Tag: Option on a popular car service crossword clue

Bill’s time: 7m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Neighbor of Vt. and N.H. : MASS

“The Bay State” is one of the nicknames of Massachusetts. Other nicknames for Massachusetts are “The Old Colony State” and “The Codfish State”.

14A Longer of the two lower arm bones : ULNA

The bones in the forearm are the radius and ulna. “Ulna” is the Latin word for “elbow”, and “radius” is Latin for “ray”. The humerus (plural “humeri”) is the long bone in the upper arm.

16A Option on a popular car service : UBERX

The basic service offered by ride-hailing company Uber is known as UberX. This provides a private ride for up to four passengers in a standard car. UberXL provides a minivan or SUV with room for up to 6 passengers.

17A Porn : SMUT

“Smut” means “dirt, smudge” and more recently “pornographic material”. The term comes from the Yiddish “schmutz”, which is a slang word used in English for dirt, as in “dirt on one’s face”.

The word “pornography” comes from the Greek “pornographos” meaning “writing of prostitutes”.

18A “Designing Women” co-star of 1980s-’90s TV : DELTA BURKE

Actress and comedian Delta Burke is best known for playing Suzanne Sugarbaker in the sitcom “Designing Women”. Burke ended up leaving the cast in 1991 due to her poor relationship with the creators of the show.

20A Japanese theatrical genre : KABUKI

Kabuki is a Japanese form of theater involving dance and drama. In the original Kabuki theater, both male and female parts were played by women. In contrast, the Noh dramas have the male and female parts played by men.

23A Yahoo alternative : MSN

Tut, tut … let’s not forget that exclamation mark in “Yahoo!”

Jerry Yang and David Filo called their company “Yahoo!” for two reasons. Firstly, a Yahoo is a rude unsophisticated brute from Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”. Secondly, Yahoo stands for “Yet another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

24A Snorkeling site : REEF

Our word “snorkel” comes from German navy slang “Schnorchel” meaning “nose, snout”. The German slang was applied to an air-shaft used for submarines, due to its resemblance to a nose, in that air passed through it and it made a “snoring” sound. “Schnorchel” comes from “Schnarchen”, the German for “snore”.

28A Player of the middle son on TV’s “The Partridge Family” : DANNY BONADUCE

Danny Bonaduce, who played the wisecracking middle son Danny Partridge in the show “The Partridge Family”, has had quite a varied career beyond his child acting days. He’s been a radio personality, a television personality (including starring in the VH1 reality show “Breaking Bonaduce”), and even a professional wrestler. He also has a black belt in Tang Soo Do. In 2023, he retired from his radio show in Seattle and announced plans to relocate to Palm Springs, California.

34A Dress in Delhi : SARI

New Delhi is the capital city of India. The city resides within the National Capital Territory of Delhi (otherwise known as the metropolis of Delhi). New Delhi and Delhi, therefore, are two different things.

43A American city in the Sonoran Desert : MESA

The city of Mesa, Arizona is in effect a suburb of Phoenix. The original settlement of non-Native Americans was founded by Daniel Webster Jones who led a Mormon group from St. George, Utah. The settlement was first called Jonesville, then Fort Utah and eventually Lehi. A second group of Mormons arrived and formed a settlement on top of a nearby mesa. It was this use of a mesa that eventually gave the city its current name.

Sonora is the state in Mexico lying just south of the borders with Arizona and New Mexico. The Sonoran Desert actually straddles the US-Mexico border, covering 120,000 square miles in parts of the states of Sonora, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Arizona and California.

46A First corner square after Go on a Monopoly board : JAIL

In the game of Monopoly, there are three ways that a player can end up in jail:

1. Landing directly on the “Go to Jail” space
2. Throwing three consecutive doubles in one turn
3. Drawing a “Go (Directly) to Jail” card from Chance or Community Chest

48A Author Fleming : IAN

The character James Bond was the creation of writer Ian Fleming. Fleming “stole” the James Bond name from an American ornithologist. The number “007” was “stolen” from the real-life, 16th-century English spy named John Dee. Dee would sign his reports to Queen Elizabeth I with a stylized “007” to indicate that the reports were for “her eyes only”. There’s an entertaining miniseries that aired on BBC America called “Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond” that details Ian Fleming’s military career, and draws some nice parallels between Fleming’s experiences and aspirations and those of his hero James Bond. Recommended …

49A “E.T.” actress : DREW BARRYMORE

Drew Barrymore has quite the pedigree, being a granddaughter of Hollywood icon John Barrymore. She appeared in her first movie at the age of five, in 1980’s “Altered States”, but her big break was in 1982’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”. That same year she became the youngest host of “Saturday Night Live” at the age of seven. She has been invited back to host the show quite a few times and has now hosted six times, more than any other female celebrity.

1982’s classic science fiction movie “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” was directed by Steven Spielberg. The idea behind the film came from Spielberg himself, and the character E.T. was based on an imaginary friend that he conjured up as a child after his parents divorced in 1960.

55A Dr. whose “lab” is a studio : DRE

“Dr. Dre” is the stage name of rapper Andre Romelle Young. He is known for his own singing career as well as for producing records and starting the careers of others such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem and 50 Cent.

58A Bad way to run : AMOK

The phrase “to run amok” (sometimes “to run amuck”) has been around since the 1670s and is derived from the Malay word for “attacking furiously”, “amuk”. The word “amok” was also used as a noun to describe Malay natives who were “frenzied”. Given Malaya’s troubled history, the natives probably had a good reason for that frenzy …

60A First basic cable show to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series : MAD MEN

“Mad Men” was the flagship show on the AMC television channel for several seasons. Set in the sixties, it’s all about an advertising agency located on Madison Avenue in New York (hence the title). “Mad Men” became the first show created by a basic cable channel to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.

64A Singer who starred in “Labyrinth” (1986) and “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) : DAVID BOWIE

In early 1969, the struggling David Bowie recorded a promotional film in an attempt to reach a wider audience. The film called “Love You Till Tuesday” featured seven of Bowie’s songs in what amounted to an extended music video, with one of the tracks being “Space Oddity”. Somebody smart put two and two together later in the year and decided that a fresh version of “Space Oddity” should be released, to coincide with the Apollo moon landings. Sure enough, the BBC snagged the track for their coverage of the landings and gave Bowie huge audiences. And the song still gets an awful lot of air time on the small screen. Famously, Bowie turned down the honor of Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000. The British government tried again in 2003, offering a knighthood, but Bowie stuck to his guns and refused that honor too. Bowie did however accept the French title of Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1999.

67A Shakespearean conspirator : IAGO

In William Shakespeare’s “Othello”, Iago is the villain of the piece. At one point he readily admits this, saying “Thus do I ever make my fool my purse”. Here he is claiming to make money out of making fools of others. In this case, he takes money from Roderigo, who believes that Iago will help him bed Othello’s wife Desdemona.

71A Carolers’ celebrations : YULES

Yule celebrations coincide with Christmas, and the words “Christmas” and “Yule” (often “Yuletide”) have become synonymous in much of the world. However, Yule was originally a pagan festival celebrated by Germanic peoples. The name “Yule” comes from the Old Norse word “jol” that was used to describe the festival.

73A One place to find 18-, 28-, 49- and 64-Across … or, parsed differently, how these people might introduce themselves : IMDB … or I’M DB

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website was launched in 1990, and is now owned by Amazon.com. It’s a great site for answering questions one has about movies and actors.

Down

1D Cologne scent : MUSK

Musk has such an elegant connotation these days because of its use in the world of perfumery. However, its origin is not quite so glamorous. The original substance called musk, also used in perfumes, was extracted from a gland in the rectal area of the male musk deer. The name “musk” is a Sanskrit word for “testicle”.

Back in 1709, an Italian perfume-maker moved to Cologne in Germany. There he invented a new fragrance that he named Eau de Cologne after his newly adopted town. The fragrance is still produced in Cologne, using a secret formulation. However, the terms “Eau de Cologne” and “cologne”, are now used generically.

2D Heroine of Tennessee Williams’s “Summer and Smoke” : ALMA

Tennessee Williams was an American playwright from Columbus, Mississippi. Several of his plays are widely known, both for their live performances and for their film adaptations. Perhaps the most notable works are “The Glass Menagerie”, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “The Night of the Iguana”.

6D Point value of 68% of Scrabble tiles : ONE

The game of Scrabble has been around since 1938, the invention of an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Butts determined how many tiles of each letter, and the point value of each tile, by analyzing letter distributions in publications like “The New York Times”.

7D Coat with a thin auric layer : GILD

The prefix “auri-” is used to mean “gold”. “Aurum” is Latin for “gold”.

8D Capital city on the banks of the Rideau River : OTTAWA

Ottawa is the second-largest city in the Province of Ontario (after Toronto) and is the capital city of Canada. The name “Ottawa” comes from an Algonquin word “adawe”, which means “to trade”.

9D Nonsense syllables one might say in a tub : RUB-A-DUB

The nursery rhyme “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” dates back to at least 1798 when it was first published in London:

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
‘Twas enough to make a man stare.

10D ___ Dhabi : ABU

Abu Dhabi is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

13D Yoked team : OXEN

A yoke is a wooden beam used between a pair of animals so that they are forced to work together.

21D Ivories, on a piano : KEYS

The traditional materials used for the manufacture of piano keys were ebony (black) and ivory (white). Ebony is sometimes still used, for both white and black keys. The white keys can be made by covering ebony with white plastic. More often than not these days, both black and white keys are made from a quality plastic.

25D Cry from a klutzy golfer : FORE!

No one seems to know for sure where the golfing term “fore!” comes from. It has been used at least as far back as 1881, and since then has been called out to warn other golfers that a wayward ball might be heading their way. My favorite possibility for its origin is that it is a contraction of the Gaelic warning cry “Faugh a Ballagh!” (clear the way!) which is still called out in the sport of road bowling. Road bowling is an Irish game where players bowl balls along roads between villages, trying to reach the end of the course in as few bowls as possible, just like in golf!

A klutz is an awkward individual, with the term “klutz” coming from Yiddish. The Yiddish word for a clumsy person is “klots”.

27D Grift : SCAM

Grift is money made dishonestly, especially as the result of a swindle. The term is perhaps an alteration of the word “graft”, which can have a similar meaning.

28D Socially awkward sort : DORK

I consider “dork” and “adorkable” to be pretty offensive slang. “Dork” originated in the sixties among American students, and has its roots in another slang term, a term for male genitalia.

29D Stratford-on-___ : AVON

Stratford-upon-Avon, not Stratford-on-Avon …

Stratford-upon-Avon is a town in the county of Warwickshire in the English midlands. Most famously perhaps, it was the birthplace of William Shakespeare.

31D Stealthy assassin with a sword : NINJA

The ninjas were around in Japan at the time of the samurai, but were a very different type of warrior. The ninjas were covert operatives, specializing in the use of stealth to accomplish their missions. As they were a secretive cadre they took on a mystical reputation with the public, who believed they had the ability to become invisible or perhaps walk on water. We now use the term “ninja” figuratively, to describe anyone highly-skilled in a specific field.

32D Farmyard refrain in a children’s song : E-I-E-I-O

There was an old American version of the English children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (E-I-E-I-O) that was around in the days of WWI. The first line of the older US version goes “Old MacDougal had a farm, in Ohio-i-o”.

36D Ruler opposed by the Bolsheviks : TSAR

At the second party congress of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, a split developed. The faction with the most support was led by Vladimir Lenin. As they were in the majority, the group became known as the “Bolsheviks”, a term derived from the Russian word for “more” or “majority”. Lenin and the Bolsheviks led the October Revolution of 1917, as a result of which Lenin came to power. He headed the new Soviet State during its formative years.

41D Notable features of elves and basset hounds : EARS

The basset hound wouldn’t be my favorite breed of dog, to be honest. Basset hounds have a great sense of smell with an ability to track a scent that is second only to that of the bloodhound. The name “basset” comes from the French word for “rather low”, a reference to the dog’s short legs.

47D Constellation resembling a musical instrument : LYRA

Lyra (Latin for “lyre, harp, lute”) is a constellation that includes the star Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Lyra is surrounded by the neighboring constellations of Draco, Hercules, Vulpecula and Cygnus.

51D Arcing baseball hits : BLOOPS

In baseball, a bloop single is more usually called a blooper. It’s a fly ball that drops for a single between an infielder and an outfielder.

52D House of ___ (old Italian banking family) : MEDICI

The House of Medici was a dynasty from the Italian Republic of Florence. The Medici family went into the world of finance and built the largest bank in Europe in the 15th century. Significantly, the Medicis produced four Popes around this time, and then the family moved from the status of common citizens to become hereditary Dukes of Florence. By the middle of the 18th century the family ruled the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but ended up fiscally bankrupt.

55D June 6 remembrance : D-DAY

The Allied Invasion of Normandy during WWII was given the codename “Operation Overlord”. The Normandy landings that kicked off the invasion on D-Day (6 June 1944) were given the codename “Operation Neptune”.

56D Competitor of Rao’s : RAGU

The Ragú brand of pasta sauce was introduced in 1937. The name ”Ragù” is the Italian word for a sauce used to dress pasta, however the spelling is a little off in the name of the sauce. In Italian, the word is “Ragù” with a grave accent over the “u”, but if you look at a jar of the sauce on the supermarket shelf it is spelled “Ragú” on the label, with an acute accent. Sometimes I think we just don’t try …

Rao’s Italian restaurant opened in East Harlem in New York City in 1896. Rao’s also sells a small line of Italian foodstuffs in supermarkets, such as pasta, sauces and olive oil.

59D Title river in an Oscar-winning movie : KWAI

The river referred to in the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is actually called the Khwae Yai River, and is in western Thailand. The original novel by Pierre Boulle, “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, was published in French in 1952, and the wonderful movie released in 1957. Both tell the story of the construction of part of the Burma Railway and a bridge over the river, using prisoners of war as laborers. The film stars William Holden, Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins.

63D Modern greenhorn : NOOB

A greenhorn is a young-horned animal. “Greenhorn” is also a term that is now applied to any inexperienced person.

65D ___ de la Cité : ILE

There are two famous “îles” (islands) in the middle of the River Seine in Paris, one being the Île de la Cité, and the other Île Saint-Louis. Île de la Cité is the most renowned of the two, as it is home to the cathedral of Notre-Dame.

66D Verb suffix : -ING

A gerund is a form of a verb that can be used as a noun. For example, the gerund of the verb “to solve” is “solving”, as in the phrase “we really enjoyed the solving of the crossword”.