C.C. Burnikel thought she was using four homonyms of colors in today's
Los Angeles Times crossword. She was wrong. She used only three:
Lost it: BLEWAFUSE
Bonanza star: LORNEGREENE
Entertained the kids, in a way: READALOUD
Cottage site in the Beatles'
When I'm Sixty-Four: ISLEOFWIGHT
The puzzle's theme is OFFCOLOR ("Risqué...and what each long answer contains"). Blew and blue are pronounced the same. So are Greene and green. So are read and red. But Wight and white are not homonyms. Some people might pronounce "white" as "wite" but such a pronunciation is incorrect, just as the pronunciation of "temperature" as "tempature" is wrong and the pronunciation of "comfortable" as "cumfterble" is wrong. Common, yes -- but wrong.
Isle of Wight is an unincorportated community in Isle of Wight county in southeast Virginia. Christopher Lawne, an English merchant, established a plantation in the area in 1618 and named it Warrosquoake, a variant spelling of Warraskoyak, a Native American tribe of the Powhatan Confederacy. In 1634, King Charles I of England divided Virginia into eight shires (the British equivalent of counties). The region settled by Lawne and other colonists was named Warrosquoyake Shire --
another variant spelling. In 1637, the shire was renamed Isle of Wight County, after an island off the south coast of England from which many of the Virginia settlers had come.
"Summation symbol, in math" is SIGMA. Sigma is the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet. It is written as Σ (upper case), σ (lower case) and ς (when it is the last letter of a word). The function of the Σ symbol in finite summation is explained at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SummationAnyone with an IQ of 35,000 or above might be able to understand the explanation.
I certainly couldn't.
"'Ideas Worth Spreading' acronym" is TED. In 1984, architect Richard Wurman organized a TED conference in Monterey, California, to display the latest innovations in technology, entertainment and design (TED). The second conference was held in 1990 and has been held annually since then. In 2000, control of the now-worldwide TED conferences was purchased by Future UK, a British media company owned by Chris Anderson, an Oxford graduate and publisher/entrepeneur. A year later, ownership moved to Anderson's non-profit Sapling Foundation, which has a goal "to foster the spread of great ideas, to provide a platform for the world's smartest thinkers, greatest visionaries and most-inspiring teachers so that millions of people can gain a better understanding of the biggest issues faced by the world, and to help create a better future." There are now several offshoots, including TEDMED, TEDx, TEDxYouth, TED Fellows, TED Women and Ted Salon.
https://www.ted.com/
