Tag: Southernmost active volcano in the world crossword clue

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Constructed by: Jacob Stulberg
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Theme: Mt. Erebus

We have a rebus puzzle today. In fact, it is as “MTE REBUS”, as revealed by rewriting the answer “MT EREBUS”:

• 59A. Southernmost active volcano in the world … or a cryptic hint to certain squares in this puzzle : MT EREBUS (or “MTE rebus”)

Bill’s time: 17m 10s!!!

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4. Klutzes : OAFS

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

8. Response to a sophomoric joke : GROW UP

The term “sophomore” has been used for a student in the second year of university since the 1680’s. The original meaning of the word was “arguer”. The term has Greek roots, from two Greek words that have been artificially combined in English. The Greek “sophos” means “wise”, and “moros” means “foolish”.

14. Tolkien creature : ORC

Orcs are mythical humanoid creatures that appear in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. Since Tolkien’s use of orcs, they have also been featured in other fantasy fiction and in fantasy games.

17. Grp. known as the Bureau of Chemistry from 1901 to 1927 : FDA

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has its roots in the Division of Chemistry (later “Bureau of Chemistry”) that was part of the US Department of Agriculture. President Theodore Roosevelt gave responsibility for examination of food and drugs to the Bureau of Chemistry with the signing of the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Bureau’s name was changed to the Food, Drug and Insecticide Organization in 1927, and to the Food and Drug Administration in 1930.

20. Site of a famous opening shot : FORT SUMTER

Fort Sumter is a fortification lying on an artificially constructed island in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. In December 1860, when South Carolina seceded from the Union, US Army forces relocated to Fort Sumter deeming it to be a relatively defensible location. On 11 April 1861, confederate forces demanded that the fort be surrendered. When the defenders refused to budge, confederate artillery opened fire at 4:30 in the morning on 12 April 1861, starting the American Civil War.

30. Indian beverage : ASSAM TEA

Assam is a state in the very northeast of India, and just south of the Himalayas. Assam is noted for its tea as well as its silk.

38. Courageous and energetic sort, they say : ARIES

Aries the Ram is the first astrological sign in the Zodiac, and is named after the constellation. Your birth sign is Aries if you were born between March 21 and April 20, but if you are an Aries you would know that! “Aries” is the Latin word for “ram”.

39. “___ my first night beneath the Sun” (Dickinson poem) : ‘TIS

Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, with less than a dozen published before she died in 1886. Emily’s younger sister discovered the enormous collection, and it was published in batches over the coming decades. Try this one for size:

‘Tis my first night beneath the Sun
If I should spend it here —
Above him is too low a height
For his Barometer
Who Airs of expectation breathes
And takes the Wind at prime —
But Distance his Delights confides
To those who visit him —

42. Weekly 90-min. TV show : SNL

“Saturday Night Live” (SNL)

43. Heart : CRUX

“Crux” is the Latin word for “cross”. The term came into English meaning “a central difficulty” in the early 1700s.

48. Black ___ (voodoo and such) : ARTS

Voodoo is a religion that originated the French slave colony of Saint-Domingue on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

50. 17+ million square miles of the earth : ASIA

Most of the world’s population lives in Asia (60%), and Asia is the largest continent in terms of landmass (30% of the world). Asia also has the highest population density (246 people per square mile), and the most populous city on the continent is Shanghai, China.

51. Certain Bach composition : SUITE

Like so many of the great composers, the extent of Bach’s contribution to the repertoire wasn’t fully recognized until long after his passing. I think that Johann Sebastian Bach was the greatest composer of the Baroque period, and is ranked by many as the greatest classical composer of all time.

59. Southernmost active volcano in the world … or a cryptic hint to certain squares in this puzzle : MT EREBUS (or “MTE rebus”)

Mount Erebus is a volcano that is located on Ross Island in Antarctica. Erebus is the second-highest on the continent, after Mount Sidley. It was discovered in 1841 by Sir James Clark Ross, along with the companion volcano Mount Terror. Ross named the peaks for the ships used on his voyage: HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

A rebus is a puzzle that uses pictures to represent letters and groups of letters. For example, a picture of a “ewe” might represent the letter “U” or the pronoun “you”.

61. 2007 Heisman winner who went on to play for the Broncos : TIM TEBOW

Tim Tebow is a former quarterback who played mainly for the Denver Broncos and New York Jets. Tebow’s relatively short professional career followed a very successful college career during which he became the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy.

The Heisman Trophy is awarded to the most outstanding college football player each season. The trophy was first awarded in 1935, and the following year was given the name Heisman after the death of John Heisman, a noted college football player and football director.

64. Windy City rail inits. : CTA

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

It seems that the derivation of Chicago’s nickname as the “Windy City” isn’t as obvious as I would have thought. There are two viable theories. First that the weather can be breezy, with wind blowing in off Lake Michigan. The effect of the wind is exaggerated by the grid-layout adopted by city planners after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The second theory is that “windy” means “being full of bluster”. Sportswriters from the rival city of Cincinnati were fond of calling Chicago supporters “windy” in the 1860s and 1870s, meaning that they were full of hot air in their claims that the Chicago White Stockings were superior to the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

66. “The great binder and loosener,” per Jung : EROS

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, and the founder of analytical psychology. Jung was very much associated with the analysis of dreams, and also introduced us to the psychological concepts of introversion and extroversion.

Down

1. Labor leader played by Jack Nicholson in a 1992 biopic : HOFFA

Jimmy Hoffa headed off to meet with two Mafia leaders at a restaurant in a suburb of Detroit on July 30, 1975. The two men he was supposed to meet denied any appointment was made, and they were seen in public in other locations far from the restaurant. Hoffa was spotted by passers-by in the restaurant parking lot, the last time he was ever seen. His wife reported him missing later that night, and the resulting police investigation failed to find Hoffa or his body. Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982, seven years after he disappeared.

8. Sierra and Canyon maker : GMC

GMC is a division of General Motors (GM) established in 1901 that started out as “GMC Truck”.

10. Frozen food brand : ORE-IDA

Ore-Ida frozen foods are all made using potatoes. The company is located in Oregon, just across the border from Idaho. “Ore-Ida” is a melding of the two state names.

11. Ones down in the mouth? : WISDOM TEETH

Wisdom teeth are an extra set of molars in the back of the jaws. There are usually four wisdom teeth, and they only occur in about 65% of the population.

13. Out of style : PASSE

“Passé” is a French word, meaning “past, faded”.

25. Southwestern ski resort : TAOS

Taos Ski Valley is a resort village in New Mexico, founded in 1955. About twelve families live there, making up thirty or so households and a population of about 60 people. It is said to very much resemble a Swiss village, and even includes an elected village council.

26. “Cleopatra” prop : ASP

The asp is a venomous snake found in the Nile region of Africa. It is so venomous that the asp was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as a means of execution. Cleopatra observed such executions noting that the venom brought on sleepiness without any painful spasms. When the great queen opted to commit suicide, the asp was therefore her chosen method.

The 1963 movie “Cleopatra” really is an epic work. It was the highest grossing film of the year, taking in $26 million dollars at the box office, yet it still lost money. The original budget for the film was just $2 million, but so many things went wrong the final cost swelled to a staggering $44 million dollars, making it the second most expensive movie ever made (taking into account inflation). Elizabeth Taylor was supposed to earn a record amount of $1 million for the film, and ended up earned seven times that amount due to delays. But she paid dearly, as she became seriously ill during shooting and had to have an emergency tracheotomy to save her life. The scar in her throat can actually be seen in some of the shots in the film.

29. Opera that takes place in 1800 and premiered in 1900 : TOSCA

Unlike so many operas, Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca” was a big hit right from day one, when it was first performed in 1900 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. “Tosca” is currently the eighth-most performed opera in America.

32. “Cherry Wine” rapper, 2012 : NAS

Rapper Nas used to go by another stage name, Nasty Nas, and before that by his real name, Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones. Nas released his first album “Illmatic” in 1994, and inventively titled his fifth studio album “Stillmatic”, released in 2001. Not my cup of tea, I would say …

33. Lily Tomlin’s “one ringy-dingy” character on old TV : ERNESTINE

Lily Tomlin is a comedian and actress who got her big break as a regular member of the cast of “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in the late sixties and early seventies. Tomlin created several great characters on the show. My personal favorite is Ernestine, the condescending telephone operator with the marvelous nasal voice and snorting laugh. Ernestine was fond of saying “One ringy dingy …” I really enjoy Tomlin’s performances as an actress, notably in the movies “9 to 5” and “All of Me”, and on the TV shows “The West Wing” and “Grace and Frankie”. I went to her stage show many years ago in San Francisco, and just did not enjoy it. I was devastated …

34. Apple employer, once? : WILLIAM TELL

Supposedly, William Tell came from Uri, a canton in the German part of Switzerland. Altdorf is the capital of Uri and is the city where William Tell shot the apple off his son’s head using a crossbow, at least according to legend. There is a bronze statue of Tell that was erected in the city’s marketplace in 1895 to memorialize the event.

35. Not remain aloof : MIX

I suppose one might guess from the “feel” of the word “aloof” that is has nautical roots. Originally “aloof” meant “to windward” and was the opposite of “alee”. A helmsman might be instructed to stay aloof, to steer the boat into the weather to keep a distance from a lee-shore. It is from this sense of maintaining a distance that aloof came to mean “distant” in terms of personality. Interesting, huh …?

37. Big thing in London? : BEN

Big Ben is the name commonly used for the large bell in the Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament). Big Ben’s official name is the Great Bell, and there is some debate about the origins of the nickname. It may be named after Sir Benjamin Hall who oversaw the bell’s installation, or perhaps the English heavyweight champion of the day Benjamin Caunt.

39. Frilly garment : TUTU

The word “tutu”, used for a ballet dancer’s skirt, is actually a somewhat “naughty” term. It came into English from French in the early 20th century. The French “tutu” is an alteration of the word “cucu”, a childish word meaning “bottom, backside”.

44. Norfolk Southern and others: Abbr. : RRS

Railroad (RR)

47. Its capital is an Atlantic port : GAMBIA

Banjul is the capital city of the Gambia, and is located on an island in the Gambia River where it enters the Atlantic Ocean.

48. Raiment : ATTIRE

Raiment is clothing, those items “arrayed” on one’s body.

55. East African people : TUTSI

The Tutsi are the second largest population in Rwanda, with the Hutu being the largest. The bloody conflict that has existed between the Tutsi and Hutu peoples dates back to about 1880 when Catholic missionaries arrived in the region. The missionaries found that they had more success converting the Hutus than the Tutsi, and when the Germans occupied the area during WWI they confiscated Tutsi land and gave it to Hutu tribes in order to reward religious conversion. This injustice fuels fighting to this very day.

56. Home of Panasonic : OSAKA

Not so long ago, Panasonic was called Matsushita Electronics, the name it took from its founder when the company started in 1918. The products manufactured back then were lamp sockets, and in 1927 the company introduced a bicycle lamp. Even after the company became famous for producing electrical and electronic goods, Matsushita had a very successful line of Panasonic bicycles, as the founder was raised in a family with a bicycle shop and he was passionate about cycling.

62. Director Anderson : WES

Film director Wes Anderson’s most famous movie is probably “The Royal Tenenbaums” that was released in 2001, and is not my favorite film by any stretch. However, Anderson’s 2007 release “The Darjeeling Limited”, that I enjoyed.