Tag: Symbol in the Bluetooth logo for one crossword clue

Bill’s time: 7m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Manly : MACHO

A macho man is one showing pride in his masculinity. “Macho” is a Spanish word for “male animal”.

13 ___ Pendragon, 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.

16 Nonviolent protest A farewell to artist Chagall? Nonviolent protest : PEACE MARCH (and PEACE, MARC!)

Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist, one of the most successful of the 20th century. Unlike so many painters, Chagall was able to achieve wealth and fame for his work during his own lifetime. It did help that Chagall lived to a ripe old age though. He passed away in 1985, when he was 97 years young. One of Chagall’s most famous works is the ceiling of the Paris Opera. The new ceiling for the beautiful 19th-century building was commissioned in 1963, and took Chagall a year to complete. Chagall was 77 years old when he worked on the Paris Opera project.

18 Theater boxes : AMPS

An electric guitar, for example, needs an amplifier (amp) to take the weak signal created by the vibration of the strings and turn it into a signal powerful enough for a loudspeaker.

19 Activity that turns an urban area into an obstacle course : PARKOUR

Parkour (also “freerunning”) is a physical discipline that involves moving from one point to another in an urban environment using only the human body. Parkour practitioners (“traceurs”) use a variety of techniques, including running, jumping, climbing, and vaulting, to move quickly and efficiently through their environment. The discipline originated in France, and the name “parkour” comes from the French “parcours du combattant”, which can be translated as “obstacle course”.

22 “Is,” to Livy : EST

Titus Livius (aka “Livy”) was a Roman historian who lived from 59 BC to AD 17. Livy wrote the definitive history of Rome at that time.

27 Scientist played by David Bowie in 2006’s “The Prestige” : TESLA

Nikola Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire in a village located in modern-day Croatia, and later moved to the US. Tesla’s work on mechanical and electrical engineering was crucial to the development of alternating current technology, the same technology that is used by equipment at the backbone of modern power generation and distribution systems.

“The Prestige” is a 2006 film based on a 1995 novel of the same name by Christopher Priest. The story revolves around two rival magicians played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. The real-life inventor Nikola Tesla appears as a character in the movie, portrayed by the great David Bowie.

35 Symbol in the Bluetooth logo, for one : RUNE

A rune is a character in an alphabet that is believed to have mysterious powers. In Norse mythology, the runic alphabet was said to have a divine origin.

Bluetooth is a standard for wireless technology that was introduced by Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson in 1994. The name was chosen in honor of Harald Bluetooth, a medieval King of Denmark and Norway. Harald is said to have earned his name because of his love of blueberries, which stained his teeth. Harald was said to have a gift for convincing diverse factions to talk to one another, so Ericsson’s communication protocol was given Harald’s name.

37 Notre Dame team Asset in a staring contest? Notre Dame team : FIGHTING IRISH (and FIGHTING IRIS)

The athletic teams of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana are known as the Fighting Irish. There are several debated etymologies for the moniker “Fighting Irish”, with the most generally accepted being that it was applied by the press in the 1920s, reflecting the team’s fighting spirit and grit, determination and tenacity. I guess “grit, determination and tenacity” are characteristics often associated with the Irish.

The iris is the colored part of the eye. It has an aperture in the center that can open or close depending on the level of light hitting the eye.

43 Sci-fi publisher whose logo is a rocky peak : TOR

Tor Books is a publishing house in New York City that specializes in science fiction and fantasy novels.

52 For reference, it’s over 21,000 pages, in brief : OED

The “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) contains over 600,000 “main” entries and 59 million words in total. The longest entry for one word in the second edition of the OED is the verb “set”. When the third edition was published in 2007, the longest entry for a single word became the verb “put”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most-quoted author in the OED is William Shakespeare, with his most quoted work being “Hamlet”. The most-quoted female author is George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans).

54 Antagonist in “Calvin and Hobbes” : MOE

The comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” is still widely syndicated, but hasn’t been written since 1995. The cartoonist Bill Watterson named the character Calvin after John Calvin, the 16th century theologian. Hobbes was named for Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English political philosopher.

58 Kids’ items that can come in packs of 8 and 168 : CRAYONS

We use the word “crayon” for a stick of colored wax used for drawing. The term was imported in the 16th century from French, in which language it means “pencil”.

62 City that had the final letter of its name removed in 1891, only to be restored in 1911 : PITTSBURGH

The Pennsylvania city of Pittsburgh was named in 1758 for British statesman and future prime minister William Pitt the Elder. Originally known as Fort Duquesne, the settlement was renamed after it was captured from the French during the Seven Years’ War. The most commonly used nicknames for Pittsburgh are “Steel City”, referring to the history of steel-related industry, and “City of Bridges”, referring to the 446 bridges in the metropolis.

65 Mexican money : PESO

The Mexican peso is the most traded currency from Latin America. It is also the third most traded currency in the Americas (after the US dollar and the Canadian dollar).

67 C.P.A.’s column header, perhaps : YTD

Year-to-date (YTD)

Down

1 Bert or Ernie : MUPPET

For many years, I believed that the “Sesame Street” characters Bert and Ernie were named after two roles played in the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. In the movie, the policeman’s name is Bert and his taxi-driving buddy is named Ernie. However, the “Sesame Street” folks have stated that the use of the same names is just a coincidence. Aww, I don’t wanna believe that’s a coincidence …

7 The cruelest mo., per T.S. Eliot : APR

T. S. Eliot (TSE) wrote his poem called “The Waste Land” in 1922. “The Waste Land” opens with the famous line, “April is the cruellest month …”

21 One of 16 over the course of the Ming dynasty : EMPEROR

The Ming dynasty lasted in China from 1368 to 1644. It was a time of tremendous innovation in so many areas, including the manufacture of ceramics. In the late Ming period, a shift towards a market economy in China led to the export of porcelain on an unprecedented scale, perhaps explaining why we tend to hear more about Ming vases than we do about porcelain from any other Chinese dynasty.

26 Pi follower : RHO

Rho is the Greek letter that looks just like our Roman letter “p”, although it is equivalent to the Roman letter R. It is the 17th letter in the Greek alphabet.

28 “Ahab’s ___” (chapter in “Moby-Dick”) : LEG

The full title of Herman Melville’s novel is “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”. Note that the convention is to hyphenate “Moby-Dick” in the title, as that was how the book was first published, in 1851. However, there is no hyphen in the name of the whale “Moby Dick” as reproduced throughout the text.

32 Watt or newton : UNIT

James Watt was a Scottish inventor. He figured prominently in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, largely due to the improvements he made to the fledgling steam engine. The SI unit of power is called the watt, and was named in his honor.

Newtons are units of force. The newton is named for Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist and mathematician.

38 Courageous : INTREPID

The adjective “intrepid” describes someone who is fearless, with resolute fortitude. The term comes from the Latin “in-” meaning “not” and “trepidus” meaning “alarmed”.

46 Browbeat : HECTOR

The verb “to hector” means “to bully, to dominate in a blustering way”. The term comes from the Trojan hero Hector, who encouraged his fellow Trojans to keep up the fight against the Greeks. I guess he must have bullied them …

53 E.N.T.s, e.g. : DRS

Ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT)

56 Galaxy downloads : APPS

The Galaxy is a series of mobile computing devices made by Samsung that was introduced in 2009. Almost all of the Galaxy devices have used Google’s Android operating system, until a Windows 10 Galaxy device was introduced by Samsung in 2016.

60 Gagarin in space : YURI

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space when his spacecraft Vostok I made a single orbit of the Earth in 1961. Sadly, Gagarin died only seven years later in a plane crash.

63 Org. that might have you put your belt on a belt : TSA

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the agency that employs the good folks who check passengers and baggage at airports.

61 Chest-beating mammal : APE

The tailless primates known as apes (also “hominoids”) are divided into two main branches: gibbons (lesser apes) and hominids (great apes). The hominids are the great apes, and belong to the family of primates called Hominidae. Extant genera that make up the family Hominidae are:

• chimpanzees
• gorillas
• humans
• orangutans