Tag: Mythical beauty who lent her name to a continent crossword clue

Today’s Reveal Answer: What’s My Name?

The starting letters of each of today’s themed answers collectively spell out the NAME of the fairy tale character RUM-PEL-STILT-SKIN:

• 61A Fairy tale question whose answer is spelled out in the starts of 18-, 24-, 40- and 51-Across : WHAT’S MY NAME?

• 18A Yard event to clear out the attic : RUMMAGE SALE
• 24A Louisiana’s avian nickname : PELICAN STATE
• 40A Strong-smelling cheese made in England : STILTON
• 51A One barely in the water? : SKINNY-DIPPER

Read on, or jump to …
… a complete list of answers

Bill’s time: 4m 49s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Mushroom part : CAP

A mushroom isn’t a complete living organism per se but rather is one part of a fungus, and is the fruiting body that is responsible for distributing reproductive spores. The mushroom generally has three main components: the stipe (or “stem”), the pileus (or “cap”) and the lamellae (or “gills”) under the cap which distribute the spores.

14 South America’s Carnaval city, informally : RIO

Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil (after São Paulo). “Rio de Janeiro” translates as “January River”. The name reflects the discovery of the bay on which Rio sits, on New Year’s Day in 1502.

16 Baltimore bird : ORIOLE

The songbird called an oriole builds an interesting nest. It is a woven cup-like structure that is suspended from a branch like a hammock.

17 Psychic ability, in brief : ESP

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

18 Yard event to clear out the attic : RUMMAGE SALE

Or verb “to rummage”, meaning “to search thoroughly”, has an interesting history. Back in the 16th century, a “rummage” was the act of arranging cargo in a ship. In the early 17th century, the verb “to rummage” was introduced, originally meaning to search thoroughly (the hold of a ship). It should be noted that rummaging usually involves moving things around.

24 Louisiana’s avian nickname : PELICAN STATE

The official nickname of Louisiana is the Pelican State, but it is also known as the Bayou State, the Child of Mississippi, the Creole State, the Sportsman’s Paradise and the Sugar State.

The pelican is an example of a piscivore. A piscivorous animal is actually a carnivore, but one that lives on fish.

28 Giant in health insurance : AETNA

When the healthcare management and insurance company known as Aetna was founded, the name was chosen to evoke images of Mount Etna, the Italian volcano.

39 Athlete who said “Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer” : ALI

The exact etymology of the phrase “silence is golden” seems unclear, although it is part of the older and more expansive idiom “speech is silver; silence is golden”.

40 Strong-smelling cheese made in England : STILTON

Stilton is a lovely village in Cambridgeshire in England, and is the original home of the delicious blue cheese called Stilton.

42 Investment for the golden yrs. : IRA

Individual retirement account (IRA)

46 Work by Wordsworth or Whitman : POEM

The great English poet William Wordsworth is intrinsically linked with the Lake District in the north of England, where he lived from much of his life. The Lake District is a beautiful part of the country, and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit Dove Cottage in Grasmere a couple of times, where Wordsworth lived with his sister Dorothy …

Walt Whitman is considered to be one of the greatest American poets. He was born in 1819 on Long Island, and lived through the American Civil War. Whitman was a controversial character, even during his own lifetime. One view held by him was that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were not actually written by Shakespeare, but rather by someone else, or perhaps a group of people.

47 Coughed (up) : PONIED

“To pony up” means “to pay”. Apparently, the term originated as slang use of the Latin term “legem pone” that was once used for “money”. “Legem Pone” was the title of the Psalm that was read out on March 25 each year, and March 25 was the first payday of the year in days gone by.

49 Ledger entry on the minus side : DEBIT

A ledger is an account book. The term ”ledger” comes from the Middle English “leggen” meaning “to lay”. The original ledger was a large book “laid” in one particular place permanently, an example being a breviary in a church.

56 German carmaker : AUDI

The Audi name has an interesting history. The Horch company was founded by August Horch in 1909. Early in the life of the new company, Horch was forced out of his own business. He set up a new enterprise and continued to use his own name as a brand. The old company sued him for using the Horch name so a meeting was held to choose something new. Horch’s young son was studying Latin in the room where the meeting was taking place. He pointed out that “horch” was German for “hear” and he suggested “Audi” as a replacement, the Latin for “listen”.

59 ___ Paulo, Brazil : SAO

São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil. It is also the city with the highest number of helicopters in the world. This is partly driven by the horrendous traffic jams in São Paulo, but also by the wealthy having a very real fear of being kidnapped on the city’s streets.

60 Big name in mattresses : SERTA

Serta was founded in 1931 when a group of 13 mattress manufacturers came together, essentially forming a cooperative. Today, the Serta company is owned by eight independent licensees in a similar arrangement. Serta advertisements feature the Serta Counting Sheep. Each numbered sheep has a different personality, such as:

• #1 The Leader of the Flock
• #½ The Tweener
• #13 Mr. Bad Luck
• #53 The Pessimist
• #86 Benedict Arnold

66 Mythical beauty who lent her name to a continent : EUROPA

The continent of Europe was named for Europa, a Phoenician princess of Greek mythology.

67 Oil producers’ grp. : OPEC

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

68 “___ to Joy” : ODE

“Ode to Joy” is a poem written in 1785 by German poet Friedrich Schiller. Famously, Ludwig van Beethoven he used “Ode to Joy” in the fourth movement of his Ninth “Choral” Symphony that was first performed in 1824.

69 Singer/songwriter Crow : SHERYL

Famously, Sheryl Crow dated cyclist Lance Armstrong from 2003-2006. Armstrong has stated publicly more than once that Crow’s music cured his cancer.

Down

3 China’s is around 1.4 billion : POPULATION

The world’s most populous country is the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Republic of China (ROC) is the official name of the sovereign state that we usually call Taiwan.

4 Without stopping en route : DIRECT

“En route” is a French term that means “on the way”.

5 Part of a campus URL : EDU

The .edu domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

• .com (commercial enterprise)
• .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
• .mil (US military)
• .org (not-for-profit organization)
• .gov (US federal government entity)
• .edu (college-level educational institution)

6 “Slippery” tree : ELM

The slippery elm is a species of elm native to North America that is also known as the Red Elm. The inner bark of the slippery elm can used in a medicinal tea. Elm bark tea is said to ease a sore throat or irritated stomach.

7 Co-founder of Rome with Romulus : REMUS

According to tradition, Rome was founded by the twin brothers Romulus and Remus. The pair had a heated argument about who should be allowed to name the city and Romulus hit Remus with a shovel, killing him. And so, “Rome” was born, perhaps instead of “Reme”!

8 Run off with a boxer, maybe? : DOGNAP

The boxer breed of dog (one of my favorites!) originated in Germany. My first dog was a boxer/Labrador mix, a beautiful combination. Our current family dog is a boxer/pug mix, and is another gorgeous animal.

12 Fitzgerald of jazz : ELLA

Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

19 The “A” of MoMA : ART

The founding of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City was very much driven by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller. Working with two friends, Abby managed to get the museum opened in 1929, just nine days after the Wall Street Crash. The MoMA’s sculpture garden bears the name of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and has done so since 1949.

21 Conks out : DIES

The phrase “conk out” was coined by airmen during WWI, and was used to describe the stalling of an engine.

26 Low point : NADIR

The nadir is the direction pointing immediately below a particular location (through to the other side of the Earth for example). The opposite direction, that pointing immediately above, is called the zenith. We use the terms “nadir” and “zenith” figuratively to mean the low and high points in a person’s fortunes.

27 Juliet Capulet or Holden Caulfield, agewise : TEEN

In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, it is explicitly stated that Juliet is 13 years of age, and the assumption is that Romeo is perhaps a little older.

“The Catcher in the Rye” is the most famous novel from the pen of J. D. Salinger. The main character and narrator in the book is Holden Caulfield, a teenager who gets expelled from a university prep school. Caulfield also makes appearances in several short stories written by Salinger, as do other members of the Caulfield family. The title “The Catcher in the Rye” is a reference to the 1782 poem “Comin’ Thro” the Rye” by Scottish poet Robert Burns.

36 Grand ___ Opry : OLE

The Grand Ole Opry started out as a radio show in 1925 originally called the WSM “Barn Dance”. In 1927, the “Barn Dance” radio show was broadcast in a slot after an NBC production called “Musical Appreciation Hour”, a collection of classical works including Grand Opera. In a December show, the host of “Barn Dance” announced, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From now on we will present the ‘Grand Ole Opry'”. That name was used for the radio show from then on.

41 Coup for a newspaper freelancer : OP-ED

“Op-ed” is an abbreviation for “opposite the editorial page”. Op-eds started in “The New York Evening World” in 1921 when the page opposite the editorials was used for articles written by a named guest writer, someone independent of the editorial board.

The term “free lance” was coined by Sir Walter Scott in his 1820 novel “Ivanhoe”, when he used it to describe a medieval mercenary warrior. Forty years later, a “freelancer” was a journalist who did work for more than one publication without a long-term commitment.

54 Musical practice piece : ETUDE

An étude is a short instrumental composition that is usually quite hard to play and is intended to help the performer master a particular technique. “Étude” is the French word for “study”. Études are commonly performed on the piano.

63 “Great” hominid : APE

The tailless primates known as apes are divided into two main branches: gibbons (lesser apes) and hominids (great apes). The hominids are the great apes, and belong to the family of primates called Hominidae. Extant genera that make up the family Hominidae are:

• chimpanzees
• gorillas
• humans
• orangutans