Category: Zachary David Levy

Bill’s time: 4m 55s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 K, in the NATO alphabet : KILO

The NATO phonetic alphabet is also called the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) phonetic alphabet. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie … X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

16 Lucy of 2000’s “Charlie’s Angels” : LIU

Lucy Liu is an actress from Queens, New York. Liu’s big break came when she was chosen to play the Ling Woo character in “Ally McBeal”. I liked her in the 2000 film “Charlie’s Angels” but as I am no fan of Quentin Tarantino, I did not enjoy the movie “Kill Bill”. I do enjoy one of Liu’s more recent projects in which she plays Joan Watson, one of the two lead characters in the TV crime drama “Elementary”.

“Charlie’s Angels” is a fun action movie from 2000 that is a spin-off from the iconic TV show of the same name from the seventies. The “Angels” in the movie version are Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, with Bill Murray as John Bosley. John Forsythe provides the voice of the unseen “Charlie”, just as he did in the original television show.

17 Vast South American watershed : AMAZON BASIN (giving “Amazon”)

The Amazon River of South America is the world’s largest in terms of volume, and accounts for an amazing one-fifth of the world’s total river flow. Perhaps even more amazing is that there are no bridges across the Amazon! There isn’t even one, mainly because the river flows through tropical rainforest where there are few roads and cities.

Amazon.com is the largest online retailer in the world. It is also the largest Internet company in the world by revenue. The company was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, in his garage in Bellevue, Washington. I’m a big fan of Amazon’s approach to customer service …

23 Swedish furniture giant : IKEA

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.

26 Hand bone : METACARPAL (giving “Meta”)

There are five metacarpal bones in each hand. They make up the framework of the palm and the back of the hand. Each metacarpal is connected to a finger and the wrist. The equivalent bones in the foot are called the metatarsals.

Facebook, Inc. changed its name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in 2021 as part of a rebranding exercise.

28 Large country house in ancient Rome : VILLA

“Villa” is a Latin word describing a country house owned by members of the upper class in ancient Rome. Such a person would live in a “domus” in the city, whereas the rest of the population would live in “insulae”, apartment buildings.

31 ___ of Man : ISLE

The Isle of Man is a large island located in the middle of the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. I used to spend a lot of time there in my youth, and find it a very interesting place indeed. The Isle of Man is classed as a British Crown Dependency and isn’t part of the United Kingdom at all. It is self-governing and has its own parliament called the Tynwald. The Tynwald was created in AD 979 and is arguably the oldest continuously-running parliament in the world. The inhabitants of the island speak English, although they do have their own language called Manx, which is very similar to Irish Gaeilge and Scottish Gaelic. And then there are those Manx cats, the ones without any tails. I’ve seen lots of them, and can attest that they are indeed found all over the island.

32 NBC skit show since 1975, in brief : SNL

NBC first aired a form of “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) in 1975 under the title “NBC’s Saturday Night”. The show was actually created to give Johnny Carson some time off from “The Tonight Show”. Back then “The Tonight Show” had a weekend episode, and Carson convinced NBC to pull the Saturday or Sunday recordings off the air and hold them for subsequent weeknights in which Carson needed a break. NBC turned to Lorne Michaels and asked him to put together a variety show to fill the vacant slot, and he came up with what we now call “Saturday Night Live”.

33 Coconut tree : PALM

The coconut is the fruit of the coconut palm. The term “coconut” comes from “coco” and “nut”, with “coco” being 16th-century Spanish and Portuguese for “head”, and more specifically “grinning face”. The three holes found in the base of a coconut shell might be said to resemble a human face.

37 Kitchen gadget : APPLE PEELER (giving “Apple”)

Apple Computers was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. The company incorporated the following year, but without Wayne. He sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak, for $800 …

41 Clairvoyant’s gift, for short : ESP

We’ve been using the term “clairvoyant” to describe a psychic since the nineteenth century. Prior to that, a clairvoyant was a clear-sighted person. The term comes from French, with “clair” meaning “clear” and “voyant” meaning “seeing”.

42 Pizazz : ELAN

Pizazz (also “pizzazz”) is energy, vitality. There’s a kind of cool thing about the “pizzazz” spelling, namely that it is the only 7-letter word in English that cannot be played in Scrabble. You can get close by using the Z-tile with the two blank tiles to get to three of the required four Zs, but there’s no way to get to the fourth Z.

46 Zilch : NADA

We use the term “zilch” to mean “nothing”. Our current usage evolved in the sixties, before which the term was used to describe “meaningless speech”. There was a comic character called Mr. Zilch in the 1930s in “Ballyhoo” magazine. Mr. Zilch’s name probably came from the American college slang “Joe Zilch” that was used in the early 1900s for “an insignificant person”.

52 Nietzsche’s superior man of the future : UBERMENSCH (giving “Uber”)

Friedrich Nietzsche introduced the concept of the Übermensch in his 1883 book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. He presents the Übermensch as a goal that humanity sets for itself. This idea contrasts with the philosophy of Christian values as the goals of humanity. “Übermensch” has been translated into English as “beyond-man”, “superman”, “overman” and “superior humans”.

57 Document displayed in a professional’s office : DIPLOMA

Our word “diploma” comes from Greek via Latin, with an original meaning of “state or official document”. The Greek word “diploma” described a license or a chart, and originally meant “paper doubled over” from “diploos”, the word for “double”.

61 Many a new venture in Silicon Valley … or a hint to 17-, 26-, 37- and 52-Across : TECH STARTUP

The Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, is better known as “Silicon Valley”. The term “Silicon Valley” dates back to 1971 when it was apparently first used in a weekly trade newspaper called “Electronic News” in articles written by journalist Don Hoefler.

67 Pennsylvania port : ERIE

Erie is a port city in the very north of Pennsylvania, sitting on the southern shore of Lake Erie. The city takes its name from the Erie Native American tribe that resided in the area. Erie is nicknamed the Gem City, a reference to the “sparkling” water of Lake Erie.

69 They work with R.N.s in I.C.U.s : MDS

A registered nurse (RN) might work in an intensive care unit (ICU) alongside a medical doctor (MD).

70 Bobcat, by another name : LYNX

The lynx is a wild cat, of which there are four species. These are:

• The Eurasian lynx: the biggest of the four species.
• The Canada lynx: well-adapted to life in cold environments.
• The Iberian lynx: a native of the Iberian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and the most endangered cat species in the world.
• The bobcat: our North American wildcat, the smallest of the four lynxes

Down

4 Agave-based liquor : MEZCAL

Mezcal (also “mescal”) is a distilled spirit made from the agave plant. Technically, tequila is a type of mezcal that is distilled specifically from the blue agave.

8 Minor snafu : MISHAP

“SNAFU” is an acronym standing for “situation normal: all fouled up” (well, that’s the polite version!). As one might perhaps imagine, the term developed in the US Army, during WWII.

9 Related to a pelvic bone : ILIAC

The ilium (plural “ilia”) is the upper portion of the hipbone.

10 Disco queen Summer : DONNA

Donna Summer is known as “The Queen of Disco”, with great hits like “Love to Love You, Baby”, “I Feel Love” and “Hot Stuff”. In the late sixties and early seventies, LaDonna Gaines (her real name) lived and worked in Germany. There she met and married an Austrian actor called Helmuth Sommer. They divorced not long after the marriage, but Donna kept his family name, just changing the “o” to “u” to give her the stage name of “Donna Summer”.

12 Doing a crossword every morning, for many : RITUAL

Arthur Wynne is generally credited with the invention of what we now know as a crossword puzzle. Wynne was born in Liverpool, England and emigrated to the US when he was 19-years-old. He worked as a journalist and was living in Cedar Grove, New Jersey in 1913 when he introduced a “Word-Cross Puzzle” in his page of puzzles written for the “New York World”. The first book of crossword puzzles was published by Shuster & Shuster, in 1924. The collection of puzzles was a huge hit, and crosswords were elevated to the level of “a craze” in 1924 and 1925.

18 Firefly or ladybug : BEETLE

Some living organisms are able to produce light, a phenomenon known as “bioluminescence”. A famous example on land is the firefly, with its glowing tail.

25 Jazz singer Fitzgerald : ELLA

Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, made her real stage debut at the Apollo Theater in Harlem on Amatuer Night when she was just 17 years old. She had intended to perform a dance routine, but decided to sing instead after seeing a superior dance act. She won the Amatuer Night competition.

29 iOS downloads : APPS

iOS is what Apple now calls its mobile operating system. Previously, it was known as iPhone OS.

34 Swiss or Italian peak : ALP

There are eight Alpine countries:

• Austria
• Slovenia
• France
• Switzerland
• Liechtenstein
• Germany
• Monaco
• Italy

38 Oyster’s gem : PEARL

Pearls form in oysters because of a reaction that is similar to an immune system response in higher animals. The pearl is formed as the oysters lay down successive layers of calcium carbonate around some microscopic foreign body that has penetrated the shell.

46 Lifestyle that eschews clothing : NUDISM

“To eschew”, meaning “to avoid, shun”, comes from the Old French word “eschiver” that means the same thing.

48 Bus stations : DEPOTS

Our term “depot”, meaning “station, warehouse”, comes from the French word “dépôt”. The French term translates into English as “deposit” or “place of deposit”.

49 Aleve alternative : ANACIN

Anacin is a brand of pain reliever that comprises aspirin and caffeine as active ingredients.

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

54 ___ board (need for a manicurist) : 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.

62 Wizard’s curse : HEX

“Hexen” is a German word meaning “to practice witchcraft”. The use of the word “hex” in English started with the Pennsylvania Dutch in the early 1800s.

63 Explosive inits. : TNT

Trinitrotoluene (TNT)