Tag: Brief vigorous fight crossword clue

Bill’s time: 5m 15s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Mild lettuce variety : BIBB

Bibb is a variety of lettuce in the cultivar known as butterhead. All butterhead varieties have loose-leafed heads and a buttery texture.

5 Marathons, e.g. : RACES

The marathon commemorates the legendary messenger-run by Pheidippides from the site of the Battle of Marathon back to Athens, and is run over 26 miles and 385 yards. The first modern Olympic marathon races were run over a distance that approximated the length of the modern-day Marathon-Athens highway, although the actual length of the race varied from games to games. For the 1908 Olympics in London, a course starting at Windsor Castle and ending in front of the Royal Box at White City Stadium was defined. That course was 26 miles and 385 yards, the standard length now used at all Olympic Games. Organizers of subsequent games continued to vary the length of the race, until a decision was made in 1921 to adopt the distance used in London in 1908.

15 Instrument played with a bow : VIOLA

The viola looks like and is played like a violin, but is slightly larger. It is referred to as the middle voice in the violin family, lying between the violin and the cello.

16 University in New Rochelle, N.Y. : IONA

Iona College is a Roman Catholic school run by Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, New York. The Brothers named the college for the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland on which is located Iona Abbey, which was founded by St. Columba. The school’s sports teams are called the Iona Gaels, and the team mascot goes by the name “Killian”.

17 Girl of classic comics who sported ringlets and a red outfit : LITTLE LULU

“Little Lulu” is a comic strip that ran weekly in “The Saturday Evening Post” every week from 1935 until 1944. The title character migrated into product advertising in the forties and fifties, pushing Kleenex tissues and Pepsi-Cola in magazine ads.

20 Shooting star : METEOR

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body traveling through space. Once in the atmosphere, the meteoroid is referred to as a “meteor” or “shooting star”. Almost all meteoroids burn up, but if one is large enough to survive and reach the ground then we call it a meteorite. The word “meteor” comes from the Greek “meteōros” meaning “high in the air”.

24 Producer of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast : TEAM COCO

Before Conan O’Brien came to fame as a late night talk show host, he was a writer. He wrote for both “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons”. While attending Harvard, O’Brien was president of “The Harvard Lampoon”.

31 Nobel Prize-winning poet ___ Heaney : SEAMUS

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet and writer. I like Heaney’s response when asked if there was any figure in popular culture who aroused interest in poetry and lyrics. 64-year-old Heaney answered:

There is this guy Eminem. He has created a sense of what is possible. He has sent a voltage around a generation. He has done this not just through his subversive attitude but also his verbal energy.

42 ___ and whey : CURDS

When milk curdles it separates into two parts, the solid curds and the liquid whey.

45 Words on a Little League dad’s T-shirt, perhaps : PROUD PAPA

Little League Baseball was founded in 1939 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania by Carl Stotz. Back then, Little League was limited to boys. Participation was opened up to girls in 1974, although it took a lawsuit by the National Organization for Women for that to happen.

48 Mount where Noah’s Ark landed : ARARAT

Mount Ararat is in Turkey. It is a snow-capped, dormant volcano with two peaks. The higher of the two, Greater Ararat, is the tallest peak in the country. Ararat takes its name from a legendary Armenian hero called Ara the Beautiful (or “Ara the Handsome”). According to the Book of Genesis, Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat as the Great Flood subsided.

51 “A Star Is Born” co-star (2018) : LADY GAGA

“A Star Is Born” is a 1937 film starring Janet Gaynor as an upcoming Hollywood actress. “A Star Is Born” was remade three times, in 1954 with Judy Garland playing the lead, in 1976 with Barbra Streisand, and in 2018 with Lady Gaga.

54 Siestas : NAPS

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.

58 Houston M.L.B. team : ASTROS

The Houston baseball team changed its name to the Astros (sometimes “’Stros”) from the Colt .45s in 1965 when they started playing in the Astrodome. The Astrodome was so called in recognition of the city’s long association with the US space program. The Astros moved from the National League to the American League starting in the 2013 season.

60 Anxiety about exclusion, for short : FOMO

Fear of missing out (FOMO)

67 Jazz singer Anita : O’DAY

“Anita O’Day” was the stage name of jazz singer Anita Colton. She chose the name as “O’Day” is Pig Latin for “dough”, a slang term for “money”. O’Day had problems with heroin and alcohol addiction leading to erratic behavior, earning her the nickname “The Jezebel of Jazz”.

68 Policy maven : WONK

A wonk is an overly studious person. “Wonk” is an American slang term that has been around at least since 1954. More recently, “wonk” has acquired an air of respectability as it has come to mean someone who has studied a topic thoroughly and become somewhat expert.

I’ve always loved the term “maven”, which is another word for “expert”. Maven comes into English from the Yiddish “meyvn” describing someone who appreciates and is a connoisseur.

70 Strong wind : GALE

A gale is a very strong wind, one defined by the Beaufort scale as having wind speeds from 50 to just over 100 kilometers per hour.

Down

1 Burt’s Bees product : BALM

Burt’s Bees is a line of personal care products that uses natural ingredients with minimal processing. The company started out in 1984 as a partnership between two entrepreneurs making candles out of excess beeswax from hives owned by one of the partners. Today the company has over $250 million in sales and is a division of Clorox.

4 Jason of “Ozark” : BATEMAN

Jason Bateman is an actor from Rye, New York who is most associated with the role of Michael Bluth on TV’s “Arrested Development”. Jason’s older sister is Justine Bateman, who played Mallory Keaton on the show “Family Ties”.

“Ozark” is an excellent TV crime show starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as a married couple who relocate from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks. The couple fall foul of a Mexican drug lord after a money laundering scheme goes awry. The show is set at a lake resort in the Ozarks, although filming actually takes place at lakes in the Atlanta area in order to take advantage of tax breaks offered by the State of Georgia.

7 Pickleball venue : COURT

Pickleball is a sport invented in the 1960s that combines elements of tennis, table tennis and badminton. Originally marketed as a game for children to play in backyards, pickleball is now played on purpose-built courts by many, many adults, but mainly in North and South America.

8 Singer Goulding with the 2015 8x platinum hit “Love Me Like You Do” : ELLIE

“Love Me Like You Do” is a 2015 song recorded by English singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding. The song was written specifically for the soundtrack of the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

12 Actress de Armas : ANA

Ana de Armas is an actress from Cuba. Having attended the National Theater School of Cuba, she moved to Spain at the age of 18. Thre, she made a name for herself in a Spanish TV series called “El Internado”. De Armas moved to Los Angeles in 2014, after which her performance opposite Ryan Gosling in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049” earned her critical acclaim.

13 Subwindow on a web browser : TAB

A web browser is a piece of software used to access the World Wide Web. The first web browser was called “WorldWideWeb” and was invented in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web. The browser known as Mosaic came out in 1993, and it was this browser that drove so much interest in the World Wide Web, and indeed in the Internet in general. Marc Andreessen led the team that created Mosaic, and he then set up his own company called Netscape. Netscape created the Netscape Navigator browser that further popularized the use of the Web starting in 1994. Microsoft responded by introducing Internet Explorer in 1995, which sparked the so-called “browser war”, a war that Microsoft clearly won. As Netscape floundered, the company launched the open-source Mozilla project which eventually led to the Firefox browser. Apple then came out with its own Safari browser in 2003. Google’s Chrome browser, introduced in 2008, is by far the most popular way to view the Web today.

22 Small duck : SMEW

The smew is a beautiful-looking species of duck found right across northern Europe and Asia. The smew requires trees to complete its breeding cycle as it nests in tree holes, such as old woodpecker nests.

25 Nebraska’s largest city : OMAHA

Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska. It is located on the Missouri River, about 10 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River. When Nebraska was still a territory Omaha was its capital, but when Nebraska achieved statehood the capital was moved to the city of Lincoln.

27 ___ Jackson Jr., “Cocaine Bear” actor : O’SHEA

O’Shea Jackson Jr. is an American actor and rapper who is best known for his portrayal of his own father, rapper Ice Cube, in the biopic “Straight Outta Compton” (2015).

“Cocaine Bear” is a 2023 horror comedy film loosely inspired by the true story of the “Cocaine Bear”, an American black bear that ingested nearly 75 lb of lost cocaine. The movie is a darkly comedic take on the true story of the Cocaine Bear. The film’s cast includes Ray Liotta, and It is dedicated to him as he died in May 2022.

30 Waterproof cover : TARP

Originally, tarpaulins were made from canvas covered in tar that rendered the material waterproof. The word “tarpaulin” comes from “tar” and “palling”, with “pall” meaning “heavy cloth covering”.

33 “Star Trek” role for Saldaña and Nichols : UHURA

Lt. Nyota Uhura is the communications officer on board the Starship Enterprise, and was played by Nichelle Nichols in the original “Star Trek” television series. The role was significant in that Uhura was one of the first African-American characters to figure front and center in US television. In a 1968 episode, Kirk (played by William Shatner) and Uhura kiss, the first interracial kiss to be broadcast in the US. Apparently the scene was meant to be shot twice, with and without the kiss, so that network executives could later decide which version to air. William Shatner claims that he deliberately ran long on the first take (with the kiss) and fluffed the hurried second take (without the kiss), so that the network would have no choice.

American actress Zoë Saldana played the Na’vi princess in “Avatar”, and Uhura in the 2009 movie “Star Trek” (and sequels). Saldana seems to pick the right movies, as she is the only actress to have three different films in the top twenty at the box office for three consecutive weeks (“Avatar”, “The Losers” and “Death at a Funeral”).

34 Santa-tracking org. : NORAD

The North American Defense Command (NORAD) isn’t just a US operation but is a cooperative arrangement between Canada and the United States. The two countries entered into an agreement to establish NORAD in 1958, mainly due to the concern that there would be little or no warning of a missile attack from the Soviet Union that came over the North Pole. NORAD also tracks Santa Claus coming from the North Pole every Christmas, and these days publishes Santa’s location on Christmas Eve on its website. The tracking of Santa started into 1955 when a local Sears store placed an advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper with a phone number that could be used to call Santa Claus. The newspaper accidentally printed the number for the Continental Air Defense Command (a precursor to NORAD). The officer on duty instructed his staff to give all children who called a “current location” for Santa. Today, NORAD gets about 120,000 phone queries about Santa’s location every year, and the website gets about 20 million visitors.

40 ___ La Table (high-end cookware shop) : SUR

Sur La Table is a chain of retail stores selling high-end kitchenware products. The company name translates from French as “on the table”. The first Sur La Table store opened in 1972 in Seattle’s celebrated Pike Place Market. Today, Sur La Table is the main competitor to Williams-Sonoma.

47 Wetland area where organic fuel is harvested : PEAT BOG

When dead plant matter accumulates in marshy areas, it may not fully decay due to a lack of oxygen or acidic conditions. We are familiar with this in Ireland, because this decaying matter can form peat, and we have lots and lots of peat bogs around the country.

49 “Doctor Who” vehicle that mimics a police box : TARDIS

“Doctor Who” is an iconic sci-fi television series that is made in the UK by the BBC. First broadcast in 1963, the show is still running today, making it the longest running sci-fi television show in the world. Doctor Who is a time traveler, from the planet Gallifrey, who “regenerates” from time to time (pun!) so that a new actor fits seamlessly into the storyline. He travels in his famous TARDIS spacecraft. Outwardly, the TARDIS looks like a police call box from the 1950s, but inside it is an enormous, multi-roomed time machine. “TARDIS” is an acronym standing for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.

52 Crystal-lined stone : GEODE

A geode is a rock in which there is a cavity that is lined or filled with crystal formations. The crystals inside a geode form when mineral-rich water seeps into a cavity in a rock, leaving behind dissolved minerals that gradually build up over time. Some of the largest geodes ever discovered have been as big as a room and can take millions of years to form.

55 Italian fashion house : PRADA

Prada started out in 1913 as a leather-goods shop in Milan, one established by the two Prada brothers. One of the brothers, Mario Prada, prevented the female members of his family from participating in the running of the company as he didn’t believe women should be involved in business (!). When the sexist brother died, his son had no interest in the business so it was his daughter who took over and ran the company for about twenty years, handing it over to her own daughter. I’d say the devil loved that …

56 L.A.’s region, informally : SOCAL

Southern California (SoCal)

59 Terrier breed named for a Scottish isle : SKYE

The Skye terrier is a breed of dog that is under threat of extinction. A few years ago, there were only 30 Skye terriers born in the breed’s native land of the UK. The breed was named for the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

61 Good Grips kitchen brand : OXO

The OXO line of kitchen utensils and housewares is designed to be ergonomically superior to the average household tools. The intended user of OXO products is someone who doesn’t have the normal range of motion or strength in the hands e.g. someone suffering from arthritis.