Tag: End of a presidential address crossword clue

Constructed by: Peter Wentz
Edited by: Will Shortz

[ad_above_grid]

Today’s Theme: None

Bill’s time: 11m 21s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15. About a third of South America : AMAZONIA

The Amazon rainforest is the world’s largest, covering 1.4 billion acres in nine different countries of South America. Those 1.4 billion acres represent more than half of the rainforest that’s left on the planet.

16. Election Day declaration : I VOTED

Election Day was chosen by Congress back in 1845. The month of November was selected as it suited an agricultural society, following the fall harvest and yet not too far into winter, which could make travel difficult. Tuesday was chosen so that people had time to travel to polling stations. Monday elections might have meant that some would have to start out on Sunday, and that could interfere with Christian services.

19. Part of some shortcuts : ALT

The Alt (alternate) key is found on either side of the space bar on US PC keyboards. The Alt key evolved from what was called a Meta key on old MIT keyboards, although the function has changed somewhat over the years. Alt is equivalent in many ways to the Option key on a Mac keyboard, and indeed the letters “Alt” have been printed on most Mac keyboards starting in the nineties.

20. Its capital is Nuku’alofa : TONGA

The Kingdom of Tonga is made up of 176 islands in the South Pacific, 52 of which are inhabited and scattered over an area of 270,000 square miles. Tonga was given the name Friendly Islands in 1773 when Captain James Cook first landed there, a reference to the warm reception given to the visitors.

25. Single numbers : SOLI

“Soli” (the plural of “solo”) are pieces of music performed by one artist, whereas “tutti” are pieces performed by all of the artists.

39. Blockbuster 2014 animated film : THE LEGO MOVIE

“The Lego Movie” is a 2014 computer animated film in which all the characters are Lego figures. Apparently “The Lego Movie” was well received, and resulted in the spin-off film “The Lego Batman Movie”.

41. Heat : ESTRUS

The estrous cycle of mammals can be divided into four phases:

1. Proestrus is the phase when the body prepares for a potential fertilized egg. In particular, the lining to the uterus starts to develop.
2. Estrus is the phase when the female is said to be “in heat”, when she is sexullay receptive.
3. Metestrus is the phase when levels of progesterone increase. The levels continue to increase if pregnancy has occured, but fall of if there has been no fertilization.
4. Anestrus is the phase when the sexual cycle rests, before starting all over again.

45. Repeated collaborator with Bowie : ENO

Brian Eno is a musician, composer and record producer from England who first achieved fame as the synthesizer player with Roxy Music. As a producer, Eno has worked with David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads and U2.

David Bowie was the stage name of English singer David Jones. Bowie adopted the alter ego Ziggy Stardust during his glam rock phase in the 1970s. Sadly, Bowie passed away from liver cancer in early 2016.

46. Grasslands burrower : VOLE

Vole populations can really increase rapidly. Mama vole is pregnant for just three weeks before giving birth to litters of 5-10 baby voles. Then the young voles become sexually mature in just one month! If you have one pregnant vole in your yard, within a year you could have over a hundred of the little critters.

49. Supposed source of large footprints : YETI

The yeti, also known as “the abominable snowman”, is a beast of legend. “Yeti” is a Tibetan term, and the beast is fabled to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. Our equivalent legend in North America is that of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. The study of animals whose existence have not yet been substantiated is called cryptozoology.

59. 2014 Facebook acquisition : WHATSAPP

WhatsApp is a popular messaging service used on smartphones that sends messages and other files from one mobile phone number to another. Launched in 2011, WhatsApp is incredibly popular, most popular messaging service used today. Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, paying over $19 billion.

62. One of the superstates in “1984” : EASTASIA

The action in George Orwell’s 1949 novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” takes place in the intercontinental superstate of Oceania. Orwell also created two other superstates, called Eurasia and Eastasia.

63. Panegyrizes : EXALTS

A panegyric was originally a formal speech made in public, the intent of which was to praise some person of some entity. Later, the term came to mean a laudatory verse, such as an ode. “Panegyris” is the Greek for “speech fit for a general assembly”.

64. Instagram rival : SNAPCHAT

Snapchat is a messaging system that allows users to send photos and video clips to a limited list of recipients. The photos and clips, called “snaps”, can be viewed for only a few seconds before they are deleted from the recipient’s device, and from the Snapchat servers.

Down

1. Republican politico George : PATAKI

George Pataki is a member of the Republican Party who served as Governor of New York from 1995 to 2006. I happen to know that Pataki’s maternal grandmother is from a village close to where I lived in Ireland. When Pataki was first running for Governor, I met someone in Ireland who was researching Pataki’s Irish roots for him. My guess is that the Irish vote is important in New York State …

4. Drug marketed as Retrovir : AZT

AZT is the abbreviated name for the drug azidothymidine, which is used extensively in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. AZT was originally developed in the seventies as a potential treatment for retroviruses (cancer-causing viruses), although it was never approved for use in treatment. In 1984, it was confirmed that AIDS was caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), so scientists turned to known antiviral drugs in the search for a viable treatment. Burroughs-Wellcome came up with a treatment regime using AZT, and filed a patent in 1985. The patent was challenged in court but the patent expired anyway in 2005 without any decision being made. There are now at least four generic forms of AZT approved for sale in the US.

5. Use Instagram, e.g. : POST

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 …

8. Slow and dignified : LARGO

Largo is an instruction to play a piece of music with a very slow tempo. “Largo” is an Italian word meaning “broadly”.

14. Portrayer of Warren Buffett in HBO’s “Too Big to Fail” : ED ASNER

“Too Big to Fail” is a 2009 book written by Andrew Ross Sorkin that describes the events surrounding the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in particular. Sorkin’s book was adapted into an excellent HBO television movie of the same name in 2011.

21. War-torn Mideast city : ALEPPO

Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and is located not far from Damascus, the nation’s capital. Aleppo owes it size and history of prosperity to its location at the end of the Silk Road, the trade route that linked Asia to Europe (and other locations). The Suez Canal was opened up in 1869 bringing a new route for transport of goods, and so Aleppo’s prosperity declined over the past one hundred years or so. The city’s population has suffered terribly since the start of the Syrian Civil War, with the Battle of Aleppo raging from 2012 to 2016.

26. Smitten : IN LOVE

“Smitten” is a past participle of “smite” meaning “to inflict a heavy blow”. We tend to use “smitten” to mean “affected by love, love-struck”.

30. End of a presidential address : DOT GOV

The White House website went live in 1994, although the design and content changes with each new administration. The website’s address is WhiteHouse.gov. It’s a good idea to note the ending of the address, because WhiteHouse.com used to be an adult site!

32. Margaret Thatcher’s husband : DENIS

Margaret Thatcher served as Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990, making her the longest serving leader of the country in the 20th century, and the first woman to hold the office. Thatcher’s nickname in the press was the “Iron Lady”, a moniker bestowed on her by a Soviet journalist. The “Iron Lady” was born Margaret Hilda Roberts, the daughter of a grocer. She studied chemistry at Oxford University and worked for a while as a research chemist.

35. Question pundits discuss after a presidential debate : WHO WON?

A pundit is a learned person who one might turn to for an opinion. “Pundit” is derived from the Hindi word “payndit” meaning “learned man”.

36. Certain voter ID : DEM

The modern-day Democratic Party was founded in 1828 when supporters of Andrew Jackson broke away from the former Democratic-Republican Party during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. That date makes the Democratic Party the oldest voter-based political party in the world. Andrew Jackson became the first Democratic US president, in 1829.

39. “Friday I’m in Love” band, 1992 : THE CURE

The Cure is an English rock band founded in 1976 and still going strong today, although not with the original line up. The only top ten hit the Cure had in the US is “Love Song”, released in 1989.

43. It’s perfect : UTOPIA

The word “Utopia” was coined by Sir Thomas More for his book “Utopia” published in 1516 describing an idyllic fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. More’s use of the name Utopia comes from the Greek “ou” meaning “not” and “topos” meaning “place”. By calling his perfect island “Not Place”, More was apparently making the point that he didn’t think that the ideal could actually exist.

47. “Never stop improving” sloganeer : LOWE’S

Lucius S. Lowe opened the first Lowe’s hardware store in 1921, in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Lucius only knew the one store, as it was family who expanded the company after he passed away in 1940.

48. ___ Hunt, protagonist in the “Mission: Impossible” films : ETHAN

It was Tom Cruise’s idea to adapt the “Mission Impossible” television series for the big screen, and it became the first project for Cruise’s own production company. Tom Cruise took on the starring role of Ethan Hunt, the point man for the Impossible Missions Force (IMF).

54. Mexican quarters : CASA

We use the term “quarters” for a place of abode, especially housing for military personnel. Back in the late 16th century, quarters were a portion (quarter) of a town reserved for a military force.

55. Letters before a colon : HTTP

“http” are the first letters in many Internet links. “http” stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol. More secure and “safer” websites (like this one!) use links starting with “https”, which stands for “http secure”).

58. Some shelter volunteers, briefly : RNS

Registered nurse (RN)