Bill’s time: 8m 18s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10A Thousand ___, city that’s part of Greater Los Angeles : OAKS

Thousand Oaks is a city in Greater Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly, it is named for the many oak trees in the area. In fact, it is estimated that there are 50,000 to 60,000 oak trees within the city limits. The actual choice of name was made in the 1920s by virtue of a naming contest. The young man who came up with “Thousand Oaks” was just 14 years old.

14A ___ Sea, body of water that lost 90% of its volume to irrigation : ARAL

The former Soviet Union decided to divert the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea in order to irrigate food and cotton crops. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea began to shrink dramatically in the 1960s due to the loss of water. Today, the Aral Sea is no more. Instead, there are two relatively small bodies of water labeled as the North Aral Sea and the South Aral Sea.

20A Like photons, but not protons : MASSLESS

In the field of electromagnetic radiation, a photon is the basic unit of light, and an elementary particle. It is believed to have no mass, but this fact does seem to create some theoretical inconsistencies, inconsistencies that I just do not understand …

A proton is a subatomic particle, with at least one found in the nucleus of every atom. A proton is not a “fundamental particle”, as it itself is made up of three quarks; two up quarks and one down quark.

30A Flu-fighting org. : CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is based in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC started out life during WWII as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities. The CDC worries about much more than malaria these days …

33A Met someone? : OPERAGOER

The Metropolitan Opera (often simply “the Met”) of New York City is the largest classical music organization in the country, presenting about 220 performances each and every year. Founded in 1880, the Met is renowned for using technology to expand its audiences. Performances have been broadcast live on radio since 1931, and on television since 1977. And since 2006 you can go see a live performance from New York in high definition on the big screen, at a movie theater near you …

35A Milky Way explosion : NOVA

According to Greek mythology, our galaxy (the Milky Way) is the breast milk of the goddess Hera, wife of Zeus. The term “Milky Way” is a translation of the Latin “via lactea”, used by the Romans. The Romans used the Latin name because the older Greek term for the same phenomenon was “galaxias kyklos” meaning “milky circle”.

42A “To be,” in Iberia : SER

The Iberian Peninsula in Europe is largely made up of Spain and Portugal. However, also included is the Principality of Andorra in the Pyrénées, a small part of the south of France, and the British Territory of Gibraltar. Iberia takes its name from the Ebro, the longest river entirely in Spain, which the Romans named “Hiberus”.

43A Certain Microsoft Office files, to an ancient Roman? : FORTY SHEETS (XL SHEETS = Excel sheets)

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program included in the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Microsoft’s first spreadsheet program was introduced back in 1982 and called Multiplan. Multiplan’s popularity waned due to the success of the competing product Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft then introduced Excel, initially just for the Macintosh. When Excel was extended to Windows, Lotus was slow to respond and Microsoft took over the market.

45A Destination for 2025’s ESCAPADE satellites : MARS

NASA’s ESCAPADE mission launched in 2025. Its full name is “Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers”, and uses twin spacecraft nicknamed “Blue” and “Gold”. The main goal of ESCAPADE is to understand how solar winds strip away the Martian atmosphere.

46A “Cobra ___” (Netflix series) : KAI

“Cobra Kai” is a TV show that premiered in 2018 as a sequel to “The Karate Kid” series of films, the first of which was released in 1984. Actor Ralph Macchio reprises his role from the movies, playing protagonist Daniel LaRusso. William Zabka also reprises his role from the big screen, playing Johnny Lawrence, LaRusso’s rival in karate competitions. The title of the show “Cobra Kai” is the name of the karate dojo in which Johnny Lawrence trained as a youth, and which he decides to reopen 34 years later.

50A Something you might keep tabs on? : ACID TRIP

The drug LSD is often sold impregnated into blotting paper. The paper blotter is usually divided into squares with ¼-inch sides, with each square referred to as a “tab”.

60A Genetic communicator, for short : MRNA

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is an essential catalyst in the manufacture of proteins in the body. The genetic code in DNA determines the sequence of amino acids that make up each protein. That sequence is read in DNA by messenger RNA, and amino acids are delivered for protein manufacture in the correct sequence by transfer RNA. The amino acids are then formed into proteins by ribosomal RNA. An added complication is that small changes in the sequence of amino acids specified by DNA sometimes takes place in a process known as RNA editing. This RNA editing occurs after the nucleotide sequence has been transcribed from DNA, but before it is translated into protein.

Down

1D Jon of “Top Gun: Maverick” : HAMM

Before achieving widespread fame as Don Draper in “Mad Men”, Jon Hamm worked a variety of jobs, including set dresser for a soft-core pornographic film, which he has described as “bleak” and “soul-crushing”. He also had a stint as a high school drama teacher, when one of his students was future actor Ellie Kemper.

2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” is the long-awaited sequel to the 1986 film “Top Gun”. Tom Cruise reprises his role as the navy pilot with the handle “Maverick”, this time training a group of younger Top Gun graduates to fly a dangerous mission. Personally, I think that the sequel is better than the original.

2D Integral calculation : AREA

Remember doing calculus at school, and all those derivatives and integrals? Well, you probably also remember that an integral calculates the area under a curve (for example), and a derivative calculates the slope of a tangent at a particular point on a curve.

3D Setups for some routers, in brief : LANS

In the world of computing, a router is a device that helps direct traffic, as it were. A router in a house is often found in combination with a modem, and directs traffic between the Internet and the computers in the home.

5D Clark Kent has one : ALTER EGO

Superman’s comic book creators gave their title character’s alter-ego the name “Clark Kent” by melding the names of Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, two leading men of the cinema at the time Superman was created. However, they modeled Clark’s character more on the silent film actor Harold Lloyd.

11D EGOT-winning composer Menken : ALAN

Alan Menken is a composer from New York City who is best known for scores he produced for Disney movies. Menken won Oscars for the scores for “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and “Pocahontas”.

19D Gillette Stadium team in the N.F.L., to fans : PATS

The New England Patriots football team was founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots. The “Patriots” name was selected from suggestions made by football fans in Boston. The team played at several different stadiums in the Boston area for just over ten years, before moving to their current home base in Foxborough, Massachusetts. At the time of the move, the “Boston” name was dropped and changed to “New England”.

21D TV journalist Spencer : LARA

Lara Spencer started co-anchoring “Good Morning America” in 2011, working alongside Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos. Back in 2004/2005, PBS viewers will have seen Spencer hosting the hit show “Antiques Roadshow”.

25D Traffic jam cacophony : HONKS

“Cacophony” is such a lovely word, a word used to describe a harsh or jarring sound. The term arises from the Greek “kakos” (bad) and “phone” (voice).

41D Country that forms a tripoint border with Niger and Nigeria : CHAD

The landlocked African country called Chad takes its name from the second largest wetland on the continent, which is known as Lake Chad.

47D Hairstyle sported by painter Bob Ross : AFRO

Bob Ross was an artist and art instructor. Ross created and appeared in the long-running PBS show “The Joy of Painting”, a show which provided instructions for budding artists. He was known for some colorful phrases that he tended to repeat on screen, one of the most famous being “let’s add some happy little trees”.

48D “There is no love sincerer than the love of ___”: George Bernard Shaw : FOOD

George Bernard Shaw (GBS) was a very successful Irish playwright. Shaw was one of only two people to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature, and an Oscar (the other being Bob Dylan). He won his Oscar for adapting his own play “Pygmalion” for the 1938 film of the same name starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Most people are more likely to have seen the musical adaptation of “Pygmalion” that goes by the title “My Fair Lady”.

50D Eastern city with a famous mausoleum : AGRA

The most famous mausoleum in the world has to be the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. It was built after the death of the third wife of Shah Jahan, Mumtaz Mahal (hence the name of the mausoleum). The poor woman died in childbirth delivering the couple’s 14th child. When Shah Jahan himself passed away 35 years later, he was buried beside his wife Mumtaz, in the Taj Mahal.

52D Like blue lobsters : RARE

The American lobster species is normally colored a dark, bluish green to a greenish brown. This color is the result of a mixture of yellow, blue and green pigments. There are known genetic mutations that have resulted in some different colors in the lobster population. About 1 in 2 million lobsters is blue, and 1 in 30 million is yellow. There may even be albino lobsters, occurring at a frequency of about 1 in 100 million.

54D “Mushy” side dish with fish and chips : PEAS

In the UK especially, fish and chips are often served with a side of mushy peas. They are dried marrowfat peas that have been soaked in water and baking soda, and then boiled until softened. I love almost all vegetables, and especially peas, but mushy peas? Not so much …

56D Esteemed fighter pilot : ACE

A flying ace (also “air ace”) is an aviator who has shot down a number of enemy planes during combat. The qualifying number of kills seems to vary, but five is common. The first use of “ace” was during WWI, when the French newspapers dubbed pilot Adolphe Pegoud “l’as” (French for “the ace”) when he shot down his fifth German plane.

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