Tag: Pretentious display crossword clue

Bill’s time: 29m 56s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 Coffee order : AMERICANO

A caffè Americano is espresso to which hot water is added, bringing the coffee to a similar strength as drip coffee. Caffè Italiano is a similar drink, but a little stronger, with a 1:1 ratio of espresso to hot water.

16 Seasonal shop, e.g. : POP-UP

A pop-up store is one that is temporary. The idea is that a pop-up store opens in empty retail space for a limited period of time, often to meet the needs of a particular season or holiday. Examples of the genre might be Halloween stores or Christmas stores.

21 Org. with many overseas workers : CIA

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed during WWII. The CIA was chartered by the National Security Act of 1947. The organization is often referred to familiarly as “the Company”.

23 Prefix with -centric : ETHNO-

To be ethnocentric is to believe in the superiority of one’s own race, or to have an obsessive concern with race.

25 Father of Calypso : ATLAS

In Greek mythology, Nereus and Doris had fifty daughters, and these were called the sea nymphs or nereids. The nereids often hung around with Poseidon and were generally very helpful creatures to sailors in distress. Mainly they were to be found in the Aegean, where they lived with their father in a cave in the deep. Some of the more notable names of the nereids were: Agave, Asia, Calypso, Doris, Erato, Eunice and Ione.

30 Volleyball position : SETTER

In volleyball, each team can only touch the ball a maximum of three times before it returns to the other side of the net. The three contacts are often a “bump” (a preliminary pass) and a “set” (setting up the attacking shot) followed by a “spike” (a shot into the opposing court).

34 Home contractor specialty, for short : HVAC

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC)

36 Word with bread or water : SODA …

Soda bread is a bread in which sodium bicarbonate is used as a raising agent instead of yeast. It is a bread common in Irish cuisine, and indeed we usually refer to sodium bicarbonate as “bread soda”.

37 Certain marine herd : WHALE POD

A group of whales can be called a gam, as well as a pod.

41 Lickspittle : YES-MAN

Someone described as “lickspittle” is toady, a sycophant. It’s a term that entered the language in the early 1800s.

50 Something a TV station may not earn money from, for short : PSA

Public service announcement (PSA)

51 Abbr. in calculus : LIM

Limit (lim.)

52 Verdant : LUSH

Back in the late 1500s, “verdant” simply meant “green”, but we now tend to use the term to mean “green and lush with vegetation”. “Viridis” is the Latin for “green”.

57 Boy who said “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about” : LINUS

In Charles Schulz’s fabulous comic strip “Peanuts”, Charlie Brown is friends with at least three members of the van Pelt family. Most famously there is Lucy van Pelt, who bosses everyone around, and who operates a psychiatric booth that looks like a lemonade stand. Then there is Linus, Lucy’s younger brother, the character who always has his security blanket at hand. Lastly there is an even younger brother, Rerun van Pelt. Rerun is constantly hiding under his bed, trying to avoid going to school.

58 “Beowulf” and “Aeneid,” for two : EPIC POEMS

“Beowulf” is an old epic poem from England, although the story is set in Scandinavia. Beowulf fights a battle, defending the Danish King Hrothgar from the ferocious outcast Grendel. Hrothgar had built a great hall for his people in which they could celebrate; singing, dancing and drinking lots of mead. Grendel was angered by the carousing and attacked the hall, devouring many of the incumbent warriors as they slept. A bit of an extreme reaction to noisy neighbors I’d say …

Aeneas was a Trojan hero of myth who traveled to Italy and became the ancestor of all Romans. Aeneas’s story is told in Virgil’s epic poem “The Aeneid”.

59 Warmest month in Patagonia : ENERO

In Spanish, “enero” (January) is “el primer mes” (the first month).

Patagonia is a very sparsely populated region at the very southern tip of South America that is divided administratively between Chile and Argentina. The area is named for the Patagons, a race of giant humans that were rumored to live there.

62 M.I.T.’s sports team name : ENGINEERS

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in 1861 and first offered classes in 1865, in the Mercantile building in Boston. Today’s magnificent campus on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge opened in 1916.

Down

1 Latin music duo : MARACAS

Maracas are percussion instruments that are native to Latin America. They are constructed from dried shells, like those of a coconut, to which handles are attached. The shells are filled with dried seeds or beans, and played by shaking.

3 Big picture : GESTALT

“Gestalt” is a German word meaning “shape”. The principles of gestaltism were developed in Germany in the early 1900s. One of the main tenets is that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.

5 Corp. with a red umbrella implied in its logo : CITI

During the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the US government rescued Citibank by providing loan guarantees and two payments of $25 billion each. It turns out that the government made a tidy profit on that deal, as Citibank has since repaid the loans in full, along with interest.

6 What classic sonnets do : SCAN

A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a specific structure and rhyming scheme. A popular rhyming scheme for what is known as the Italian sonnet is ABBA, ABBA, CDECDE. Compare this with the Shakespearean sonnet which rhymes as ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG.

7 N.B.A. legend Olajuwon : HAKEEM

Hakeem Olajuwon is a retired Nigerian American basketball player. Hakeem was born in Lagos in Nigeria, and came to the US to play for the University of Houston. He was drafted by the Houston Rockets in 1984, ahead of the likes of Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan.

9 Taycan and Macan : PORSCHES

We tend to say the name “Porsche” in English as if it is perhaps French, pronouncing it as one syllable. In German, it is pronounced with two syllables, i.e. Por-sche.

10 Head-in-the-clouds sort : SPACE CADET

The expression “space cadet” is used to describe someone who is eccentric and disconnected from reality. It may even imply that the person is a user of hallucinogens. The phrase has been around since the sixties, and may be derived from the science fiction TV show “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” that aired in the fifties.

11 What makes clam chowder “Manhattan” rather than “New England” : TOMATO BASE

The type of soup known as “chowder” is possibly named for the pot in which it used to be cooked called a “chaudière”, a French term.

14 Here’s even more: Abbr. : PPS

One adds a PS (post scriptum, or simply “postscript”) at the end of a letter (ltr.). A second postscript is a post post scriptum, a PPS.

26 Fashion trend embraced by Fendi and Versace : ATHLEISURE

The wearing of clothing designed for athletic activity in casual, non-athletic environments is termed “athleisure”, which is a portmanteau of “athletic” and “leisure”.

27 Potentially prophetic child : SEVENTH SON

According to folklore, the seventh son of a seventh son has special powers. Tradition dictates that the seven sons in each family must be born sequentially, with no daughters intervening.

40 Item on a janitorial cart : DUSTPAN

A janitor is someone who takes care of the maintenance or cleaning of a building. An older definition of the term “janitor” is “doorman”. Our word comes from the Latin “ianitor” meaning “doorkeeper”.

42 Certain lap dog : MALTESE

The Maltese breed of dog falls into the toy group, as adults weigh just 3-10 pounds. The breed is an old one. Indeed, ancient Greek geographer Strabo suggested in the first century CE that the breed originated on the Mediterranean island of Malta. He also noted that Maltese dogs were favored by noble women.

44 Pokémon’s Gary and Ash, e.g. : NEMESES

Nemesis was a Greek goddess, the goddess of retribution. Her role was to make pay those individuals who were either haughty or arrogant. In modern parlance, one’s nemesis (plural “nemeses”) is one’s sworn enemy, often someone who is the exact opposite in character but someone who still shares some important characteristics. A nemesis is often someone one cannot seem to beat in competition.

57 “Titanic” co-star, familiarly : LEO

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio is from Los Angeles, California. DiCaprio’s mother was visiting a museum in Italy when she was pregnant and felt the first kick of her unborn child. At the moment of that first kick, Mama DiCaprio was looking at a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, and so named her son Leonardo.

When James Cameron made his epic movie “Titanic”, released in 1997, it was the most expensive film ever made and cost about $200 million. It was a good investment for the studio as it became the highest-grossing film of all time, bringing in over $1.8 billion. “Titanic” remained the highest-grossing film until 2010, when Cameron eclipsed the prior record with “Avatar”.