Tag: Certain art print informally crossword clue

Bill’s time: 5m 18s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Cherokee or Wrangler : JEEP

The Jeep Cherokee is an SUV with some legs. The original SJ series Jeep Cherokee was produced from 1974 until 1983, and derivative models are very much alive today.

Chrysler’s Jeep Wrangler is a direct descendent of the military “Jeep” vehicle that the US military relied on heavily during WWII.

9A Big noisy fight : MELEE

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

16A Dale who sang “Happy Trails” with Roy Rogers : EVANS

“Happy Trails” was the theme song of “The Roy Rogers Show”, aired on radio in the 1940s and on television in the 1950s. The song was written by Dale Evans, wife of Roy Rogers.

19A Assigns stars to, as on Yelp : RATES

yelp.com is a website that provides a local business directory and reviews of services. The site is sort of like Yellow Pages on steroids, and the term “yelp” is derived from “yel-low p-ages”.

20A “Spare” things at a barbecue : RIBS

Spare ribs are so called because “spare” can indicate the absence of fat.

24A Atlantic City attraction : CASINO

Atlantic City, New Jersey was developed in the 1850s as a potential resort town. The first version of the celebrated Atlantic City Boardwalk was installed in 1870. The city’s heyday came with Prohibition, when illegal drinking and gambling thrived in the backrooms of nightclubs and restaurants. After a long period of decline, Atlantic City was revitalized with the introduction of legalized casino gambling in 1976.

27A “Is it bigger than a ___?” : BREADBOX (giving “banana bread”)

I only discovered the wonderful old American TV show “What’s My Line?” a few years ago. I was familiar with the show’s British adaptation, but hadn’t spotted the US version until relatively recently in reruns. I fell in love with the beautiful Arlene Francis watching those reruns. She was a regular panelist on the show, and the embodiment of elegance. Host of the show was the erudite and genteel John Daly, a much-respected journalist and broadcaster. Daly became the son-in-law of Chief Justice Earl Warren when he married Warren’s daughter, Virginia. One of the legacies of the show is the popularization of the question “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

29A 911 respondent, in brief : EMT

Emergency medical technician (EMT)

30A Latina toon explorer : DORA

“Dora the Explorer” is a cartoon series shown on Nickelodeon. Part of Dora’s remit is to introduce the show’s young viewers to some Spanish words and phrases. Her constant companion is an anthropomorphic monkey named “Boots”, because he always wears red boots. Dora, full name “Dora Márquez”, also hangs out with Isa, an iguana.

32A Beatles song with the lyric “She promises the earth to me” : GIRL

“Girl” is a 1965 song by John Lennon that was released by the Beatles on the “Rubber Soul” album. Years later in 1980, Lennon released his hit single “Woman”, which he described as “a grown-up version of ‘Girl’”.

When I think of all the times I’ve tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry
And she promises the earth to me
And I believe her
After all this time I don’t know why
Ah, girl
Girl

33A Pinocchio’s are easily exposed : LIES

“The Adventures of Pinocchio” is an 1883 children’s novel by Carlo Collodi, which is all about an animated puppet named Pinocchio, and Geppetto, his poor woodcarver father. 1940’s movie adaptation “Pinocchio” was the second animated feature produced by Walt Disney, following the success of 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. “Pinocchio” was the first animated feature to win a competitive Oscar, winning for Best Original Score and for Best Original Song “When You Wish upon a Star”.

37A The White Stripes and the Black Keys, for two : DUOS

The White Stripes was a rock duo from Detroit that was together from 1997 to 2011. The duo was made up of Meg and Jack White, who were married from 1996 to 2000. Prior to the couple tying the knot, Jack’s family name was Gillis. Gillis took the unusual step of taking his wife’s family name when they married.

The Black Keys are a rock band, a duo from Akron, Ohio. Dan Auerbach on guitar, along with Patrick Carney on drums, formed the Black Keys in 2001.

39A Close boxing match outcome : SPLIT DECISION (giving “banana split”)

The banana split was created in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1904. This particular sundae was the idea of David Strickler, a young apprentice pharmacist at the Tassel Pharmacy’s soda fountain.

42A Picket line crosser : SCAB

Back in the late 17th century, a picket was a pointed stake used militarily to defend against attacking forces, and charging cavalry in particular. Ultimately, the term “picket” comes from the French verb “piquer” meaning “to pierce”. The term “pickets” then became the name for troops posted in the front lines, watching for the enemy. A picket line is a unit of soldiers lined up as a team of lookouts. The first use of “picket line” in the sense of labor disputes appeared in the 19th century. Our use of “picket fence” evolved from the original lines of pointed stakes used to defend positions held by early colonists.

43A Silverstein who wrote and illustrated “The Giving Tree” : SHEL

Author Shel Silverstein had a varied career and did a lot more than write books. He was a poet, composer, cartoonist and screenwriter among other things. One of his successful children’s books is “The Giving Tree”, which was first published in 1964. “The Giving Tree” tells of a young boy who has a special relationship with a tree in a forest. The message of the book seems to be that the tree provides the little boy with everything he needs.

44A Contacted on Instagram, informally : DMED

Direct message (DM)

48A Mallorca or Menorca, por ejemplo : ISLA

The Island of Majorca (“Isla de Mallorca” in Spanish) is Spain’s largest island, and is located in the Mediterranean Sea. The population of the island ballooned over the past few decades as Majorca became a mecca for tourists from all over Europe.

The island of Minorca in the Mediterranean takes its name from the larger neighboring island of Majorca. The names come from the Latin “Insula Minor” meaning “Minor Island” and “Insula Major” meaning “Major Island”. The island is known as “Minorca” in English, and “Menorca” in Spanish and Catalan.

51A All-out boxing match : SLUGFEST (giving “banana slug”)

Banana slugs can be a bright yellow color. They also are shaped like the fruit, hence the name “banana slug”.

54A Sarcastic : SNARKY

“Snark” is a term that was coined by Lewis Carroll in his fabulous 1876 nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Somehow, the term “snarky” came to mean “irritable, short-tempered” in the early 1900s, and from there “snark” became “sarcastic rhetoric” at the beginning of the 21st century.

56A “Hamilton” composer ___-Manuel Miranda : LIN

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a composer and playwright from New York City, and the creator and star of the hit Broadway musicals “Hamilton” and “In the Heights”. Miranda also co-wrote the songs for the Disney animated features “Moana” and “Encanto”. He started composing early, and wrote jingles as a child.

57A Singer/actress Rita ___ : ORA

Rita Ora is a British singer who was born Rita Sahatçiu in Pristina, Yugoslavia to Albanian parents. The family name “Sahatçiu” comes from a Turkish word meaning “watchmaker”. Rita’s parents changed their name to make it easier to pronounce. So, the family name morphed from “watchmaker” to “time”, which is “ora” in Albanian.

58A It’s “smashed” in a particle accelerator : ATOM

Nowadays, we call an “atom smasher” a “particle accelerator”. An accelerator creates highly focused beams of fast-moving ions that can be “smashed” into various atoms. Those collisions can produce new particles. Important work, I hear …

59A Playful aquatic mammal : OTTER

Male and female otters are known as dogs and bitches, with the offspring called pups. Males and females are sometimes referred to as boars and sows. A collection of otters is a bevy, family, lodge or perhaps a romp. When in water, a collection of otters can be called a raft.

61A Flip out … or a hint to the beginnings of 17-, 27-, 39- and 51-Across : GO BANANAS

The expression “to go bananas”, meaning “to become excited or angry”, is one that I would have imagined had a clear etymology but that doesn’t seem to be the case. A further surprise is that we’ve only been “going bananas” since the sixties, the days of flower power. One apt theory about the hippy roots of the phrase is that there was an unfounded belief that ingesting roasted banana peels had a similar hallucinogenic effect as magic mushrooms.

68A Coldest possible temperature on the Kelvin scale : ZERO

Absolute zero is a temperature that can be reached theoretically by removing all the “energy” of the test vehicle that is being “frozen”. This temperature is designated as 0 degrees on the Kelvin scale, equivalent to -273.15 degrees Celsius. Scientists try to get as close to absolute zero as possible because matter has weird and wonderful properties at such cold temperatures, such as superconductivity and superfluidity.

69A Informal hoops game : HORSE

H-O-R-S-E is a simple game played with a basketball and a hoop. The idea is that one player makes a basket using a certain move and technique, and then subsequent players have to make a basket the same way. Anyone failing to make a basket is assigned a letter in the word H-O-R-S-E, and after five letters, you’re out. A quicker game is called P-I-G.

70A Winter road application : SALT

Halite is the mineral form of sodium chloride, and is also known as “rock salt”. It is used to melt ice, as salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. Adding salt to icy sidewalks can therefore cause any ice to melt (as long as the ambient temperature isn’t too low). A mixture of halite and ice can also be used to cool things below the freezing point of water, perhaps to make ice cream.

71A Rams’ mates : EWES

An adult male sheep is a ram, although a castrated ram is known as a wether. An adult female is a ewe, and a young sheep is a lamb.

Down

4D ___ dish (lab item) : PETRI

Julius Richard Petri was a German bacteriologist and was the man after whom the Petri dish is named. The petri dish can have an agar gel on the bottom which acts as a nutrient source for the specimen being grown and studied, in which case the dish plus agar is referred to as an “agar plate”.

6D African antelopes : GNUS

The gnu is also known as the wildebeest, and is an antelope native to Africa. “Wildebeest” is a Dutch word meaning “wild beast”.

9D Disney’s Ariel and her sisters : MERMAIDS

“The Little Mermaid” is a 1989 animated feature from Disney that is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. It tells the story of a mermaid princess named Ariel who falls in love with the human Prince Eric. Ariel’s father is chief merman King Triton. Her best friend is Flounder, who despite his name is not a flounder at all and is actually a tropical fish. Ariel is also friends with Sebastian, a red Jamaican crab whose full name is Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian.

10D Youngest of the Gabor sisters : EVA

Eva Gabor was the youngest of the Gabor sisters, all three of whom were celebrated Hollywood actresses and socialites (her siblings were Zsa-Zsa and Magda). One of Eva’s claims to fame is the unwitting promotion of the game called “Twister”, the sales of which were languishing in 1966. In an appearance on “The Tonight Show” she got on all fours and played the game with Johnny Carson. Sales took off immediately, and Twister became a huge hit.

12D Beginning of el año : ENERO

In Spanish, we start “el año” (the year) in “enero” (January) as noted on a “calendario” (calendar).

13D English county NE of London : ESSEX

Essex is a county in England that is referred to as one of the home counties, one of the counties that surround the city of London. The name “Essex” comes from the Old English “Eastseaxe”, referring to the Kingdom of the East Saxons founded in the 6th century.

18D Female red deer : HIND

Nowadays, a hart is a male red deer over five years old. A hind is a female red deer.

22D “Break a ___!” : LEG

There are many, many colorful theories for the origins of the expression “break a leg” that’s used in the world of theater to mean “good luck”. Regardless of the origin, what is clear is that using the phrase “good” luck is considered to be very “bad” luck.

24D “The Simpsons” collectible : CEL

Animation cels are transparent sheets made of celluloid acetate that were used in traditional hand-drawn animation to create animated films. They were first introduced in the 1930s and were widely used in animation production until the late 1990s, when digital animation techniques began to dominate the industry.

26D Pedometer : STEP COUNTER

A pedometer is an instrument worn by a runner or walker that measures the number of steps taken. The name of the device comes from “pes”, the Latin for “foot”.

28D Ancient Celtic priest : DRUID

Druids were priests of Celtic Europe during the Iron Age. Historians rely on accounts of the beliefs and practices of druids recorded by the likes of ancient Romans and Greeks, as it is believed that druids themselves were prevented from recording their knowledge by their belief system.

40D Lead-in to “except after C” : I BEFORE E

“I before E, except after C”. With so many exceptions, I think this is one rule that’s not taught in schools anymore …

47D To be, in Barcelona : SER

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain, after the capital Madrid. It is also the largest European city that sits on the Mediterranean coast, and the capital city of the autonomous community of Catalonia.

51D Animal that sleeps upside down : SLOTH

All four of the extant species of three-toed sloths are native to South and Central America. Cousins of the three-toed sloths are the two-toed sloths, of which there are two species still living.

52D Certain art print, informally : LITHO

Lithography is a printing technique that was invented in 1796 as a cheap way to publish theatrical works. In the litho process the image is drawn on a metal plate, although originally it was drawn on a stone (hence the prefix “litho-“). The image is drawn in such a way that some regions of the plate repel ink, and then when paper is applied to the plate, those areas are ink-free. A “lithograph” is a print that is made using the technique, and is often a reproduction of a work of art.

58D Brother of Cain : ABEL

The story of Cain and Abel not only appears in the Christian and Hebrew Bibles, it also features in the Qur’an. In the Muslim account the brothers are named Qabil and Habil.

62D Things traveling through fallopian tubes : OVA

The Fallopian tubes stretch from the ovaries of female mammals to the uterus. They are named for the 16th-century Italian anatomist Gabriello Fallopio, who was the first to describe them.

65D Abba title sung after the line “The love you gave me, nothing else can save me” : SOS

The ABBA 1975 song “SOS” was originally titled “Turn Me On”. In the movie “Mamma Mia!”, “SOS” is performed by Meryl Streep (brilliantly) and by Pierce Brosnan (terribly).