Tag: This won’t last crossword clue

Bill’s time: 17m 18s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

19A Rust, e.g. : OXIDE

Rust is iron oxide. It forms when iron oxidizes, reacts with oxygen.

20A Score direction for some stringed instruments : ARCO

“Arco” is a musical direction instructing a string player to return to normal bowing technique after a passage played using some other technique (perhaps pizzicato).

26A Director Kurosawa : AKIRA

Akira Kurosawa was an Oscar-winning Japanese film director. His most famous movie to us in the West has to be “The Seven Samurai”, the inspiration for “The Magnificent Seven” starring Yul Brynner.

27A “The Little Prince” author ___ de Saint-Exupéry : ANTOINE

“Le Petit Prince” is a celebrated French novella written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and first published in 1943. “Le Petit Prince” (The Little Prince) is the most read book in France, and the book most translated from French. The philosophical tale recounts the story of a stranded pilot meeting a young prince who falls to Earth from an asteroid. Saint-Exupéry was himself a pioneering aviator. He wrote “Le Petit Prince” while living in exile in the US due to the German occupation of France during WWII.

29A Dream stage : REM

“REM” is an acronym standing for “rapid eye movement”. REM sleep takes up 20-25% of the sleeping hours and is the period associated with one’s most vivid dreams.

38A Designer who helped popularize the beatnik look, in brief : YSL

Yves Saint Laurent (YSL)

57A Architectural feature above a belfry : SPIRE

In general terms, a steeple is a tall tower on a building, often a church. More specifically, a steeple can be made up of several distinct parts:

1. Tower: the base of the steeple, which can often house a clock.
2. Belfry: the part that holds bells, often part of church steeples
3. Lantern: a decorative, windowed structure that admits light into the steeple
4. Spire: the tall, slender top

58A God who sacrificed an eye for wisdom : ODIN

In Norse mythology, Odin was not the sole creator, although his role in the formation of the cosmos was pivotal. After the primordial giant Ymir’s death, Odin and his brothers, Vili and Vé, used Ymir’s body to fashion the world: his flesh became the earth, his blood the seas, his skull the sky, and his eyebrows the barrier between the realms of men and gods. Odin also breathed life into the first humans, who were carved from trees.

65A Nowhere to be found : AWOL

AWOL (absent without leave)

67A Radio City Music Hall style, informally : DECO

New York City’s Radio City Music Hall in Rockefeller Center opened for business in 1932. Originally to be named International Music Hall, the current name was chosen in honor of the Radio Corporation of America, which was one of Rockefeller Center’s first tenants.

69A Pop singer Rita : ORA

Rita Ora is a British singer who was born Rita Sahatçiu in Pristina, Yugoslavia to Albanian parents. The family name “Sahatçiu” comes from a Turkish word meaning “watchmaker”. Rita’s parents changed their name to make it easier to pronounce. So, the family name morphed from “watchmaker” to “time”, which is “ora” in Albanian.

76A Mathematician John who won a Nobel in economic science in 1994 : NASH

The wonderful 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind” was adapted from a very successful book of the same name written by Sylvia Nasar. Both book and film tell the life story of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe on the big screen). Nash was a mathematician and Nobel Laureate who struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. Sadly, Nash and his wife died in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2015. They were on their way home from the airport, returning from Norway where Nash had been awarded the Abel Prize.

84A “Doctor Who” and “Doctor Foster” airer, with “the” : BEEB

“Doctor Who” is an iconic sci-fi television series that is made in the UK by the BBC. First broadcast in 1963, the show is still running today, making it the longest running sci-fi television show in the world. Doctor Who is a time traveler, from the planet Gallifrey, who “regenerates” from time to time (pun!) so that a new actor fits seamlessly into the storyline. He travels in his famous TARDIS spacecraft. Outwardly, the TARDIS looks like a police call box from the 1950s, but inside it is an enormous, multi-roomed time machine. “TARDIS” is an acronym standing for Time and Relative Dimension in Space.

98A “It’s Raining ___” (gay anthem) : MEN

“It’s Raining Men” has been labeled as a dance anthem, gay anthem and a classic female anthem; whatever anthem you relate to, it’s a fun song. It sounds very “disco”, and was indeed written in the late disco era. The Disco Divas like Donna Summer passed on it so it was only in the early eighties that it surfaced, when it was recorded by the one-hit wonder act called the Weather Girls. Geri Halliwell came out with a version in 2001, which is the version that I actually prefer, largely because of its inclusion on the soundtrack of the movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary”.

112A Fashion designer Emhoff : ELLA

Ella Emhoff is a model and fashion designer. She is the stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris and daughter of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. The outfit that Ella designed for herself to wear to the Biden inauguration garnered a lot of favorable attention from the media, and really gave her career a boost.

113A Specialized vocabularies : ARGOTS

“Argot” is a French term. It is the name given in the 17th century to “the jargon of the Paris underworld”. Nowadays argot is a set of idioms used by any particular group, the “lingo” of that group.

115A Kyiv’s country: Abbr. : UKR

Kyiv is located on the Dnieper River, and is the capital of Ukraine. We still seem to use the spelling “Kiev” sometimes, but the Ukrainian government decided in 1995 to refer to the city as “Kyiv” when using Roman/Latin script.

120A State capital in the Treasure Valley : BOISE

The Treasure Valley is in southwestern Idaho. Once known as the Lower Snake River or the Boise River Valley, the contemporary name was chosen in 1959 by a local businessman, who wanted to bring more people into the valley.

125A Little redhead in a long-running Broadway show : ANNIE

The Broadway musical “Annie” is based on the Harold Gray comic strip “Little Orphan Annie”. There have been multiple film adaptations of the musical. They were really quite successful, including one released in 1982, directed by John Huston of all people. It was his only ever musical.

126A Nobel laureate Wiesel : ELIE

Elie Wiesel was a holocaust survivor, and is best known for his book “Night” that tells of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was also the first recipient of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Award, which was later renamed the Elie Wiesel Award in his honor.

127A Island where parts of “Jurassic Park” were filmed : KAUAI

Because the Hawaiian island of Kauai is one of the wettest places on earth, all the rainfall has helped to carve out magnificent canyons and left superb waterfalls. The island is often used as a backdrop for movies. The facilities at the island’s Lihue Airport reflect the pleasant climate enjoyed by the Hawaiian Islands. Check-in takes place completely outdoors!

“Jurassic Park” is a 1993 Steven Spielberg movie that is based on Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name. According to Spielberg, the terrifying Tyrannosaurus Rex is “the star of the movie”. That may be true, but what’s not true is that the creature existed during the Jurassic period. The T. rex roamed the Earth much later, in the late Cretaceous period.

130A High-five, e.g. : SLAP

The celebratory gesture that we call a “high five” is said to have been invented by former baseball players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke when they were both playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s.

Down

1D Santa ___, city that’s home to the Charles M. Schulz Museum : ROSA

Santa Rosa is the largest city in California’s Wine Country, and the county seat of Sonoma County. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake had a great impact in Santa Rosa, because of its location on the fault line. There was actually more damage in Santa Rosa, for the size of the city, than there was in San Francisco.

Charles M. Schulz was a cartoonist best known for his comic strip “Peanuts” that featured the much-loved characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy. “Peanuts” was so successful, running daily in over 70 countries and 21 languages, that it earned Schulz an estimated 30-40 million dollars annually.

2D One acting on impulse? : AXON

A nerve cell is more correctly called a neuron. The long nerve fiber that conducts signals away from the neuron is known as the axon. The axon is surrounded by a myelin sheath, which acts as an electrical insulator and which increases the rate the impulses pass along the axon.

3D Split from suddenly, in a way : JILT

To jilt someone with whom you have a relationship is to drop them suddenly or callously. “Jilt” is an obsolete noun that used to mean “harlot, loose woman”.

5D Greek sun god : HELIOS

Helios was the god of the Sun in Greek mythology, and is the reason that we use the prefix “helio-” to mean “sun”. He was the brother of Selene, the goddess of the moon, and Eos, the goddess of the dawn. Helios drove his chariot of the sun across the sky during the day, returning to the East at night by traveling through the ocean. The Roman equivalent to Helios was Sol.

10D Start of a song with the same tune as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” : ABC

“The Alphabet Song” was copyrighted in 1835 in the US. The tune that goes with the words is the French folk song “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman”, used by Mozart for a set of piano variations. The same tune is used for the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

11D Hadron component : QUARK

Quarks are elementary subatomic particles that combine to make composite particles called “hadrons”. I’m really only familiar with the really stable hadrons i.e. protons and neutrons. There are six types of quarks (referred to as “flavors”). These flavors are up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. The term “quark” was borrowed from James Joyce’s book “Finnegans Wake”, by physicist Murray Gell-Mann. However, the word coined by Joyce is pronounced “kwark”, and the particle’s name is pronounced “kwork”.

12D Iconic nerd of 1990s TV : URKEL

Steve Urkel is a character on the TV show “Family Matters” that originally aired in the late eighties and nineties. The Urkel character was the archetypal “geek”, played by Jaleel White. Urkel was originally written into the show’s storyline for just one episode, but before long, Urkel was the show’s most popular recurring character.

13D Needing iron supplements, say : ANEMIC

The term “anemia” (or “anaemia”, as we write it back in Ireland) comes from a Greek word meaning “lack of blood”. Anemia is a lack of iron in the blood, or a low red blood cell count. Tiredness is a symptom of the condition, and so we use the term “anemic” figuratively to mean “lacking in vitality or substance”.

18D Wolf (down) : SNARF

To snarf down is to gobble up, to eat voraciously. “To snarf” is a slang term that is probably related to “to scarf”, which has the same meaning.

25D New Mexico county or its seat : TAOS

New Mexico’s Taos County was formed in 1852 as one of the nine original counties in the New Mexico Territory.

33D Actress Kurylenko of “Quantum of Solace” : OLGA

Olga Kurylenko is a Ukrainian actress and model. Kurylenko played the Bond girl Camille Montes in the James Bond movie “Quantum of Solace”.

“Quantum of Solace” is a 2008 “James Bond” movie starring Daniel Craig as the celebrated spy. It is a direct sequel to Craig’s first Bond movie, “Casino Royale”. The film’s title is the name of a short story in the “For Your Eyes Only” collection by Ian Fleming.

40D Some microbuses, in brief : VWS

The iconic Volkswagen Bus was introduced in 1950, and was VW’s second automobile design to go into production. As such, it was initially marketed as the Volkswagen Type 2, as the Beetle/Bug had been designated in the factory as the Type 1.

42D Relating to some forces on Earth : TIDAL

Tides are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans. At neap tide, the smaller gravitational effect of the sun cancels out some of the moon’s effect. At spring tide, the sun and the moon’s gravitational forces act in concert causing more extreme movement of the oceans.

50D Smallest relative of an ostrich : KIWI

The kiwi is an unusual bird in that it has a highly developed sense of smell and is the only one of our feathered friends with nostrils located at the tip of its long beak.

51D Kind of mushroom that comes in a bundle : ENOKI

Enokitake (also known as “enoki”) are long and thin white mushrooms often added to soups or salads.

55D Summary of a contract’s details : TERM SHEET

A term sheet is a document that summarizes an agreement between the parties prior to the preparation and signing of the final agreement.

63D Riddle in Zen Buddhism : KOAN

The concept of koan appears in the Zen Buddhist tradition. A koan is a story, question or perhaps a statement that is used as an aid to meditation. It often takes the form of a problem or riddle that has no logical solution and is intended to help the meditator break free of reason and develop intuition.

64D Pretty fishy : SUS

The slang term “sus” is a shortened form of “suspicious” or “suspect”.

70D Pump, say : SHOE

A pump is a woman’s shoe that doesn’t have a strap. Such shoes are probably called “pumps” because of the sound they make while walking in them.

71D God who rides in a chariot pulled by two goats : THOR

The Norse god Thor rode in a chariot pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. Somewhat ungratefully (!), he would actually roast and eat his goats to sustain himself. Fortunately for all concerned, Thor could use his celebrated hammer, Mjölnir, to resurrect the goats, provided their bones were intact.

83D Washington, D.C.’s International ___ Museum : SPY

The International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. is a private enterprise that opened in 2002. It was founded by Milton Maltz, a former code-breaker during the Korean War. The Spy Museum is a fun place to visit …

85D Jessica of “The Better Sister” : BIEL

Jessica Biel is an actress who was known by television audiences for portraying Mary Camden on “7th Heaven”. Biel’s first film role was playing Peter Fonda’s granddaughter in “Ulee’s Gold”. Biel married singer and actor Justin Timberlake in 2012.

“The Better Sister” is a 2025 limited TV series starring Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks as estranged sisters who are forced to reunite after Biel’s character’s husband is murdered. This show is based on a 2019 bestselling book of the same name by crime novelist Alafair Burke.

87D W-2 requirement, in brief : SSN

Form W-2 is provided by US employers to their employees by January 31 each year. The form reports wages paid to the employees, as well as taxes withheld.

89D Person from South Asia : DESI

People from the Indian subcontinent might refer to themselves as “desi”.

90D Whisky flavorer : PEAT

Many whiskies are noted for a peaty, smoky flavor. That taste is introduced when the malted grain is dried over a peat-heated fire.

99D Awe-inspiring light show : AURORA

The spectacular aurora polaris phenomenon is seen lighting up the night sky at both poles of the Earth (the Aurora Borealis in the north, and the Aurora Australis in the south). The eerie effect is caused by charged particles colliding with atoms at high latitudes.

100D Sushi consisting of thin slices of fish over rice : NIGIRI

Nigiri is a type of sushi consisting of a small, hand-pressed mound of vinegared rice with a topping, typically a thin slice of raw fish or seafood. The name “nigiri” means “hand-pressed” in Japanese, which refers to the way the rice is shaped.

108D Biblical tower locale : BABEL

We use the word “babel” now to describe a scene of confusion, lifting the term from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The Tower was built in the city of Babylon, and the construction was cursed with a confusion of languages due to the varied origins of all the builders.

111D Something consumed by the ton by whales : KRILL

Krill are small, shrimp-like crustaceans that live in the oceans. Krill feed on plankton, and in turn, krill are the main part of the diet of larger animals such as whales, seals and penguins. There’s an awful lot of krill in the world, an estimated 500,000,000 tonnes of it. That’s about twice the biomass of humans on the planet!

117D Home of the Road to Hana, whose 64-mile length contains more than 600 curves : MAUI

If you visit the island of Maui, a trip to the Haleakala National Park is a must. One section of the park features the spectacular Haleakala Crater, where you would swear you are on the moon. The second part of the park is the Kipahulu section, which features the very picturesque pools accessed along the Hana Highway. When we visited (quite a few years ago), “The Road to Hana” was a tad undeveloped and rental car companies would not allow you to drive their cars there. Funnily enough, the only cars you’d meet on the Road to Hana were rental cars …

118D Modern-day Persia : IRAN

Before 1935, the country we know today as Iran was referred to as Persia by the Western world. The official name of the country since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 is the “Islamic Republic of Iran”.

122D Abbr. in a job posting : EEO

“Equal Employment Opportunity” (EEO) is a term that has been around since 1964 when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was set up by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Act prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin or religion.

123D Carnival maker : KIA

The Kia Sedona is a minivan that is also sold as the Kia Carnival.