Google's Gmail service turned 15 a couple of days ago, and today we celebrate good ol' Google itself, with a bevy of SEARCHRESULTS crammed into an oversized 16x15 grid.
I tried putting the clues directly into Google, and the first one "19A: *Louis Pasteur, 1885" (I left out the asterisk and the comma) returned as its first hit a nice little article from Wired magazine about how, on July 6, 1885, Pasteur, who was not a licensed physician, tested his newly created vaccine on a 9-year-old boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog. The story ends happily, of course, but if it had not, he would probably have been prosecuted.
I was expecting something about the South Pole when I saw Roald Amundsen's name, but if you also include the date, his successful navigation of the NORTHWESTPASSAGE is the second hit.
Of course, what's interesting about this theme is that the people in question were not just searching on Google, but whether Herschel can be said to have been "searching" for URANUS is questionable. That one seems the most like a flat out discovery, to me. I would have said the same about TUTANKHAMENSTOMB (variant spelling), but that was only because I knew very little about the history behind the find. Thanks to various SEARCHRESULTS, I now know better. I'll leave it to you to do your own searching to verify this.
So a fun, engaging theme. In addition to that, we have kind of a lot of good non-theme material too. STRUT, AGATHA, GOLEMS, TENNESSEE (68A: Home of the Titans) (Anybody else spend time thinking about the children of Gaia and URANUS instead of the NFL team?), and that GOESALLIN (13A: Bets everything one's got) looks crazy if you don't parse it right. Fun to see CHARO (real name: María del Rosario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza - (SEARCHRESULTS!)) again. It's been a while. Both in crosswords and in real life.
Overall, I'd call this one a SUCCESS!
- Horace
11:33
ReplyDeleteI, too, enjoyed this, and agree that URANUS wasn't the result of an actual search. I needed a few crosses on the back of GIFTGUIDE (I was thinking along the lines of a mailed present), and if not for CHARO, I would have entered iNSCENE for the down, so she saved me from FWOEing. And UNE saved me from spelling TUTANKHAMEN with a "u" since even I knew that UNu was unlikely. Sue and I went to CABO, but not yet SAMOA (although it's on my list; I'll BIDE my time). SEX was pretty bold, and I enjoyed UMNO, also. Excellent puzzle.
You hit some nice entries that I had meant to mention, including SAMOA. At the ACPT this year, Frannie and I talked some with a guy who was in the Peace Corps in Apia, and he complained about the usual assumption that everyone there at poi. Heh. Anyway, it also allowed me to fill in SAMOA very quickly, which was nice.
DeleteI didn't even consider that assumption; I thought that was just Hawai'i. I didn't love poi, thinking it somewhat bland, although I though it accented the pork nicely. We were off pork right after that trip. That luau may have been the final meat.
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