Day: November 28, 2012

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Blue toon SMURF
The Smurfs are little blue men created by a Belgian cartoonist in 1958. They became famous in the US when Hanna-Barbera used the Smurfs in a children’s cartoon series. The characters are largely a group of males, originally with just one female Smurf called Smurfette, who is wooed by almost all of the boy Smurfs. Later, another female was introduced into the mix called Sassette, and still later along came Granny Smurf.

6. Stats at Anaheim’s “Big A” RBIS
“The Big A” is the nickname of the Angel Stadium of Anaheim, currently the home of the LA Angels of Anaheim baseball team. The Big A used to be home to the LA Rams of the NFL (now the St. Louis Rams).

16. Supermodel Heidi who inspired a 2009 Barbie doll KLUM
German-born Heidi Klum is married to the successful English singer, Seal. Klum is a talented lady and has built a multi-faceted career based on her early success as a model. She is the force behind the Bravo reality show called “Project Runway” that has been on the air since 2004. Klum has been nominated 4-5 times for an Emmy for her association with the show. Klum was also signed up as the official ambassador for Barbie in 2009, the 50th anniversary of the Barbie Doll, and for her service that year a Heidi Klum Barbie was produced.

The famous Barbie doll was created by businesswoman Ruth Handler and first appeared on store shelves in 1959. Barbie was based on a German fashion doll called Bild Lilli that had been introduced four years earlier. Lilli had been a German cartoon character before taking on a three-dimensional form. Prior to the introduction of Bild Lilli and Barbie, children’s dolls were primarily representations of infants.

17. Wonderland wanderer ALICE
Lewis Carroll wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in 1865, and the sequel called “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” in 1871. Because in the second adventure Alice went through a looking glass, the themes were deliberately chosen to be mirror images of the themes in “Wonderland”. Whereas “Wonderland” begins indoors, is set in summer, and uses playing card imagery, “Looking Glass” begins out of doors, is set in winter and uses images from the game of chess.

18. Arctic obstacle FLOE
An ice floe is a sheet of ice that has separated from an ice field and is floating freely on the ocean.

20. *Darth Vader, e.g. MOVIE VILLAIN
Anakin Skywalker is the principal character in all six of the “Star Wars” movies. His progress chronologically through the series of films is:

– Episode I: Anakin is a 9-year-old slave boy who earns the promise of Jedi training by young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
– Episode II: Anakin is 18-years-old and goes on a murdering rampage to avenge the killing of his mother.
– Episode III: Anakin is 21-years-old and a Jedi knight, but he turns to the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader. His wife Padme gives birth to twins, Luke and Leia Skywalker.
– Episode IV: Anakin, as Darth Vader, comes into conflict with his children, Luke Skywalker and the Princess Leia.
– Episode V: Darth Vader attempts to coax his son Luke over to the dark side, and reveals to Luke that he is his father.
– Episode VI: Luke learns that Leia is his sister, and takes on the task of bringing Darth Vader back from the Dark Side in order to save the Galaxy. Vader saves his son from the Emperor’s evil grip, dying in the process, but his spirit ends up alongside the spirits of Yoda and Obi-Wan. They all live happily ever after …

24. Place to see long lines, briefly DMV
In most states, the government agency responsible for vehicle registration and the issuing of drivers licenses is called the DMV. This acronym usually stands for the Department of Motor Vehicles, but there are “variations on the theme”. For example, in Arizona the responsible agency is called the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD), and in Colorado the familiar acronym DMV stands for “Division” of Motor Vehicles.

25. Copier tray abbr. LTR
Like so many things it seems, our paper sizes here in North America don’t conform with the standards in the rest of the world. ISO standard sizes used elsewhere have some logic behind them in that the ratio of width to length is usually one to the square root of two. This mathematical relationship means that when you cut a piece of paper in two each half preserves the aspect ratio of the original, which can be useful in making reduced or enlarged copies of documents. Our standard size of “letter” (8.5 x 11 inches) was determined in 1980 by the Reagan administration to be the official paper size for the US government. Prior to this, the “legal” size (8.5 x 14 inches) had been the standard, since 1921.

28. *City near Sacramento ROSEVILLE
Of the many US cities called Roseville, the one near Sacramento, California is the largest.

37. Workplace in many crime shows DNA LAB
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the DNA of living things is so very similar across different species. Human DNA is almost exactly the same for every individual (to the degree of 99.9%). However, those small differences are sufficient to distinguish one individual from another, and to determine whether or not individuals are close family relations.

38. *Weekly newspaper with three Pulitzers THE VILLAGE VOICE
“The Village Voice” is a free newspaper distributed in New York City. “The Village Voice” had a great advertising slogan in the eighties: “Some people swear by us … other people swear AT us”.

42. It’s ground in a Southern side dish HOMINY
Hominy is a dish consisting of dried kernels of maize that have been treated with an alkali. The term “hominy” is derived from a Native American word for “maize”.

43. Desperate letters SOS
The combination of three dots – three dashes – three dots, is a Morse signal first introduced by the German government as a standard distress call in 1905. The sequence is remembered as the letters SOS (three dots – pause – three dashes – pause – three dots), although in the emergency signal there is no pause between the dots and dashes, so SOS is in effect only a mnemonic. Similarly, the phrases “Save Our Souls” and “Save Our Ship” are also mnemonics, introduced after the “SOS” signal was adopted.

44. __ Aviv TEL
The full name of Israel’s second largest city is Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tel Aviv translates into “Spring Mound”, a name chosen in 1910.

45. Calvin of couture KLEIN
Calvin Klein is an American fashion designer, born in the Bronx in New York City. Klein’s biography entitled “Obsession” takes its name from one of the most famous brands in his line of fragrances.

50. Developer of the one-named “Jeopardy!” contestant Watson IBM
Watson is a program still in development at IBM. Watson is designed to answer questions that are posed in natural language, so that it should be able to interpret questions just as you and I would, no matter how the question is phrased. The program is named after the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson. Today’s Watson competed in a few memorable episodes of “Jeopardy!” in 2011 taking out two of the best players of the quiz show. That made for fun television.

53. Horror video game/film franchise, and a literal feature of the answers to the starred clues RESIDENT EVIL
“Resident Evil” is a video game that has been spun off into comic books, novels and movies. “Resident Evil” is a horror game, and it sounds horrible …

59. Composer Bartók BELA
Bela Bartok was a composer and a pianist, and perhaps after Liszt is considered by many to be Hungary’s greatest composer.

64. Folk singer associated with Dylan BAEZ
Joan Baez is an American folk singer and a prominent activist in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and environmental protection. Baez has dated some high-profile figures in her life including Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs (of Apple) and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead.

66. Chromosome components GENES
A gene is a section of a chromosome that is responsible for a particular characteristic in an organism. For example, one gene may determine eye color and another balding pattern. We have two copies of each gene, one from each of our parents, with each copy known as an allele.

Down
2. Actor O’Shea MILO
Milo O’Shea is a great Irish character actor from Dublin, who has appeared in everything from “Romeo and Juliet” to “The West Wing”.

4. Rachael Ray offering RECIPE
Rachael Ray is a so-called celebrity chef and host of several shows on the Food Network television channel. Ray comes from a family steeped in the restaurant tradition, owning and managing a number of restaurants in the northeast of the country.

8. Lover of Tristan ISOLDE
“Tristan und Isolde” is an epic opera by Richard Wagner (Wagner … not one of my favorites!). Many see it as the first serious move away from the traditional harmony and tonality of the classical and romantic eras.

11. TV E.T. ALF
“ALF” is a sitcom that aired in the late eighties. ALF is a hand-puppet, supposedly an alien that crash-landed in a suburban neighborhood. “ALF” stands for “alien life form”.

12. Mercury Seven astronaut Grissom GUS
Gus Grissom was the second American to fly in space, and the first astronaut at NASA to make two space flights. Sadly, Grissom was one of the three astronauts who died in a terrible launch pad fire in 1967.

13. Mopey music genre EMO
The musical genre of “emo” originated in Washington D.C. in the 80s, and takes its name from “emotional hardcore”. Not my cup of tea …

22. Joint tsar with Peter I IVAN V
Peter I and Ivan V were half-brothers who serves as joint Tsars of Russia between the years 1682 and 1696. Peter was the most influential of the duo by far, and after Ivan died Peter went on to bring Russia into a new age earning himself the name Peter the Great.

25. Nabokov nymphet LOLITA
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” has a famously controversial storyline, dealing with a middle-aged man’s obsession and sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl. Although “Lolita” is considered a classic today, after Nabokov finished it in 1953 the edgy subject matter made it impossible for him to find a publisher in the US (where Nabokov lived). In 1955, he resorted to publishing it in English at a printing house in Paris. Publication was followed by bans and seizures all over Europe. A US printing house finally took on the project in 1958, by which time the title had such a reputation that it sold exceptionally quickly. “Lolita” became the first book since “Gone with the Wind” to sell over 100,000 copies in its first three weeks in stores.

26. Actress Gold of “Growing Pains” TRACEY
Tracey Gold is a former child television star who played Carol Seaver on the sitcom “Growing Pains” in the eighties. Tracey’s younger sister is Missy Gold, also a child star and who portrayed the Governor’s daughter on the sitcom “Benson”.

28. “Orange, Red, Yellow” painter Mark ROTHKO
Mark Rothko was a Russian-American painter often classified as an abstract expressionist. Rothko’s 1961 painting “Orange, Red, Yellow” was sold in 2012 at auction for over $86 million dollars, a record price for any Post-War contemporary work of art.

31. Hip-hop’s __ Kim LIL’
Lil’ Kim is the stage name of rap artist Kimberly Denise Jones from Brooklyn, New York. Lil’ Kim spent a year in jail in 2005 for lying to a jury in a case about a shooting.

34. 1972 host to Nixon MAO
Mao Zedong was born on December 16, 1893 in the Hunan Province of China. As Mao was the son of a peasant farmer, his prospects for education were limited. Indeed he left school at age 13 to work on the family farm but did eventually get to secondary school in Changsa, the provincial capital. In the years following, Mao continued his education in Beijing and actually turned down an opportunity to study in France.

39. Final article of the Constitution VII
Article VII of the US Constitution deals with its ratification. Article VII called for nine states to ratify the wording of the Constitution before it would take effect.

48. Aroused the patrolman’s suspicion REELED
Reeling around could indicate that one is drunk, and might attract the attention of a patrol officer.

55. Gaelic music star ENYA
Enya’s real name is Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin, which can translate from Irish into Enya Brennan. Her Donegal family (in the northwest of Ireland) formed a band called Clannad, which included Enya. In 1980 Enya launched her very successful solo career. She sure does turn up a lot in crosswords!

57. Éclair finisher ICER
The name for the pastry known as an éclair is clearly French in origin. The French word for lightning is “éclair”, but no one seems to be too sure how it came to be used for the rather delicious “temptation”.

59. Jul. 4th party, often BBQ
It is believed that our word “barbecue” comes from the Taíno people of the Caribbean in whose language “barbacoa” means “sacred fire pit”.

60. __ Claire EAU
Eau Claire translates from French to English as “clear water”. There are locations all over Canada and the United State with the name Eau Claire.

61. Ring of blooms LEI
“Lei” is the Hawaiian word for “garland, wreath”, although in more general terms a “lei” is any series of objects strung together as an adornment for the body.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Blue toon SMURF
6. Stats at Anaheim’s “Big A” RBIS
10. Thyme rackmate SAGE
14. Garbage can insert LINER
15. Vane point EAST
16. Supermodel Heidi who inspired a 2009 Barbie doll KLUM
17. Wonderland wanderer ALICE
18. Arctic obstacle FLOE
19. Words before a conclusion IF SO
20. *Darth Vader, e.g. MOVIE VILLAIN
23. Educ. support org. PTA
24. Place to see long lines, briefly DMV
25. Copier tray abbr. LTR
28. *City near Sacramento ROSEVILLE
33. Luciano’s love AMORE
35. Common bill ONE
36. Never, in Munich NIE
37. Workplace in many crime shows DNA LAB
38. *Weekly newspaper with three Pulitzers THE VILLAGE VOICE
42. It’s ground in a Southern side dish HOMINY
43. Desperate letters SOS
44. __ Aviv TEL
45. Calvin of couture KLEIN
46. *Bottom-feeding fish DEVILRAYS
49. Weird ODD
50. Developer of the one-named “Jeopardy!” contestant Watson IBM
52. “You don’t say!” GEE
53. Horror video game/film franchise, and a literal feature of the answers to the starred clues RESIDENT EVIL
59. Composer Bartók BELA
62. Privy to IN ON
63. Pizzeria order SLICE
64. Folk singer associated with Dylan BAEZ
65. As is proper DULY
66. Chromosome components GENES
67. Student’s surprise QUIZ
68. This, in Havana ESTA
69. Bouquets ODORS

Down
1. Sound of an angry exit SLAM
2. Actor O’Shea MILO
3. Deg. issuer UNIV
4. Rachael Ray offering RECIPE
5. Motel come-on FREE TV
6. Mtge. payment-lowering option REFI
7. Musket projectile BALL
8. Lover of Tristan ISOLDE
9. Mirror obscurer STEAM
10. Shallot covering SKIN
11. TV E.T. ALF
12. Mercury Seven astronaut Grissom GUS
13. Mopey music genre EMO
21. For naught VAINLY
22. Joint tsar with Peter I IVAN V
25. Nabokov nymphet LOLITA
26. Actress Gold of “Growing Pains” TRACEY
27. Rejects authority REBELS
28. “Orange, Red, Yellow” painter Mark ROTHKO
29. In phone limbo ON HOLD
30. Came off as SEEMED
31. Hip-hop’s __ Kim LIL’
32. Car shopper’s option LEASE
34. 1972 host to Nixon MAO
37. Decorator’s study DESIGN
39. Final article of the Constitution VII
40. Navel variety INNIE
41. URL ending for many agencies GOV
46. It’s usually barely passing D-MINUS
47. “Time to split!” LET’S GO!
48. Aroused the patrolman’s suspicion REELED
51. Hit back? B-SIDE
53. Make fun of RAZZ
54. Blockhead DOLT
55. Gaelic music star ENYA
56. Ristorante beverage VINO
57. Éclair finisher ICER
58. Reduced by LESS
59. Jul. 4th party, often BBQ
60. __ Claire EAU
61. Ring of blooms LEI

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