Brilliant Bobbie - our Wordsmith!! Yes, it was Buddy Holly!! It was a pretty sad story, with which we are all aware!! The Phil Everly connection surprised me, just a little. Holly's funeral was held on February 7, 1959, at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock. The service was officiated by Ben D. Johnson, who had presided at the Hollys' wedding just months earlier. The pallbearers were Jerry Allison, Joe B. Mauldin, Niki Sullivan, Bob Montgomery, Sonny Curtis and Phil Everly. Waylon Jennings was unable to attend due to his commitment to the still-touring Winter Dance Party. Holly's body was interred in the City of Lubbock Cemetery in the eastern part of the city. His headstone carries the correct spelling of his surname (Holley) and a carving of his Fender Stratocaster guitar. All pallbearers save Everly were or would be, Crickets. María Elena Holly did not attend the funeral, and has never visited the gravesite. She was pregnant at the time of the crash. She miscarried the day after learning of his death, reportedly due to âÂÂpsychological traumaâÂÂ. Because of this incident, authorities found it necessary, in the months following, to implement a policy against announcing victims' names until after families had first been informed. Seems like common sense, but I guess the 'need to know' superseded that! I hope you are all staying warm in the deep-freeze - we go from -2C at lunch today to -32C overnight. Yikes. Thanks for playing: everyone gets Stars!!! And a song to leave you with!! See you next week. Nancy. Rave on my friends~~ Here is a link that might be useful: Rave On

OK, we ran out of time. Falstaff was the friend of Henry V, in Shakespeare's plays, and he was who we were looking for - other clues would have been Agincourt and Monmouth. His reign was generally free from serious trouble at home. Henry V promoted the use of the English language in government, and his reign marks the appearance of Chancery Standard English as well as the adoption of English as the language of record within Government. He was the first king to use English in his personal correspondence since the Norman conquest, which had occurred 350 years earlier. A forward thinking guy! He is credited with having invented what some consider the first true passport, notwithstanding the earlier examples cited, as a means of helping his subjects prove who they were in foreign lands. A passport does not necessarily grant the passport holder entry into another country, nor to consular protection while abroad or any other privileges, such as immunity from arrest or prison sentences rights to consular protection arise from international treaties. It is considered unlikely that the term "passport" is derived from sea ports, but rather from a medieval document that was required to pass through the gate of a city wall (porte) or to pass through a territory. In medieval Europe, such documents were issued to travelers by local authorities, and generally contained a list of towns and cities into which a document holder was permitted to pass. On the whole, documents were not required for travel to sea ports, which were considered open trading points, but documents were required to travel inland from sea ports. There, more than we ever wanted to know about passports, except that all important question, where is my application, and more importantly, by birth certificate. I am seriously miffed about this, and will now once again tear the house apart. Thanks for playing, and sorry I skunked you. See you next week, same time, same Bat-station!! Nancy.

Well, I sent you out on a bit of a wild goose chase. There really is no know answer. Mr. Safire put the question to America, and found no plausible answers - huh. The whole nine yards or full nine yards is a colloquial American phrase meaning "everything, the whole lot" or, when used as an adjective, "all the way," as in, "The Army came out and gave us the whole nine yards on how they use space systems." Its origin is unknown and has been described as "the most prominent etymological riddle of our time." The earliest known example of this phrase is from 1907 in southern Indiana. It is related to the expression "the whole six yards," used around the same time in Kentucky and South Carolina. Both phrases are variations on the whole ball of wax, first recorded in the 1880s. They are part of a family of expressions in which an odd-sounding item, such as enchilada, shooting match, or shebang, is substituted for "ball of wax." The choice of the number nine may be related to the expression "to the nines" (to perfection). The phrase was introduced to a national audience by Elaine Shepard in the Vietnam War novel The Doom Pussy (1967). Use of the phrase became widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of the interest in the phrase's etymology can be attributed to New York Times language columnist William Safire, who wrote extensively on this question. The earliest known use of the phrase is from The Mitchell Commercial, a newspaper in the small town of Mitchell, Indiana, in their 2 May 1907 edition: "This afternoon at 2:30 will be called one of the baseball games that will be worth going a long way to see. The regular nine is going to play the business men as many innings as they can stand, but we can not promise the full nine yards." The phrase was used three more times in the Mitchell Commercial over the next seven years, in the forms "give him the whole nine yards" (i.e., tell someone a big story), "take the whole nine yards" (i.e., take everything), and "settled the whole nine yards" (i.e., resolved everything). In other uses from this time period, the phrase was given as "the whole six yards." In 1912, a local newspaper in Kentucky asked readers to, "Just wait boys until the fix gets to a fever heat and they will tell the whole six yards." The six-yard form of the phrase also appears in a 1921 headline in a local South Carolina paper. The phrase is not known to have been used in writing thereafter until a 1956 issue of Kentucky Happy Hunting Ground, where it appears in an article on fishing. After describing the contests and prizes, the author writes, "So that's the whole nine-yards." It appeared in an article on hunting the following year, this time unhyphenated. So, it's probably not a phrase we all grew up, yet it has become ubiquitous!! Amazing. It was a silly question, just to see what you might come up with - thanks for playing with me. For everyone: Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!!! Annette, we are having leftover soup from our Thanksgiving - you? See you all next week! Nancy.

Oh so close and all oh so wrong!! Noel is from the Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nÃÂtÃÂlis (dias), "(day) of birth". I thought this was sooo easy - I am sorry. Nativity, Latin nÃÂtëvitÃÂs - all the origins of the word. Maybe Canadian crosswords are different from American ones - I was going for the word 'nee' meaning birth, born as. Well it's Christmas, so you all get a star anyway!! May the peace and joy of the Season fill your homes and your hearts. I'll 'see' you all next week!! Thanks for playing. Nancy/ Here is a link that might be useful: Santa Claus and his old lady