Tag: Exploit a loophole e.g. crossword clue

Bill’s time: 15m 12s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Olympic slalom equipment : CANOE

Canoe racing has been featured as a competition sport in the Summer Olympic Games since the 1936 Games in Berlin. There are two disciplines of canoeing in competition: slalom and sprint. Slalom is an event in which competitors navigate a course of gates that are placed in a river. Sprint is an event in which competitors race over a fixed distance on a calm body of water.

6A Spanish sparkling wine : CAVA

Cava is a Spanish sparkling wine mainly from the Penedès area of Catalonia. “Cava” translates as “cave” or “cellar”, and was adopted in 1970 to distinguish it from French Champagne. The wine must be produced using the traditional method, similar to Champagne.

16A Fictional company famous for its duds : ACME

The Acme Corporation is a fictional company used mainly by Looney Tunes, and within the Looney Tunes empire it appears mostly in “Road Runner” cartoons. Wile E. Coyote is always receiving a new piece of gear from Acme designed to finally capture the Road Runner, but the equipment always leads to his downfall.

17A Outcome of a match, maybe : TINDER DATE

Tinder is a matchmaking app that uses Facebook profiles. Users “swipe” photos of potential matches, either to the right (“like”) or to the left (“not interested”). Users who “match” each other can then chat within the app.

18A Forum setting : ROME

The Latin “forum” (plural “fora”) translates as “marketplace, town square”. The Roman Forum is the most famous example of such a space. It is surrounded by the ruins of several ancient government buildings, and has been referred to as the most celebrated meeting place in the world.

19A U2 producer Brian : 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.

The band known today as U2 was originally called Feedback, and then The Hype. The band members searched for yet another name and chose U2 from a list of six names suggested by a friend. They picked U2 because it was the name they disliked least …

21A Like a whodunit in which the butler did it [duh!] : BANAL

A butler is the head servant in a household. The butler is often in charge of the wine stores in the house. The term “butler” comes from the Old French “boteillier” meaning “officer in charge of wine”, which in turn comes from the Old French “boteille”, the word for a “bottle”.

23A Ho Chi Minh City’s former name : SAIGON

Ho Chi Minh City is the largest city in Vietnam by population. Formerly known as Saigon, and the capital of South Vietnam, it was renamed following the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976. The renaming is in honor of the Vietnamese communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.

30A Supermodel Alek : WEK

Alek Wek is a supermodel originally from Southern Sudan. In her native language, Wek’s name translates as “Black Spotted Cow”, which is a symbol of good luck for the Dinka, her native people.

37A ___ Minor : ASIA

Asia Minor is also known as Anatolia. It is the geographic part of Asia that protrudes out into the west, towards Europe, and is roughly equivalent to modern-day Turkey.

38A Pen that isn’t used for writing, in brief : E-CIG

An electronic cigarette (also called an “e-cigarette”) is a battery-powered device that resembles a real cigarette. The e-cigarette vaporizes a solution that contains nicotine, forming a vapor that resembles smoke. The vapor is inhaled in a process called “vaping”, delivering nicotine into the body. The assumption is that an e-cigarette is healthier than a regular cigarette as the inhaled vapor is less harmful than inhaled smoke. But, that may not be so …

40A Port on the Loire : NANTES

Nantes is a beautiful city located on the delta of the Loire, Erdre and Sèvre rivers. It has the well deserved nickname of “The Venice of the West”. I had the privilege of visiting Nantes a couple of times on business, and I can attest that it really is a charming city …

The Loire is the longest river in France. It is so long that it drains one-fifth of the nation’s land mass. The Loire rises in the southeast, in the Cévennes mountain range, then heads north then due west, passing through the city of Nantes before emptying into the Bay of Biscay at Saint-Nazaire.. The Loire Valley is home to some of France’s most famous wine production, and includes the wine regions of Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé and Muscadet. It is also home to some of the nation’s most spectacular châteaux. There are over 300 castles along the river, built by French kings and their courtiers.

45A Like an earworm : CATCHY

“Earworm” is a colloquial term used for a catchy tune that is also somewhat irritating, one that you can’t get out of your head.

48A Rapper and actor Smith : JADEN

Actor Jaden Smith is the son of actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. Jaden played the title character in the 2010 remake of 1984’s “The Karate Kid”. I must say, that is a very entertaining film and young Jaden did a great job. More recently, Jaden Smith has focused more on a career as a rap singer.

50A Go-to doc : PCP

Primary care physician (PCP)

53A Actress Shawkat : ALIA

Alia Shawkat is an actor who might be best known for playing Maeby Fünke on the sitcom “Arrested Development”. She is best friends with fellow actor Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page), whom Shawkat met while filming the 2009 movie “Whip It”.

54A Ones providing brief assistance? : PARALEGALS

A paralegal (sometimes just “para”) is a person who is trained sufficiently in legal matters to assist a lawyer. A paralegal cannot engage in the practice of law and must be supervised by a qualified lawyer.

58A One might be meat-only or dairy-only in a kosher household : SINK

According to Jewish dietary laws, kosher food is fit to eat, and food that is not fit to eat is referred to as treif (or “tref”). The usage of “kosher” has extended to include anything considered legitimate.

60A The Devil’s domain : TAROT

Tarot cards have been around since the mid-1400s, and for centuries were simply used for entertainment as a game. It has only been since the late 1700s that the cards have been used by fortune tellers to predict the future. The list of tarot cards includes the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man and the Lovers.

Down

3D ___ Sarratore, “My Brilliant Friend” character : NINO

“My Brilliant Friend” is the first installment in Elena Ferrante’s series of four “Neapolitan Novels”. It introduces the reader to the complex and often turbulent friendship between Elena Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo, as they grow up in Naples in the 1950s.

7D Second Freudian stage : ANAL

According to Freudian psychology, we have an instinctive sexual appetite that develops in five phases, named for the erogenous zones that are the source of the drive in each phase. They are:

1. the oral stage (~ 0-2 years)
2. the anal stage (~ 1-3 years)
3. the phallic stage (~ 3-6 years)
4. the latency stage (~ 6 years – puberty)
5. the genital stage ( ~ puberty – adult life)

I’m not so sure …

12D World capital once known as Philadelphia : AMMAN

Amman is the capital city of Jordan, and one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world. It has been occupied by a number of different civilizations over the centuries, including the Greeks. The Greeks called the city “Philadelphia”, a name retained by the Romans after they conquered the city in 63 BC (and later annexed it into the province of Arabia Petraea in 106 AD).

13D Instagram : ___ :: YouTube : Short : REEL

Reels is a facility introduced by Instagram in 2020. Essentially, it is a feature that competes with TikTok.

21D Skosh : BIT

“Skosh” is a slang term meaning “a little bit”. It was originally military slang that came out of the Korean War. “Skosh” derives from the Japanese word “sukoshi” which translates as “few, little, some”.

26D “___ plaisir” (“You’re welcome,” in French) : AVEC

“Avec plaisir!” is French for “with pleasure!”.

32D Per ___ : DIEM

“Per diem” is the Latin for “by the day”. We tend to use the term for a daily allowance for expenses when traveling for work.

36D Ganja : MARY JANE

“Ganja” is another name for the drug cannabis. Cannabis is known to have been used thousands of years ago by ancient Hindus in India, and “ganja” is the Sanskrit term for the drug.

41D Residence that can have thousands of chambers : ANT NEST

“Formicary” is another name for “ant nest”, and comes from the Latin “formica” meaning “ant”. The phrase “ant colony” describes the ants living in an ant nest. A formicarium is similar to an aquarium, and used to house an ant colony perhaps for study. The phrase “ant farm” is usually reserved for ant nests built by an ant colony in a formicarium.

43D Unreturnable pickleball shot : ACE

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.

45D Instruments in chamber groups : CELLI

Chamber music is a style of classical music that is written for a small group of instruments, as opposed to a full orchestra. That number of players should be able to stage a performance in a “chamber”, traditionally a large room in a palace or other grand residence.

47D Discovery sites : LABS

Our term “laboratory”, often shortened to “lab”, comes from the Medieval Latin word “laboratorium” meaning “place for labor, work”. This in turn comes from the Latin verb “laborare” meaning “to work”.

49D What’s distorted in a Mercator projection : AREA

A Mercator projection is a type of map, one named for Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator. The map distorts reality in that lines of longitude are parallel to each other, rather than meeting at the north and south poles. The resulting effect is that land masses are distorted in size, with more and more distortion taking place moving away from the equator and towards the poles.

50D Part of a full house : PAIR

In early versions of poker, straights and flushes had no value as the game was focused on two, three, four-of-a-kind etc. Two-of-a-kind and three-of-a-kind in the same hand was “special” in those days as it was the only hand in which all five cards were of value. This hand was therefore called a “full” hand, which eventually became a “full house”.

51D Ptolemaic royal, familiarly : CLEO

Cleopatra was the last pharaoh to rule Egypt. After she died, Egypt became a province in the Roman Empire.

The Ptolemaic dynasty was a Greek royal family that ruled in Egypt from 305 BC to 30 BC. The dynasty started when Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s bodyguards, was given charge of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 BC. Ptolemy and his descendants then became the successors to the pharaohs of independent Egypt, and ruled the country until the Romans took over in 30 BC.