Tag: Press releases? crossword clue

Bill’s time: 8m 49s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Leader of the world’s smallest nation (“An Essay on Man”) : POPE

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state that is walled off within the city of Rome. Vatican City is about 110 acres in area, and so is the smallest independent state in the world. With about 800 residents, it is also the smallest state in terms of population. Although the Holy See dates back to early Christianity, Vatican City only came into being in 1929. At that time, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed a treaty with the Holy See on behalf of the Kingdom of Italy that established the city-state.

Alexander Pope wrote the following lines in “An Essay on Man” in 1734:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

10 Loaded (“Diving Into the Wreck”) : RICH

Adrienne Rich was a poet and feminist. Famously, Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in 1997 as a protest. She decried the Clinton Administration’s policies towards the arts, and the efforts by Newt Gingrich to shut down the National Endowment for the Arts.

14 Actor Wilson : OWEN

Actor Owen Wilson was nominated for an Oscar, but not for his acting. He was nominated for co-writing the screenplay for “The Royal Tenenbaums” along with Wes Anderson. My favorite of Wilson’s performances, by far, is in the excellent movie “Midnight in Paris”.

16 ___ breve (2/2 time) : ALLA

The musical term “alla breve”, meaning “at the breve (i.e. the note)”, denotes a meter equivalent to 2/2. This implies quite a fast tempo, one often found in military marches. 2/2 is also known as “cut time”.

17 Potentially insulting, for short : UN-PC

To be un-PC is to be politically incorrect, not politically correct (PC).

18 Prefix with meter, to a versifier : TETRA-

A tetrameter is a line of verse that consists of four metrical feet. The type of foot can vary, with iambic tetrameter and dactylic tetrameter being examples. The opening lines of the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is an example of dactylic tetrameter: “Picture yourself in a boat on a river with …”

19 Junket : TOUR

Nowadays we use the term “junket” for a trip taken by a government official at public expense that has no public benefit. Back in the late 1500s, a junket was a basket for carrying fish. The term was then applied to a feast or banquet, perhaps adopting the notion of a picnic “basket”. From feast or banquet, the term came to mean a pleasure trip, and is now our political junket.

20 Kathmandu residents : NEPALIS

Although Kathmandu (sometimes “Katmandu”) is the capital city of the lofty nation of Nepal, it sits in a bowl-shaped valley at an elevation of only 4,600 ft. Air pollution is a huge problem in the city. Industry and residents launch a lot of smog into the air, and given the surrounding geography and climate, any pollution blown away during the day tends to fall back into the valley at night.

25 Many a craft brew, informally : IPA

India pale ale (IPA) is a style of beer that originated in England. The beer was originally intended for transportation from England to India, hence the name.

27 Restless : ANTSY

The word “antsy” embodies the concept of “having ants in one’s pants”, meaning being nervous and fidgety. However, “antsy” has been used in English since the 1830s, whereas “ants in the pants” originated a century later.

42 Inflation measure, in brief : PSI

Pounds per square inch (PSI) is a measure of pressure.

47 Westminster Abbey section hinted at by this puzzle’s architecture : POETS’ CORNER

Poets’ Corner is an area in Westminster Abbey in London that earned its name from the high number of poets buried and commemorated there, as well as playwrights and authors. The first poet interred there was Geoffrey Chaucer. Also in Poets’ Corner are the remains of Edmund Spenser, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, John Dryden, George Frideric Handel, Thomas Hardy, Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, Laurence Olivier and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Wow!

51 Secretly loops in, in a way : BCCS

A blind carbon copy (bcc) is a copy of a document or message that is sent to someone without other recipients of the message knowing about that extra copy.

57 Address to click : URL

An Internet address (like NYXCrossword.com and LAXCrossword.com) is more correctly called a uniform resource locator (URL).

58 1990s hit with the line “keep playing that song, all night” : HEY MR DJ

“Hey Mr DJ” was the debut single for R&B duo Zhané,and was released in 1993.

63 Antitraffic org. : DEA

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

64 Prokaryotic model organism : E COLI

Escherichia coli (E. coli) are usually harmless bacteria found in the human gut, working away quite happily. However, there are some strains that can produce lethal toxins. These strains can make their way into the food chain from animal fecal matter that comes into contact with food designated for human consumption.

In taxonomic terms, life is divided into three main categories, the three domains called Eukaryota, Bacteria and Archaea. Eukaryotes are all organisms whose cells contain a nucleus within which genetic material is contained. The domain Eukaryota includes unicellular organisms such as protozoa, and all multicellular organisms including animals, plants and fungi. The organisms in the domains Bacteria and Archaea all lack a nucleus, and as such are known as prokaryotes.

67 Open about one’s sexuality, say : OUT

Back in the 1950s, to come “out of the closet” was to admit to being an alcoholic. By the seventies, the phrase mainly referred to gay people shrugging off secrecy about their sexual orientation.

68 Bass staff symbol : F-CLEF

“Clef” is the French word for “key”. In music, a clef is used to indicate the pitch of the notes written on a stave. The bass clef is also known as the F-clef, the alto clef is the C-clef, and the treble clef is the G-clef.

69 Drinking vessel that may have a lid (“Sacred Emily”) : STEIN

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” is a line from a poem called “Sacred Emily” that was written by Gertrude Stein. In the poem, Rose is actually a person. In later writings Stein used the phrase “a rose is a rose is a rose” to mean “things are what they are”.

70 Device that might say “In two miles …” : GPS

The modern Global Positioning System (GPS) system that we use today was built by the US military who received the massive funding needed because of fears during the Cold War of the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. We civilians, all round the world, owe a lot to President Ronald Reagan because he directed the military to make GPS technology available to the public for the common good. President Reagan was moved to do so after the Soviet Union shot down KAL flight 007 carrying 269 people, just because the plane strayed accidentally into Soviet airspace.

71 Coat put on when it’s cold? (“Mending Wall”) : FROST

“Mending Wall” is a 1914 poem from the pen of American poet Robert Frost. The poem is about a stone wall that separates a man from his neighbor. The last line of the piece includes the old adage “Good fences make good neighbors”.

Down

1 Use a hammer on (“In a Station of the Metro”) : POUND

Ezra Pound was an American poet who spent much of his life wandering the world, and spending years in London, Paris, and Italy. In Italy, Pound’s work and sympathies for Mussolini’s regime led to his arrest at the end of the war. His major work was the epic, albeit incomplete, “The Cantos”. This epic poem is divided into 120 sections, each known as a canto.

3 Pig of children’s TV : PEPPA

“Peppa Pig” is a children’s animated show that is produced in the UK and airs all over the world. There’s even a Peppa Pig World theme park located in Hampshire, England.

5 ___ Field (Shea Stadium successor) : CITI

Citi Field is a relatively new baseball stadium used by the New York Mets that sits right next door to the site of Shea stadium, where the Mets had played for decades. The new facility’s name comes from corporate sponsor Citigroup.

Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York was named after William A. Shea, the man credited with bringing National League baseball back to the city in the form of the New York Mets. Shea Stadium was dismantled in 2008-2009, and the site now provides additional parking for the new stadium nearby called Citi Field.

7 Summer hrs. in Sonoma : PDT

Did you know that there are far more wine grapes produced in Sonoma than Napa? Within Sonoma County some of the more well-known appellations are Chalk Hill, Anderson Valley and Russian River Valley. Personally, when I want to visit the wine country, I head for the Russian River Valley as it’s far less crowded and much more fun than Napa Valley.

8 Freight in flight : AIR CARGO

Cargo is freight carried by some vehicle. The term “cargo” comes into English via Spanish, ultimately deriving from the Latin “carricare” meaning “to load on a cart”.

13 Able to weather difficult conditions (“Channel Firing”) : HARDY

Thomas Hardy was a novelist and poet from Dorset in England. Hardy thought of himself mainly as a poet, but he is best remembered for some very fine novels, such as “Far from the Madding Crowd”, “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure”.

21 Mekong Valley language : LAO

Lao is the official language of Laos. It is also spoken in the northeast of Thailand, but there the language is known as Isan.

At over 2,700 miles in length, the Mekong is the twelfth longest river in the world. It rises in the Tibetan Plateau and empties into the South China Sea at the famed Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

23 Abu Dhabi’s grp. : UAE

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”.

26 New Orleans N.B.A. team, informally : PELS

The New Orleans Hornets joined the NBA in 1988 as an expansion team, originally based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The team was going to be called the Charlotte Spirit, but the name was changed following a “name the team” contest run in the local area. During the Revolutionary War, Lord General Cornwallis had referred to Charlotte as a “veritable nest of hornets” due the city’s resistance to British occupation, which explains the local fans’ fondness for the name “Hornets”. The franchise was moved to New Orleans for the 2002 season, as attendance wasn’t big enough to sustain the team in Charlotte. The team had to play two seasons in Oklahoma City due to damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, and played as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets. After several years back in New Orleans, the franchise was renamed to the Pelicans, a nod to the Brown Pelican that is the Louisiana state bird.

29 Expression of befuddlement : WHAT THE …!

To be befuddled is to be confused. Originally, back in the late 1800s, that confusion was specifically caused by liquor or opium.

30 Ikea founder Ingvar ___ : KAMPRAD

The IKEA furniture chain was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, when he was just 17-years-old. IKEA is an acronym standing for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd (don’t forget now!). Elmtaryd was the name of the farm where Ingvar Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd is his home parish in Sweden.

31 Nest egg letters : IRA

A nest egg is an amount of money laid down as a reserve. This is the figurative use of “nest egg” that originally described an artificial egg left in a nest to encourage a hen to lay real eggs in that spot. So our financial nest egg is set aside in anticipation of continued growth, more eggs being laid.

38 Place to retire in a hurry? : PIT

That would be motor racing.

51 Incinerates (“To a Mouse”) : BURNS

The famous Robert Burns poem “To a Mouse” describes the little creature as a “wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie” (Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast). There’s another oft-quoted line later in the poem, i.e. “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, gang aft agley” (The best-laid schemes of mice and men, go often awry). John Steinbeck used this line as inspiration for the title of his 1937 novel “Of Mice and Men”.

52 Dubrovnik resident : CROAT

Dubrovnik is a Croatian port city on the Adriatic Sea, and in the very south of the country. It has been a major tourist destination since the end of the war that raged after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. So many tourists have been flocking to the city that the authorities have resorted in recent years to staggering the arrival of cruise ships in order to manage the flow of visitors.

56 Fleet-footed (“A Maypole”) : SWIFT

Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and cleric. Swift is most famous perhaps for his 1726 novel “Gulliver’s Travels”, but we Irishmen also remember him as the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Swift was renowned for his wit and satire.

59 “Survivor” host Probst : JEFF

Jeff Probst is the host of the very successful US version of the reality show “Survivor”. Before snapping up that gig, he hosted the VH1 game show “Rock & Roll Jeopardy!”

62 Customizable Nintendo avatar : MII

Nintendo introduced customizable avatars for the company’s video game consoles starting in 1997. The first customizable avatars for the Wii system were introduced in 2006, and were given the inventive name “Miis”.

65 “Proud Mary” band, in brief : CCR

Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) was a rock band from San Francisco that played in a Southern rock style, with hits such as “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Down on the Corner” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain”.

“Proud Mary” is a song written by John Fogerty and recorded in 1968 by Creedence Clearwater Revival with Fogarty singing lead vocals. The song was famously covered by Ike and Tina Turner in 1970. The “Proud Mary” in the title is a riverboat, with a “big wheel” that keeps on turnin’.