Page Text: Bill’s time: 6m 39s
Bill’s errors: 0
Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies
Across
1 Brew orders : CREAM ALES
A cream ale is an American beer that is similar to a pale lager, even though it truly is a top-fermented ale.
14 Actress Polo : TERI
Teri Polo’s most prominent role on the big screen was Pam Focker in “Meet the Fockers” and its sequels. Pam is the wife of the character played by Ben Stiller. Polo also played the wife of Presidential candidate Matt Santos in “The West Wing”.
16 Actor McGregor who’s a UNICEF ambassador : EWAN
Ewan McGregor is a very talented Scottish actor, one who got his break in the 1996 film “Trainspotting”. McGregor’s first big Hollywood role was playing the young Obi-Wan-Kenobi in the “Star Wars” prequels. Less known is his televised marathon motorcycle journey from London to New York via central Europe, Ukraine, Siberia, Mongolia and Canada. The 2004 trip was shown as “Long Way Round” on TV. McGregor did a similar trip in 2007 called “Long Way Down”, which took him and the same traveling companion from the north of Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.
The United Nations Children’s Fund is known by the acronym UNICEF because the organization’s original name when it was founded in 1946 was the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The original focus of the fund was to provide relief to children in countries that had been devastated by WWII. UNICEF is supported by contributions from governments, but also by individual donors. One of the more successful programs for collecting private donations is the Trick-or-Treat UNICEF box that has been a tradition here in North America since 1950.
18 Criticize : DISS
“Dis” (also “diss”) is a slang term meaning “insult” that originated in the eighties. It is a shortened form of “disrespect” or “dismiss”.
19 They’re minimal in a keto diet : CARBS
A ketogenic (also “keto”) diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet. When a body consumes insufficient carbohydrates to meet the need for energy, then the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies in order to make up the energy deficit. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the bloodstream is known as “ketosis”, a term that gives rise to the name “ketogenic diet”. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe a ketogenic diet in order to control epilepsy in children. A condition of ketosis can reduce the frequency of epileptic seizures.
20 Killer __ : BEE
Killer bees are descended from European and African bees that were deliberately interbred by a Brazilian geneticist in 1957. The resulting hybrid was intended to be isolated from local populations, but 28 swarms were accidentally released into the wild. Over the coming decades, the Africanized bees have been remarkably successful in ecological terms and have spread right through South and Central America. The first to be found in the US were discovered in California in 1985.
21 Its common tuning is known as “My dog has fleas” : UKULELE
The ukulele (uke) originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.
“My Dog Has Fleas” is a little song used to tune the strings of a ukulele. The words “my dog has fleas” represent the notes G4–C4–E4–A4.
23 Damon and Affleck, often : COSTARS
Matt Damon is an actor and screenwriter from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Damon’s big break came with the 1997 movie “Good Will Hunting”, in which he starred. He co-wrote the screenplay with his childhood friend Ben Affleck.
Actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck started his career as a child actor in the PBS show “The Voyage of the Mimi”. His big break came with the release of the film “Good Will Hunting” which he co-wrote and co-starred in with his childhood friend Matt Damon. Affleck had a relationship with actress and singer Jennifer Lopez, with the celebrity couple often being referred to as “Bennifer” in the media. He was also married for several years to actress Jennifer Garner, with whom he has three children.
27 “The Big Bang Theory” regular : RAJ
Raj Koothrappali is a character on the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” who is played by British-Indian actor Kunal Nayyar. Nayyar is married to Neha Kapur, a former Miss India.
28 Net judge’s call : LET!
That would be tennis.
29 Moving pictures? : OP ART
Op art is also known as optical art, and puts optical illusions to great effect.
30 Music genre term coined by Nigeria’s Fela Kuti : AFROBEAT
Fela Kuti was a Nigerian musician, a pioneer in the genre known as “Afrobeat”. Fela had an interesting relationship with women, and actually married twenty-seven different women in the same year, in 1978. He then slowed down a little and maintained a rotating roster of only twelve wives at any one time. Fela died from AIDS in 1997.
33 Young partner : ERNST
Ernst & Young is one of the Big Four accountancy firms, alongside Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ernst & Young is headquartered in London. The company was founded in 1989 with the merger of Ernst & Whinney with Young & Co.
35 Put in a hold : LADE
The verb “to lade” meaning “to load” comes from an Old English word “hladan”. “Lade” also used to mean “draw water” and indeed gave us our word “ladle”. So “lade” and “ladle” are close cousins.
38 Canadian put-down : HOSER
The derogatory word “hoser”, meaning “foolish or uncultivated person”, is apparently attributed to Canadians. That said, I just read that the term is in fact rarely used north of the border.
39 “__: Vegas” : CSI
The “CSI” franchise of TV shows has been tremendously successful, and seems to really have legs. “CSI: Miami” (the “worst” of the franchise, I think) was canceled in 2012 after ten seasons. “CSI: NY” (the “best” of the franchise) was canceled in 2013 after nine seasons. The original “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” was set in Las Vegas, and hung in there until 2015 when it ended with a two-hour TV movie. Then there was “CSI: Cyber”. It lasted for two seasons, before being canceled in 2016. “CSI: Vegas”, a sequel to the original “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, launched in 2021.
43 Iberian titles : SENORAS
The Ebro is the longest river in Spain. The river was known by the Romans as the Iber, and it is the “Iber” river that gives the “Iberian” Peninsula its name.
45 Sound often heard at Cirque du Soleil : OOH!
Cirque du Soleil is an entertainment company based in Montreal. The company was founded in 1984, by two former street performers, and stages spectacular shows that are a dramatic mix of circus and street entertainment. I’ve seen several Cirque du Soleil shows over the years, and have thoroughly enjoyed every single one.
46 LPGA golfer Yani, the youngest to win five majors : TSENG
Yani Tseng is a professional golfer from Taiwan. She was ranked number one in the Women’s World Golf Rankings from 2011 to 2013, and is the youngest player (male or female) to win five majors.
54 Combat tradition : MARTIAL ART
Martial arts are various fighting traditions and systems used in combat or simply to promote physical well-being. The term “martial” ultimately derives from Latin and means “Arts of Mars”, a reference to Mars, the Roman god of war.
56 Format favored by big-shot directors? : IMAX
The IMAX Corporation, which is behind the IMAX film format, is a Canadian company. The impetus for developing the system came after Expo ’67 in Montreal. Back then large format screenings were accomplished using multiple projectors with multiple screens, with images basically stitched together. The team behind the IMAX technology set out to simplify things, and developed a single-camera, single-projector system.
57 Church staple : ORGAN MUSIC
The organ that we often see in churches, synagogues and concert halls is a pipe organ. Sound is produced by pressurized air driven through particular pipes selected by keys on a keyboard.
59 Chucks : DEEP-SIXES
To deep-six something is to toss it, possibly overboard, or to completely destroy it. The derivation of this slang term is from “six feet deep”, not the length of a fathom but rather the traditional depth of a grave.
Down
1 République de __ d’Ivoire : COTE
The Republic of Côte d’Ivoire is located in West Africa on the Gulf of Guinea. The country is often referred to in English as “the Ivory Coast”, the direct translation from the French. The official language of the country is French, as for many years it was a French colony.
2 Symbol of Lancaster or York : ROSE
The Wars of the Roses was a series of civil wars fought for the throne of England between the rival Houses of Lancaster (with a symbol of a red rose) and York (with a symbol of a white rose). Ultimately the Lancastrians emerged victorious after Henry Tudor defeated King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Henry was crowned King Henry VII, and so began the Tudor dynasty. Henry Tudor united the rival houses by marrying his cousin Elizabeth of York. Henry VII had a relatively long reign of 23 years that lasted until his death, after which his son succeeded to the throne as Henry VIII, continuing the relatively short-lived Tudor dynasty. Henry VIII ruled from 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry VIII was the last male to lead the House of Tudor, as his daughter Queen Elizabeth I died without issue. When Elizabeth died, the Scottish King James VI succeeded to the throne as James I of England and Ireland. James I was the first English monarch of the House of Stuart.
4 Internet pioneer : AOL