Tag: Chaotic state crossword clue

Bill’s time: 9m 21s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14A Largest U.S. city with a majority-Hispanic population : SAN ANTONIO

The city of San Antonio, Texas was named by Spanish explorers. They came upon a Native American settlement in the area on 13 June 1631, the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua, hence the city’s name.

16A BTS ___ (K-pop group’s fan base) : ARMY

BTS is a boy band from South Korea with seven members. The initialism “BTS” stands for the phrase “Bangtan Sonyeondan”, which translates literally as “Bulletproof Boy Scouts”. It is the best-selling musical act in the history of South Korea.

17A Receiving a certain hormone treatment : ON ESTROGEN

The primary female sex hormone is estrogen (also “oestrogen”). The term “estrogen” comes from the Greek “oistros” meaning “verve, inspiration” and the suffix “-gen” meaning “producer of”.

20A Word with crop or shotgun : RIDING …

A crop is a type of whip, one without a long lash.

21A Literary heroine who described herself as “poor, obscure, plain and little” : EYRE

“Jane Eyre” is a celebrated novel written by Charlotte Brontë, under the pen name Currer Bell. The love story is perhaps represented by the oft-quoted opening lines of the last chapter, “Reader, I married him”. There is a wonderful 4-hour television adaptation made by the BBC that I highly recommend to fans of the novel …

30A Chicken korma, e.g. : CURRY

Curry powder is a mixture of spices used in South Asian dishes. The actual composition of curry powder varies depending on the cuisine. The term “curry” is an anglicization of the Tamil “kari” meaning “sauce”.

32A End of a mayoral address? : GOV

The .gov domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

• .com (commercial enterprise)
• .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
• .mil (US military)
• .org (not-for-profit organization)
• .gov (US federal government entity)
• .edu (college-level educational institution)

34A Case load? : BEERS

The word “case” is commonly used to denote a specific quantity of items, particularly for beverages and packaged goods. For example, a case of beer usually contains 24 bottles or cans, and a case of wine usually holds 12 bottles.

36A The Blues, on N.H.L. scoreboards : STL

The St. Louis Blues hockey team takes its name from the song “St. Louis Blues”, a jazz and popular music classic.

37A ___ incognita (unexplored area) : TERRA

“Terra incognita” is a Latin term meaning “unknown land”, a term one might see on an old map. One might also see “mare ingognitum”, meaning “unknown sea”.

38A Things left at the entrance of a mosque : SHOES

“Masjid” is an Arabic word meaning “temple, place of worship”. It is from “masjid” that we get the English word “mosque”.

52A Deep study : OCEANOLOGY

Oceanography (also “oceanology”) is an Earth science, the scientific study of the oceans. Oceanographers study marine physics, chemistry, biology and geology.

Down

4D “___ Lied von der Erde” (Mahler work) : DAS

I’m still trying to keep an open mind when it comes to the music of Gustav Mahler, but I find it hard to appreciate. Mahler was an Austrian composer who was active in the late-Romantic period. During his own lifetime, he was most notable as a conductor, and his compositions gained in popularity only after his death in 1911. Mahler’s music was banned as “degenerate” during the Nazi Era, as Mahler was Jewish.

5D Chaotic state : ENTROPY

In the world of thermodynamics, entropy is a measure of disorder in a system. According to the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system always increases, the system always tends toward disorder.

7D Website for finding home services : ANGI

Angie’s List is a website used by consumers to rate and research local businesses. The “list” was founded in 1995, originally as a call-in service and publication with reviews, by William S. Oesterle and the eponymous Angie Hicks. Angie’s List moved to the Internet in 1996, and by 2013 had 70,000 subscribers. A rebranding exercise in 2021 resulted in Angie’s List becoming “ANGI”.

9D Medieval weapons traditionally made with yew : LONGBOWS

Yew is the wood of choice for the longbow, a valued weapon in the history of England. The longbow is constructed with a core of yew heartwood (as the heartwood resists compression) that has a sheath of yew sapwood (as the sapwood resists stretching). The yew was in such demand for longbows that for centuries yew trees were in short supply in Britain and the wood had to be imported from all over Europe.

15D Pianist’s flourish : TRILL

In music a “trill” is the rapid alternation of two tones that are very close to each other to make a vibrato sound.

22D Certain winter accouterments : FURS

“Accouterments” are personal clothing items or accessories. We use the term “accoutrements’ back in Ireland, which sounds more French, but I don’t think is actually a French word. I could be wrong …

27D Cartoondom’s “Princess of Power” : SHE-RA

“She-Ra: Princess of Power” is an animated television show, and a spinoff of the very successful “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe”. Both shows are aimed at young people, with “He-Man” targeted at boys and “She-Ra” at girls.

28D Reptile known for its distinct color bands : CORAL SNAKE

Coral snakes are a widely distributed group of snakes, with species found in much of the world. In North America, they are mainly found in the southern US. The bite of a coral snake is particularly nasty, although few such bites are reported each year.

34D Beast : BEHEMOTH

A behemoth is something that is huge in size. The term comes from the Hebrew word “b’hemoth”, which is a beast described in the Book of Job. It is suggested that the Biblical creature is an elephant, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, crocodile or perhaps something mythical.

35D Land with two official languages — French and Arabic : CHAD

The landlocked African country called Chad takes its name from the second largest wetland on the continent, which is known as Lake Chad.

37D ___ Fridays : TGI

T.G.I. Fridays is an American restaurant chain that was founded in 1965 in New York City. Today there are over a thousand T.G.I. Fridays restaurants in over 50 countries. I think that Fridays has always been particularly successful overseas. I used to visit one a lot with my family when we lived in the Philippines, and I believe the most successful Fridays restaurant anywhere in the world is the one in Haymarket Leicester Square in London in the UK.

40D They surround pupils : IRISES

The iris is the colored part of the eye. It has an aperture in the center that can open or close depending on the level of light hitting the eye.

41D River sourced by a glacier in the Swiss Alps : RHONE

The Rhône river rises in Switzerland, passes through Lake Geneva, flows through the southeast of France, and empties into the Mediterranean Sea near Arles.

44D Cotton variety : PIMA

Pima is a soft cotton that is very durable and absorbent. It is named for the Pima Native Americans who first cultivated it in this part of the world.

46D Beverage that was invented in a Dairy Queen : ICEE

Soft serve ice cream was developed by John McCullough in 1938. McCullough was able to get his new dessert carried by a local ice cream store in Illinois. He and the store owner became so swamped with sales that they opened a store specifically built around the product in Joliet, Illinois, hence creating the first Dairy Queen outlet. There are now over 5,700 Dairy Queen franchises in 19 countries. We’ve even got one in Ireland …

48D Accessory out West : BOLO

I’ve never worn a bolo tie, and was surprised to discover that it is a relatively recent invention. The first bolo tie was apparently produced in Wickenburg, Arizona in the late 1940s by a silversmith. The bolo takes its name from the boleadora, an Argentine lariat.

50D Where Ferrari is “RACE,” for short : NYSE

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) can give some quite descriptive ticker symbols to companies, for example:

• Anheuser-Busch (BUD, for “Budweiser”)
• Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP, as in “beer tap”)
• Steinway Musical Instruments (LVB, for “Ludwig van Beethoven”)
• Sotheby’s (BID, for the auction house)

53D Paper size: Abbr. : LTR

Our paper sizes here in North America don’t conform with the standards in the rest of the world. ISO standard sizes used elsewhere were chosen so that the ratio of width to length is usually one to the square root of two. This mathematical relationship means that when you cut a piece of paper in two each half preserves the aspect ratio of the original, which can be useful in making reduced or enlarged copies of documents. Our standard size of “letter” (ltr., 8.5 x 11 inches) was determined in 1980 by the Reagan administration to be the official paper size for the US government. Prior to this, the “legal” size (8.5 x 14 inches) had been the standard, since 1921.