Tag: Dorothy to the Wicked Witch of the West crossword clue

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Creature of the internet : LOLCAT

A lolcat is an image of a cat with a humorous message superimposed in text. Such images have been around since the late 1800s, but the term “lolcat” only surfaced in 2006 as the phenomenon was sweeping across the Internet. “Lolcat” is a melding of the acronym for “laugh out loud” (LOL) and “cat”.

7 “The ___ deeds like poison weeds / Bloom well in prison-air”: Oscar Wilde : VILEST

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer who led a very public life in his adopted home of London. Although he was a prolific writer of many forms of literature, Wilde penned only one novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. He was perhaps more renowned in his own time as a dramatist. Several of his plays are performed regularly today, including “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Wilde’s last work was a poem titled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which recounted his time in prison after being convicted of homosexual offenses in 1895 and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Oscar Wilde died in 1900 at the age of 46 in Paris, destitute.

16 Muttonchops moisturizer : BEARD OIL

Ambrose Burnside was a Union Army general during the Civil War, and a successful businessman. When the National Rifle Association was formed in 1871, Burnside was chosen as the organization’s first president. Burnside was also noted for the very lush growth of hair on his face and the distinctive style in which he cut it. We now know that style of cut as “sideburns”, a term derived from the Burnside name. When sideburns connect with the mustache, they might be termed “mutton chops”, a reference to their similarity in shape to the cut of meat.

18 Like the feeling of one’s legs after a marathon, maybe : LEADEN

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.

19 Helping of gravy? : BONUS

The original “riders of the gravy train” were railroad men in the 1920s who were assigned a run that had good pay and little work. Since then, the phrase “gravy train” has come to mean any job that is easy and pays well. The term “gravy” had been slang for easy money since about 1900.

20 Silver streaks, e.g. : LODES

A lode is a metal ore deposit that’s found between two layers of rock or in a fissure. The mother lode is the principal deposit in a mine, usually of gold or silver. “Mother lode” is probably a translation of “veta madre”, an expression used in mining in Mexico.

22 Network behind the Ken Burns docuseries “Jazz” : PBS

Ken Burns directs and produces epic documentary films that usually make inventive use of archive footage. Recent works are the sensational “The War” (about the US in WWII) and the magnificent “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”, as well as 2014’s “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History”. Burns’ 2017 offering was “The Vietnam War” that he co-directed with Lynn Novick.

23 Son of Seth : ENOS

Enos was the son of Seth, and therefore the grandson of Adam and Eve, and nephew of Cain and Abel. According to the ancient Jewish work called the Book of Jubilees, Enos married his own sister Noam.

25 ___ gras torchon (French dish) : FOIE

“Gras” is a French word meaning “fat”, as in “foie gras” meaning “fat liver”.

26 ___ Peres, suburb of St. Louis : DES

Des Peres, Missouri takes its name from the River Des Peres that doesn’t actually flow through the city, although two tributaries do. The river’s name translates to “River of the Fathers”, a reference to a mission of Catholic priests that lived nearby.

34 Jockey’s main competitor? : HANES

The Hanes brand of apparel was founded in 1901. A related brand was introduced in 1986 called Hanes Her Way.

35 Caboose, e.g. : CAR

The word “caboose” originally came from Middle Dutch and was the word for a ship’s galley. When the last car in a train in North America was given a stove for the comfort of the crew, it took on the name “caboose”. The term has also become slang for a person’s backside.

38 Don’t do it, doc! : HARM

“First, do no harm” is a translation of the Latin phrase “Primum non nocere”. The phrase is a principle used in the world of medicine that reminds a provider of healthcare that to do nothing might be better than intervening in some situations. It is often said that “First, do no harm” is found in the text of the Hippocratic Oath, but that’s just not true. What is true is that the line “I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them” is included.

42 Blacksmith’s need : FORGE

A blacksmith is someone who forges and shapes iron, perhaps to make horseshoes. A farrier is someone who fits horseshoes onto the hooves of horses. The term “blacksmith” is sometimes used for one who shoes horses, especially as many blacksmiths make horseshoes and fit them as well.

43 Vermont municipality SE of Montpelier : BARRE

The city of Barre, Vermont calls itself the “Granite Center of the World”, as there are vast deposits of the stone in nearby Millstone Hill. “Barre Gray” granite is famous worldwide and is very popular with sculptors, especially for outdoor works.

48 Weapon that originated in feudal Japan : KATANA

A katana is a curved sword worn by the samurai of Japan. It is sometimes referred to as a “samurai sword”.

51 Some golfing attire : SKORTS

The garment called a “skort” is a hybrid between a “skirt” and “shorts”.

Down

1 Like many shots in pickleball : LOBBED

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.

3 Landforms seen in South America : LLANOS

“Llano” is a Spanish word meaning “plain, flat region”. The Llanos is a vast grassland in the northwest of South America.

4 ___ the Great, founder of the first Persian empire : CYRUS

Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Persian Empire and ruled from 559 BCE to 530 BCE. Some say that Cyrus’s legacy is that he established the concept of an empire that was ruled centrally, but which operated for the welfare and benefit of its subjects.

5 Some operators in Boolean logic : ANDS

Boolean logic is a logic system used in computers. The system takes its name from the man who devised it in 1854, George Boole. Boolean logic is used by many Internet search engines. Using Boolean logic in a search you can combine words into one search term “like this” by using quotation marks. You can also search for pages that contain “term one” but not “term two” by searching for “term one” – “term two”.

6 It’s between one and many : TOO

That would be “one too many”.

8 Saint in a nursery rhyme : IVES

You might remember the nursery rhyme “As I was going to St. Ives” from the third “Die Hard” movie, “Die Hard With a Vengeance” as it is used as a riddle in the film’s storyline. The rhyme goes like this:

As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives
Each wife had seven sacks
Each sack had seven cats
Each cat had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St Ives?

There is more than one place called St. Ives in England, but most think the reference is to the seaside town of St. Ives in Cornwall. By the way, the answer to the riddle is “one”, because just the narrator was going to St. Ives, and the rest were characters he met along the way.

9 Salonga of Broadway : LEA

Lea Salonga is a singer and actress from the Philippines who is known for originating the lead role in the musical “Miss Saigon” in both the West End and on Broadway. She also provided the singing voice for the Disney princesses Jasmine (in “Aladdin”) and Fa Mulan (in “Mulan”, both 1998 and 2004 versions). Salonga was the first Asian woman to win a Tony Award, for her performance in “Miss Saigon”.

10 Terminus : END POINT

We absorbed our word “terminus” (plural “termini”) from Latin, and in both languages it means “end, final goal”. The Roman god Terminus presided over landmarks and boundaries, and was the focus of the festival of Terminalia at the end of the Roman year.

11 Basketball star with five Olympic gold medals : SUE BIRD

WNBA player Sue Bird is one of only two basketball players, male or female, to have won five Olympic gold medals. The other is fellow WNBA star Diana Taurasi. Bird became engaged to US soccer phenom Megan Rapinoe in 2020.

14 “Alexander’s Bridge” was her debut novel (1912) : WILLA CATHER

American author Willa Cather wrote what’s referred to as the “Prairie Trilogy”, novels that tell the story of Swedish immigrants living in Nebraska. The titles in the trilogy are “O Pioneers!”, “The Song of the Lark” and “My Ántonia”. Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for another novel “One of Ours”, which is set in Nebraska and the French battlefields of WWI.

24 Makeup set? : GENES

The set of all genes in a particular population is known as the “gene pool”, a term coined in Russian by geneticist Aleksandr Sergeevich Serebrovskii in the 1920s. In general, the larger the gene pool, the more diverse and robust the population.

25 Beasts : FAUNA

The fauna (plural “faunae”) is the animal life of a particular region, and the flora (plural “florae”) is that region’s plant life. The term “fauna” comes from the Roman goddess of earth and fertility who was called Fauna. Flora was the Roman goddess of plants, flowers and fertility.

28 “Ella and ___” (1956 jazz album) : LOUIS

“Ella and Louis” was a studio album released in 1956. It was a collaboration between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong with accompaniment by the Oscar Peterson Quartet. The pair worked together on two more albums: “Ella and Louis Again” and “Porgy and Bess”, both released in 1957.

29 Target of acid washing, often : DENIM

Denim fabric originated in Nîmes in France. The French phrase “de Nîmes” (meaning “from Nîmes”) gives us the word “denim”. Also, the French phrase “bleu de Genes” (meaning “blue of Genoa”) gives us our word “jeans”.

One might acid wash jeans, for example, to make them look older.

30 Wine list heading : ROSES

Rosé wines get their color from the skins of the grapes, although the intensity of the color is not sufficient to make them red wines. Of the varying type of rosé wines available, we are most familiar with sweet White Zinfandels. Personally, I am fond of the dry Provençal rosé wines.

31 Dorothy, to the Wicked Witch of the West : MY PRETTY

In the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, Dorothy arrives in the Land of Oz after her farmhouse is swept up in a cyclone. The farmhouse comes to ground and kills the Wicked Witch of the East. The Wicked Witch of the West arrives to claim the magical ruby slippers worn by the Wicked Witch Witch of the East. The Good Witch of the North steps in and gives the ruby slippers to Dorothy instead.

32 Capricorn’s symbol : SEA-GOAT

Capricorn is the tenth sign of the Zodiac. The astrological sign is associated with the constellation Capricornus. “Capricornus” is Latin for “horned goat”. That said, Capricorn is often represented by a sea-goat symbol, a mythical half-fish, half-goat creature.

33 What might precede a million : THANKS

Thanks a million …

35 Tech pointer : CURSOR

The cursor on a computer screen is named for the cursor on a slide rule, which is the part that slides on the device. In turn, a slide rule cursor was named for an even earlier cursor, which was a running messenger, from the Latin “cursor” meaning “runner, errand boy”.

37 Hershey candy company trademark : REESE’S

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups were invented by Harry Burnett “HB” Reese. Peanut Butter Cups were originally called penny cups, reflecting the price at which they were sold. Then inflation took over, and maybe that’s why they were broken into smaller “Pieces” …

39 Ovary, for example : GONAD

Reproductive glands, of either sex, are known as gonads. Female reproductive cells are eggs, which are produced in the female gonad, the ovary. Male reproductive cells are sperm, which are produced in the male gonad, the testicle.

45 Sci-fi villain that Anthony Hopkins once said inspired his performance as Hannibal Lecter : HAL

In Arthur C. Clarke’s “Space Odyssey” (famously adapted for the big screen as “2001: A Space Odyssey”) the computer system that went rogue was called HAL 9000, or simply “HAL”. HAL stands for “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer”. Even though Clarke denied it, there’s a good argument that can be made that the acronym HAL is a veiled reference to IBM, the big player in the world of computing at the time of the novel’s publication (1968). The acronym HAL is just a one-letter shift from the initials “IBM”.

The marvelous actor Anthony Hopkins got his big break in movies playing Richard the Lionheart in the 1968 historical drama “The Lion in Winter”. Hopkins hails from the south coast of Wales, and was encouraged in his early career by fellow Welshman Richard Burton, whom he met when he was a teenager. I’d say that Hopkins’ best-known film role was Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs”.

Hannibal Lecter is a character created by author Thomas Harris, first appearing in his novel “Red Dragon”. Lecter also features prominently in “Red Dragon’s” famous sequel “The Silence of the Lambs”, and even more so in the third book, “Hannibal Rising”. The latter title is a “prequel” exploring Lecter’s childhood and development into a serial killer. Lecter was portrayed in the 1991 film version of “The Silence of the Lambs” by Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins also played Lecter in 2001’s “Hannibal” and in 2002’s “Red Dragon”. Lecter was also played by Brian Cox (“Manhunter” – 1986), by Gaspard Ulliel (“Hannibal Rising” – 2007), and by Mad Mikkelsen (“Hannibal” – TV series).

47 Column on an R.S.V.P. spreadsheet : NOS

“RSVP” stands for “répondez s’il vous plaît”, which is French for “answer, please”.