Category: Peter Koetters

96 Shelley’s “___ Skylark” : TO A

“To a Skylark” is an 1820 poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The opening line “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit” is the inspiration used by Noël Coward for the title of his famous comic play called “Blithe Spirit”.

100 One with two years to go, informally : SOPH

The term “sophomore” has been used for a student in the second year of university since the 1680’s. The original meaning of the word was “arguer”. The term has Greek roots, from two Greek words that have been artificially combined in English. The Greek “sophos” means “wise”, and “moros” means “foolish”.

102 270° from sur : ESTE

The cardinal directions in Spanish are “norte” (north), “este” (east), “sur” (south) and “oeste” (west).

105 Hide ___ hair : NOR

The phrase “neither hide nor hair” means “nothing whatsoever”. This peculiarly American phrase arose in the mid 1800s, and paradoxically may have its origins in a much older English expression that means exactly the opposite. The older “in hide and hair” meant “wholly, entirely”.

108 Soldier’s helmet, in old slang : TIN HAT

The helmet worn by British and American soldiers for much of WWI was known colloquially as a “tin hat”, and more formally as a “Brodie helmet”. Inventor John Leopold Brodie patented the design in 1915 in London. The helmet was pressed from a single sheet of steel, lined with leather and included a leather chin strap.

111 Downhearted : IN A FUNK

Funk is ill humor. The term “funk” dates back to the mid-1700s, and probably came from Scottish and northern English.

117 Lab dropper : PIPETTE

A pipette (also “pipet”) is a tool used in a lab to transport an accurately measured volume of liquid. Back in my day, we would suck up the liquid into the pipette by applying our mouths to the top of the instrument. This could be quite dangerous, as one ends up with a mouthful of something unsavory if one lifts the top of the pipette out of the liquid too soon. Nowadays, things are much safer.

118 Character with character : EMOJI

An emoji is a character found on many cell phones that is much like an emoticon, but is more elaborate. The use of emojis originated in 1997 on mobile phones in Japan, and within a few years spread around the world. “Emoji” is a Japanese word meaning “picture word”.

120 Bagel topper : SCHMEAR

The word “schmear” comes from the Yiddish word “shmir” meaning “spread”. The phrase “the whole schmear” is a relatively recent one, dating back to around 1969 and coming from the world of business.

122 Seventh heaven : ECSTASY

In cosmology associated with some religious traditions, the universe is said to be made up of Seven Heavens. The highest of these is the “seventh heaven”.

Down

3 Duplicating machine : MIMEOGRAPH

A mimeograph (also “mimeo”) is a cheap printing press that applies ink to paper through a stencil wrapped around a rotating drum. Mimeographs are still around, but have largely been replaced by offset printers and photocopiers.

7 Bone attached to the patellar tendon : TIBIA

The tibia is the shinbone, and is the larger of the two bones right below the knee. It is the strongest weight-bearing bone in the human body. “Tibia” is the Roman name for a Greek flute and it is thought that the shinbone was given the same name because flutes were often fashioned out of the shinbones of animals.

The patella is the kneecap. The bone’s Latin name “patella” is a diminutive form of “patina”, the word for “pan”. The idea is that the kneecap is pan-shaped.

9 Poet Federico García ___ : LORCA

Federico García Lorca was a Spanish poet and dramatist. He is as famous for his poems and his plays as he is for the circumstances of his death. Although it has never been irrefutably proven, many believe that Lorca was shot and killed while in the custody of Nationalist militia, one month after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

11 Whisper from Don Juan : TE AMO

“I love you” translates into “te amo” in Spanish, “Ich liebe dich” in German, and “je t’aime” in French.

Don Juan is a flighty character who has been featured by a number of authors, poets and composers, including Molière, Byron, and Mozart. In the underlying legend, Don Juan ends up talking to the statue of the dead father of one of his conquests. He dines with the ghost of the dead man and when shaking the hand of the ghost he is dragged away to hell. We now use the term “Don Juan” to describe any womanizer or ladies’ man.

14 Verb in some tautologies : ARE

“Tautology” is one of my favorite words. It describes needless repetition, the redundant use of words to convey the same message, perhaps in the same sentence.

16 Che Guevara wore one : BERET

“Guerrillero Heroico” is the name of an iconic photograph taken by Alberto Korda of the revolutionary Che Guevara. With the title translating into English as “Heroic Guerrilla Fighter”, the image shows Guevara in a dark beret, with an “implacable” stare. Versions of this photo have been used so many times in tattoos, posters, paintings, etc. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has determined that “Guerrillero Heroico” has been reproduced more than any other image in the history of photography.

17 “Easy on Me” singer : ADELE

“Easy on Me” is a 2021 song co-written and recorded by Adele. In the song, Adele is directly addressing her 9-year-old son, asking him to be “easy on” her following her divorce from his father.

19 Activist Chavez : CESAR

César Chávez was a Mexican-American farm worker, and co-founder of the union today known as the United Farm Workers. Chávez was born in Yuma, Arizona, but moved to California as a child with his family. He never attended high school, dropping out to become a full-time migrant farm worker. In 1944, at 17 years of age, he joined the US Navy and served for two years. 5-6 years after returning from the military, back working as a farm laborer, Chávez became politically active and rose to national attention as an articulate union leader during some high profile strikes. He is remembered annually here in California on his birthday, March 31, which is a state holiday.

28 Bygone tape type : VHS

The VHS video standard is more fully referred to as the Video Home System. VHS was one of many standards touted by various manufacturers in the seventies. The biggest rival to VHS was Betamax, but we all knew which of the two standards won the final round in that fight.

32 Italian dipping sauce : MARINARA

Italians use the term “marinara” not for a sauce, but in the name of a recipe that includes a tomato-based sauce. For example, “spaghetti alla marinara” would be a spaghetti dish, served “mariner’s style”. The tomato sauce that we call “marinara” is called “salsa di pomodoro” in Italy.

34 Netflix series starring the Fab Five : QUEER EYE

“Queer Eye” is a reality TV show that was launched in 2003 as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. Each episode features a panel of gay professional experts in the fields of fashion and design giving a makeover to a straight man. The show was given a new life in 2018 when it was launched on Netflix as “Queer Eye” with a new “Fab Five” cast.

36 Legacy of 72-Down, seven of which appear among this puzzle’s answers and one more suggested by the black squares in the middle of the grid : INVENTIONS
(72D With [circled letters reading clockwise], American icon born 2/11/1847 : THOMAS ALVA [EDISON])

Thomas Alva Edison (TAE) was a very successful inventor. He held over a thousand US patents in his name. Included in the list of Edison’s inventions is the phonograph, the movie camera and the long-lasting light bulb. He passed away in 1931. There is a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum that supposedly holds Edison’s last breath. Ford convinced Thomas’s son Charles to seal up a tube of air in the room just after the inventor died, as a memento.

39 Actress Sorvino : MIRA

Mira Sorvino is an American actress, and a winner of an Oscar for her supporting role in the 1995 Woody Allen movie “Mighty Aphrodite”. Sorvino also played a title role opposite Lisa Kudrow in the very forgettable “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion”.

44 When the original Big Five ruled Hollywood : STUDIO ERA

During the Golden Age of Cinema (roughly, the thirties and forties), the “Big Five” Hollywood studios were:

• Lowe’s/MGM
• Paramount
• Fox (later “20th Century Fox”)
• Warner Bros.
• RKO

45 Magical objects : TALISMANS

A talisman is an object used as a charm to protect against evil and attract good fortune.

46 Union members : STATES

The first known use of the phrase “United States of America” is in a letter dated January 2nd, 1776 from Irish-American Stephen Moylan, who was serving as acting secretary to General George Washington. Writing to Washington’s aide-de-camp Colonel Joseph Reed, Moylan stated:

I should like vastly to go with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain [to seek foreign assistance for the cause].

53 Relative of Ltd. : INC

A company that has incorporated uses the abbreviation “Inc.” after its name. By incorporating, a company forms a corporation, which is a legal entity that has legal rights similar to those of an individual. For example, a corporation can sue another corporation or individual. However, a corporation does not have all the rights of citizens. A corporation does not have the Fifth Amendment right of protections against self-incrimination, for example. It is perhaps understandable that the concept of “corporations as persons” is a frequent subject for debate.

In Britain and Ireland, the most common type of business (my perception anyway) is one that has private shareholders whose liability is limited to the value of their investment. Such a company is known as a private limited company, and has the abbreviation “Ltd.” after the name. If the shares are publicly traded, then the company is a public limited company, and has the letters “plc” after the name.

64 Bygone tape dispenser : STOCK TICKER

Stock price information used to be transmitted over telegraph lines by “stock tickers” that produced the famous “ticker tape”, a paper tape with stock symbols and prices printed on it. The “ticker” got its name from the noise it created when it was printing. Even though ticker tape is no longer used, the concept lives on in the scrolling electronic tickers that stream across the bottom of a television screen when there’s a financial program airing.

68 Org. that sets worker exposure limits : OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

69 Object in the classic painting “His Master’s Voice” : PHONOGRAPH

Famously, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, which was a device that recorded sound onto wax phonograph cylinders. The flat disc phonograph record was developed by Emile Berliner, a German-born American inventor. Berliner called his flat disc record player a “gramophone”, and started selling Berliner Gramophone records in 1894.

The RCA logo features a dog named Nipper. Nipper was a real dog from England whose owner, Francis Barraud, made a painting of Nipper listening to a gramophone. Barraud then approached several gramophone manufacturers in the hope they would be interested in using the image for advertising. Nipper’s likeness was indeed picked up, and around that time it was Barraud himself who came up with the slogan “His Master’s Voice”.

72 With [circled letters reading clockwise], American icon born 2/11/1847 : THOMAS ALVA [EDISON]

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb as such. What he came up with was a long-lasting bulb, one that enabled the development of electric lighting as a viable alternative to gas- and oil-based illumination. Key to Edison’s success was the use of a carbon filament.

74 Primatologist Fossey : DIAN

Dian Fossey carried out her famous study of gorilla populations in the mountain forests of Rwanda. She wrote a 1983 autobiographical account of her work titled “Gorillas in the Mist”, which served as a basis for a 1988 film of the same name starring Sigourney Weaver as Fossey. Sadly, Fossey was found dead in her cabin in Rwanda in 1986, murdered in her bedroom, her skull split open by a machete. The crime was never solved.

77 You can trip on it in the desert : PEYOTE

The peyote is a small, spineless cactus that is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico. When ingested, the peyote is known to have a psychoactive effect. One of the psychoactive alkaloids in peyote is mescaline, a recreational drug of choice for the likes of Aldous Huxley and Pablo Picasso.

88 Novelist Brown : DAN

Dan Brown is a somewhat controversial author who is best known for his 2003 novel “The Da Vinci Code”. I’ve read all of Brown’s books and must say that his early ones are awful (“Digital Fortress” and “Deception Point”). Having said that, I loved “Angels and Demons”, and found “The Da Vinci Code” to be a great read.

95 Egyptian god of death and rebirth : OSIRIS

Osiris was the Egyptian god of the underworld. He was the son of Geb the Earth god, and Nut the sky goddess. His wife Isis was also his sister. Osiris was killed and mutilated by Set, his own brother. Isis reassembled Osiris and revived him, just long enough that they could conceive their son Horus.

98 Kind of bond : IONIC

An ionic bond is formed between two oppositely-charged ions. A common example is the bond between positively-charged sodium atoms and negatively-charged chlorine atoms to form table salt (NaCl). A covalent bond, on the other hand, is formed when two atoms share electrons. Atoms sharing electrons tend to be stable, so they prefer to stay together rather than apart.

101 Chaos : HAVOC

Havoc is great damage or destruction. The term “havoc” comes from the Anglo-French phrase “crier havok”, which was an order given in the late 1500s to soldiers, instructing them to seize plunder.

104 Board of a cosmetics company? : EMERY

Emery is a very hard type of rock that is crushed for use as an abrasive. Emery paper is made by gluing small particles of emery to paper. Emery boards are just emery paper with a cardboard backing. And emery boards are primarily used for filing nails.

107 Cougar : PUMA

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.

108 Hideki ___, W.W. II prime minister : TOJO

Hideki Tojo was a general and the Prime Minister of Japan during most of WWII. Although the attack on Pearl Harbor was planned before he took office, Tojo was the Prime Minister who made the decision to declare war on the US. After Japan surrendered, General MacArthur ordered Tojo’s arrest. Tojo attempted to commit suicide by shooting himself in the heart, but missed. There is a story that while recovering, Tojo was given a set of replacement dentures that were made by an American dentist. Apparently the dentist drilled the message “Remember Pearl Harbor” into the teeth in Morse code. Tojo was hanged for war crimes in 1948.

109 P.I.s, e.g. : TECS

“Tec” is a slang term meaning “private detective” or “private investigator” (PI).