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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9A One who measures meter by the feet? : POET

The meter of a poem is its rhythmic structure.

In poetry, a foot is a metrical unit comprising usually two, three or four syllables. Lines of verse are often classified by the number of feet that they contain, e.g. pentameter: containing five feet.

13A Plant used to make a Mexican beverage called “pulque” : AGAVE

Pulque (also “octli”) is an alcoholic drink made by fermenting the sap of the maguey (Agave americana).

16A Guthrie who wrote “Alice’s Restaurant” : ARLO

Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie. Both father and son are renowned for singing protest songs about social injustice. Arlo is most famous for his epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a song that lasts a full 18m 34s. In the song Guthrie tells how, after being drafted, he was rejected for service in the Vietnam War based on his criminal record. He had only one incident on his public record, a Thanksgiving Day arrest for littering and being a public nuisance when he was 18-years-old.

20A Wine aperitif : KIR

Kir is a French cocktail made by adding a teaspoon or so of crème de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur) to a glass, and then topping it off with white wine. The drink is named after Felix Kir, the Mayor of Dijon in Burgundy, who used to offer the drink to his guests. My wife is particularly fond of a variant called a kir royale, in which the white wine is replaced with champagne.

An apéritif is an alcoholic drink served before a meal, to stimulate the palate. A digestif is an alcoholic drink served after a meal, to aid digestion.

21A Pioneering Philips product of the 1970s, in brief : VCR

The first video tape recorder (VTR) was introduced in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that video cassette recorders (VCRs) became successful.

23A Equipment that attaches to a mask : SNORKEL

Our word “snorkel” comes from German navy slang “Schnorchel” meaning “nose, snout”. The German slang was applied to an air-shaft used for submarines, due to its resemblance to a nose, in that air passed through it and it made a “snoring” sound. “Schnorchel” comes from “Schnarchen”, the German for “snore”.

33A Yeshiva head : RABBI

In the Jewish tradition, a yeshiva is an educational institution focusing on the study of sacred texts.

35A Blanchett of 2025’s “Black Bag” : CATE

Cate Blanchett is a great actress from Australia, and a winner of an Academy Award for playing Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator”. Winning for that role made Blanchett the first person to win an Academy Award for playing an actor (Hepburn) who had also won an Oscar. Now that is trivial information …

38A “Eureka!” : AHA!

“Eureka” translates from Greek as “I have found it”. The word is usually associated with Archimedes, uttered as he stepped into his bath one day. His discovery was that the volume of water that was displaced was equal to that of the object (presumably his foot) that had been submerged. He used this fact to determine volume (and density) of a crown, something he needed in order to determine if it was made of pure gold or was a forgery.

41A Pewter, mostly : TIN

Pewter is a relatively soft alloy that is made up mostly of tin, with some copper, antimony, bismuth and lead.

42A Pre-calc course : TRIG

Trigonometry (trig) is a branch of mathematics dealing with triangles, and calculations based on the relationship between a triangle’s angles and the lengths of its sides.

43A Minority group in Iraq and Turkey : KURDS

Most of the Kurdish people live in a region known as Kurdistan, which stretches into parts of Iran, Syria, Turkey as well as northern Iraq.

44A P___ANT QUEEN : AGELESS BEAUTY (Pageant queen)

The oldest beauty pageant still operating in the US is the Miss America contest. It started out as a marketing ploy in the early twenties to attract tourists to the Atlantic City boardwalk after Labor Day. Today, contestants must be between 17 and 24 years of age. Before those limits were introduced, Marian Bergeron won the 1933 title at only 15 years of age.

60A Tea brand once owned by Starbucks : TAZO

The Tazo Tea Company was founded in 1994 in Portland, Oregon. Tazo was purchased in 1999 by Starbucks, and then by Unilever in 2017.

61A Kind of high-fat diet : KETO

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.

62A Prey for a ladybug : APHID

Aphids are called “greenfly” back in Britain and Ireland where I come from. The most effective way to control aphids, in my experience, is to make sure there are plenty of ladybugs in the garden (called “ladybirds” in Ireland!).

The insect we know as a ladybug (also “ladybird”) has seven spots on its wing covers. These seven spots gave rise to the common name “ladybug”, as in the Middle Ages the insect was called the “beetle of Our Lady”. The spots were said to symbolize the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows, events in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary called out in the Roman Catholic tradition.

64A “You can no more win a ___ than you can win an earthquake”: Jeannette Rankin : WAR

Jeannette Rankin was a Montana politician and activist who was elected to the House of Representatives in 1916, making her the first woman to hold a US federal office. Rankin, a Republican, was a lifelong pacifist. Along with 49 of her House colleagues, she opposed the 1917 declaration of war against Germany. Decades later, Rankin was the sole member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

65A ___ Park (gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park) : ESTES

Rocky Mountain National Park was established back in 1915. It covers over 250,000 acres of federal land in Colorado, between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The Continental Divide bisects the park, running in the north-south direction. Rocky Mountain NP gets a lot of visitors, and routinely ranks as one of the top five most popular of our national parks.

Down

1D Powerful cards in euchre : JACKS

Euchre is a card game that probably came to the US from Germany, introduced by German farmers who settled in Wisconsin. It is a trick-taking game usually played by four people in two partnerships. Unlike bridge, Euchre is played with a stripped-down deck of 24 or 32 cards. The verb “to euchre” is slang for “to cheat, swindle”, a term that presumably comes from the card game.

3D Ingredient in osso buco : MARROWBONE

Osso buco is a traditional Italian dish that is typically made with veal shanks that are braised with vegetables and herbs. The name “osso buco” means “bone with a hole” in Italian, which refers to the marrow-filled bone in the center of the veal shank. The marrow is considered a delicacy and is often scooped out and served with the dish.

6D Chargers and Challengers : MUSCLE CARS

By definition, a “muscle car” is a small vehicle with a large and maybe oversized engine.

The first Dodge Chargers came off the production line in 1966. One of the more famous Chargers was the General Lee, a 1969 model that was painted orange and driven by the title characters in “The Dukes of Hazzard”.

The Dodge Challenger is a car made by Chrysler to compete with the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Camaro.

7D Country that boycotted the 1984 Olympics : USSR

The 1984 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles. The event was boycotted by 14 Eastern Bloc countries in retaliation for the US’s boycott of the prior 1980 Summer Olympics hosted by Moscow. The boycotting countries held a competing event around the same time that was dubbed the Friendship Games.

8D Something a lapidary cuts : GEM

A lapidary is an artist who works with gemstones to make decorative jewelry items. The term ultimately derives from the Latin “lapis” meaning “stone”.

9D Green film on copper, e.g. : PATINA

Patina is the oxide film that develops on brass and similar metals over time. For example, it’s patina that makes Lady Liberty the lovely green color that she is.

11D Animals that bugle : ELKS

Male elks are called bulls, and females are known as cows. Bull elks are known for their very loud screaming, which is called bugling. Cow elks are attracted to bulls that bugle more often and most loudly.

15D Gary of “Apollo 13” : SINISE

Actor Gary Sinise was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Lieutenant Dan Taylor in the 1994 film “Forrest Gump”. Sinise then played the lead in television’s “CSI: NY” starting in 2004. Sinise was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bush for his work helping Iraqi school children as well as his work with the USO.

“Apollo 13” is a great film, and supposedly one that is historically and technically accurate. The film is an adaptation of mission commander Jim Lovell’s book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13”. I am going to have to put that book on my Christmas list …

18D Knievel in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame : EVEL

Daredevil Evel Knievel contracted hepatitis C from the many blood transfusions that he needed after injuries incurred during stunts. He had to have a liver transplant as a result, but his health declined after that. Knievel eventually passed away in 2007.

28D Hindi honorific : SAHIB

“Sahib” is most recognized as a term of address used in India, where it is used in much the same way as we use “mister” in English. The term was also used to address male Europeans in the days of the British Raj. The correct female form of address is “sahiba”, but in the colonial days the address used was “memsahib”, a melding of “ma’am” and “sahib”

31D “Metamorphoses” writer : OVID

“Metamorphoses” is a narrative poem by Roman poet Ovid that deals with a lofty subject. It describes the history of the world from creation until the “present day”, that is Ovid’s “present day”, the era of Julius Caesar. A lot of the storyline makes use of Greek mythology (rather than Roman).

33D Meter maid in a Beatles hit : RITA

“Lovely Rita” is a Beatles song on the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album. When the album was released in 1967, the term “meter maid” wasn’t used in the UK, although it was a slang term used in the US. The song helped spread the usage of “meter maid” all around the English-speaking world. Apparently the inspiration for the song was McCartney getting a parking ticket one day outside the Abbey Road Studios. He accepted the ticket with good grace, from a warden named Meta Davis. McCartney felt that Meta “looked like a ‘Rita’”, so that was the name she was given in the song.

34D Sacha Baron Cohen character : ALI G

Sacha Baron Cohen is a comedian and comic actor from England. He is perhaps most famous for playing the characters Borat and Ali G on the small and large screens. I wasn’t a fan, but I must admit that I really enjoyed 2020’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”.

39D Arctic seabird nicknamed “aerial pirate” : SKUA

Skuas are a group of about seven species of seabird. Some of these species are known as jaegers in the Americas. The skua takes its name from the island of Skúvoy in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. The name “jaeger” comes from the German word for “hunter”.

40D Counterparts to calls, in stock lingo : PUTS

In the world of stock trading, a call option (also “call”) is a type of financial contract. The buyer of a call option purchases the right, without obligation, to buy a particular commodity from the seller before a specified date (the expiration date) at a specified price (the strike price). The related put option (also “put”) gives the owner of a commodity the right to sell that commodity at the strike price.

50D Kemper of “The Office” : ELLIE

Actress Ellie Kemper’s big break came with the role of Erin Hannon, a receptionist on the sitcom “The Office”. More recently, Kemper played the title role in the Netflix comedy series “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”.

53D Woodworking tool : ADZE

An adze (also “adz”) is similar to an ax, but is different in that the blade of an adze is set at right angles to the tool’s shaft. An ax blade is set in line with the shaft.

54D “___ bien” : ESTA

“Está bien” is Spanish for “it’s okay”.

56D Saucer contents, informally : ETS

Disc-shaped flying objects have been reported in the sky since the Middle Ages. In the modern era, the event that launched the term “flying saucer” was a UFO sighting in 1947, which was covered widely in the media. Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unidentified flying objects in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington. In describing the objects, he repeatedly used the words “saucer”, “disc” and “pie-plate”. Newspapers latched onto the terminology, and we’ve been seeing flying “saucers” ever since.

58D Nation ruled by six royal families, in brief : UAE

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates (states) in the Middle East. Included in the seven are Abu Dhabi and Dubai, with the city of Abu Dhabi being the UAE capital and cultural center.