Tag: Pastries with a portmanteau name crossword clue

Bill’s time: 12m 07s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 Place to get a variety of views : OP-ED PAGE

“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.

16 Friendly term of address in France : MON AMI

“Mon ami” is French for “my friend”, when referring to a male. The phrase “mon amie” is used for a female.

18 Crunchy candy bar since 1930 : ZAGNUT

The Zagnut candy bar is a tad unusual in that it contains no chocolate. Introduced in 1930, Zagnut bars have seen a resurgence in popularity over the past decade. Apparently, the lack of chocolate to melt is appreciated by US troops deployed in warm climates.

22 Cover with perfume : CENSE

To cense is to perfume with incense. Such a lovely word …

23 White wine aperitif : KIR

Kir is a French cocktail made by adding a teaspoon or so of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) to a glass, and then topping it off with white wine. The drink is named after Felix Kir, the Mayor of Dijon in Burgundy, who used to offer the drink to his guests. My wife is particularly fond of a variant called a kir royale, in which the white wine is replaced with champagne.

29 Je ne sais quoi : AURA

An aura (plural “aurae”) is an intangible quality that surrounds a person or thing, a “je ne sais quoi”. “Je ne sais quoi” is French for “I don’t know what”.

33 Sent : ON CLOUD NINE

I don’t think that anyone is really certain of the etymology of the term “on cloud nine” meaning “elated”, but I do like the following explanation. The 1896 “International Cloud-Atlas” was a long-standing reference used to define cloud shapes that was based on a classification created by amateur meteorologist Luke Howard some decades earlier. The biggest and fluffiest of all cloud shapes (and most comfortable-looking to lie on) is cumulonimbus. And you guessed it, of the ten cloud shapes defined in the atlas, cumulonimbus was cloud nine …

36 Mary Barra, for G.M., beginning in 2014 : CEO

Mary Barra is the chief executive officer of General Motors (GM). Barra is the first woman to hold the top position in a global automotive manufacturing company.

37 Pastries with a portmanteau name : CRONUTS

A cronut is a pastry that resembles a doughnut but is made using a croissant-like dough. It is filled with cream and deep-fried in grapeseed oil. It is a relatively new pastry, having been invented by New York bakery owner Dominique Ansel in 2013. The term “cronut” is a portmanteau of “croissant” and “doughnut”.

43 Move like a snail : INCH

Snails and slugs are referred to collectively as gastropods. There are many, many species of gastropods, found both on land and in the sea. Gastropods with shells are generally described as snails, and those species without shells are referred to as slugs.

45 Ancient Greek birthplace of Parmenides : ELEA

Parmenides was a philosopher in ancient Greece. He was born in the Greek city of Elea located on the Italian coast, and so the school of philosophy that he founded is called the Eleatic School.

47 Tippi on the Hollywood Walk of Fame : HEDREN

Tippi Hedren is an actress from New Ulm, Minnesota who is best known for her starring roles in two Alfred Hitchcock classics: “The Birds” (1963) and “Marnie” (1964). Famously, Hedren claimed that Hitchcock destroyed her movie career because she would not succumb to his sexual advances, a charge that has been denied. Hedren’s daughter is actress Melanie Griffith.

49 Totally relaxed, so to speak : ZEN

Zen is a Buddhist school that developed its own tradition in China back in the 7th century AD. Zen is a Japanese spelling of the Chinese word “chan”, which in turn derives from the Sanskrit word “dhyana” meaning “meditation”.

61 Paid for a ride, in a way : UBERED

Uber is a ridesharing service that was founded in 2009 and is based in San Francisco. The service is somewhat controversial and has been described as an illegal taxicab operation. Central to Uber’s service is the company’s mobile app, which can use the client’s GPS location to help find the nearest available ride. Uber’s main competitor is Lyft.

62 Classic works by the poet Martial : EPIGRAMS

An epigram is a short and clever statement, poem or discourse.

64 Underperformed, colloquially : DOGGED IT

To dog it is to not expend the effort necessary to accomplish a task. Folks tell me that the expression is quite common, but I must confess that I personally haven’t heard it used outside of crosswords. I’ll have to listen more carefully in the future …

Down

1 Broadway hit, informally : BOFF

“Boffo” (sometimes “boff”) is show biz slang for “very successful”, and is a term that dates back to the early sixties.

2 The Olympic Australis is the world’s largest discovered one : OPAL

The largest opal ever found, and the most valuable, is the Olympic Australis. It was discovered in South Australia in 1956. That same year, the Summer Olympics were being held in Melbourne so the newly discovered stone was given the name “Olympic Australis”.

7 Molding shape : OGEE

An ogee is a type of S-curve. Specifically it is a figure consisting of two arcs that curve in opposite directions (like an S) but both ends of the curve end up parallel to each other (which is not necessarily true for an S).

9 Breaker of a celebrity breakup, maybe : TMZ

TMZ.com is a celebrity gossip website launched in 2005. “TMZ” stands for “thirty-mile zone”, a reference to the “studio zone” in Los Angeles. The studio zone is circular in shape with a 30-mile radius centered on the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard.

10 Extermination target : ROACH

The insect known as a cockroach is closely related to the termite. Although generally considered a pest, the lowly cockroach has at least one claim to fame. A cockroach named Nadezhda was sent into space in 2007 by Russian scientists, where it became the first terrestrial creature to give birth in space. Nadezhda bore 33 cockroaches.

11 One side of baseball’s Freeway Series rivalry : ANGELS

The Anaheim Angels baseball team is today more correctly called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (LAA). The “Angels” name dates back to 1961 when the team was founded in the “City of Angels”, Los Angeles. When the franchise moved to Anaheim in 1965 they were known as the California Angels, then the Anaheim Angels, and most recently the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Angels are also known as “the Halos”.

12 Film part for Frank Sinatra and George Clooney : DANNY OCEAN

“Ocean’s 11” is a great film from 1960, starring Frank Sinatra as Danny Ocean. The original storyline is updated for the excellent 2001 remake, with George Clooney playing the lead. In the 1960 movie, the love interest is a character called Beatrice Ocean, played by Angie Dickinson. In the 2001 version, the love interest gets a new name, Tess Ocean, and is played by Julia Roberts. The 2001 remake (titled “Ocean’s Eleven”, note the spelling) spawned two sequels: “Ocean’s Twelve” in 2004 and “Ocean’s Thirteen” in 2007.

Frank Sinatra was married four times in all. His first wife, and mother of his three children, was Nancy Barbato. Barbato and Sinatra met in Jersey City while in their teens, and married in their early twenties in 1939. They divorced in 1951 following a string of affairs that Sinatra had after he moved his family to Hollywood. One of those very public affairs was with actress Ava Gardner, who became Sinatra’s second wife a few months after divorcing Barbato. That marriage lasted until 1957. Sinatra then married actress Mia Farrow, when she was 21 years old and he was 29 years her senior. That marriage only lasted a couple of years. Sinatra’s last marriage took place in 1976, and was Barbara Blakely Marx, the ex-wife of Zeppo Marx of the Marx Brothers.

Actor George Clooney’s breakthrough role was playing Dr. Doug Ross on TV’s “ER”, although before that he had a fairly regular role on the sitcom “Roseanne”. George’s aunt was the singer and actress Rosemary Clooney.

13 Creatures whose males barely eat or drink during incubation : EMUS

Emu eggs are very large, with a thick shell that is dark-green in color. One emu egg weighs about the same as a dozen chicken eggs. It is the male emu that incubates the eggs. The incubation period lasts about 8 weeks, during which time the male neither eats nor drinks, just lapping up any morning dew that is nearby. While incubating a clutch of eggs, male emus lose about a third of their weight.

23 Rheinland city : KOLN

Cologne is the fourth largest city in Germany, and is known as “Köln” in German.

25 Kraft Foods brand : SANKA

The first successful process for removing caffeine from coffee involved steaming the beans in salt water, and then extracting the caffeine using benzene (a potent carcinogen) as a solvent. Coffee processed this way was sold as Sanka here in the US. There are other processes used these days, and let’s hope they are safer …

26 Game played on a dirt court : BOCCI

The Italian bowling game of “bocce” (often anglicized as “bocci” or “boccie”) is based on a game played in ancient Rome. “Bocce” is the plural of the Italian word “boccia” meaning “bowl”.

27 Former company with a crooked logo, appropriately enough : ENRON

After all the trials following the exposure of fraud at Enron, several of the key players ended up in jail. Andrew Fastow was the Chief Financial Officer. He plea-bargained and received ten years without parole, and became the key witness in the trials of others. Even Fastow’s wife was involved and she was sentenced to one year for helping her husband hide money. Jeffrey Skilling (ex-CEO) was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months. Kenneth Lay (CEO) died in 2006 after he had been found guilty but before he could be sentenced. The accounting firm Arthur Andersen was found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding thousands of pertinent documents and deleting emails and files (a decision that the Supreme Court later overturned on a technicality). But still, Arthur Andersen collapsed under the weight of the scandal and 85,000 people lost their jobs (despite only a handful being directly involved with Enron).

31 Symptom Checker offerer : WEBMD

WebMD is a website containing health information. Online since 1996, WebMD is read by over 80 million readers each month. One example of the useful features on the site is the Pill Identification Tool.

32 Poet whose name consists of side-by-side opposites : NOYES

Alfred Noyes was an English poet best known for his narrative poem “The Highwayman” that was published in 1906. The highwayman in the poem is in love with an innkeeper’s daughter named Bess. Bess dies trying to warn her lover about an ambush, and then the highwayman dies when trying to exact revenge for her death. The highwayman and Bess meet up as ghosts on winter nights.

34 Father of King Arthur : UTHER

According to legend, King Arthur was the son of Uther Pendragon. Uther magically disguised himself as his enemy Gorlois and slept with Gorlois’ wife Igerna, and the result of the union was Arthur.

35 Bonus feature, of a sort : EASTER EGG

In a film, book, computer program (or even a crossword!), an “Easter egg” is a hidden message or inside joke that is left intentionally during production. The term “Easter egg” is used for such a device as it evokes the idea of an Easter egg hunt. You can check out thousands of such Easter eggs at www.eeggs.com.

42 Hard to let go of, in a way : TENURED

A job in a university that is described as “tenure-track” is one that can lead to a tenured position. A tenured position is a “job for life”. A person with tenure can only be dismissed for cause.

44 Straight : HETERO

“Heterosexuality” is sexual attraction between persons of the opposite gender. The prefix “hetero-” comes from the Greek “heteros” meaning “different, other”.

49 Leonard ___, subject of a 1983 mockumentary : ZELIG

“Zelig” is a 1983 film by Woody Allen. It tells the fictitious story, in documentary style, of Leonard Zelig (played by Allen) who has the gift of being able to change his appearance in order to better fit in with the company he keeps. He becomes famous as a “human chameleon”. By using archive footage, the film includes clever “cameos” by real figures from history (like Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Susan Sontag).

50 Choice : PLUM

To describe something as plum is to say that it is especially desirable, e.g. a plum job, the plum choice. We’ve been using “plum” in this sense since the late 18th century, and it is probably a reference to the particularly sweet and enjoyably parts of a plum pudding.

51 ___ bag (fashion accessory) : HOBO

A hobo bag is a rather unstructured-looking, crescent-shaped bag with a long strap and soft sides that tends to slump when set down. It’s called a hobo bag because the shape resembles that of the bundle carried by archetypal hobos on the ends of sticks resting on their shoulders.

53 Coppers : PO-PO

“Po-po” is a slang term meaning “police”.

“To cop” was northern-English dialect for “to seize, catch”, and is still a slang term meaning “to get hold of, steal”. This verb evolved in the noun “copper”, describing a policeman, someone who catches criminals. “Copper” is often shortened to “cop”.

55 Sleeveless garment, informally : CAMI

A camisole (also “cami”) is a sleeveless undergarment worn by women that extends down to the waist. “Camisole” is a French word that we imported into English that ultimately derives from the Latin “camisia” meaning “shirt, nightgown”.

60 Line-skipping option at the airport, for short : PRE

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operates its precheck program known as “TSA Pre✓” or “TSA PreCheck”). Members of the program receive expedited screening at airports at most airports. In order to become a member, a traveler must apply online, appear in person at a designated office for a background check and fingerprinting, and pay a fee for a 5-year membership.