Tag: Available for rental to Brits crossword clue

Bill’s time: 20m 28s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Large dog breed : MASTIFF

There are a number of mastiff breeds of dog, all of which are noted for their large size. Even though modern mastiffs generally have an easy temperament, over the centuries the mastiff breeds have been used as guard dogs and war dogs, even back to ancient Roman times.

8 U.K. movie award : BAFTA

The BAFTA awards are presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). The BAFTAs are the UK equivalent of the US’s Oscar and Emmy awards, all rolled into one.

18 Unit equivalent to 4.184 joules : CALORIE

I wish we’d stop using the term “calorie”, because it is so confusing. In terms of physics, a calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree celsius (at one atmosphere of pressure). The so-called “food calorie” is one thousand times as large, as it is defined in terms of kilograms instead of grams. In attempts to differentiate between these two definitions, the former is sometimes referred to as the “small calorie” and is given the symbol “cal”. The latter is referred to as the “large calorie” and given the symbol “Cal”, with a capital C. If only we’d use the SI system of units, we’d be thinking in just joules, instead of large and small and food calories.

19 Awards for ad campaigns : CLIOS

The Clio Awards are the Oscars of the advertising world and are named after Clio, the Greek Muse of History. Clio was also the recorder of great deeds, the proclaimer and celebrator of great accomplishments and a source of inspiration and genius. The Clio Awards were first presented in 1959.

20 Thawing : DETENTE

“Détente” is a French word meaning “loosening, reduction in tension” and in general it is used to describe the easing of strained relations in a political situation. In particular, the policy of détente came to be associated with the improved relations between the US and the Soviet Union in the seventies.

22 Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replaced one by one : SHIP OF THESEUS

Ancient philosophers developed the thought experiment known as “The Ship of Theseus”. Legend has it that ancient Athenians transported the Ship of Theseus to Delos, where centuries of maintenance required the replacement of all the individual parts of the ship. Given that all the parts were replaced, one-by-one, did it remain the same ship?

24 Person living between Liberia and Ghana : IVORIAN

The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire is located in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea. The country is often referred to in English as “the Ivory Coast”, the direct translation from the French. The official language of the country is French, as for many years it was a French colony.

28 Canada’s House of Commons has 338 of them, in brief : MPS

Member of Parliament (MP)

29 “Nothing but net!” : SWISH!

“Nothing but net” is a phrase used in basketball to describe a “clean basket”. A clean basket is a score in which the ball doesn’t touch the backboard or even the rim, and touches only the net.

31 Place to run some tests : LAB

Our term “laboratory”, often shortened to “lab”, comes from the Medieval Latin word “laboratorium” meaning “place for labor, work”. This in turn comes from the Latin verb “laborare” meaning “to work”.

33 Acorn-loving duo : CHIP AND DALE

Chip ‘n’ Dale are two chipmunk characters created by Disney in 1943. The characters’ names are a pun on “Chippendale”, the family name of noted English furniture designer Thomas Chippendale.

40 Actress Ullmann : LIV

Liv Ullmann is a Norwegian, best known to us in North America as an actress (I saw her recently in the classic war movie “A Bridge Too Far”). Ullmann has also directed several films, including “Sofie” released in 1992. Ullmann lived with famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman for several years in the 1960s.

46 Use crayons : COLOR

We use the word “crayon” for a stick of colored wax used for drawing. The term was imported in the 16th century from French, in which language it means “pencil”.

56 Oily sauce : PESTO

The Italian term “pesto” applies to anything made by pounding. What we tend to know as pesto sauce is more properly called “pesto alla genovese”, i.e. pesto from Genoa in northern Italy. I love, love pesto sauce …

60 “The way I see it …,” via texts : IMO …

In my opinion (IMO)

61 Métro area? : PARIS

The Paris Métro is the busiest underground transportation system in western Europe. The network carries about 4.5 million passengers a day, which is about the same ridership as the New York City Subway. The system took its name from the company that originally operated it, namely “La Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris” (The Metropolitan Paris Railroad Company), which was shortened to “Métro”. The term “Metro” was then adopted for similar systems in cities all over the world.

64 Comedian Margaret : CHO

Margaret Cho is a Korean-American comedian and actress who was born in San Francisco in 1968. As well as performing as a comedian, Cho has also had a successful acting career, appearing in films such as “Face/Off,” “Bam Bam and Celeste,” and “All About Steve,” as well as TV shows such as “Drop Dead Diva” and “30 Rock.”

68 Chef/food writer Samin ___ : NOSRAT

“Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking” is a 2017 cookbook penned by chef and TV host Samin Nosrat. A best seller, it has been described as more of a reference book than a collection of recipes. Nosrat explains how to master flavor and texture using salt, fat, acid and heat, four elements that she calls the “cardinal directions” of cooking.

75 Prestige : CACHET

“Cachet” is a French word that we use in English for an official seal, usually one applied to a document. We also use the term figuratively. When we say that something has “a certain cachet”, we are implying that it has a certain level of prestige, as if some authority has given it a seal of approval.

77 “Buona ___” (Italian greeting) : SERA

“Buona sera” is Italian for “good evening”.

78 Human, e.g. : APE

The tailless primates known as apes (also “hominoids”) are divided into two main branches: gibbons (lesser apes) and hominids (great apes). The hominids are the great apes, and belong to the family of primates called Hominidae. Extant genera that make up the family Hominidae are:

• chimpanzees
• gorillas
• humans
• orangutans

81 Jersey call : MOO!

Jersey cattle were bred originally on the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. If you’ve seen Elsie the Cow, the mascot of Borden in the US, then you’ve seen a Jersey cow.

83 Singer Amos : TORI

Tori Amos is an American pianist and singer. She started playing the piano at two years old, and was composing piano pieces by age five. Amos was playing in piano bars (chaperoned by her father) when she was 14. I’m going to have to find some of her music …

96 ___ Pet : CHIA

Chia is a flowering plant in the mint family. Chia seeds are an excellent food source and are often added to breakfast cereals and energy bars. There is also the famous Chia Pet, an invention of a San Francisco company. Chia Pets are terra-cotta figurines to which moistened chia seeds are applied. The seeds sprout and the seedlings become the “fur” of the Chia Pet.

101 Mo. for Canadian Thanksgiving : OCT

The Canadian Thanksgiving holiday predates the related celebration in the US. The first Canadian Thanksgiving was held in 1578 by an explorer from England named Martin Frobisher. Frobisher was giving thanks for his safe arrival in the New World, and made the observance in the month of October as this was a tradition in England. All this happened 43 years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

107 Loafers, e.g. : SLIP-ON SHOES

The loafer slip-on shoe dates back to 1939. “Loafer” was originally a brand name introduced by Fortnum and Mason’s store in London. The derivative term “penny loafer” arose in the late fifties or early sixties, although the exact etymology seems unclear.

111 County between London and the North Sea : ESSEX

Essex is a county in England that is referred to as one of the “home counties”. The home counties are those that surround the city of London, outside of London itself. “Home county” is not an official designation but has been in popular use since the 1800s. The list of home counties usually comprises Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex.

115 Flour variety with a palindromic name : ATTA

Atta is a whole-wheat flour used to make flatbreads in South Asian cuisine, such as chapati and naan. “Atta” is the Hindi or Urdu word for “dough”.

117 Bone at the base of the spine : SACRUM

As children, we have five “extra” vertebrae at the base of our spine. Those vertebrae will have fused into one bone called the sacrum by the time we hit our late twenties.

119 Emily Dickinson’s hometown : AMHERST

On a road trip around the country a few years ago, my wife and I had a very disappointing stop in Amherst, Massachusetts intending to visit the old home of Emily Dickinson. We hadn’t done our homework and failed to note that the home was only open for tours on certain days of the week, and not the day we were there (so be warned!). Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, with less than a dozen published before she died in 1886. Emily’s younger sister discovered the enormous collection, and it was published in batches over the coming decades.

121 Thought experiment that asks whether an object remains the same object if its parts are replaced one by one : SHIP OF THESEUS

In the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, Theseus sailed to the island of Crete in order to convince the Minotaur to stop devouring young boys and girls who were sent into the Minotaur’s lair, the Labyrinth. Soon after Theseus landed on Crete, he fell in love with Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, the King of Crete. Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of string that he unraveled as he ventured deep into the Labyrinth. He found the Minotaur and slew him, and then followed the unraveled string back to the entrance of the Labyrinth, and into the arms of Ariadne.

127 First president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots : EARHART

Amelia Earhart is as famous today as she was during her lifetime. When she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by Congress, and the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government. She made two attempts to circumnavigate the globe by air (not solo). Her first attempt in March 1937 had to be abandoned when her aircraft was damaged during takeoff. The second attempt in June/July of the same year ended when Earhart and her navigator disappeared flying from Lae, New Guinea to Howland Island in the Central Pacific.

Down

1 Rap battle participants : MCS

Battle rapping (also “rap battling”) is a contest in which two or more rappers “fight it out” using opposing, improvised lyrics. I’d be annihilated …

5 Steam trains, in the 19th century : IRON HORSES

The term “iron horse” started appearing in Victorian times, describing those new-fangled steam-driven trains and trams that left horse-drawn vehicles in their dust. The term was especially popular in North America where it described steam locomotives.

6 World Cup org. : FIFA

The International Federation of Association Football (“Fédération Internationale de Football Association” in French) is usually referred to by the acronym “FIFA”. FIFA is the governing body of the game of soccer (association football), and the organizer of the FIFA World Cup held every four years.

8 Abbr. in ancient dates : BCE

The designations Anno Domini (AD, “year of Our Lord”) and Before Christ (BC) are found in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The dividing point between AD and BC is the year of the conception of Jesus, with AD 1 following 1 BC without a year “0” in between. The AD/BC scheme dates back to AD 525, and gained wide acceptance soon after AD 800. Nowadays a modified version has become popular, with CE (Common/Christian Era) used to replace AD, and BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) used to replace BC.

14 Part of b.p.s. : PER

Bits per second (bps)

15 Member of a kingdom that spans the globe : ANIMAL

Biological classification is a method used to group organisms by biological type. The method uses a hierarchy of nested classes, with an organism being classified with reference to evolutionary traits. The major taxonomic ranks used are:

• Life
• Domain
• Kingdom
• Phylum (plural “phyla”)
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus (plural “genera”)
• Species

21 ___ Rachel Wood of “Kajillionaire” : EVAN

Actress Evan Rachel Wood’s most famous role to date is playing one of the leads in the 2003 movie “Thirteen”. Wood’s private life draws a lot of attention, especially as she was romantically linked for some time with the “outrageous” musician Marilyn Manson.

23 Learn through the grapevine : HEAR

There are competing stories about the etymology of the phrase “heard it through the grapevine”, meaning “heard it by means of gossip or rumor”. One is that it is a reference to the Grapevine Tavern in Greenwich Village in New York City. The Grapevine was a popular meeting place for Union officers and Confederate spies during the Civil War, and so was a great spot for picking up and spreading vital gossip.

34 Salsa variety, casually : PICO

Pico de gallo is a Mexican condiment made from tomato, onion and chili peppers. “Pico de gallo” is Spanish for “beak of rooster”. Apparently this name was given as eating of the condiment with the thumb and forefinger resembled the pecking of a rooster. An alternative name for pico de gallo is “salsa fresca”, which translates literally as “fresh sauce”.

38 November honorees : VETS

Veterans Day used to be known as Armistice Day, and is observed on November 11th each year. This particular date was chosen as the Armistice that ended WWI was signed on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

39 Meeting, informally : SESH

Session (abbreviated to “sess.” formally, and “sesh” informally)

43 Hoity-toity : UPPISH

Believe it or not, the term “hoity-toity” has been in the English language since the 1660s, but back then it meant “riotous behavior”. It began to mean “haughty” in the late 1800s, simply because the “haughty” sounds similar to “hoity”.

45 Astronaut Ellen of shuttle missions : OCHOA

Ellen Ochoa was the first Hispanic woman in space, serving on a nine-day mission on the space shuttle Discovery in 1993. She spent over 1,000 hours in space over the course of four missions. Ochoa is now the Deputy Director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

47 Prevaricating : LYING

To prevaricate is to stray from the truth. The term “prevaricate” comes from a Church Latin word meaning “walk crookedly”.

50 Some Pacific salmon : COHOS

The coho salmon is dark blue with silver along the side of its body, but only during the phase of its life while it is in the ocean. When spawning and heading up into a freshwater river, the coho has bright red sides.

52 “___ luego” : HASTA

“Hasta luego” translates literally from Spanish as “until later”, and is used to say “see you later”.

53 Like ceramics : FIRED

A ceramic is a hard, heat- and corrosion-resistant material that is strong in compression but has a low tensile strength. Most ceramics are inorganic, non-metallic chemicals. As an aside, I have a degree in ceramics, believe it or not, after writing a thesis on the material used to make refrigerator magnets. Sad, really …

63 Half of a leaf : RECTO

The left and right pages of a book or magazine are known in publishing circles as verso and recto. Recto comes from the Latin for “right”, and verso comes from the Latin word for “turned”. The idea is that the left side of the page is “turned” and is the reverse of the recto/right side.

67 Mudhole wallower : HIPPO

The name “hippopotamus” comes from the Greek for “river horse”. Hippos are the third-largest land mammals, after elephants and rhinos. The closest living relatives to hippos don’t even live on land. They are the whales and porpoises of the oceans.

72 Bucking beast, informally : BRONC

A bronco (also “bronc”) is a horse that is untamed. In Mexican Spanish “bronco” is a word for “horse”, and in the original Spanish “bronco” means “rough, rude”.

73 ___ tide : NEAP

Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans. At neap tide, the smaller gravitational effect of the sun cancels out some of the moon’s effect. At spring tide, the sun and the moon’s gravitational forces act in concert causing more extreme movement of the oceans.

76 Portrayer of Princess Diana on “The Crown” : EMMA CORRIN

Actor Emma Corrin’s breakthrough role was portraying Diana, Princess of Wales in the hit drama “The Crown”. Corrin appeared on the cover of “Vogue” in 2022, and in so doing became the magazine’s first non-binary cover star.

82 Idleness : OTIOSITY

“Otiose” means “lazy, indolent”, and comes from the Latin word “otium” meaning “leisure”. Use of the term has extended to mean “without profit, futile”.

94 “Ideas worth spreading” spinoff : TEDX

The acronym “TED” stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”. TED is a set of conferences held around the world by a non-profit group called the Sapling Foundation. The conference subjects are varied, and the meetings are often led by big names such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Gates and Jane Goodall. The Sapling Foundation then makes recordings of the conferences available for free online with the intent of disseminating the ideas globally. These conferences are known as “TED Talks”. There are also TEDx events, which are locally-run talks presented under license from TED.

104 Bay Area sch. : UCSF

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

107 Septet in a Christmas carol : SWANS

The fabulous Christmas carol called “The Twelve Days of Christmas” dates back at least to 1780 when it was first published in England, though it may be French in origin. The concept of twelve days of Christmas comes from the tradition that the three kings came to visit the Christ Child twelve days after he was born. This same tradition is the origin of the title to Shakespeare’s play “Twelfth Night”.

109 Patriot Allen : ETHAN

Ethan Allen was one of the founders of the state of Vermont. Allen was also a hero in the American Revolutionary War, famous for leading (along with Benedict Arnold) the small band of men known as the Green Mountain Boys that captured Fort Ticonderoga. And yes, the Ethan Allen store and furniture line is named for Ethan Allen the patriot, even though he had nothing to do with the furniture business.

112 Food served with gari and wasabi : SUSHI

Gari is thinly sliced ginger that has been marinated in sugar and vinegar. Also known as sushi ginger, gari is usually served with sushi. Lovely stuff …

Sometimes called Japanese horseradish, wasabi is a root used as a condiment in Japanese cooking. The taste of wasabi is more like mustard than a hot pepper in that the vapors that create the “hotness” stimulate the nasal passages rather than the tongue. Personally, I love the stuff …

120 Scrabble rating system : ELO

The Elo rating system is used to compare the skill levels of competing players in games like chess and Scrabble. The system is named for a Hungarian-born professor of physics called Arpad Elo, who was also a master-level chess player active in the US Chess Federation.

123 Link, of a sort : URL

An Internet address (like NYXCrossword.com and LAXCrossword.com) is more correctly called a uniform resource locator (URL).