Day: April 2, 2016

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Law school accrediting org. ABA
The American Bar Association (ABA) was founded back in 1878 and is a voluntary association for lawyers and law students. The ABA focuses on setting academic standards for law schools and setting ethical codes for the profession.

4. Current information source TWITTER FEED
I have never tweeted in my life, and have no plans to do so (but one should never say “never”). Twitter is a microblogging service that limits any post sent to just 140 characters. In a sense, it is similar to this blog. Here I send out a post once a day containing information that I think might be useful to folks (thank you for reading!). I don’t think I could send out much of interest using just 140 characters.

15. Like many a Beverly Hills partygoer FASHIONABLY LATE
The city of Beverly Hills, California was named after Beverly Farms in Beverly, Massachusetts and also after the hills in that part of California.

18. Former seniors ALUMS
An “alumnus” (plural … alumni) is a graduate or former student of a school or college. The female form is “alumna” (plural … alumnae). The term comes into English from Latin, in which alumnus means foster-son or pupil. “Alum” is an informal term used for either an alumna or an alumnus.

19. Points for a piano tuner? TINES
Those would be the tines on a tuning fork …

20. “Murder in the First” airer TNT
TNT stands for Turner Network Television. The TNT cable channel made a big splash in the eighties when it started to broadcast old MGM movies that had been “colorized”, not something that was a big hit with the public. In recent years, the TNT programming lineup is touted with the tagline “We Know Drama”, and includes shows like “Judging Amy”, “ER” and “Cold Case”.

21. Crossword legend Reagle MERL
Merl Reagle was a renowned constructor of puzzles in crossword circles. Despite the availability of computer tools Reagle was known for constructing puzzles using pencil and paper. There is an interesting segment in the 2006 movie “ Wordplay” in which we see Reagle in action creating a puzzle for the New York Times. Reagle even made an appearance in a 2008 episode of “The Simpsons”.

23. “Hogan’s Heroes” setting, briefly WWII
“Hogan’s Heroes” is a sitcom that ran in the late sixties and early seventies. The show starred Bob Crane as the ranking prisoner in a German POW camp during WWII. The four major German roles were played by actors who all were Jewish, and who all fled from the Nazis during the war. The French-American actor Robert Clary, who played Corporal Lebeau, spent three in concentration camps before being liberated from Buchenwald in 1945.

25. Zen teaching techniques KOANS
The concept of the “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.

27. Zsa Zsa’s older sister MAGDA
Magda Gabor was the elder sister of Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor. Like her sisters, Magda was an actress and socialite. Magda married six times in all. Her most famous husband was probably the fifth, the English actor George Sanders, although that only lasted for 32 days. Sanders had been married to Magda’s younger sister Zsa Zsa.

Zsa Zsa Gabor is a Hungarian American actress, born in Budapest as Sári Gábor (the older sister of the actress Eva). Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married a whopping nine times, including a 5-year stint with Conrad Hilton and another 5 years with the actor George Sanders. One of Gabor’s famous quips was that she was always a good housekeeper, as after every divorce she kept the house!

33. Sea BRINY
The “briny” is the sea, from “brine” meaning “salty water”. The term “briny” was originally used for “tears”.

35. Mirren of “The Hundred-Foot Journey” HELEN
Helen Mirren, one of my favorite English actresses, won her Best Actress Oscar for playing the title role in the marvelous 2006 film “The Queen”. Mirren has played three different queens on film and television including Queen Elizabeth II. She also played the title role in the TV drama “Elizabeth I”, and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of the title character in the 1994 film “The Madness of King George”.

“The Hundred-Foot Journey” is an excellent 2014 film based on a 2010 novel of the same name by Richard Morais. It tells the story of a feud between two restaurants in a town in France that are located across the road from each other, just one hundred feet apart. One is a Michelin-starred French restaurant, and the other an establishment serving Indian cuisine. “The Hundred-Foot Journey” was produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.

36. Thugs GOONS
The handheld weapon known as a garrote (or garotte) was in particular used by murderers and robbers harassing travelers in India. These felons were known locally as “thuggees” (from the Hindi word for “thief”). This gave us our contemporary word “thug”, meaning a brute.

37. BART stop SFO
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) serves as the main base of operations for Virgin America, and is also the maintenance hub for United Airlines.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serves the San Francisco Bay Area.

42. Dutch word meaning “farmer” BOER
“Boer” is the Dutch and Afrikaans word for “farmer”, a word that was used to describe the Dutch-speaking people who settled parts of South Africa during the 1700s.

43. Triple Crown stat RBI
In Major League baseball, a player can earn the Triple Crown when he is the leader in three specific statistics. The pitching Triple Crown includes wins, strikeouts and earned run average (ERA). The batting Triple Crown includes home runs, runs batted in (RBI) and batting average.

44. “Tequila Sunrise” writer/director Robert TOWNE
“Tequila Sunrise” is a 1988 thriller starring Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell. Gibson plays a former drug dealer and Russell plays a police detective who is also a childhood friend.

46. Bird named for its large-scale migrations PASSENGER PIGEON
The passenger pigeon was a bird native to North America that is now extinct. The name “passenger” comes from the French “passager”, a word meaning “passing by”. This is a reference to the large flocks that could be seen migrating across the whole continent. The passenger pigeon was largely hunted to extinction.

50. Time for fluff pieces SLOW NEWS DAY
A “fluff piece” (also “puff piece”) is a news story that is considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Fluff pieces tend to be chosen for their cuteness, rather than their import.

51. Soapmaker’s supply LYE
Soap is basically made by adding a strong alkali (like lye) to a fat (like olive oil or palm oil). The fats break down in the basic solution in a process called saponification. The crude soap is extracted from the mixture, washed, purified and finished in molds.

Down
2. Castle wall BAILEY
A “bailey” is a walled enclosure that contributes to the defenses of a castle, or the walls that surround the space.

4. All scores? TIES
Particularly in soccer, a tied score can be referred to using the word “all”. For example, a score of 1-1 is “one all”, and 0-0 is “nil all”.

7. “Orphan Black” star Maslany TATIANA
“Orphan Black” is a Canadian sci-fi TV show about several women who discover that they are in fact clones. Star of the show is Tatiana Maslany, who has what must be an exhausting job, playing all of the clones.

8. Govt. obligations T-BONDS
A Treasury note (T-Note) is a government debt that matures in 1-10 years. A T-Note has a coupon (interest) payment made every six months. The T-note is purchased at a discount to face value, and at the date of maturity can be redeemed at that face value. A T-Bill is a similar financial vehicle, but it matures in one year or less, and a T-Bond matures in 20-30 years.

9. __ de los Timbales: Tito Puente’s nickname EL REY
After serving in the navy in WWII for three years, the musician Tito Puente studied at Juilliard, where he got a great grounding in conducting, orchestration and theory. Puente parlayed this education into a career in Latin Jazz and Mambo. He was known as “El Rey” as well as “The King of Latin Music”.

Timbales are a type of drum from Cuba. Timbales usually come in pairs.

11. Where Hollywood is: Abbr. FLA
Hollywood is a coastal city in Florida that was founded in 1925. It was named after Hollywood, California as the founder’s dream was to build a motion picture colony on the East Coast.

12. “American Sniper” director EASTWOOD
The actor and director Clint Eastwood is a native of San Francisco, California. As many of us perhaps remember, Eastwood’s big break was playing the supporting role of Rowdy Yates in the TV show “Rawhide” in the late fifties and early sixties. He then became the face of the spaghetti western genre of movie in the sixties, most notably in the classic “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. In later years Eastwood has branched out into directing and producing with remarkable success. And of course in the late eighties he also served as mayor of his hometown, Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Chris Kyle was a Navy SEAL who served four tours in Iraq, and then wrote a 2012 autobiography called “American Sniper”. The book was adapted into an equally successful 2014 movie of the same name. Kyle was murdered in 2013 by a US Marine suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder on a public shooting range.

13. Many British prime ministers ETONIANS
The world-famous Eton College is just a brisk walk from Windsor Castle, which itself is just outside London. Eton is noted for producing many British prime ministers, including David Cameron who took power in 2010. The list of Old Etonians also includes Princes William and Harry, the Duke of Wellington, George Orwell, and the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming (as well as 007 himself as described in the Fleming novels).

14. Tooth layer DENTINE
The outer layer of our teeth is made from enamel. This covers the dentin layer, which supports the enamel.

16. Web page standard HTML
HTML is HyperText Markup Language, the language used to write most Internet web pages (including this one).

22. “I copy” ROGER
The term “roger”, meaning “yes” or “acknowledged”, comes from the world of radiotelephony. The British military used a phonetic alphabet in the fifties that included “Roger” to represent the letter “R”. As such, it became customary to say “Roger” when acknowledging a message, with R (Roger) standing for “received”.

25. Black on screen KAREN
The actress Karen Black played quite a few memorable roles, including the waitress girlfriend of Jack Nicholson in “Five Easy Pieces” for which performance she received an Oscar nomination. If you have ever seen “Airport 1975”, Black is the one playing the stewardess who ended up flying the plane after a mid-air collision.

27. Bristol bro MATEY
Bristol is the most populous city in the southwest of England. Bristol is a port city, one that had an important role in growth of slavery in America. Manufactured goods from the UK were shipped from Bristol to West Africa where they were traded for Africans who were forcibly transported across the Atlantic for trade in the Americas. The slave ships brought back plantation goods to Bristol.

29. Its first national tournament was held in 1932 in Atlantic City SKEE BALL
Skee Ball is that arcade game where you roll balls up a ramp trying to “bounce” it into rings for varying numbers of points. The game was first introduced in Philadelphia, in 1909.

30. Nymph who ultimately became the stars of Ursa Major CALLISTO
In Greek mythology, Callisto was a nymph who was turned into a bear after being seduced by Zeus. As a bear she was set into the night sky as the constellation Ursa Major (the Big Bear).

32. Hillary aides SHERPAS
In the Tibetan language, Sherpa means “eastern people” (sher = east, pa = people). Sherpas are an ethnic group from Nepal, but the name is also used for the local guides who assist mountaineers in the Himalayas, and particularly on Mount Everest.

Mount Everest was first summited in 1953 by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepali sherpa Tenzing Norgay. Hillary and Norgay were part of an expedition from which two pairs of climbers were selected to make a summit attempt. The first pair were Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, and they came within 330 feet of their goal but had to turn back. The expedition sent up the second pair two days later, and history was made on 29 May 1953.

34. Snow-White’s sister, in Grimm ROSE-RED
“Snow White” is a traditional German fairy tale that was published in 1812 in the collection of the Brothers Grimm. There is also a second, very different Grimms’ Fairy Tale called “Snow-White and Rose-Red”, not to be confused with its more famous cousin. In the latter tale, Snow-White and Rose-Red are sisters who get into trouble with a dwarf, but are rescued by a bear who turns into a prince.

36. Trifle GEWGAW
A “gewgaw” is a trinket, and trivial piece of jewelry. A new term to me …

37. Été blazer SOLEIL
One might spend the summer (été) under the sun (le soleil) in France, and “juillet” is French for July (note that the name of months aren’t capitalized in French).

38. Grand theft auto, e.g. FELONY
In the US, there is a dividing line between felony grand theft (a more serious crime) and misdemeanor petty theft (a lesser crime). That dividing line is a dollar amount, and that dollar amount varies from state to state.

39. Santa Ana’s county ORANGE
Orange County in the Greater Los Angeles Area is the smallest county in Southern California, yet is the sixth most populous county in the US. The county seat is Santa Ana.

41. “Holy Sonnets” poet DONNE
The “Holy Sonnets” are a group of Nineteen poems by John Donne.

John Donne is one of England’s most celebrated poets, working at the start of the 17th century. He spent much of his life in poverty and even spent a short time in prison for having married his wife without procuring the appropriate permissions. After his release, his wife bore him 12 children in 16 years, passing away a few days after the twelfth child was born.

42. City NNE of San Antone BIG D
“Big D” is a nickname for the city of Dallas, Texas.

The city of San Antonio was named by Spanish explorers who came up a Native American settlement in the area on 13 June 1631, the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua.

44. Arctic-to-Antarctica migrating bird TERN
Terns are seabirds that are found all over the world. The Arctic Tern makes a very long-distance migration. One Arctic Tern that was tagged as a chick in Great Britain in the summer of 1982, was spotted in Melbourne, Australia just three months later. The bird had traveled over 14,000 miles in over those three months, an average of about 150 miles a day. Remarkable …

45. Like clematis VINY
The genus of flowering plant known as clematis is in the buttercup family. The name of the genus comes from an Ancient Greek word for “a climbing plant”.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Law school accrediting org. ABA
4. Current information source TWITTER FEED
15. Like many a Beverly Hills partygoer FASHIONABLY LATE
17. Heeds sound advice LISTENS TO REASON
18. Former seniors ALUMS
19. Points for a piano tuner? TINES
20. “Murder in the First” airer TNT
21. Crossword legend Reagle MERL
22. Primed READY
23. “Hogan’s Heroes” setting, briefly WWII
24. Word with wash or wear EYE
25. Zen teaching techniques KOANS
26. “Aw, mom!” sound GROAN
27. Zsa Zsa’s older sister MAGDA
28. “I think you’ll like it!” TRY ONE!
29. Sweat inducer SCARE
31. Desolate tract WILDS
32. One good at figures? SKATER
33. Sea BRINY
35. Mirren of “The Hundred-Foot Journey” HELEN
36. Thugs GOONS
37. BART stop SFO
40. Hard to grasp EELY
41. Complex DENSE
42. Dutch word meaning “farmer” BOER
43. Triple Crown stat RBI
44. “Tequila Sunrise” writer/director Robert TOWNE
45. Beverly Hills retreat VILLA
46. Bird named for its large-scale migrations PASSENGER PIGEON
49. DVD special feature, perhaps ALTERNATE ENDING
50. Time for fluff pieces SLOW NEWS DAY
51. Soapmaker’s supply LYE

Down
1. Lit AFLAME
2. Castle wall BAILEY
3. Promise ASSURE
4. All scores? TIES
5. Wooed successfully WON
6. Rather INSTEAD
7. “Orphan Black” star Maslany TATIANA
8. Govt. obligations T-BONDS
9. __ de los Timbales: Tito Puente’s nickname EL REY
10. Bakery output RYES
11. Where Hollywood is: Abbr. FLA
12. “American Sniper” director EASTWOOD
13. Many British prime ministers ETONIANS
14. Tooth layer DENTINE
16. Web page standard HTML
22. “I copy” ROGER
23. Not straight, in a way WRYLY
25. Black on screen KAREN
26. They can be silly GRINS
27. Bristol bro MATEY
28. Interlace TWINE
29. Its first national tournament was held in 1932 in Atlantic City SKEE BALL
30. Nymph who ultimately became the stars of Ursa Major CALLISTO
32. Hillary aides SHERPAS
33. Tied hats BONNETS
34. Snow-White’s sister, in Grimm ROSE-RED
36. Trifle GEWGAW
37. Été blazer SOLEIL
38. Grand theft auto, e.g. FELONY
39. Santa Ana’s county ORANGE
41. “Holy Sonnets” poet DONNE
42. City NNE of San Antone BIG D
44. Arctic-to-Antarctica migrating bird TERN
45. Like clematis VINY
47. Needle SEW
48. Gravel designation PEA

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