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Bill’s time: 9m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11A Hits up on Insta, say : DMS

Direct message (DM)

17A Where Docs and Sheets are stored : GOOGLE DRIVE

Google Drive is Google’s cloud-based storage service. I’m a heavy user …

Google Docs is a word processing application that is part of the Google Drive suite of services. In fact, I am typing this blog post right now in Google Docs.

Google Sheets is the spreadsheet that is included in the “office” suite that comes free with Google Drive. I’m a big fan …

19A Jordan joined it in 1984, for short : NBA

Michael Jordan is considered by some to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Not only is he a talented sportsman, but he is also very successful in the business world. He became the majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets NBA team in 2010. Fans refer to Jordan as “His Airness”.

21A Only number that appears twice in the Fibonacci sequence : ONE

Leonardo of Pisa was a famous and respected Italian mathematician, also known as simply “Fibonacci”. He is remembered for writing about a number sequence (although he didn’t “discover” it) that later was given the name “Fibonacci sequence”. He wrote about the series of numbers in his book called “Liber Abaci”, a celebrated work that introduced Arabic numerals (i.e. 0-9) to the Western world.

23A Measurements of Wi-Fi performance : NETWORK SPEEDS

“Wi-Fi” is nothing more than a trademark, a trademark registered by an association of manufacturers of equipment that use wireless LAN (Local Area Network) technology. A device labeled with “Wi-Fi” has to meet certain defined technical standards, basically meaning that the devices can talk to each other. The name “Wi-Fi” suggests “Wireless Fidelity”, although apparently the term was never intended to mean anything at all.

27A Didn’t have a match in Go Fish, say : DREW

Go Fish is a very simple card game, one usually played by children:

Q. Do you have any queens?
A. No.
Q. Go fish!

28A Feeling little to no amorous attraction, in L.G.B.T.Q.+ lingo : ARO

“Aro” is a common shorthand for “aromantic”. An aromantic person is someone who experiences little or no romantic attraction. It is distinct from asexual (“ace”), which refers to little or no sexual attraction, though some individuals identify as both aromantic and asexual.

29A Identity prefix : CIS-

The term “cisgender” is used as the opposite of “transgender”. Cisgender people have a gender identity that matches the sex they were assigned at birth. A transgender person is someone with a gender identity that is different from that assigned at birth.

32A Baldwin with a record 17 appearances as “Saturday Night Live” host : ALEC

Alec Baldwin is the oldest of the acting Baldwin brothers. I think Alec’s big break was playing Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in “The Hunt for Red October”, but thank goodness that role was taken over by Harrison Ford for the subsequent Jack Ryan movies. Baldwin also made a name for himself playing Jack Donaghy on “30 Rock”, opposite Tina Fey. More recently, he made a name for himself by impersonating President Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live”. Famously, Baldwin was involved in a tragic incident while filming a Western movie titled “Rust” in 2021. He discharged a revolver being used as a prop during a rehearsal, but the gun was loaded with live ammunition. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza was injured.

42A 2024 film that won Best Picture : ANORA

The 2024 movie “Anora” is about a young stripper from Brooklyn who impulsively marries the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. The marriage is short-lived, as the groom’s parents send henchmen to find the couple and force an annulment. The film follows the aftermath as the stripper ends the marriage, leaving her in an emotionally vulnerable and uncertain state. The entire film was shot in 37 days, with one 25-minute sequence taking up 10 of those days. The sequence was a particularly demanding and disturbing home invasion scene.

43A Boba tea flavor : TARO

Bubble tea, sometimes called “boba tea”, is a tea-based drink from Taiwan. The “bubbles” are chewy tapioca balls that are usually added to the drink.

46A Buddhist leader : LAMA

“Lama” is a Tibetan word meaning “chief, high priest”.

49A Major consequence of a virus, perhaps : COMPUTER CRASH

A computer virus has characteristics very similar to a virus found in nature. It is a small computer program that can copy itself and can infect another host (computer).

56A “OK,” in Osaka : HAI

The Japanese city of Osaka used to be called Naniwa, with the name changing to Osaka sometime before 1500. “Osaka” can be translated either as “large hill” or “large slope”. Osaka is sometimes referred to as “the Chicago of Japan” as it is a major center of commerce and industry. The city has also been named the “nation’s kitchen”, and was a center for Japan’s rice trade for centuries.

61A Cause of some slow data transfers : SERVER DELAY

In the world of computer science, a computer accessing a service is called a “client”. The service is provided on a computer called a “server”. These days, clients and servers often communicate via the Internet. I am typing up this blog post on my laptop (the client) and am connected via the Internet to the Google Drive service that resides on a computer somewhere (the server).

64A Highly monitored area, for short : ICU

Intensive care unit (ICU)

67A Home of Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” with “the” : … MET

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (“the Met”) was founded in 1870 by a group of private citizens. The current museum is huge, with 2 million square feet of floor space.

68A Snipes of “White Men Can’t Jump” : WESLEY

Wesley Snipes is a movie actor, and a martial artist. The role most associated with him is the title character in the “Blade” series of films. Snipes was sent to federal prison in 2010 to serve a 3-year sentence for willful failure to file tax returns.

“White Men Can’t Jump” is a comedy film about two street basketball hustlers played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson.

Down

5D Hot French beverage : THE

In French, a “tasse” (cup) might contain perhaps “thé” (tea) or “café” (coffee).

18D Tolkien fantasy series inits. : LOTR

“Lord of the Rings” (LOTR)

26D Lawyer’s aide, informally : PARA

A paralegal (sometimes just “para”) is a person who is trained sufficiently in legal matters to assist a lawyer. A paralegal cannot engage in the practice of law and must be supervised by a qualified lawyer.

29D Org. in the Jack Ryan movies : CIA

I loved the Tom Clancy series of novels, most of which feature Jack Ryan as the main character. However, I felt that with each successive title, my interest faded a little. I was hooked with “The Hunt for Red October” published in 1984, and dutifully worked my way through Clancy’s subsequent novels, before giving up halfway through 1998’s “Rainbow Six”. Tom Clancy passed away at the beginning of October 2013.

30D Tabard ___, locale in “The Canterbury Tales” : INN

Tabards were tunics worn by knights over their armor. Often, the tabard was quite colorful and was emblazoned with the knight’s coat of arms. It was this usage of the word “tabard” that gave rise to the name of the Tabard Inn, which features in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”.

34D PC “copy” shortcut : CTRL-C

The Control (CTRL) key on a PC keyboard is used to modify the function of other keys. For example, pressing CTRL+C copies a selection to the clipboard, and CTRL+V pastes the contents of the clipboard to a location defined by the cursor. Control keys were introduced on teletypewriters to generate “control characters”, which are non-printing characters that instruct a computer to do something like print a page, ring a bell etc.

36D ___Tok : TIK

TikTok is a video-sharing service based in China that is very popular with the younger set (I am told). The original and equivalent service in China is known as Douyin, which went live in 2016. TikTok was launched the following year as the global version of Douyin.

37D STEM part: Abbr. : SCI

The acronym “STEM” stands for the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. An alternative acronym with a similar meaning is MINT, standing for mathematics, information sciences, natural sciences and technology.

39D Go ballistic : ERUPT

A ballista was a large siege weapon used by the ancient Greeks and Romans that functioned like a giant crossbow, using the torsion from twisted ropes to launch heavy bolts or stones. The weapon’s name comes from the Greek word “ballein” (“to throw”), which is the same root for the modern term “ballistics”, the study of the movement of projectiles.

40D Big name in pasta sauce : RAGU

The Ragú brand of pasta sauce was introduced in 1937. The name ”Ragù” is the Italian word for a sauce used to dress pasta, however the spelling is a little off in the name of the sauce. In Italian, the word is “Ragù” with a grave accent over the “u”, but if you look at a jar of the sauce on the supermarket shelf it is spelled “Ragú” on the label, with an acute accent. Sometimes I think we just don’t try …

41D Pride sound : ROAR

Here are some colorful collective nouns:

• A pride of lions
• A shrewdness of apes
• A cloud of bats
• A bench of bishops
• A clowder of cats
• A waddling of ducks
• An army of frogs
• A knot of toads
• A memory of elephants
• A dazzle of zebra
• A tower of giraffe
• A crash of rhinos

47D ___ Marian (English folklore heroine) : MAID

Robin Hood is a figure from English folklore who is celebrated in story and song. Some stories suggest that Robin Hood the outlaw was actually a real nobleman, the Earl of Huntingdon. Robin Hood’s famous companion was Maid Marian. Interestingly, the legend of Maid Marian (full name Lady Marian of Leaford) had been around for centuries, before she became associated with Robin Hood starting in the 16th century.

51D “And … voilà!” : THERE!

The French word “voilà” means “there it is”, and “voici” means “here it is”. The terms come from “vois là” meaning “see there” and “vois ici” meaning “see here”.

54D Nickname for M.L.B.’s Angels : HALOS

The Anaheim Angels baseball team is today more correctly called the Los Angeles Angels (LAA). The “Angels” name dates back to 1961 when the team was founded in the “City of Angels”, Los Angeles. When the franchise moved to Anaheim in 1965 they were known as the California Angels, then the Anaheim Angels, and most recently the Los Angeles Angels. The Angels are also known as “the Halos”.

62D It ends in septembre : ETE

In French, “été” (summer) starts in “juin” (June) and ends in septembre (September). Note that the names of months are not capitalized in French.

63D Singer Lana Del ___ : REY

“Lana Del Rey” is the stage name of singer/songwriter Elizabeth Grant. Del Rey calls herself a “self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra”. Nice …