Tag: Black mark on a credit report in brief crossword clue

Bill’s time: 8m 20s

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Modern lead-in to quit or bait : RAGE

Rage-quitting is the act of abruptly abandoning an endeavor in a fit of frustration or anger. The term “rage-quit” originated in the early days of multiplayer video gaming.

5A Heat source for many hydrothermal vents : MAGMA

Magma is the molten material below the Earth’s surface. When magma cools, it forms igneous rock. “Magma” is a Greek term that describes a thick ointment.

15A He has the weight of the world on his shoulders : ATLAS

In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who was tasked with holding up the celestial sphere on his shoulders. The Greeks observed the planets moving and the stars in fixed positions. They believed that the stars were on the surface of a single starry sphere, the celestial sphere that was supported by Atlas.

16A River by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre : AVON

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. The facility opened in 1932, replacing the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that had been destroyed by fire six years earlier. The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a marvelous redbrick structure that backs onto the River Avon.

17A Enhancing “blemish” (3x) : BEAUTY MARK

A mole is a dark spot on the skin that is sometimes called a beauty spot, if it is located on the face. The term “mole” comes from the Old English word “mal”, which describes a mark or blemish on a piece of cloth.

21A Tennis’s “King of Clay,” familiarly : RAFA

Rafael “Rafa” Nadal is considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, and he has some superstitions that help him focus on winning. For example, he has a unique pre-match ritual in which he arranges his water bottles in a very specific way. He always places them in a straight line with the labels facing the court, and he adjusts them so that they are perfectly aligned.

29A Pinocchio’s tell : NOSE

“The Adventures of Pinocchio” is an 1883 children’s novel by Carlo Collodi. It is all about an animated puppet named Pinocchio and Geppetto, his poor woodcarver father. Pinocchio is prone to telling lies, the stress of which causes his short nose to become longer.

31A South American capital where Simón Bolívar was born : CARACAS

Caracas is the capital of Venezuela, and is located in the north of the country. The original settlement of Caracas was named by the Spanish using the name of a local indigenous tribe.

Simón Bolívar was a military and political leader who led a revolution that overthrew Spanish rule in Venezuela. Bolívar’s military exploits continued after independence, resulting in the conquest of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The latter was named for Simón Bolívar.

35A Sweet popcorn coating (4x) : SALTED CARAMEL

The confectionery product known as caramel is made by heating sugar. The process of caramelization requires slow heating of the sugar to about 170 °C. The heating causes the sugar molecules to break down and convert into the compounds that provide the characteristic color and flavor of caramel.

39A Sci-fi pilot ___ Solo : HAN

Han Solo is the space smuggler in “Star Wars” played by Harrison Ford. Ford was originally hired by George Lucas just to read lines for actors during auditions for “Star Wars”, but over time Lucas became convinced that Ford was right for the pivotal role of Han Solo.

41A Roman author of “Metamorphoses” : OVID

“Metamorphoses” is a narrative poem by Roman poet Ovid that deals with a lofty subject. It describes the history of the world from creation until the “present day”, that is Ovid’s “present day”, the era of Julius Caesar. A lot of the storyline makes use of Greek mythology (rather than Roman).

42A Fred Flintstone’s boss at the rock quarry : MR SLATE

In “The Flintstones” animated TV show, Fred Flintstone operates a bronto-crane at the Slate Rock and Gravel Company, which is owned by Fred’s boss Mr. Slate.

46A Nut in Sausalito cookies (3x) : MACADAMIA

The macadamia tree is native to Australia and is largely grown for its fruit, the macadamia nut. The tree was named in 1857 in honor of Scottish-Australian chemist and politician John Macadam. The macadamia was introduced into Hawaii as a commercial crop in the 1920s.

48A Bundles in a stationery shop : REAMS

A ream is 500 sheets of paper. As there were 24 sheets in a quire, and 20 quires made up a ream, there used to be 480 sheets in a ream. Ever since the standard was changed to 500, a 480-sheet packet of paper has been called a “short ream”. We also use the term “reams” to mean a great amount, evolving from the idea of a lot of printed material.

53A “Famous” cookie entrepreneur : AMOS

Wally Amos was a talent agent, one who was in the habit of taking home-baked cookies with him as an enticement to get celebrities to see him. He was urged by friends to open a cookie store (the cookies were that delicious, I guess) and this he did in Los Angeles in 1975 using the name “Famous Amos”. The store was a smash hit and he was able to build on the success by introducing his cookies into supermarkets. The brand was eventually purchased, making Wally a rich man, and Famous Amos cookies are still flying off the shelf. Wally Amos also became an energetic literacy advocate. He hosted 30 TV programs in 1987 entitled “Learn to Read” that provided reading instruction targeted at adults.

61A April’s ___ Day : ARBOR

Arbor Day is a holiday each year in which people traditionally plant and care for trees. The first Arbor Day was held way back in 1872.

62A Bug on a pug : FLEA

The pug is a dog breed of Chinese origin. Our last family pet was a boxer/pug cross, and was a good-looking mutt!

63A Alien incubators in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” : PODS

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is a 1956 sci-fi movie that was remade in 1978. Not my kind of film, quite frankly …

65A Units of verse : FEET

In poetry, a foot is a metrical unit comprising usually two, three or four syllables. Lines of verse are often classified by the number of feet that they contain, e.g. pentameter: containing five feet.

Down

4D Ground-dwelling bird in a eucalyptus forest : EMU

Eucalyptus (plural “eucalypti”) is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs that is particularly widespread in Australia. The species known as mountain ash or swamp gum is the tallest flowering plant in the world, with the tallest example located in Tasmania and standing at over 325 feet tall.

5D Chichén Itzá builders : MAYA

Chichén Itzá is a Mayan ruin located in the Mexican state of Yucatán. It is the second-most visited archaeological site in the country (after the ancient city of Teotihuacan). Chichén Itzá has seen a surge in the number of visitors since the development of nearby Cancún as a tourist destination.

7D Happy-sounding advocacy grp. : GLAAD

GLAAD is a non-governmental media monitoring organization that was founded in 1985 as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The organization changed its name to GLAAD in 2013 to reflect the organization’s efforts to support the whole of the LGBTQ+ community.

10D Instrument associated with beans and salsa? : MARACA

Maracas are percussion instruments that are native to Latin America. They are constructed from dried shells, like those of a coconut, to which handles are attached. The shells are filled with dried seeds or beans, and played by shaking.

The genre of music called salsa is a modern interpretation of various Cuban traditional music styles.

11D Was a ham : OVERACTED

The word “ham”, describing a performer who overacts, is a shortened form of “hamfatter” and dates back to the late 1800s. “Hamfatter” comes from a song in old minstrel shows called “The Ham-Fat Man”. It seems that a poorly performing actor was deemed to have the “acting” qualities of a minstrel made up in blackface.

12D Scrunchied hairstyle : PONYTAIL

When Rommy Revson patented the Scrunchie hair tie in 1987, she called it a “Scunci”, after her pet poodle.

13D “The ___” (final track listed on the original “Abbey Road”) : END

“The End” is a Beatles song composed by Paul McCartney. It is the final song in a medley found on side two of the 1969 album “Abbey Road”. The song is mainly remembered as the last one recorded collectively by all four Beatles.

18D Audition : TRYOUT

A trial performance to appraise the merits of an entertainer is known as an audition. When a group of entertainers is involved, the informal term “cattle call” might be used instead of “audition”. The idea is that those auditioning are often corralled into a single, large room (like “cattle”) prior to performing.

26D Sch. attended by Steve Martin, James Dean and Jack Black (none of whom stayed to graduate) : UCLA

Comedian, actor and writer Steve Martin is from Waco, Texas. Martin’s entertainment career started to take off with success as a writer for the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”. He then turned to stand-up comedy and often appeared on “The Tonight Show”. He was, and still is, a popular guest host on “Saturday Night Live”. He is so popular on “SNL” that many mistakenly believe that he was a permanent member of the “Saturday Night Live” cast.

In his short life, James Dean starred in three great movies: “East of Eden”, “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant”, for which he received two posthumous Best Actor Oscar nominations (the only person to do so). On a fateful day in September 1955, Dean set off in a Porsche for a race in Salinas, California. While driving to the race he was given a speeding ticket. Two hours later Dean was involved in a near head-on collision and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in Paso Robles, California.

Actor Jack Black was born in Santa Monica, California and is the son of two satellite engineers who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope program.

28D What cards with circles, stars, pluses, squares and wavy lines test for, in brief : ESP

Zener cards were developed in the early thirties by psychologist Karl Zener for use in experiments related to extrasensory perception (ESP) that he conducted with his colleague J. B. Rhine. These five simple and distinctive cards replaced the standard deck of cards that had been used in trials up to that point. The five symbols used on the cards are a circle, a cross, three wavy lines, a square and a star.

30D Day break? : SIESTA

We use the word “siesta” to describe a short nap in the early afternoon, and imported the word into English from Spanish. In turn, the Spanish word is derived from the Latin “hora sexta” meaning “the sixth hour”. The idea is that the nap is taken at the sixth hour after dawn.

32D Got it all off his chest? : MANSCAPED

The practice of men removing and trimming their body hair is known as “manscaping”, a portmanteau of “man” and “landscaping”.

33D Disc golf “hole”-in-one : ACE

Disc golf is also known as Frisbee golf, and sometimes even Frolf. Believe it or not, disc golf predates the introduction of the Frisbee. The first game was played at a school in Bladworth, Saskatchewan in 1926. The participating schoolkids threw tin lids into circles drawn on a course they created in the school grounds. They named the game “Tin Lid Golf”. By the way, I try to play disc golf at least three times a week. Lots of fun …

35D Capital city known as the “Jerusalem of the Balkans” : SARAJEVO

Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city is famous for many historical events. In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated there, the single event that sparked off WWI. More happily, Sarajevo was the host of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games. Just over a decade later the city was the center of the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, lasting almost four years from 1992 to 1996.

43D Herculean tasks : LABORS

“The Twelve Labors of Hercules” is actually a Greek myth, although “Hercules” is the Roman name for the hero that the Greeks called “Heracles”.

44D Almost a quarter of the Super Bowl’s run time : ADS

The Super Bowl is used for high-profile advertising because of the high viewership numbers. For example, Super Bowl XLIX (2015) had an average audience of 114 million viewers, making it the most-watched American TV program in history, until it was surpassed by Super Bowl LVII in 2023.

45D Sometimes-uncredited appearances : CAMEOS

Even in my day, a cameo role was more than just a short appearance in a movie (or other artistic piece). For the appearance to be a cameo, the actor had to play themself, and be instantly recognizable. With this meaning it’s easy to see the etymology of the term, as a cameo brooch is one with the recognizable carving of the silhouette of a person. Nowadays, a cameo is any minor role played by a celebrity or famous actor, regardless of the character played.

47D da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, for example : IAMBS

An iamb is a metrical foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The lines in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” use four sequential iambs, e.g. “Whose woods / these are / I think / I know”. With that sequence of four iambs, the poem’s structure is described as iambic tetrameter.

50D Free-for-all : MELEE

Our term “melee” comes from the French “mêlée”, and in both languages the word means “confused fight”.

54D Grand Ole ___ : OPRY

The Grand Ole Opry started out as a radio show in 1925 originally called the WSM “Barn Dance”. In 1927, the “Barn Dance” radio show was broadcast in a slot after an NBC production called “Musical Appreciation Hour”, a collection of classical works including Grand Opera. In a December show, the host of “Barn Dance” announced, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From now on we will present the ‘Grand Ole Opry'”. That name was used for the radio show from then on.

57D Uncle ___ : SAM

The Uncle Sam personification of the United States was first used during the War of 1812. The term was so widely accepted that even the Germans used it during WWII, choosing the code word “Samland” for “America” in intelligence communiques.

58D Minecraft resource : ORE

Minecraft is a video game that was released in 2011. Apparently, it is the most popular video game of all time, with well over 200 million units sold.