0128-10 New York Times Crossword Answers 28 Jan 10

The name’s William Ernest Butler, but please call me Bill. I grew up in Ireland, but now live out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m retired now, from technology businesses that took our family all over the world. I answer all emails, so please feel free to email me at bill@paxient.com

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This is my solution to the crossword published in the New York Times today …

Completion Time: N/A (watching the “State of the Union“)
Theme: PINK THINGS … as in PINK CARNATION, PINK FLAMINGO
Answers I missed: 0

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES …
Across
6 LAIT: Chocolat au lait is French for “milk chocolate”.

Square Peg: Confessions Of A Citizen-senator14 ORRIN: Senator Orrin Hatch is a Republican from Utah.

15 ETNA: The Arabic name for Mt. Etna translates as “Mountain of Fire”.

19 ESSO: Esso is the Italian word for “it”, in the masculine form.

21 POINTE: En pointe is a French term used to describe the ballet technique of dancing on the toes.

28 TATER: Apparently, a baseball has long been referred to as a potato, or a “tater”. In the seventies, a long  ball started to be called a “long tater”, and form this a home run became a “tater”.

35 ASIA: Asia isn’t occidental. Just the opposite … it’s oriental.

52 EDU: Harvard and Yale, like most education establishments, use an Internet address ending in .edu.

57 INGE: William Inge‘s 1957 play “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” won a Tony for Best Play and was made into a film in 1960.

Down
1: SOFIA: Queen Sofia was Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark marrying King Juan Carlos of Spain. She was quite the sportswoman in her day, and even represented Greece in the sailing competitions in the 1960 Olympics.

2 ORLON: Dupont invented acrylic fibers in 1941, marketing the product under the name “Orlon”.

1805: Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition3 FRANCIS II: Francis II dissolved the Holy Roman Empire after a defeat by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz.

10 QUE SERA SERA: As Doris Day told us, que sera sera is Spanish for “whatever will be, will be”.

18 NONE: “The cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none” … from the old English nursery rhyme “Old Mother Hubbard“.

24 INCARNATION: Horus was one of the oldest gods in Ancient Egyptian religion. The pharaohs were supposed incarnations of Horus.

31 TWADDLING: Twaddling is talking twaddle, talking silly.

34 SYS: The modus operandi (M.O.) is the method of operating, the system (SYS).

36 THREEPIO: C-3PO, Threepio for short, is a “protocol droid” appearing in all six “Star Wars” movies.

43 THAIS: Thais” is a 3-act opera composed by Jules Massenet. It is most famous for its “Meditation“, the entr’acte performed between scenes in Act II.

45 HARD G: There’s a hard G at the start of the word “government”.

46 MCKEE: Lonette McKee also played Maggie Davis on the NBC drama “Third Watch“.

The Lost Symbol47 EDGAR: Edgar Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon. He has been interested in paranormal phenomena for many years, and even conducted ESP experiments with people back on earth during the Apollo 14 flight. He founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, to study areas shunned by mainstream science. By the way, “noetics” is central to Dan Brown’s (author of “The Da Vinci Code“) latest novel “The Lost Symbol“, which I am reading right now and finding very enjoyable.

55 -INE: Mescaline is a psychedelic compound, found naturally in some types of cactus.