 1970 film adaptation of the book, the Minderbinder character is played by Jon Voight.

19. Old PalmPilot products, in brief : PDAS

The PalmPilot was one of the most successful PDAs (personal digital assistants) in its day.

20. Sauce for falafels : TAHINI

“Tahini” is the Arabic name for a paste made from ground sesame seeds. Tahini is a major ingredient in hummus, one of my favorite dishes.

Falafel is a ball of ground chickpeas or fava beans that has been deep fried and served in pita bread. I love chickpeas, but falafel is often too dry to me …

21. Lucy’s bandleader husband : DESI

Lucille Ball was at the height of her success while she was married to Desi Arnaz. The couple met in 1940 and not long afterwards eloped. Lucy had several miscarriages before she gave birth to her first child in 1951, just one month before her fortieth birthday. A year and a half later, while “I Love Lucy” was garnering large audiences, she became pregnant with her second child, a pregnancy that was written into the television show’s script. In fact, the day that Lucy gave birth on the show, was the same day that she gave birth in real life.

24. *Crafts site : FUTZ (from “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.

28. Neighbor of a Montanan : ALBERTAN

Alberta (Alta.) is a big province, one about the size of Texas. Alberta is named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Princess Louise also donated her name to Lake Louise, the large glacial lake in the province, now within the bounds of Banff National Park.

32. Soft ball material : NERF

Nerf is soft material used in a whole series of toys designed for “safe” play indoors. The Nerf product is used to make darts, balls and ammunition for toy guns. “NERF” is an acronym, standing for Non-Expanding Recreational Foam.

33. Short, for short : LI’L

“Li’l” is a little, abbreviated, form of “little”.

34. Poet who wrote “Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity” : ELIOT

T. S. Eliot was born in New England but grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Much of Eliot’s college education was at Oxford, and clearly he became comfortable with life in England. In 1927 he became a British citizen and lived the rest of life in the UK.

39. 1847 novel partly set on a whaler : OMOO

Herman Melville mined his own experiences when writing his novels. Melville sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1841 on a whaler heading into the Pacific Ocean (a source for “Moby-Dick”). Melville ended up deserting his ship 18 months later and lived with natives on a South Pacific Island for three weeks (a source for “Typee”). He picked up another whaler and headed for Hawaii, where he joined the crew of a US navy frigate that was bound for Boston (a source for “Omoo”).

41. Western New York Iroquois : ERIES

The Erie people lived on lands south of Lake Erie, in parts of the modern-day US states of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Erie were sometimes referred to as the Cat Nation, a reference to the mountain lions that were ever-present in the area that they lived. The name “Erie” is a shortened form of “Erielhonan” meaning “long tail”, possibly a further reference to the mountain lion or cat, which was possibly used as a totem. The Erie people gave their name to the Great Lake.

48. Windy City rail org. : CTA

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

It seems that the derivation of Chicago’s nickname as the “Windy City” isn’t as obvious as I would have thought. There are two viable theories. First that the weather can be breezy, with wind blowing in off Lake Michigan. The effect of the wind is exaggerated by the grid-layout adopted by city planners after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The second theory is that “windy” means “being full of bluster”. Sportswriters from the rival city of Cincinnati were fond of calling Chicago supporters “windy” in the 1860s and 1870s, meaning that they were full of hot air in their claims that the Chicago White Stockings were superior to the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

51. Chunnel train : EUROSTAR

The English Channel is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, the narrow part that separates the south of England from northern France. The French call the same body of water “La Manche”, which translates literally as “the sleeve”. At its narrowest point the Channel is just over 20 miles wide, and it indeed possible to see France from England and vice versa. Nowadays of course there is a tunnel under the channel making travel extremely convenient. When I was living and working in Europe, with the help of the Channel Tunnel, one day I had a breakfast meeting in Brussels, a lunch meeting in London, and a dinner meeting in Paris. That said, it’s a lot more fun sitting here blogging about the crossword …

56. *Resistance units : PINT (from “OHMS”)

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied, (V=IR) a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

57. *Shakespearean prince : IBM (from “HAL”)

“Prince Hal” is a term used for Prince Henry, the son of the title character in Shakespeare’s plays “Henry IV, Part 1” and “Henry IV, Part 2”. Prince Hal then becomes king in Shakespeare’s “Henry V”.

60. Short, for one : MARTIN

Martin Short’s father emigrated to Canada as a refugee from Ireland during the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence. In fact, I worked closely with one of Martin’s cousins back in Ireland. Martin Short started out his career as a comedian with “SCTV” before moving to “Saturday Night Live” where he became one of the show’s most celebrated stars. Back in 1972 Short appeared in a production of “Godspell” alongside Gilda Radner. Short and Radner dated for a while, then Short started going out with Radner’s understudy, Nancy Dolman. Dolman and Short married in 1980. Any of you that follow British politics will know of Clare Short, a minister in the cabinet of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Clare and Martin are first cousins.

64. Opposite of plummet : SOAR

To plummet is to plunge downwards. The verb comes from the noun “plummet”, which is an alternative name for a plumb bob. A plumb bob is a weight that is suspended from a string so as to provide a vertical reference line.

69. Woman’s name that sounds like two letters of the alphabet : ELSIE

“Elsie” sounds like L-C.

71. Band with the top 10 hits “Lady” and “Babe” : STYX

Styx is a band that formed in Chicago in 1972. Their biggest hit was “Babe” from 1979, and “Mr. Roboto” from 1983.

72. Participated in a bee : SEWED

Back in 18th-century America, when neighbors would gather to work for the benefit of one of their group, such a meeting was called a bee. The name “bee” was an allusion to the social nature of the insect. In modern parlance, a further element of entertainment and pleasure has been introduced, for example in a quilting bee, or even a spelling bee.

Down

5. First N.F.L. player on the cover of Sports Illustrated : YA TITTLE

Y. A. Tittle is a former professional football player, a quarterback. There’s a famous photograph of Tittle taking during a game in 1964 in which he is kneeling without his helmet, bloodied after a tackle. The image is regarded as iconic in the world of sports photography as it is one of the first pictures to focus on a player’s reaction as opposed to focusing on just action.

6. Wine label abbr. : ALC

Alcohol (alc.)

8. He was accompanied by the guard dog Cerberus : HADES

Hades was the god of the underworld to the ancient Greeks. Over time, Hades gave his name to the underworld itself, the place where the dead reside. The term “Hades” was also adopted into the Christian tradition, as an alternative name for hell. But, the concept of hell in Christianity is more akin to the Greek “Tartarus”, which is a dark and gloomy dungeon located in Hades, a place of suffering and torment.

Cerberus is a dog with three heads that appears in both Greek and Roman mythology. Cerberus had the job of guarding the gates of Hades and preventing those who had crossed the River Styx from ever escaping. A sop is a piece of food that has been dipped in some liquid, as one might sop a piece of bread in soup. There is an idiomatic expression, “to give a sop to Cerberus”, which means to give someone a bribe, or pay someone off. The idea is that if one could bribe Cerberus, give him a sop to eat, then he would let you pass and escape from Hades.

9. Biggest-selling newspaper in England : THE SUN

The tabloid newspaper “The Sun” has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in Britain. “The Sun” was the paper that introduced the infamous “Page 3”, a page almost completely taken up with a photo of a topless model. The feature was finally pulled in 2015, after 40 years.

10. First, second or third person : UMP

Back in the 15th century, “an umpire” was referred to as “a noumpere”, which was misheard and hence causing the dropping of the initial letter N. The term “noumpere” came from Old French “nonper” meaning “not even, odd number”. The idea was that the original umpire was a third person called on to arbitrate between two, providing that “odd number” needed to decide the dispute.

12. Major European ethnic group : SLAVS

The Slavic peoples are in the majority in communities covering over half of Europe. This large ethnic group is traditionally broken down into three smaller groups:

• the West Slavic (including Czechs and Poles)
• the East Slavic (including Russians and Ukrainians)
• the South Slavic (including Bulgarians and Serbs)

13. What Moses supposes his toeses are, in an old verse : ROSES

Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
but Moses supposes erroneously.
For Moses he knowses his toeses aren’t roses
as Moses supposes his toeses to be.

22. Rapper with the 1999 album “The Seventh Deadly Sin” : ICE-T

Rapper Ice-T must be sick of having his name come up as an answer in crossword puzzles (I know I am!). Ice-T has been interested in acting for decades and made his film debut in the 1984 movie about breakdancing called “Breakin’”. He has also played Detective Fin Tutuola in the TV show “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” since the year 2000.

25. Where Ali won his 1974 world heavyweight title : ZAIRE

The African nation once called Zaire is a neighbor of Rwanda. The genocide and war in Rwanda spilled over into Zaire in 1996, with the conflict escalating into what is now called the First Congo War. As part of the war’s fallout there was a regime change, and in 1997 Zaire became the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Rumble in the Jungle was the celebrated 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman that took place in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The fight was set in Zaire because of financial arrangements between promoter Don King and Zaire’s President Mobutu Seko. Ali coined the term “Rope-a-dope” to describe his incredibly successful strategy in the contest. From the second round onwards, Ali adopted a protected stance on the ropes letting Foreman pound him with blows to the body and head, with Ali using his arms to dissipate the power of the punches. He kept this up until the eighth round, and then opened up and downed the exhausted Foreman with a left-right combination. I hate boxing but I have to say, that was an fascinating fight …

28. Surname of three baseball brothers : ALOU

Jesus Alou played Major League Baseball, as did his brothers Matty and Felipe, and as does Felipe’s son Moises.

30. Vodka and tomato juice cocktail : BLOODY MARY

The Bloody Mary is one of my favorite cocktails, perhaps because it seems to taste so differently depending on who makes it. It has numerous ingredients above and beyond the requisite vodka and tomato juice, and has been described as “the world’s most complex cocktail”.

31. Like la nuit : NOIRE

In French, “la nuit” (the night) might be described as “noire” (dark, black).

35. Prepare to drive : TEE UP

That would be golf.

37. Greek salad ingredient : FETA

Feta is a Greek cheese made from sheep’s milk, or a mixture of sheep’s and goat’s milk. The cheese is salted and cured in a brine solution for several months before it is eaten.

40. Margarine : OLEO

Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France announced a competition to develop a substitute for butter, a substitute that would be more accessible to the lower classes and more practical for the armed forces. A French chemist called Hippolyte Mege-Mouries came up with something he called oleomargarine in 1869, which was eventually manufactured under the trade name “margarine”. The name “oleomargarine” also gives us our generic term “oleo”.

50. Old Beatles rival, with “the” : STONES

Even though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been the driving force behind the Rolling Stones for decades, they didn’t start the group. The band was the idea of guitarist and harmonica player Brian Jones, and it was he who invited Richards and Jagger to join, as well as Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts to make an original lineup of six band members. Jones called the band “Rollin’ Stone” back then in 1962, named for the song by Muddy Waters. Jones was the leader, manager and decision maker for the first few years until songs written by Richards and Jagger became hits and he started to lose artistic control. In 1967, Jones was arrested for drug possession, and again in 1968. When his trouble with the law prevented him from getting a US work visa, Jones wasn’t able to accompany the Stones on a 1969 US tour. That was the last straw, it seems, and Jones and the Stones parted company. Famously, one month later, Jones was found dead, at the bottom of his swimming pool.

52. 17-time Best Actress nominee : STREEP

Meryl Streep has had more nominations for an Academy Award than any other actor, which is both a tribute to her talent and the respect she has earned in the industry. I am not a huge fan of her earlier works but some of her recent movies are now on my list of all-time favorites. I recommend “Mamma Mia!” (you’ll either love it or hate it!), “Julie & Julia”, “It’s Complicated” and ”Hope Springs”.

55. Many an ancient tombstone : STELE

Stelae (singular “stele” or “stela”) were used all over the world, sometimes as territorial markers and sometimes to commemorate military victories. In later times stelae were commonly erected as commemorative markers in graveyards or other religious sites.

59. Annual Austin media event, informally : SXSW

South by Southwest, also known as “SXSW”, is an annual festival that has been taking place in Austin, Texas since 1987. SXSW is a melded event, combining a music festival, a film festival and an interactive festival.