Tag: Rips [five letters] crossword clue

Bill’s time: 9m 21s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5 ___ Empire, a.k.a. the Realm of the Four Parts : INCA

The Inca Empire was known as the Tawantinsuyu, which translates as “land of the four quarters”. It was a federal organization with a central government that sat above four “suyu” or “quarters”, four administrative regions.

9 Word with bar or bowl : SALAD …

Our word “salad” comes from the Latin “salare” meaning “to salt”. The Latin “herba salata” translates as “salted vegetables”, which I guess could be a salad …

14 Pizazz : ELAN

Pizazz (also “pizzazz”) is energy, vitality. There’s a kind of cool thing about the “pizzazz” spelling, namely that it is the only 7-letter word in English that cannot be played in Scrabble. You can get close by using the Z-tile with the two blank tiles to get to three of the required four Zs, but there’s no way to get to the fourth Z.

21 Phnom ___ : PENH

Phnom Penh (also “Pnom Penh”) is the capital of Cambodia, and has been so since the French colonized the country in the late 1800s. The city’s name translates from the Khmer language as “Hill of Penh”.

30 Peter Sarsgaard’s role in 2016’s “Jackie,” for short : RFK

Robert “Bobby” Francis Kennedy (RFK) was the US Attorney General (AG) in the administration of his brother President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1964. He then served as a US Senator for the State of New York from 1965 until 1968, when he was assassinated. Bobby was killed during his own run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

35 Children’s author Carle : ERIC

Eric Carle is a very successful children’s author and book illustrator, with over 100 million of his books sold around the world. Carle’s most famous title is “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, and it alone has sold 30 million copies.

37 Squid predator : ORCA

Squids are cephalopods with large eyes, two tentacles and eight arms. They can move very rapidly through the water, using jet propulsion. Very commonly, squid is served as a food under the name “calamari”.

50 Lunar New Year : TET

The full name for the New Year holiday in Vietnam is “Tet Nguyen Dan” meaning “Feast of the First Morning”, with the reference being to the arrival of the season of spring. Tet usually falls on the same day as Chinese New Year.

52 Philippine coins : PESOS

The peso is used in many Spanish-speaking countries around the world. The coin originated in Spain where the word “peso” means “weight”. The original peso was what we know in English as a “piece of eight”, a silver coin of a specific weight that had a nominal value of eight “reales”.

60 End of the quip : … STILL STATIONARY/STATIONERY

“Stationery” is a noun describing writing materials and office supplies, items that are sold by a stationer. Centuries ago, a stationer was someone who sold goods from a shop or a “station”, from a fixed, “stationary” stall.

66 Where shampoo was invented : INDIA

Back in the 1760s, the verb “to shampoo” was an Anglo-Indian word meaning “to massage”. A century later we started to shampoo our hair.

Down

2 Slews : ALOT

Our usage of “slew” to mean “large number” has nothing to do with the verb “to slew” meaning “to turn, skid”. The noun “slew” came into English in the early 1800s from the Irish word “sluagh” meaning “host, crowd, multitude”.

3 Tibetan spiritual leader : LAMA

“Lama” is a Tibetan word meaning “chief, high priest”.

4 Epitome of slowness : SNAIL

The more common meaning of “epitome” is “perfect example of a group, quality, type”. An epitome is also an abstract or summary of a book or article.

5 Cousin ___ (“The Addams Family” member) : ITT

In the television sitcom “The Addams Family”, the family had a frequent visitor called Cousin Itt. Itt is a short man with long hair that runs from his head to the floor. Cousin Itt was played by Italian actor Felix Silla.

6 Agatha Christie ___ Miller : NEE

Agatha Christie (née Miller) was the best-selling novelist of all time, having sold about 4 billion copies worldwide in total. The only books to have sold in higher volume are the works of William Shakespeare and the Bible.

7 ___ diem : CARPE

“Carpe diem” is a quotation from Horace, one of ancient Rome’s leading lyric poets. “Carpe diem” translates from Latin as “seize the day” or “enjoy the day”. The satirical motto of a procrastinator is “carpe mañana”, “translating” as “seize tomorrow”.

8 Arthur ___, 1975 Wimbledon winner : ASHE

Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African-American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

11 Singer Rawls : LOU

Lou Rawls was an American soul and blues singer known for his smooth vocal style. With his singing career well on the way, Rawls was asked to sing “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1977 at a Muhammad Ali fight in Madison Square Garden. This performance led to him being asked to sing the anthem many, many times in the coming years with his last rendition being at a World Series game in 2005. Rawls passed away in January of the following year.

12 Theater chain or cable channel : AMC

The AMC theater chain used to go by the name American Multi-Cinema Inc., hence the initialism “AMC”.

13 Dit’s counterpart : DAH

Samuel Morse came up with the forerunner to modern Morse code for use on the electric telegraph, of which he was the co-inventor. Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. The most common letters are assigned the simplest code elements e.g. E is represented by one dot, and T is represented by one dash. When words are spelled aloud in Morse code, a dot is pronounced as “dit”, and a dash is pronounced as “dah”.

18 Aid in busing : TRAY

A busboy is a person who assists a waiter, mainly by clearing tables. The verb “to bus” arose in the early 1900s and is probably a reference to the wheeled cart that was used to carry dishes.

23 Fictional character who dreams about Heffalumps : POOH

The elephant-like creatures in the “Winnie the Pooh” stories by A.A. Milne are known as Heffalumps.

27 Skedaddled : LIT OUT

“Skedaddle” is a slang term meaning “run away” that dates back to the Civil War.

28 Conical shelter : TEEPEE

A tepee (also written as “tipi” and “teepee”) is a cone-shaped tent traditionally made from animal hides that is used by the Great Plains Native Americans. A wigwam is a completely different structure and is often a misnomer for a tepee. A wigwam is a domed structure built by Native Americans in the West and Southwest, intended to be a more permanent dwelling. The wigwam can also be covered with hides but more often was covered with grass, reeds, brush or cloth.

30 Meal : REPAST

Our word “repast”, meaning “meal”, came to us via French (in which language “repas” is “meal”). Ultimately the term comes from the Latin “repascere” meaning “to repeatedly graze”.

31 Tutti-___ : FRUTTI

The adjective “tutti-frutti” describes a prepared confection that has a combination of fruit flavors. “Tutti frutti” is Italian for “all fruits”.

34 ___ Mae (mortgage company) : FANNIE

The Federal National Mortgage Association is commonly called “Fannie Mae”, a play on the initialism “FNMA”. Fannie Mae was founded during the Great Depression as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

36 “10-4!” : CHECK!

There is a set of “ten-codes” that were developed in 1937 for the use of law enforcement departments. As of 2006, the US federal government is recommending that they be replaced by plain language due to a lack of standardization in ten-codes. Examples of ten-codes are:

• 10-1 meaning “bad reception”
• 10-4 meaning “understood”
• 10-9 meaning “say again”
• 10-33 meaning “emergency, all units stand by”

41 Come under fire, literally or figuratively : TAKE FLAK

“Flak” was originally an acronym standing for the German term for an aircraft defense cannon (FLiegerAbwehrKanone). “Flak” then became used in English as a general term for antiaircraft fire and ultimately a term for verbal criticism, as in “to take flak”.

42 Ones ordering lab tests? : VETS

A veterinarian (vet) is a professional who treats animals for disease and injury. The word “veterinary” comes from the Latin “veterinae” meaning “working animals, beasts of burden”.

47 Heroine Prior of the “Divergent” series : TRIS

The “Divergent” series of movies is based on the “Divergent” novels written by Veronica Roth. The movies and novels are set in a post-apocalyptic version of Chicago called the Divergent Universe. The story is about a citizenry that is divided into five different factions based on personality traits. The critics weren’t crazy about the first movie in the series, but I really enjoyed it …

49 London’s ___ Square : SOHO

The area of London called Soho had a very poor reputation for most of the 20th century as it was home to the city’s red-light district. Soho went through a transformation in recent decades, and has been a very fashionable neighborhood since the 1980s.

53 Ed Asner role in 2003’s “Elf” : SANTA

“Elf” is a comedy movie that was released for the 2003 Christmas season. It was directed by Jon Favreau and stars Will Ferrell in the title role, with James Caan supporting and Ed Asner playing Santa Claus. It’s all about one of Santa’s elves who finds out he is human and goes to meet his father in New York City. The film was adapted into a stage musical that premiered on Broadway during the Christmas season of 2010.

Ed Asner was most famous for playing the irascible but lovable Lou Grant on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and on the spin-off drama “Lou Grant”. Off-screen Asner was noted for his political activism. He served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and was very involved in the 1980 SAG strike. When “Lou Grant” was canceled in 1982, despite decent ratings, there was a lot of talk that the cancellation was a move by the network against Asner personally. In fact, one of Asner’s activist colleagues, Howard Hesseman (who played Johnny Fever) found that his show “WKRP in Cincinnati” was also canceled … on the very same day.

58 Lit ___ : CRIT

Literary studies, also called literary criticism (lit crit), is the evaluation and interpretation of literature.

61 “Explosive” cable channel : TNT

“TNT” stands for Turner Network Television. The TNT cable channel made a big splash in the eighties when it started to broadcast old MGM movies that had been “colorized”, not something that was a big hit with the public. In recent years, the TNT programming lineup is touted with the tagline “We Know Drama”.

63 New driver’s acquisition: Abbr. : LIC

It took me years, years to stop using the term “driving license” after I moved to the US. We call a driver’s license a “driving license” back in Ireland.

65 Actor McShane : IAN

Ian McShane is an English actor who is famous in his homeland, and to PBS viewers in the US, for playing the title role in “Lovejoy”. In this country, he is perhaps better known for playing the conniving saloon owner on the HBO western drama “Deadwood”.