Day: July 21, 2014

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
6. Florida resort, familiarly BOCA
The name of the city of Boca Raton in Florida translates from Spanish as “Mouse Mouth”. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive etymology of the name but one plausible explanation is a nautical one. “Boca”, as well as meaning “mouth” can mean “inlet”. “Ratón”, as well as meaning “mouse” was also used to describe rocks that chewed away at a ship’s anchor cable. So possibly Boca Raton was named for a rocky inlet.

10. __ America Competition MISS
The Miss America beauty pageant started out as a marketing ploy in the early twenties to attract tourists to the Atlantic City boardwalk after Labor Day.

14. Speedy Amtrak train ACELA
The Acela Express is the fastest train routinely running in the US, getting up to 150 mph at times. The service runs between Boston and Washington D.C. via Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The brand name “Acela” was created to evoke “acceleration” and “excellence”.

15. The Bard’s river AVON
There are actually four rivers called the Avon in England, but “Shakespeare’s Avon” lies mainly in Warwickshire. The name “Avon” comes from the Old English word for a river, “abona”. Stratford-upon-Avon was of course the birthplace of William Shakespeare.

16. “A time to cast away stones” Bible bk. ECCL
Ecclesiastes is a book in the Hebrew Bible and in the Old Testament. The term “ecclesiastes” is usually translated as “teacher” or “preacher”, although a more literal translation is “gatherer”.

19. “Star Wars” princess LEIA
Princess Leia is Luke Skywalker’s sister in the original “Star Wars” trilogy and was played by Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher has stated that she hated the famous “cinnamon bun hairstyle” that she had to wear in the films, as she felt it made her face look too round. She also had to to sit for two hours every day just to get her hair styled. Two hours to get your hair done? It takes me just two seconds …

21. Dada artist Jean ARP
Hans Arp was a French artist renowned for his work with torn and pasted paper, although that wasn’t the only medium he used. Arp was the son of a French mother and German father and spoke both languages fluently. When he was speaking German he gave his name as Hans Arp, but when speaking French he called himself Jean Arp. Both “Hans” and “Jean” translate into English as “John”. In WWI Arp moved to Switzerland to avoid being called up to fight, taking advantage of Swiss neutrality. Eventually he was told to report to the German Consulate and fill out paperwork for the draft. In order to get out of fighting, Arp messed up the paperwork by writing the date in every blank space on the forms. Then he took off all of his clothes and walked with his papers over to the officials in charge. He was sent home …

Dadaism thrived during and just after WWI, and was an anti-war, anti-bourgeois and anti-art culture. The movement began in Zurich, Switzerland started by a group of artists and writers who met to discuss art and put on performances in the Cabaret Voltaire, frequently expressing disgust at the war that was raging across Europe.

23. Director Affleck BEN
Actor, screenwriter and director Ben Affleck really hit the big time when he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1997 for “Good Will Hunting”, along with his childhood friend Matt Damon. Affleck has directed a few movies, most notably 2012’s “Argo”, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Offscreen, Affleck is one of the best celebrity poker players, and his prowess at blackjack got him banned from playing at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. He has had a few celebrity relationships that have delighted the paparazzi. Famously, he was involved with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, and is now married to Jennifer Garner.

24. Mercedes sedan category E-CLASS
The Mercedes-Benz E-Class is a range of executive-size cars. Originally, the “E” stood for “Einspritzmotor”, the German for “fuel injection engine”.

29. Author Victor HUGO
Victor Hugo was a French poet and playwright, known in his native country mainly for his poetry. However, outside of France Hugo is perhaps more closely associated with his novels such as “Les Misérables” and “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”.

32. BLT spread MAYO
Mayonnaise originated in the town of Mahon in Menorca, a Mediterranean island belonging to Spain. The Spanish called the sauce “salsa mahonesa” after the town, and this morphed into the French word “mayonnaise” that we use in English today.

The BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) is the second most popular sandwich in the US, after the plain old ham sandwich.

40. 2014 French Open winner Rafael NADAL
Rafael Nadal is a Spanish tennis player who is noted for his expertise on clay courts, earning him the nickname “The King of Clay”.

44. Fraternal gp. with an antlered animal in its logo BPOE
The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) was founded in 1868, and is a social club that has about a million members today. It started out as a group of men getting together in a “club” in order to get around the legal opening hours of taverns in New York City. The club took on a new role as it started to look out for poor families of members who passed away. The club now accepts African Americans as members (since the seventies) and women (since the nineties), but atheists still aren’t welcome.

52. Delta rival: Abbr. UAL
United Airlines used the tagline “Fly the Friendly Skies” in its marketing materials from 1965 to 1996. It was then replaced with “It’s time to fly”. United chose George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as the company’s theme music in 1976, and paid the Gershwin estate a fee of $500,000 for the privilege.

Delta was the world’s largest airline for a while (after merging with Northwest Airlines in 2008) and is also the oldest airline still operating in the US. Delta’s roots go back to 1924 before it started carrying passengers and was called Huff Daland Dusters, a crop dusting company based in Macon, Georgia. The name Delta Air Service was introduced in 1928.

53. Wanderer VAGABOND
A “vagabond” is a person without a home who moves from place to place. The term derives from the Latin “vagabundus” meaning “wandering, strolling about”.

55. Irritable SNARKY
“Snark” is a term that was coined by Lewis Carroll in his fabulous 1876 nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Somehow, the term “snarky” came to mean “irritable, short-tempered” in the early 1900s.

57. Braz. neighbor ARG
Argentina is the second largest country in South America (after Brazil), and geographically is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking nation. The name “Argentina” comes from the Latin “argentum”, the word for “silver”. It is thought that the name was given by the early Spanish and Portuguese conquerors who also named the Rio de la Plata (the “Silver River”). Those early explorers got hold of lots of silver objects that they found among the native population.

58. WWII mil. zone ETO
European Theater of Operations (ETO)

60. Christian of fashion DIOR
Christian Dior was a French fashion designer. As WWII approached, Dior was called up by the French military, imposing a temporary halt to his career in fashion. He left the army in 1942 and for the duration of the war designed clothes for wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators. After the war his designs became so popular that he helped re-establish Paris as the fashion center of the world.

62. Tuxedo accessory CUMMERBUND
A cummerbund is a sash worn around the waist by some men, usually with a dinner jacket or tuxedo. Cummerbands came to us from Afghanistan in the early 1600s.

66. What Clearasil treats ACNE
Clearasil acne medication was developed in 1940 by Ivan Combe and Kedzie Teller. Combe promoted the product by sponsoring the television show “American Bandstand” for many years.

67. Norway’s capital OSLO
Oslo is an ancient city, founded around 1048. The medieval city was destroyed by fire in 1624 and was rebuilt by the Danish-Norwegian King Christian IV and renamed Christiania. In 1877 there was an official change of the name’s spelling to “Kristiania”, and then more recently in 1925 the name was restored to the original Oslo. Things have gone full circle as the center of Oslo, the area that would have been contained by the original medieval walls, has recently been named Christiania again.

68. Davis of “Thelma & Louise” GEENA
As well as being a successful Hollywood actress, Geena Davis is an accomplished archer and came close to qualifying for the US archery team for the 2000 Summer Olympics. Davis is also a member of American Mensa. She is quite the lady …

“Thelma & Louise” is a thought-provoking movie, but one that is very entertaining. It was directed by Ridley Scott in 1991, and stars two fabulous leads in Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. You’ll also spot Brad Pitt in there as well, in his first significant movie role.

Down
1. Calif.’s ocean PAC
The Pacific Ocean was given its name by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. When Magellan sailed into the ocean on his 1521 circumnavigation of the globe, he encountered favorable winds and so called it “Mar Pacifico” meaning “peaceful sea”.

2. Author Umberto ECO
Umberto Eco is an Italian writer, probably best known for his novel “The Name of the Rose” published in 1980. In 1986, “The Name of the Rose” was adapted into a movie with the same title starring Sean Connery.

5. County counterpart in Louisiana PARISH
Louisiana is the only US state that uses parishes as political subdivisions. Parishes are equivalent to counties in the other 49 states. The use of “parish” is a result of the state’s history as a French colony.

6. Slugger Ruth BABE
Jack Dunn was the owner/manager of the Baltimore Orioles back in 1913, when he signed on George Herman Ruth as a pitcher. The other players called Ruth “Jack’s newest babe”, and the name “Babe” stuck.

8. Sir Arthur __ Doyle CONAN
The Scottish writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is most closely associated with his wonderful character Sherlock Holmes. Doyle also wrote a series of science fiction stories featuring the character Professor Challenger. The first book in which Challenger appears is the famous “The Lost World”, a story about prehistoric creatures that are found living in the modern age on an isolated plateau in South America.

9. Guitarist Segovia ANDRES
Andrés Segovia was a classical guitar player from Andalusia in Spain.

10. Diner owner on “Alice” MEL
The TV sitcom “Alice” ran from 1976 to 1985, a story about a widow named Alice who takes a job at Mel’s Diner. The show was based on a very successful 1974 movie called “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” directed by Martin Scorsese (his first Hollywood production) and starring Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson.

11. Titanic sinker ICEBERG
The RMS Titanic set off on her tragic maiden voyage in 1912, sailing from Southampton, England bound for New York City. Regulations only required that the ship have lifeboat capacity for 1,178 people, even though a full complement of passengers and crew was 3,547. When the order was given to abandon ship, the captain adhered to the traditional protocol of “women and children first”. As a result, only 20% of male passengers survived the disaster, compared to 75% of the female passengers. Perhaps more telling is that 61% of those in first class survived, and only 25% of those in third class. The crew fared even worse though, with only 24% making it.

25. Covert govt. group CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed during WWII. The CIA was chartered by the National Security Act of 1947.

26. Drink brand with a pitcher for a mascot KOOL-AID
The drink we know today as Kool-Aid was invented by Edward Perkins and his wife, in Perkins’ mother’s kitchen in southwest Nebraska. Kool-Aid is now the Official Soft Drink of the state.

27. Quaint weekend getaway, briefly B AND B
An intimate inn (in the US) is a bed & breakfast (B&B). A bed & breakfast back in Ireland is more basic, and is almost always much cheaper than a comparable hotel room.

30. 18-hole outing GOLF
There’s an urban myth that the standard number of holes on a golf course is 18 because it takes 18 shots to polish off a fifth of scotch whisky. However, the truth is that the standard number of holes in the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland happened to settle down over time at 18, and that standard was adopted all around the world.

33. Honshu port OSAKA
The Japanese city of Osaka used to be called Naniwa, with the name changing to Osaka some time before 1500. “Osaka” can be translated either as “large hill” or “large slope”.

Honshu is the largest island in Japan, with the name “Honshu” translating as “Main Island”. Honshu is the seventh largest island in the world. As it is home to the principal cities in Japan, Honshu is also the second most populous island on the planet (after Java, in Indonesia).

35. Score-producing MLB stats RBIS
Runs batted in (RBIs)

38. Academy frosh PLEBE
“Plebe” is a slang term for a freshman in the US military and naval academies. Plebe is probably short for “plebeian”, an adjective describing someone of the common class in Ancient Rome, one of the “plebs” (a singular collective noun). “Pleb” is a shortened version of plebeian, and is a term used outside of the military schools to mean “commoner”.

“Frosh” is a slang term for a college freshman. We call them “freshers” back in Ireland …

40. Reno resident NEVADAN
The city of Reno’s economy took off when open gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931. Within a short time, a syndicate had built the Bank Club in Reno, which was the largest casino in the whole world at the time.

41. Greed AVARICE
Our word “avarice”, meaning a desire for wealth, ultimately derives from the Latin word for crave, “avere”.

47. Tarzan portrayer Ron ELY
Ron Ely is most famous for playing the title role in the “Tarzan” TV series in the sixties. Years later, Ely hosted the 1980 and 1981 “Miss America” pageants right after longtime host Bert Parks retired, before the job was taken over by Gary Collins. And Ely is a successful mystery novelist. He wrote “Night Shadows” and “East Beach” in the mid-nineties, both of which featured his private eye Jake Sands.

49. __ bubble: Internet stock phenomenon DOT-COM
The “dot-com bubble” was a phenomenon seen in 1997 to 2000 during which speculation led to the overvaluation of poorly understood Internet stocks. The bubble “burst” in effect, on March 10, 2000. Within ten days the value of the NASDAQ was down by over 10%.

56. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” playwright Edward ALBEE
Edward Albee’s most famous play is “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Albee’s first play, a one-acter, was “The Zoo Story”.

59. Managed care gps. HMOS
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)

61. Chianti color RED
Chianti is a red wine from the Chianti region of central Tuscany in Italy. Historically, Chianti was stored in a characteristically bulbous bottle wrapped in a straw basket. However, the pragmatists have won the day and regular wine bottles tend to be used nowadays.

63. D.C. United’s org. MLS
D.C. United is a professional soccer team based in the nation’s capital. The team competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) and plays home games at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.

65. Opponents of defense lawyers: Abbr. DAS
District Attorneys (DAs)

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Put some pizazz in PEP UP
6. Florida resort, familiarly BOCA
10. __ America Competition MISS
14. Speedy Amtrak train ACELA
15. The Bard’s river AVON
16. “A time to cast away stones” Bible bk. ECCL
17. Illegally imported goods CONTRABAND
19. “Star Wars” princess LEIA
20. Come up ARISE
21. Dada artist Jean ARP
23. Director Affleck BEN
24. Mercedes sedan category E-CLASS
26. Squatting exercise KNEE BEND
28. Illuminated LIT
29. Author Victor HUGO
31. Hard to find SCARCE
32. BLT spread MAYO
34. Marshy wasteland MOOR
36. Rage ANGER
37. Enchant SPELLBIND
40. 2014 French Open winner Rafael NADAL
43. Opposite of pass FAIL
44. Fraternal gp. with an antlered animal in its logo BPOE
48. Brought to mind EVOKED
50. Cruise stop ISLE
52. Delta rival: Abbr. UAL
53. Wanderer VAGABOND
55. Irritable SNARKY
57. Braz. neighbor ARG
58. WWII mil. zone ETO
59. Cobbler’s supply HEELS
60. Christian of fashion DIOR
62. Tuxedo accessory CUMMERBUND
66. What Clearasil treats ACNE
67. Norway’s capital OSLO
68. Davis of “Thelma & Louise” GEENA
69. Requirement NEED
70. Situation to be cleaned up MESS
71. Okays YESES

Down
1. Calif.’s ocean PAC
2. Author Umberto ECO
3. Football ref’s call PENALTY
4. Extreme ULTRA
5. County counterpart in Louisiana PARISH
6. Slugger Ruth BABE
7. Eggs in a clinic OVA
8. Sir Arthur __ Doyle CONAN
9. Guitarist Segovia ANDRES
10. Diner owner on “Alice” MEL
11. Titanic sinker ICEBERG
12. Chemistry or physics SCIENCE
13. Libel’s spoken equivalent SLANDER
18. Take for granted ASSUME
22. Nut in a pie PECAN
24. Shade tree ELM
25. Covert govt. group CIA
26. Drink brand with a pitcher for a mascot KOOL-AID
27. Quaint weekend getaway, briefly B AND B
30. 18-hole outing GOLF
33. Honshu port OSAKA
35. Score-producing MLB stats RBIS
38. Academy frosh PLEBE
39. “Haven’t made up my mind yet” I’LL SEE
40. Reno resident NEVADAN
41. Greed AVARICE
42. Danged DOGGONE
45. Chases after PURSUES
46. Shade tree OAK
47. Tarzan portrayer Ron ELY
49. __ bubble: Internet stock phenomenon DOT-COM
51. Get-up-and-go ENERGY
54. Hopeless NO USE
56. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” playwright Edward ALBEE
59. Managed care gps. HMOS
61. Chianti color RED
63. D.C. United’s org. MLS
64. Opposite of SSW NNE
65. Opponents of defense lawyers: Abbr. DAS

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