Tag: Just the slightest bit crossword clue

Bill’s time: 7m 07s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Hogwarts headmaster ___ Dumbledore : ALBUS

Professor Albus Dumbledore is the headmaster of the school for wizards called Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter universe. Dumbledore’s specialties are nonverbal spells and alchemy. Author J. K. Rowling chose the name Dumbledore as it is an Early English word for a bumblebee. Apparently she pictured him wandering around, humming to himself.

14A Japanese automaker named for a river : ISUZU

Isuzu is a Japanese manufacturer of commercial vehicles and diesel engines. The company was named for the Isuzu River, with “isuzu” translating into English as “fifty bells”.

15A Ground transportation option : TAXI

We call cabs “taxis”, a word derived from “taximeter cabs” that were introduced in London in 1907. A taximeter was an automated meter designed to record distance traveled and fare to be charged. The term “taximeter” evolved from “taxameter”, with “taxa” being Latin for “tax, charge”.

19A Where Bengali and Burmese are spoken : ASIA

Bengal is a region in the northeast of the Indian subcontinent that lies at the northern end of the Bay of Bengal. Bengal is divided between the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

The Republic of the Union of Myanmar is the official name of the Asian country that some nations still recognize as the Union of Burma.

26A Actress Wong of the Netflix series “Beef” : ALI

Ali Wong is a stand-up comedian from San Francisco who is a protégé of Chris Rock. She made two very successful Netflix stand-up specials “Baby Cobra” and “Hard Knock Wife”, and also worked as a writer for the hit sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat”.

27A James of jazz : ETTA

“Etta James” was the stage name of celebrated R&B and jazz singer Jamesetta Hawkins. James was an acquaintance of civil rights activist Malcom X. For ten years, she was a member of the Nation of Islam, and used the name “Jamesetta X”.

28A Ham-handed : INEPT

The term “ham-fisted” (also “ham-handed) has been in use since the 1920s, when it was originally used to describe a pilot who was heavy on the controls of a plane.

30A Onetime CBS forensic drama : CSI

The “CSI” TV show franchise uses hits from the Who as theme music:

• “Who Are You” … “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”
• “Baba O’Riley” … “CSI: New York”
• “Won’t Get Fooled Again” … “CSI: Miami”
• “I Can See for Miles” … “CSI: Cyber”

33A “I don’t mind ___ / Except as meals. / And the way they feels”: Ogden Nash : EELS

Ogden Nash was a poet from Rye, New York who is remembered for his light and quirky verse. He had over 500 such works published between 1931 and 1972.

36A Seyfried of “Mean Girls” : AMANDA

Actress Amanda Seyfried’s first film role was in the 2004 teen comedy “Mean Girls”, supporting Lindsay Lohan. Seyfried has quite the voice too, using it to good effect in her leading roles in 2008’s “Mamma Mia!” and 2012’s “Les Misérables”. Seyfried married fellow actor Thomas Sadoski (from “Life in Pieces”) in 2017.

38A Tragic ending? : CEE

The word “tragic” ends with a letter C (cee).

40A He and I, but not she and you : CHEMICAL SYMBOLS

Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and the element symbol “He”. It is a gas, lighter than air, and is the second-most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen). Helium was first detected in 1868 as an unknown yellow spectral line during a solar eclipse. As such, the gas was named for “Helios”, the Greek god of the Sun.

The chemical element iodine is a halogen (as are fluorine, chlorine and bromine) and has the symbol “I”. At room temperature, iodine is a purple-black solid. With heat, it melts into violet liquid, and at high temperatures a violet gas. The name “iodine” comes from the Greek “ioeides” meaning “violet-colored”.

44A Highlands cryptid, affectionately : NESSIE

The Loch Ness monster has been talked about for centuries, but modern interest started in 1933 when a spate of sightings was reported. Those sightings don’t seem to have stopped, with photographs really sparking the imagination.

The study of animals whose existence have not yet been substantiated is called cryptozoology, and a cryptid is a creature or plant that isn’t recognized by the scientific community, but the existence of which has been suggested.

46A Fast-swimming shark : MAKO

The shortfin mako shark can appear on restaurant menus, and as a result the species is dying out in some parts of the world. The mako gets its own back sometimes though, as attacks on humans are not unknown. It is the fastest-swimming shark, and has been clocked at speeds of over 40 miles/hour. And the shark in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”, that’s a mako. “Mako” is the Maori word for “shark” or “shark tooth”.

49A Villainous animal in “The Lion King” : HYENA

Among the group of lions at the center of “The Lion King” story, young Simba is the heir apparent and the lion cub destined to take over as leader of the pride. His uncle is jealous of Simba, and plots with a trio of hyenas to kill Simba, so that he can take his position. The uncle was originally named Taka (according to books) but he was given the name Scar after being injured by a buffalo. The trio of hyenas are called Shenzi, Banzai and Ed.

60A A+ and B-, but not F : BLOOD TYPES

Here is an approximate distribution of blood types across the US population:

• O-positive: 38 percent
• O-negative: 7 percent
• A-positive: 34 percent
• A-negative: 6 percent
• B-positive: 9 percent
• B-negative: 2 percent
• AB-positive: 3 percent
• AB-negative: 1 percent

67A ___ coffee (whiskey drink) : IRISH

Despite rumors to the contrary, I choose to believe that the Irish coffee cocktail was invented in my homeland, and specifically in Foynes flying-boat station in the west of Ireland. The terminal at Foynes was one of the busiest in Europe back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in the days when airlines such as Pan Am were using flying-boats for transatlantic crossings. Joe Sheridan, chef at the terminal’s restaurant, started to serve coffee laced with whiskey to warm the incoming passengers, especially those who landed on a wet and blustery west of Ireland day. Sheridan, it is said, coined the term “Irish coffee” for the drink.

69A “We will make amends ere long; / ___ the Puck a liar call”: Shak. : ELSE

Puck (aka “Robin Goodfellow”) is a character in William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, one of the Fairies in the tale. One of Puck’s tasks in the storyline is to use love juice that is made from a flower that has been hit by cupid’s arrow. The magical juice is applied to the eyelids of someone sleeping, so that the person wakes and falls in love with the first living things he or she sees. Of course, Puck drops the love juice on the wrong character …

Down

2D Sch. on the banks of the Mississippi : LSU

Louisiana State University (LSU)

3D Ground transportation option : BUS

We use the term “bus” for a mode of transportation as it is an abbreviated form of the original “omnibus”. We imported “omnibus” via French from Latin, in which language it means “for all”. The idea is that an omnibus is a carriage “for all”.

4D Commando weapons : UZIS

The first Uzi submachine gun was designed in the late 1940s by Major Uziel “Uzi” Gal of the Israel Defense Forces, who gave his name to the gun.

A commando unit is a body of troops specially trained for hit-and-run raids into enemy territory. We imported the term into English from Afrikaans in the early 1800s. We owe the modern usage of “commando” to Winston Churchill, who used it starting in 1940 to describe shock troops whose job it was to disrupt the planned German invasion of Britain. Churchill was probably familiar with the word from his time as a war correspondent and military officer during the Second Boer War.

6D Figure that roughly equals protons plus neutrons : ATOMIC MASS

The atomic mass of an atom is simply that atom’s mass. As some elements have isotopes, then the atomic mass of one isotope is different from another. For example, the atomic mass of chlorine 35 is 35 AMU (atomic mass units), and the atomic mass of chlorine 37 is 37 AMU. The related atomic weight is the average weight of an atom of a naturally occurring element. About ¾ of the world’s chlorine is chlorine 35, and ¼ is chlorine 37. On average, an atom of chlorine then weighs 35.5 AMU. The atomic weight of chlorine is 35.5 AMU, i.e. nearer to the atomic mass of the more abundant chlorine 35.

8D PC file extension : EXE

In the Windows operating system, a file with the extension “.exe” is an “executable” file.

9D Congressional divide, literally as well as metaphorically : AISLE

The concept of left-right politics started in France during the French Revolution. When members of France’s National Assembly convened in 1789, supporters of the King sat to the President’s right, and supporters of the revolution to the President’s left. The political terms “left” and “right” were then coined in the local media, and have been used ever since.

11D MA and MS, but not BA and BS : POSTAL CODES

MA for Massachusetts and MS for Mississippi.

12D Canal with a “low bridge” (“Everybody down!”) : ERIE

The phrase “Low Bridge, Everybody Down” comes from the 1905 folk song “Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal” (also known as “Low Bridge, Everybody Down”) by Thomas S. Allen.

The song “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” was written in 1905. The lyrics are nostalgic and look back to the days when traffic on the canal was pulled by mules, bemoaning the introduction of the fast-moving engine-powered barges. The first line is “I’ve got an old mule and her name is Sal”.

18D Zilch : NIL

We use the term “zilch” to mean “nothing”. Our current usage evolved in the sixties, before which the term was used to describe “meaningless speech”. There was a comic character called Mr. Zilch in the 1930s in “Ballyhoo” magazine. Mr. Zilch’s name probably came from the American college slang “Joe Zilch” that was used in the early 1900s for “an insignificant person”.

24D Something to stand for : ANTHEM

The word “anthem” used to describe a sacred song, especially one with words taken from the Scriptures. The British national anthem (“God Save the Queen/King”) technically is a hymn, and so it came to be described as “the national hymn” and later “the national anthem”. The use of the word “anthem” extended from there to describe any patriotic song.

25D X, Y and Z, but not A, B and C : GENERATIONS

The term “Generation X” originated in the UK where it was the name of a book by Jane Deverson. Her book detailed the results of a study of British youths in 1964, contrasting their lifestyle to those of previous generations. It was Canadian author Douglas Coupland who was responsible for popularizing the term, with his more successful publication “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”. By one definition, Gen-Xers were born between 1961 and 1981.

The Millennial Generation are sometimes referred to as “Generation Y” (Gen-Y). Millennials were born after the “Gen-Xers”, from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

Definitions vary, but it seems that the term “Generation Z” is reserved for the children of “Generation X”, and for the generation that follows the “Millennials” (Generation Y). Gen-Zers are also known as “Zoomers”, a portmanteau of “Z” and “boomer” (as in “baby boomer”).

29D “The Office” role : PAM

In the excellent sitcom “The Office”, the character Pam Halpert (née Beesly) is played very ably by Jenna Fischer. If you’ve seen the original version of “The Office” from the UK, then you’d have met Pam’s equivalent character, whose name is Dawn Tinsley.

34D Pop star Gomez : SELENA

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.

36D Top gun : ACE

A flying ace (also “air ace”) is an aviator who has shot down a number of enemy planes during combat. The qualifying number of kills seems to vary, but five is common. The first use of “ace” was during WWI, when the French newspapers dubbed pilot Adolphe Pegoud “l’as” (French for “the ace”) when he shot down his fifth German plane.

47D Organ with a distinctive shape : KIDNEY

The kidneys have several functions in the body, including the removal of toxins from the blood. This function is carried out by nephrons, the main structural units in the kidneys. Each human kidney comprises about a million nephrons.

51D Postpone for now : TABLE

These “tabling” and “shelving” idioms drive me crazy, because they are often misused. If a topic is shelved, it is set aside. If a topic is tabled, it is brought “off the shelf” and put “on the table” for discussion. I know that language evolves, but I think that it should at least make sense …

55D River through Khartoum : NILE

Khartoum is the capital city of Sudan, and is located at the point where the Blue Nile and White Nile meet.

58D Banks of “America’s Next Top Model” : TYRA

Tyra Banks is a tremendously successful model and businesswoman. Banks created and hosted the hit show “America’s Next Top Model “, and also had her own talk show. She was also the first African-American woman to make the cover of the “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit issue.

61D ___ Nas X : LIL

“Lil Nas X” is the stage name of rapper Montero Lamar Hill. He was born and raised just outside of Atlanta. His first hit was “Old Town Road”, which is classified as country rap.

62D Place to retire? : PIT

At a motor race track, crews “retire” their cars during a pit stop.