Tag: Corners in geometry crossword clue

Bill’s time: 6m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5. Native of Muscat : OMANI

Muscat, the capital of Oman, lies on the northeast coast of the state on the Gulf of Oman, a branch of the Persian Gulf.

14. Like photos that violate one of Instagram’s community guidelines : NUDE

Instagram is a photo-sharing application, one that is extremely popular. Instagram was started in San Francisco in 2010. Facebook purchased Instagram two years later, paying $1 billion. The billion-dollar Instagram company had just 13 employees at the time of the sale …

17. Legendary N.Y.C. punk rock club : CBGB

The music club known as CBCG opened in 1973 intending to feature country, bluegrass and blues music (hence the name “CBGB”, Country, BlueGrass and Blues). The club developed an association in the eighties with New York’s underground hardcore punk music.

19. Common picnic side dish : SLAW

The term “coleslaw” is an Anglicized version of the Dutch name “koolsla”, which in itself is a shortened form of “Koolsalade” meaning “cabbage salad”.

Our term “picnic” comes from the French word that now has the same meaning, namely “pique-nique”. The original “pique-nique” was a fashionable potluck affair, and not necessarily held outdoors.

20. Leave gobsmacked : AWE

“Gobsmack” is slang from the British Isles. “Gob” is also slang, for a mouth. So someone who is gobsmacked has received a “smack in the mouth”, is stunned.

21. W.W.E. head Vince ___ : MCMAHON

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is a company promoting professional wrestling as a form of entertainment.

28. Tenor Ronan ___ : TYNAN

Ronan Tynan is a classical singer from Ireland who is best known as a member of the Irish Tenors. Tynan is also known as participant in the 1984 and 1988 Paralympics, as he has had both his legs amputated below the knee.

29. Early hrs. : AMS

The 12-hour clock has been around a long time, and was even used in sundial format in Ancient Egypt. Our use of AM and PM dates back to Roman times, with AM standing for Ante Meridiem (before noon) and PM standing for Post Meridiem (after noon). However, the Romans originally used the AM concept a little differently, by counting backwards from noon. So, 2AM to the Romans would be two hours before noon, or 10AM as we would call it today.

39. Amanda of Nickelodeon’s “The Amanda Show” : BYNES

Amanda Bynes is an actress that made it big as a teenager on TV shows like “All That” and “The Amanda Show”. She then moved on to playing teen roles on the big screen, particularly in “She’s the Man” and “Hairspray”.

44. “Great” primate : APE

The tailless primates known as apes 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

45. Church recesses : APSES

The apse of a church or cathedral is a semicircular recess in an outer wall, usually with a half-dome as a roof and often where there resides an altar. Originally, apses were used as burial places for the clergy and also for storage of important relics.

46. “Selma” director DuVernay : AVA

Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker who became the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, a feat she achieved in 2012 for her feature film “Middle of Nowhere”. “Middle of Nowhere” tells the story of a woman who drops out of medical school to focus on husband when he is sentenced to 8 years in prison. DuVernay also directed the 2014 film “Selma” about the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

50. Antonym: Abbr. : OPP

An antonym is an “anti-synonym”. A synonym is word having the same sense as another, and an antonym the opposite. For example, “love” is an antonym of “hate”, and “stop” is an antonym of “go”.

51. Hit a four-bagger : HOMER

That would be baseball.

54. ___ of Good Feelings : ERA

The Era of Good Feelings lasted from about 1816 to 1824, during the administration of President James Monroe. The term described the feeling of bipartisanship that permeated politics at that time, largely due to President Monroe deliberately downplaying differences between the parties in Washington. One can only dream …

56. Network on the telly, with “the” : BEEB

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is also known as “the Beeb”, a name given to the network by the great Peter Sellers on the classic British radio comedy called “The Goon Show”. The BBC was founded in 1922, and was the world’s first national broadcasting organization.

“Telly” is a term commonly used in the UK and Ireland that is short for “television”.

57. Cool, to a jive talker : HEP

“Jive” is the name given to the jargon associated with early jazz and swing music.

59. Pulitzer-winning playwright for “Both Your Houses” : MAXWELL ANDERSON

Maxwell Anderson was an American playwright and author. Anderson’s 1948 stage play “Anne of the Thousand Days” is one Anderson’s most famous works, largely due to the successful 1969 film adaptation starring Richard Burton as King Henry VIII and Geneviève Bujold as the ill-fated Anne Boleyn.

64. Eurasian animals with antlers : ROE DEER

Roe deer are found mainly in Europe. They would be the deer shown on television and in movies when Robin Hood was out hunting in Sherwood Forest.

67. Foot bones : TARSALS

The tarsals (also “tarsi”) are the ankle bones, and are equivalent to the carpals in the wrist.

Down

4. Ball belle, briefly : DEB

“Deb” is short for “debutante”, which translates from French as “beginner” when referring to a female.

5. Hoover competitor : ORECK

The Oreck Corporation is named after founder David Oreck and makes vacuum cleaners and air purifiers. The company started out selling vacuum cleaners by mail, a new concept in 1963. David Oreck himself appears regularly as a spokesman in the company’s ads and infomercials.

The first practical portable vacuum cleaner was invented by James Spangler in 1907. Spangler sold the patent for the design to his cousin’s husband, William Henry Hoover. Hoover then made his fortune from manufacturing and selling vacuum cleaners. Hoover was so successful in my part of the world that back in Ireland we don’t use the verb “to vacuum” and instead say “to hoover”. Also, a hoover is what we call a vacuum cleaner, regardless of who makes it.

6. “Just the facts, ___” : MA’AM

Sgt. Joe Friday may have said “No, ma’am” and “I’m a cop” a lot on “Dragnet”, but he never actually said the oft-quoted “Just the facts, ma’am”.

8. Biblical patriarch-turned-sailor : NOAH

According to the Book of Genesis, Noah lived to a ripe old age. Noah fathered his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth when he was 500 years old, and the Great Flood took place when he was 600.

11. Comics boy who says “Reality continues to ruin my life” : CALVIN

The comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” is still widely syndicated, but hasn’t been written since 1995. The cartoonist Bill Watterson named the character Calvin after John Calvin, the 16th century theologian. Hobbes was named for Thomas Hobbes a 17th century English political philosopher.

21. “___ Lisa” : MONA

Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece that we know in English as the “Mona Lisa” is called “La Gioconda” in Italian, the language of the artist. It’s also known as “La Joconde” by the Government of France which owns the painting and displays it in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The title comes from the name of the subject, almost certainly Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Giocondo was a wealthy silk merchant in Florence who commissioned the painting for the couple’s new home to celebrate the birth of their second son.

22. Org. prominent at Cape Canaveral : NASA

The famous headland in Florida called Cape Canaveral was named by Spanish explorers in the early 16th century. As the Cape acts as a launching station for many of NASA’s rockets, when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 the NASA facility on nearby Merritt Island was renamed the Kennedy Space Center, and President Johnson went as far as renaming the whole of Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy. The name change for the cape didn’t go down well in Florida though, as the headland had been called Cape Canaveral for over 400 years. So, the name was restored in 1973, and Cape Kennedy is no more.

25. Title for Judi Dench : DAME

Dame Judi Dench is an outstanding English actress who has appeared for decades in her home country on stage and screen. Dench’s film career took off in the nineties with a relatively trivial role as “M” in the James Bond series of films. Since then she has played leading roles in several excellent movies including “Shakespeare in Love”, “Mrs. Brown”, “Notes on a Scandal” and “Philomena”.

27. Casino game : KENO

The name of the game keno has French or Latin roots, with the French “quine” being a term for five winning numbers, and the Latin “quini” meaning “five each”. The game originated in China and was introduced into the West by Chinese immigrants who were working on the first Transcontinental Railroad in the 1800s.

29. “Parks and Recreation” star : AMY POEHLER

Amy Poehler was a cast member on “Saturday Night Live” from 2001 to 2008, notable for appearing in many great sketches, including those where she played Hillary Clinton opposite Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin. Poehler also starred with Fey in the 2008 movie “Baby Mama”. And, Poehler led the cast of the sitcom “Parks and Recreation” for its seven-season run.

“Parks and Recreation” is a sitcom that started airing on NBC in 2009, and is a show that has grown on me. It stars the “Saturday Night Live” alum Amy Poehler. The creators of “Parks and Recreation” are part of the team responsible for the American version of “The Office”, so you’ll notice some similarities in the style of the two shows, and some actors that have appeared in both.

31. Nighttime breathing disorder : SLEEP APNEA

Sleep apnea (“apnoea” in British English) can be caused by an obstruction in the airways, possibly due to obesity or enlarged tonsils.

34. Deg. for a C.E.O. : MBA

The world’s first Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree was offered by Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration, in 1908.

35. Magazine no. : ISS

Issue (iss.)

41. Skedaddled : VAMOOSED

To vamoose is to to leave, coming from the Spanish “vamos” meaning “let’s go”.

49. Mount ___, highest peak in the Rockies : ELBERT

North America’s Rocky Mountains stretch from the very north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the US. The length of the range is over 3,000 miles. The highest point is Mount Elbert in Colorado, which has an elevation of 14,440 feet.

60. Hawaii’s Mauna ___ : LOA

Mauna Loa on the “Big Island” of Hawaii is the largest volcano on the planet (in terms of volume). The name “Mauna Loa” is Hawaiian for “Long Mountain”.

61. Joe Biden’s state: Abbr. : DEL

Vice President Joe Biden was a US Senator representing the state of Delaware from 1973 until he joined the Obama administration. While he was a senator, Vice President Biden commuted to Washington from Wilmington, Delaware almost every working day. He was such an active customer and supporter of Amtrak that the Wilmington Station was renamed as the Joseph R. Biden Railroad Station in 2011. Biden has made over 7,000 trips from that station, and the Amtrak crews were known to even hold the last train for a few minutes so that he could catch it. Biden earned himself the nickname “Amtrak Joe”.