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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11 “Father of the American Cartoon” : NAST

Thomas Nast was an American caricaturist and cartoonist. He was the creator of the Republican Party elephant, the Democratic Party donkey, Uncle Sam and the image of the plump and jocular Santa Claus that we use today.

16 James of jazz : ETTA

“Etta James” was the stage name of celebrated R&B and jazz singer Jamesetta Hawkins. James was an acquaintance of civil rights activist Malcom X. For ten years, she was a member of the Nation of Islam, and used the name “Jamesetta X”.

18 Isle of Man resident : GAEL

The Isle of Man is a large island located in the middle of the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. I used to spend a lot of time there in my youth, and find it a very interesting place indeed. The Isle of Man is classed as a British Crown Dependency and isn’t part of the United Kingdom at all. It is self-governing and has its own parliament called the Tynwald. The Tynwald was created in AD 979 and is arguably the oldest continuously-running parliament in the world. The inhabitants of the island speak English, although they do have their own language called Manx, which is very similar to Irish Gaeilge and Scottish Gaelic. And then there are those Manx cats, the ones without any tails. I’ve seen lots of them, and can attest that they are indeed found all over the island.

20 Pistol used by James Bond : WALTHER PPK

Walther is a German gun manufacturer that was founded in 1886 by Carl Walther. The company’s most famous weapon is the Walther PPK, a small semiautomatic pistol designed primarily for use by police forces. Ian Fleming armed his fictional hero James Bond with a Walther PPK. Also, Adolph Hitler killed himself with his own PPK in the Führerbunker in Berlin in 1945.

22 Brooklyn’s Saint ___ School : ANN’S

The New York City borough of Brooklyn has the same boundaries as Kings County, which is the most populous county in the state of New York.

24 Darling, informally : ADORBS

“Adorbs!” is a colloquial term meaning “So cute, adorable!”

25 Famous frenemy of Manet : DEGAS

Edgar Degas was a French artist who was famous for both his paintings and his sculptures. Some of Degas’ most beautiful works feature female ballet dancers, and others depict women bathing.

Édouard Manet was a French painter whose works are mainly classified as Realist and Impressionist. Manet was friends with Impressionists masters like Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and greatly influenced the Impressionist movement. The list of Manet’s marvelous paintings includes “Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe”, “Le Repose” and “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”.

29 Symbol of Ra’s power in ancient Egypt : EYE

Ra (sometimes “Re”) was the ancient Egyptian sun god. He was associated with the falcon, and was often depicted as a man with a falcon’s head.

30 Regatta leaders : COXES

The coxswain of a boat is one in charge of steering and navigation. The word “coxswain” is shortened to “cox”, particularly when used for the person steering and calling out the stroke in a competition rowing boat.

The word “regatta” is Venetian dialect and was originally used to describe boat races among the gondoliers of Venice on the Grand Canal back in the mid-1600s.

31 Runs out of gas : FLAGS

Our verb “to flag” meaning “to tire” was originally used in the sense of something flapping about lazily in the wind. From this it came to mean “to go limp, droop”, and then “to tire”.

32 Longtime offerer of the anagramming game Text Twist : MSN

Microsoft Network (MSN)

36 “The cautious seldom ___” (quote attributed to Confucius) : ERR

The sayings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius (anglicized from “K’ung Fu-Tse”) are collected in a work called “The Analects” or “Linyu”. It wasn’t Confucius who wrote down his thoughts though, but rather his pupils, some 40 or so years after his death in 479 BC.

39 Blotter letters : AKA

A police blotter is (or used to be) a daily record of arrests made.

40 Capital on the Gulf of Guinea : LOME

Lomé is the capital city of Togo in West Africa. It is located on the Gulf of Guinea, and is the country’s largest port.

The Gulf of Guinea is a large gulf that forms part of the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Africa. One of the gulf’s claims to fame is that it is home to the intersecting point between zero degrees of latitude and zero degrees of longitude, i.e. where the Equator and Prime Meridian cross.

42 Maker of the first athletic shoe designed for women : REEBOK

The brand name Reebok was adopted as the new company name for Foster Shoes of the UK in 1960. The name Reebok (more commonly “Rhebok”) is an Afrikaans word for an antelope, and comes from the term “roe buck”.

44 Popular assistant : SIRI

Siri was originally developed as a standalone app by a startup company of the same name. Apple acquired the company in 2010 and integrated the technology into their operating system.

45 Company logo derived from a state symbol : TEXACO STAR

Texaco gets its name from “The TEXA-s CO-mpany”. Today, Texaco is just a brand name owned by Chevron. It used to be its own operation, founded as the Texas Fuel Company in 1901.

The single star on the state flag of Texas is a reminder of the “lone star” on the 1836 National Standard of Texas. The single white star on a blue background symbolizes Texas as an independent republic and its struggle for independence from Mexico.

48 TV streaming device : ROKU

Roku is a manufacturer of digital media players that allow access to audio and video programming over the Internet that is shown on television. The company was founded in Los Gatos, California in 2002 by Anthony Wood. Wood chose the name “Roku” as it is the Japanese word for “six”, and Roku is the sixth company that Wood founded.

52 Penthouses, e.g.: Abbr. : APTS

Originally, the term “penthouse” described a modest building attached to a main structure. In fact, in centuries past, the manger in which Jesus was born was often referred to as a penthouse. The modern, more luxurious connotation dates back to the early twenties.

57 B.C. and others : ERAS

The designations Anno Domini (AD, “year of Our Lord”) and Before Christ (BC) are found in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The dividing point between AD and BC is the year of the conception of Jesus, with AD 1 following 1 BC without a year “0” in between. The AD/BC scheme dates back to AD 525, and gained wide acceptance soon after AD 800. Nowadays a modified version has become popular, with CE (Common/Christian Era) used to replace AD, and BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) used to replace BC.

Down

1 Mad ___ : LIBS

Mad Libs is a word game, one mostly played by children in America. The idea is that one player provides a list of words which are then inserted into blank spots in a story, usually with hilarious results (they say!).

6 Seafood order : PRAWNS

The terms “prawn” and “shrimp” are often used interchangeably on menus. Over in the UK, the term “prawn” is most common, while “shrimp” is seen more often here in North America. Sometimes there is a differentiation from a food standpoint, with “prawn” being used for larger species and “shrimp” for smaller species. As a result, “jumbo prawns” seems to be an acceptable descriptor for a dish, whereas “jumbo shrimp” seems to be an oxymoron.

7 NASA rocket name since 1957 : ATLAS

Atlas boosters launched the first four US astronauts into space. The Atlas rocket design was originally developed in the late fifties and was deployed for several years as it was intended, as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

8 Annoying sort : PILL

The term “pill” can be used to describe a boring and disagreeable person, a “bitter pill to swallow”.

13 How many assemble Ikea furniture : STEP-BY-STEP

The IKEA furniture chain was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, when he was just 17-years-old. IKEA is an acronym standing for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd (don’t forget now!). Elmtaryd was the name of the farm where Ingvar Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd is his home parish in Sweden.

27 1987 #1 hit for Heart : ALONE

Heart is a rock band from Seattle, Washington that was founded in the seventies and is still going strong. The band has had a changing lineup, except for sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson.

28 Modern driving aid : WAZE

Waze is a navigation app that is similar to Google Maps and Apple Maps. Waze was developed in Israel, and was acquired by Google in 2013.

38 Kind of snapper, for short? : SLR

The initialism “SLR” stands for “single lens reflex”. Usually, cameras with changeable lenses are the SLR type. The main feature of an SLR is that a mirror reflects the image seen through the lens out through the viewfinder, so that the photographer sees exactly what the lens sees. The mirror moves out of the way as the picture is taken, and the image that comes through the lens falls onto unexposed film, or nowadays onto a digital sensor.

41 Ice crystal formation : CIRRUS

Cirrus (plural “cirri”) clouds are those lovely wispy, white strands that are often called “mare’s tails”.

43 Enjoys some warmth : BASKS

Our verb “to bask”, meaning “to expose one to pleasant warmth”, is derived from the gruesome, 14th-century term “basken”, meaning “to wallow in blood”. The contemporary usage apparently originated with Shakespeare, who employed “bask” with reference to sunshine in “As You Like It”.

44 ___-Coeur (Paris basilica) : SACRE

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Basilique du Sacré-Coeur) is that gorgeous white structure that sits at the top of the hill known as “butte Montmartre” in Paris, the highest point in the city. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited Sacré-Coeur several times, and find it to be a much more stunning building inside than out.

46 Acronymic shopping mecca : SOHO

The Manhattan neighborhood known today as SoHo was very fashionable in the early 1900s, but as the well-heeled started to move uptown the area became very run down and poorly maintained. Noted for the number of fires that erupted in derelict buildings, SoHo earned the nickname “Hell’s Hundred Acres”. The area was then zoned for manufacturing and became home to many sweatshops. In the mid-1900s artists started to move into open loft spaces and renovating old buildings as the lofts were ideal locations in which an artist could both live and work. In 1968, artists and others organized themselves so that they could legalize their residential use of an area zoned for manufacturing. The group they formed took its name from the name given to the area by the city’s Planning Commission i.e “South of Houston”. This was shortened from So-uth of Ho-uston to SoHo as in “SoHo Artists Association”, and the name stuck.

47 Sporty car option : T-TOP

A T-top is a car roof that has removable panels on either side of a rigid bar that runs down the center of the vehicle above the driver.

49 Elizabeth Warren, e.g., self-descriptively : OKIE

Elizabeth Warren is the senior US Senator from Massachusetts, and the first female to hold that office for her state. She is a prominent Democratic and is a favorite of the progressive wing of the party. In 2020, Warren ran for president of the United States. She was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination, but ultimately finished third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

50 County on the Strait of Dover : KENT

Kent is a county in the southeast of England. Kent is a little unusual in that it shares a “land” border with France. That border nominally exists halfway through the Channel Tunnel, one end of which comes to the surface in the Kent port of Folkestone.