Tag: Giggle crossword clue

Bill’s time: 18m 48s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Prepares, as shumai : STEAMS

Shumai are traditional pork dumplings that are often served in dim sum restaurants.

7A Paste commonly simulated by a blend of horseradish, mustard and green dye : WASABI

Sometimes called Japanese horseradish, wasabi is a root used as a condiment in Japanese cooking. The taste of wasabi is more like mustard than a hot pepper in that the vapors that create the “hotness” stimulate the nasal passages rather than the tongue. Personally, I love the stuff …

18A N.F.C. West team, informally : NINERS

The 49ers football team in San Francisco takes its name from the gold prospectors who flooded into Northern California around 1849 during the California gold rush. These “1849 prospectors” became known as the “49ers”.

22A Selena Gomez or Beyoncé, by birth : TEXAN

Selena Gomez is an actress and singer from Grand Prairie, Texas. Gomez’s first television role was in the children’s show “Barney & Friends”. She then played the lead in the TV series “Wizards of Waverly Place”. Gomez’s fans often refer to themselves as “Selenators”. Offscreen, Gomez made a splash as the girlfriend of Canadian singer Justin Bieber for a couple of years. More recently, she has been playing a lead role in the hit TV show “Only Murders in the Building” alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short.

Beyoncé Knowles established herself in the entertainment industry as the lead singer with the R&B group Destiny’s Child. She launched her solo singing career in 2002, after making her first appearance as an actor. In 2006 she played the lead in the very successful movie adaptation of the Broadway musical “Dreamgirls”. Beyoncé is married to rap star Jay-Z. She is also referred to affectionately as “Queen Bey”, a play on the phrase “the queen bee”. Her fan base goes by the name “Beyhive”.

24A John ___, singer with the hit albums “Perfectly Good Guitar” and “Mystic Pinball” : HIATT

John Hiatt is a rock guitarist and singer-songwriter from Indianapolis.

28A Early giant in punch-card tabulating systems : IBM

Tech giant IBM was founded as the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. The company changed its name to the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) in 1911 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1916. The name “International Business Machines” (IBM) was given first to the company’s Canadian subsidiary, and then to its South American subsidiary. In 1924, it was decided to adopt the International Business Machines name for the whole company. Good choice …

37A Kite feature : TALON

Kites are birds of prey that feed mainly on carrion. They have very small bodies relative to the size of their wings. As a result, kites fly somewhat effortlessly, catching the gentlest of updrafts. The weightless, drifting appearance of the bird in flight led to the flying toy being called a “kite”.

38A The Marlins, on scoreboards : MIA

The Miami Marlins baseball team was founded in 1993 as the Florida Marlins. The franchise changed its name to the Miami Marlins in 2011 when it relocated to the newly constructed Marlins Park.

39A ___-corner : CATTY

“Kitty-corner” means “diagonally opposite”. Apparently, the term is used mainly in the north and west of the US.

41A STEM field concern : GENDER GAP

Women in STEM (WiSTEM) is an organization focused on addressing attitudes to women working in the STEM disciplines, as well as the relatively limited educational opportunities for girls in high schools who are interested in pursuing STEM careers. WiSTEM was founded in 2017 at the University of Chicago Lab Schools.

43A It’s in the eye of the beholder : RETINA

The retina is the tissue that lines the inside of the eye, and is the tissue that is light-sensitive. There are (mainly) two types of cells in the retina that are sensitive to light, namely rods and cones. Rods are cells that best function in very dim light and only provide black-and-white vision. Cones on the other hand function in brighter light and can perceive color.

50A Verse from Emily Dickinson or Emma Lazarus : SESTET

Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, with less than a dozen published before she died in 1886. Emily’s younger sister discovered the enormous collection, and it was published in batches over the coming decades.

Emma Lazarus was a poet from New York City who is best known as the author of an 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus”. “The New Colossus” sits on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, a fitting location given that the title refers to Lady Liberty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Down

1D Duluth-to-Minneapolis dir. : SSW

Duluth, Minnesota lies at the westernmost end of Lake Superior, and as such is the westernmost port of the Great Lakes. One has to travel 2,300 miles of inland waterway to get to the Atlantic Ocean from Duluth. The city of Duluth takes its name from the first European explorer of the region, the Frenchman Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut.

Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota, and shares the name “Twin Cities” with the neighboring state capital of Saint Paul. One of the early settlers in the area was New England scholar Charles Hoag, who became the first schoolmaster in Minneapolis, and later the county treasurer. Hoag proposed the name “Minnehapolis” for the new city, combining part of “Minnehaha” with the Greek suffix “-polis”. Minnehaha Falls is a local waterfall, the name of which gained celebrity after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used the name for his fictional character in his poem “The Song of Hiawatha”.

2D Broadcaster with a onetime coat-of-arms logo, informally : 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”. Another nickname is “Auntie”, perhaps a reference to an old idiom “Auntie knows best”. As a result, the moniker “Auntie Beeb” has also become popular! The BBC was founded in 1922, and was the world’s first national broadcasting organization.

3D Otoscopy, e.g. : EAR EXAM

An ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT) uses an otoscope to look into the interior of one’s ears.

4D Anthropopithecus, e.g. : APE-MAN

The term “missing link” is usually applied to the concept that there existed some form of animal that is a hybrid between apes and humans. The idea that there was some “ape-man” or “missing link” is discounted these days by the scientific community, who now favor the theory of evolution.

8D Subject of the 1996 documentary “When We Were Kings” : ALI

“When We Were Kings” is a documentary by Leon Gast that was released in 1996. It tells of the “Rumble in the Jungle” world heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman that took place in Zaire. That’s the fight with the famous “rope-a-dope” tactic that tired out Foreman, and perhaps launched his new career selling grills …

11D Some Basque headwear : BERETS

Basque Country is an area that covers north-central Spain and southwestern France, and is home to the Basque people.

22D Lead-in to light : TWI-

Twilight is the light experienced when the sun is below the horizon, both in the morning and the evening. The prefix “twi-” seems to come from the sense of “half”, as in “half light”. There appears to be no connection to the word “twice”, despite twilight occurring twice each day.

30D Signature QB move included as a feature in 2012’s Madden NFL 13 video game : TEBOWING

Tim Tebow is a former quarterback who played mainly for the Denver Broncos and New York Jets. His relatively short professional career followed a very successful college career during which he became the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy. Tebow often gets down on one knee on the field to make a short prayer, a practice that has been dubbed “tebowing”.

31D Main pack in a bicycle race : PELOTON

In military terms, a platoon is a subdivision of a company-sized unit, and is usually divided into squads or sections. The term “platoon” arose in the 1630s from the French “peloton”. “Peloton” translates literally as “little ball”, and is used to this day to mean “agglomeration”. “Peloton” gives rise to our word “pellet”. Also, we use the Modern French “peloton” in English now to refer to the main body (agglomeration) of riders in a bicycle race.

34D Olympic gymnast Raisman : ALY

Aly Raisman is a retired gymnast. She captained the US gold-winning teams in the Olympics in 2012 (“The Fierce Five”) and in 2016 (“The Final Five”).

36D Pudding typically served with “neeps and tatties” : HAGGIS

Haggis is the national dish of Scotland. It is a savory pudding made from the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, mixed with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. The pudding was originally cooked in the sheep’s stomach but these days is usually prepared in a sausage casing.

37D Highly prized rewards on “Survivor” : TARPS

Originally, tarpaulins were made from canvas covered in tar that rendered the material waterproof. The word “tarpaulin” comes from “tar” and “palling”, with “pall” meaning “heavy cloth covering”.

The reality show “Survivor” is based on a Swedish television series created in 1997 called “Expedition Robinson”. The American “Survivor” is widely considered as the leading reality TV show. It was the first highly-rated reality TV offering to become very profitable.

42D HHH : ETAS

Eta is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, and is a forerunner of our Latin character “H”. Originally denoting a consonant, eta was used as a long vowel in Ancient Greek.

44D Once called : NEE

“Née” is the French word for “born” when referring to a female. The male equivalent is “né”. The term “née” is mainly used in English when referring to a married woman’s birth name, assuming that she has adopted her husband’s name, e.g. Michelle Obama née Robinson, Melania Trump née Knavs, and Jill Biden née Jacobs.

46D Lake Tahoe winter hrs. : PST

Lake Tahoe (often referred to simply as “Tahoe”) is up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and is located right on the border between California and Nevada. It is the largest alpine lake in the country. Tahoe is also the second deepest lake, with only the beautiful Crater Lake in Oregon being deeper. Given its location, there are tall casinos that sit right on the shore on the Nevada side of the state line where gambling is legal.