Look sharp! Today’s Crossword has no blunt edges – from the Excalibur (8-Across) to 1990s American teen-pop icon Britney (19-Across), name everything and everyone that has to do with a sharp, pointy end.
Click start to play our sharpest Crossword yet!
In 2006, scientists at Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology and the University of Alberta created the sharpest man-made object in the world. According to the Guinness World Records website, it is a tungsten needle that tapers to the thickness of just one atom. The breakthrough allows for the development of better high-resolution electron microscopes.
But the sharpest objects that are probably in all our homes are the knives in our kitchen drawers. Some think the sharpest knife or blade is one that is made from obsidian, a volcanic glass, created when magma that is pushed to the Earth’s surface is cooled rapidly. The Mayan civilisation was the first to use obsidian blades around 2,500 years ago, and spears with obsidian tips have been found in Ohio, US, dating back to the Stone Age.
In the fictional land of Westeros, where the popular book series and TV show Game of Thrones is set, obsidian is one of the only two substances (along with Valyrian steel) capable of killing the White Walkers, who are powerful ice creatures that were once human. Also called dragonglass, obsidian was known as “zirtys perzys” in Old Valyrian, which translates to “frozen fire”.
If you are wondering why we don’t all have obsidian knives in our homes to chop onions with, the reason is because they are not as strong as the Game of Thrones makes them out to be. While sharp, they are actually quite delicate and tend to become brittle, so they may not survive hard kitchen work.
As for the sharpest teeth that ever existed, they belonged – surprisingly – to an extinct marine vertebrate that had no jaws. The conodont were just two inches long and eel-like in shape; they lived some 500 million years ago and went extinct in the Triassic period around 200 million years ago. According to the UK-based scientific journal Nature, they roamed the planet for a longer period than any other vertebrate and despite having no jaws, they were the first creatures to evolve teeth. With tips that were just 1/20th the width of a human hair, their teeth are the sharpest ever to have been discovered.
Find out if you are the sharpest tool in the box with today’s Crossword. Let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.
