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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 *Nonrenewable energy source … and the start of an eight-step word ladder : COAL

Coal forms from peat that is subject to heat and pressure deep in the ground over millions of years. The peat is dead plant matter from former wetlands that we now refer to as “coal forests”.

10 Singer Lambert : ADAM

Singer Adam Lambert is one of the “successes” to come out of the “American Idol” machine. After hitting the big times, Lambert started a collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, performing as Queen + Adam Lambert.

14 British princess who was an Olympic equestrian : ANNE

Anne, Princess Royal was born in 1950 and is the only daughter of British Queen Elizabeth II. Princess Anne has been in the public spotlight for many things, including her success as an equestrian. Princess Anne was the first member of the British Royal Family to have competed in an Olympic Games. Her daughter Zara Phillips continued the tradition and competed as a member of the British equestrian team in the 2012 Olympic Games. Zara’s medal was presented to her by her own mother, Princess Anne.

15 ___ Hart, “Chicago” role : ROXIE

The wonderful 1975 musical “Chicago” is based on a 1926 play of the same name written by a news reporter called Maurine Dallas Watkins. Watkins had been assigned to cover the murder trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the “Chicago Tribune”, and used the story that unfolded as the basis for her play. Annan became the character Roxie Hart, and Gaertner became Velma Kelly. I’ve only ever seen the movie version of “Chicago” and never a live performance …

16 Kind of bean mentioned in “The Silence of the Lambs” : FAVA

The fava bean is also known as the broad bean. “Broad bean” is used “broadly” (pun!) in the UK, whereas “fava bean” is common in the US. “Fava” is the Italian name for the broad bean.

“The Silence of the Lambs” is a 1991 psychological drama based on a novel of the same name by Thomas Harris. Jodie Foster plays FBI trainee Clarice Starling, and Anthony Hopkins plays the creepy cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter. “The Silence of the Lambs” swept the Big Five Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay) for that year, being only the third movie ever to do so. The other two so honored were “It Happened One Night” (1934) and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975).

20 Baroque ___ (1600-1750) : ERA

The Baroque Era flourished from the early 1600s to the 1750s, following the Renaissance. The Baroque style of architecture, music, painting and other arts is very ornamented. The list of Baroque artists includes Rembrandt, Rubens and Caravaggio. The list of composers associated with the Baroque style includes Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.

23 Traditional head garments for Sikh men : TURBANS

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.

25 Most clichéd : TRITEST

“Cliché” is a word that comes from the world of printing. In the days when type was added as individual letters into a printing plate, for efficiency some oft-used phrases and words were created as one single slug of metal. The word “cliché” was used for such a grouping of letters. It’s easy to see how the same word would become a term to describe any overused phrase. Supposedly, “cliché” comes from French, from the verb “clicher” meaning “to click”. The idea is that when a matrix of letters was dropped in molten metal to make a cliché, it made a clicking sound.

29 Slowpoke in a shell : SNAIL

Back in the early 1800s, a “poke” was a device attached to domestic animals such as pigs or sheep to keep them from escaping their enclosures. The poke was like a yoke with a pole, and slowed the animal down, hence the term “slowpoke”.

31 Double-helix material : DNA

Francis Crick and James Watson discovered that DNA had a double-helix, chain-like structure, and published their results in Cambridge in 1953. To this day the discovery is mired in controversy, as some crucial results collected by fellow researcher Rosalind Franklin were used without her permission or even knowledge. In 1962, along with molecular biologist Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

32 ___ non grata (unwelcome sort) : PERSONA

A persona non grata (plural “personae non gratae”) is someone who is not welcome. The phrase is Latin for “an unacceptable person”. The opposite phrase is “persona grata”, meaning “acceptable person”.

36 One symptom of climate change : GLOBAL WARMING

The global warming that our planet is experiencing over the past few decades is primarily the result of humans burning fossil fuels. This combustion produces dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are those which absorb some of the heat radiated by Earth from sunlight. The excessive levels of greenhouse gases experienced today are trapping more and more heat in the lower atmosphere, giving rise to global warming.

40 Big name in TV ratings : NIELSEN

Arthur Nielsen founded his Nielsen Media Research company to track brand advertising. He quickly moved into market analysis of radio audiences in the thirties, and today the company is famous for tracking television audiences. I remember watching the last episode of the TV series “Becker”, in which Ted Danson played a doctor. Given that the show had been ordered off the air due to declining viewership, there’s a great line in the last episode when Becker asks for the chart of a patient called “Nielsen”. He looks at the lab results and announces “I don’t know what everyone is talking about … these numbers aren’t so bad!” Great stuff …

41 ___ Dhabi : ABU

Abu Dhabi is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

43 Puccini opera about an opera singer : TOSCA

Unlike so many operas, Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” was a big hit right from day one, when it was first performed in 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Currently, “Tosca” is the eighth-most performed opera in America.

47 Spilling the tea, so to speak : DISHING

To dish the dirt is to talk about someone or something without regard to veracity. The phrase comes from “dish” (in the sense of dishing out food) and “dirt” (in the sense of negative information). To be dishy is to be given to gossip.

54 Carbon-based energy source : FOSSIL FUEL

Fossil fuels are refined forms of the complex mixture of hydrocarbons found in pockets under the surface of the Earth. Strictly speaking, the term “petroleum” describes the mixture in all its forms: liquid, gaseous and solid. The liquid form is “crude oil”, the gaseous form is “natural gas” and the solid form is “bitumen”. In common usage, however, crude oil is often referred to as “petroleum”.

58 Diddly-squat : NADA

“Squat” is a slang term for “nothing”. “Squat” and the variant “Jack squat”, probably have a distasteful derivation that is related to a bodily function.

61 Lena of “Chocolat” : OLIN

Lena Olin is a Swedish actress, and someone who has acting in her blood. Her mother was the actress Britta Holmberg and her father the actor and director Stig Olin. Olin had a very successful career in Sweden, often working with the great Ingmar Bergman. Olin’s breakthrough international and English-speaking role was playing opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” released in 1988. Way back in 1974, Miss Olin was crowned Miss Scandinavia in a beauty pageant for Nordic women held in Helsinki, Finland. Olin’s most famous performance was in “Chocolat” released in 2000, and then she won an Emmy in 2003 for Best Supporting Actress in the TV show “Alias”.

The movie “Chocolat”, released in 2000, is a big-screen adaption of the novel of the same name by Joanne Harris. “Chocolat” tells the story of a young mother with a six-year-old daughter who opens up a chocolate shop in a French village. The mother is played by the talented Juliette Binoche.

Down

1 These manuscript marks: ^^^ : CARETS

The character known as a caret (^) was originally a proofreading mark, one used to indicate where a punctuation mark was to be inserted. “Caret” is Latin for “it lacks”.

3 Capital of Turkey : ANKARA

Ankara is the second largest city in Turkey, after Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). After WWI, the Ottoman Empire had been defeated and the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. The victors planned to break up most of Turkey, leaving native Turks just part of their country for their own. In the inevitable War of Independence that followed, the Turkish Nationalists used Ankara as their base. When the Nationalists emerged victorious, they declared Ankara the new capital of Turkey.

4 “Abbott Elementary” actress Sheryl ___ Ralph : LEE

Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph garnered a lot of attention when she originated the role of Deena Jones in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway. Some years later, she won an Emmy for portraying school teacher Barbara Howare in the sitcom “Abbot Elementary”.

“Abbott Elementary” is a sitcom in the mockumentary genre. The show was created by and stars Quinta Brunson as a cup-half-full second-grade teacher in a Philadelphia public school. The premise of “Abbott Elementary” is that a film crew is making a documentary about the lives of teachers working in underfunded schools.

5 Element whose name anagrams to GROAN : ARGON

The chemical element argon has the symbol Ar. It is a noble gas, and so by definition is relatively nonreactive. The name “argon” comes from the Greek word for “lazy, inactive”. There’s a lot of argon around, as it is the third-most abundant gas in our atmosphere.

6 Pamplona bulls : TOROS

Pamplona, Spain is famous for its San Fermin festival held in July every year, the highlight of which is the Running of the Bulls. Every year, 200-300 people are injured in the bull run, and 15 people have been killed since 1910. If you get to Pamplona two days before the Running of the Bulls, you can see the animal-rights protest event known as the Running of the Nudes. The protesters are as naked as the bulls …

7 Skater’s jump with one and a half turns : AXEL

An axel is a forward take-off jump in figure skating. The maneuver was first performed by Norwegian Axel Paulsen at the 1882 World Figure Skating championships.

9 Cariou who played Sweeney Todd : LEN

Len Cariou is a Canadian actor who is famous for his Broadway portrayal of “Sweeney Todd”. I most recognize Cariou from supporting roles in “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Thirteen Days”, two great movies.

12 Chicago’s Michigan ___: Abbr. : AVE

Chicago’s Michigan Avenue is home to many of the city’s landmarks, including the Chicago Water Tower, the Art Institute of Chicago, Millenium Park and the Magnificent Mile shopping district.

19 Dr. on TV : PHIL

Dr. Phil (McGraw) met Oprah Winfrey when he was hired to work with her as a legal consultant during the Amarillo Texas beef trial (when the industry sued Oprah for libel over “Mad Cow Disease” statements). Oprah was impressed with Dr. Phil, and invited him onto her show. We haven’t stopped seeing him since …

21 “The Alienist” author Carr : CALEB

“The Alienist” is a 1994 crime novel by Caleb Carr that is set in New York City at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist who works with Police Commissioner and future US president Theodore Roosevelt. The novel was adapted into a 10-part TV series that first aired on TNT in early 2018.

27 Make out, in Britspeak : SNOG

“Snogging” is British slang of unknown origin that dates back to the end of WWII. The term is used for “kissing and cuddling”, what we call “making out” over here in the US.

28 Smidgen : TAD

Our word “smidgen” (sometimes shortened to “smidge”) is used to describe a small amount. The term might come from the Scots word “smitch” that means the same thing or “a small insignificant person”.

36 Its name translates as “waterless place” in Mongolian : GOBI

The Gobi, the large desert in Asia, lies in northern China and southern Mongolia. It is growing at an alarming rate, particularly towards the south. This “desertification” is caused by increased human activity. The Chinese government is trying to halt the desert’s forward progress by planting great swaths of new forest, the so-called “Green Wall of China”. The name “Gobi” is Mongolian for “waterless place, semidesert”.

42 Done, in Dijon : FINI

Dijon is a city in eastern France in the Burgundy region. Dijon is famous for its mustard, a particularly strong variation of the condiment. The European Union doesn’t protect the name “Dijon” so anyone can use it on a label. That seems fair enough to me, given that 90% of the mustard made in and around Dijon is produced using mustard seed imported from Canada!

44 Mogadishu resident : SOMALI

Mogadishu is a major port city on the west coast of Africa, and is the capital of Somalia. The city is known locally as “Xamar”.

48 “S.N.L.” V.I.P.s : HOSTS

The youngest person to host “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) was Drew Barrymore, at age 7 in 1982. The oldest host was Betty White, at 88 in 2010.
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50 Mosaic decoration : INLAY

In the Middle Ages, mosaics were often dedicated to the Muses. The term “mosaic” translates as “of the Muses”.

56 “Chocolate” breed, for short : LAB

The Labrador (Lab) breed of dog has been around at least since 1814, and the chocolate Labrador appeared over a century later in the 1930s. The name “Labrador Retriever” is simply a reference to the breed’s origin and behavior. Labs originally “retrieved” from the “Labrador Sea”.

57 Rock’s ___ Fighters : FOO

Foo Fighters are described as an alternative rock band, one formed in 1994 by the drummer from Nirvana, Dave Grohl. The term “foo fighters” originally applied to unidentified flying objects reported by allied airmen during WWII. Spooky …