Tag: Words set in stone? crossword clue

Bill’s time: 5m 29s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Prepare, as samosas : FRY

A samosa is quite the tasty appetizer. It is usually a triangular-shaped savory that often has a vegetarian filling. The word “samosa” is primarily used on Indian menus, and the name comes from “sanbosag”, the name for the dish in Persia.

4A National park in Alberta : BANFF

Banff is a town located within the bounds of Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Banff is located high in the Canadian Rockies and is a popular tourist destination. The town and park were given their name in 1884 by the then president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, George Stephen. He named Banff for his birthplace of Banffshire in Scotland.

9A Partner of Clark in exploration : LEWIS

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were soldiers in the US Army. Lewis was a personal aide to President Thomas Jefferson, even residing in the Presidential Mansion. This exposure contributed to his selection as leader of the famous “Lewis and Clark Expedition”, which was known at the time as the Corps of Discovery Expedition. William Clark was actually Lewis’s boss for a while before Clark retired. Lewis asked Clark to come out of retirement to accompany him on his three-year exploration.

15A Ad that’s handed out on the street : FLIER

Fliers (also “flyers”) are notices that are circulated. The original fliers were police bulletins that were “scatter-broadcast”.

16A Put in one’s two cents : OPINE

To put in one’s two cents is to add one’s opinion. The American expression derives from the older English version, which is “to put in one’s two pennies’ worth”.

18A Celestial event on September 22 or 23, typically : FALL EQUINOX

An equinox is a phenomenon dictated by the tilt of the earth’s axis. Twice every year, that tilt “evens out” and the sun is equidistant from points at the same latitude both north and south of the equator. It is as if the earth has no tilt relative to the sun. The term “equinox” comes from the Latin for “equal night”, inferring that night and day are equally long, as the effect of the earth’s “tilt” is nullified. Equinoxes occur each year around March 21st (the vernal equinox) and September 23rd (the autumnal equinox).

23A Number of points “Q” is worth in Scrabble : TEN

The game of Scrabble has been around since 1938, the invention of an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Butts determined how many tiles of each letter, and the point value of each tile, by analyzing letter distributions in publications like “The New York Times”.

27A You love, in Latin : AMAS

“Amo, amas, amat” translates from Latin as “I love, you love, he/she/it loves”.

38A ___ Island (smallest U.S. state) : RHODE

The largest US states by land area are, in order:

1. Alaska
2. Texas
3. California
4. Montana
5. New Mexico

The smallest US states are:

1. Rhode Island
2. Delaware
3. Connecticut
4. New Jersey
5. New Hampshire

39A Openly gay : OUT

Back in the 1950s, to come “out of the closet” was to admit to being an alcoholic. By the seventies, the phrase mainly referred to gay people shrugging off secrecy about their sexual orientation.

40A Browser that competes with Chrome : FIREFOX

Firefox is an open-source web browser produced by Mozilla. It was developed in 2002, and is in effect the successor to Netscape’s groundbreaking Navigator browser. Firefox was extremely popular in 2009, and challenged the domination of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer before succumbing to Google’s Chrome.

45A N.B.A. team in southern Florida : MIAMI HEAT

The Miami Heat basketball team debuted in the NBA in the 1988-89 season. The franchise name was chosen in a competitive survey, with “Miami Heat” beating out “Miami Vice”.

51A Location of many gold reserves : FORT KNOX

Fort Knox is a US Army base that lends its name to the adjacent facility that is more correctly called the United States Bullion Depository. Most of the US gold reserves are in “Fort Knox”, although it isn’t the biggest gold repository in the US. That honor goes to the vault under the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Manhattan. Most of the gold stored in the New York vault belongs to foreign nations and banks.

57A Mom on “Family Guy” : LOIS

“Family Guy” is a very successful animated television show. It was created by Seth MacFarlane, the same guy who came up with “American Dad!”. My kids love them both. Me? I can’t stand ‘em …

64A Material for the woodman in “The Wizard of Oz” : TIN

In the Land of Oz, created by author L. Frank Baum, the character we know as the Tin Man from the movies is named Nick Chopper or the Tin Woodman.

65A Indian or Pakistani : ASIAN

The vast Asian country of India takes its name from the Indus River. The name “Indus” in turn comes from the Sanskrit “Sindhu” that can be translated as “a body of trembling water”. India is the most populous country in the world, and the most populous democracy.

The suffix “-stan” in many place names is Persian for “place of”. One example is “Pakistan”, the Place of the Pure. “Pakistan” is a relatively recent name, coined in 1933. It comes from the abbreviation PAKSTAN, standing for Punjab – Afghan Province – Kashmir – Sindh – BaluchisTAN, all regions in the north of India. The “I” was added to Pakistan to make it easier to pronounce, and to fit the translation “Land of the Pure”.

69A Damascus’s land : SYRIA

Damascus is the second largest city in Syria (after Aleppo), and is the country’s capital. Damascus has the distinction of being the oldest, continuously-inhabited city in the world, having been settled in the 2nd millennium BC. Also, it has the nickname “City of Jasmine”.

Down

2D What matching ends of magnets do : REPEL

Magnetism is fundamentally a side effect of electricity in motion. Every time an electric charge moves, whether it’s current flowing through a household wire or an electron spinning in an atom, it generates a magnetic field that swirls around its path of travel. This inseparable link is the basis for everything from simple electromagnets to giant electric motors.

4D Person who might have the other half of a heart necklace, in brief : BFF

Best friend forever (BFF)

6D Nabisco wafer brand : NILLA

As one might expect, “Nilla” is a shortened form of “vanilla”. However, you won’t find any vanilla in Nilla brand cookies or wafers. They have always been flavored with vanillin, which is synthetic vanilla. Is nothing sacred …?

9D Baseball’s Gehrig : LOU

Baseball legend Lou Gehrig was known as a powerhouse. He was a big hitter and just kept on playing. Gehrig broke the record for the most consecutive number of games played, and he still holds the record for the most career grand slams. His durability earned him the nickname “The Iron Horse”. Sadly, he died in 1941 at 37-years-old suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), an illness we now call “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”. The New York Yankees retired the number four on 4th of July 1939 in his honor, making Lou Gehrig the first baseball player to have his number retired.

10D Words set in stone? : EPITAPH

Our word “epitaph” ultimately comes from the Greek “epitaphion”, which translates as “funeral oration”.

19D Campus courtyard : QUAD

A university often features a central quadrangle (quad).

26D Service symbolized by a dot and three curved lines : WI-FI

“Wi-Fi” is nothing more than a trademark, a trademark registered by an association of manufacturers of equipment that use wireless LAN (Local Area Network) technology. A device labeled with “Wi-Fi” has to meet certain defined technical standards, basically meaning that the devices can talk to each other. The name “Wi-Fi” suggests “Wireless Fidelity”, although apparently the term was never intended to mean anything at all.

28D Believer in communism achieved through class struggle : MARXIST

Marxism is the political and economic philosophy espoused by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid-to-late 1800s. The main tenet of Marxism is that bourgeois suppression of lower classes in a capitalistic society inevitably leads to a socialist and ultimately classless society.

30D ___ Romeo (sports car) : ALFA

The “Alfa” in “Alfa Romeo” is actually an acronym, one standing for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (“Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company”). ALFA was an enterprise founded in 1909 and which was taken over by Nicola Romeo in 1915. In 1920 the company name was changed to Alfa Romeo.

31D Poet ___ St. Vincent Millay : EDNA

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright, and the third woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in 1923 for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver”). Millay was noted not only for her work, but also for the open arrangement that she and her husband had in their marriage. Millay took many lovers, including the poet George Dillon for whom she wrote a number of sonnets.

41D Ilhan of Congress : OMAR

Ilhan Omar has been representing Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in the US House since 2019. At that time, she became one of the first two Muslim women, as well as the first Somali American, to serve in the US Congress.

46D Maori dance with rhythmic chanting : HAKA

The haka is a war dance used by the Maori people of New Zealand. Famously, the New Zealand rugby team performs a haka before each of their matches.

48D “The Three Little Pigs” antagonist : WOLF

The Big Bad Wolf is a character in many folklore stories, including “Little Red Riding” and “Three Little Pigs”. Walt Disney’s version of the Big Bad Wolf is called Zeke Wolf, and has a son called Li’l Bad Wolf, or just “Li’l Wolf” to his friends.

52D One of seven won by “Oppenheimer” : OSCAR

“Oppenheimer” is an epic 2023 film starring Cillian Murphy in the title role. The movie follows J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”, from his student days right through World War II and beyond. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film has an amazing ensemble cast that includes:

• Matt Damon (General Leslie Groves)
• Robert Downey Jr. (Lewis Strauss)
• Josh Hartnett (Ernest Lawrence)
• Kenneth Branagh (Niels Bohr)
• Tom Conti (Albert Einstein)
• Gary Oldman (Harry S. Truman)

55D Chemical element whose name starts with an 8-point Scrabble letter : XENON

The element xenon was the first of the noble gases to be made into a compound, which was somewhat remarkable in that the noble gases were thought by many to be completely inert, unreactive.

56D What yeast makes dough do : RISE

Yeasts are unicellular microorganisms in the kingdom Fungi. The species of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been used for centuries in the making of wine and beer, and in breadmaking. Saccharomyces cerevisiae converts carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and alcohol in the process of fermentation. When making beer and wine, the carbon dioxide and alcohol may be captured by the liquid. When making bread, the carbon dioxide and alcohol is driven off by heat.

60D Seasoning for una margarita : SAL

No one seems to know for sure who first created the margarita cocktail. The most plausible and oft-quoted is that it was invented in 1941 in Ensenada, Mexico. The barman mixed the drink for an important visitor, the daughter of the German ambassador. The daughter’s name was Margarita Henkel, and she lent her name to the new drink. The basic recipe for a margarita is a mixture of tequila, orange-flavored liqueur (like Cointreau) and lime juice.

61D Ambient music composer Brian : ENO

Brian Eno was one of the pioneers of the genre of ambient music. He composed an album in 1978 called “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, which was the first in a series of four albums with an ambient theme. Eno named the tracks, somewhat inventively, 1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2.

62D “I wish I could unhear everything you just said!” : TMI!

Too much information! (TMI!)

63D Mermaid’s milieu : SEA

The mythological creatures named mermaids are usually depicted with the head and upper body of a human female, and with the tail of a fish. The term “mermaid” comes from the Old English “mere” meaning “sea, lake” and “maid” meaning “young woman”. The original mermaids were probably tail-less, with that “fishy” addition likely coming with comparison to classical sirens. The male equivalent of a mermaid is “merman”.

We use the French term “milieu” (plural “milieux”) to mean “environment, surroundings”. In French, “milieu” is the word for “middle”.