Day: June 20, 2013

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
13. Enya’s homeland : EIRE
“Éire”, is the Irish word for “Ireland”. “Erin” is an anglicized version of “Éire” and actually corresponds to “Éirinn”, the dative case of “Éire”.

Enya’s real name is Eithne Patricia Ní Bhraonáin, which can translate from Irish into Enya Brennan. Her Donegal family (in the northwest of Ireland) formed a band called Clannad, which included Enya. In 1980 Enya launched her very successful solo career. She sure does turn up a lot in crosswords!

15. Roberts of NPR : COKIE
Cokie Roberts is a great journalist and author, best known for her work with National Public Radio.

16. Degrees for foreign attys. : LLBS
Bachelor of Laws (LLB) is a an undergraduate degree in law. The abbreviation “LLB” stands for Legum (LL, for the plural “laws”) Baccalaureus (B, for Bachelor).

17. Yoga equipment : MATS
In the West we tend to think of yoga as a physical discipline, a means of exercise that uses specific poses to stretch and strengthen muscles. While it is true that the ancient Indian practice of yoga does involve such physical discipline, the corporeal aspect of the practice plays a relatively small part in the whole philosophy. Other major components are meditation, ethical behavior, breathing and contemplation.

18. Wolf in Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” : AKELA
Akela is the wolf in the “Jungle Book”. He gave his name to the cubmaster in the scouting movement, now known as Akela.

19. South American tuber : OCA
The plant called an oca is also known as the New Zealand Yam. The tubers of the oca are used as a root vegetable.

20. Verdi’s “___ nome” : CARO
“Caro nome” is an aria from Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto”.

“Rigoletto” is one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most famous and oft-performed operas. The storyline comes from a Victor Hugo play called “Le roi s’amuse” (usually translated as “The King’s Fool”). Rigoletto is the king’s fool, the jester.

21. Norse love goddess : FREYA
Freyja (also “Freya”) was Norse goddess associated with love and sexuality. “Freyja” is the Old Norse word for “Lady”).

22. Via ___ (main street in ancient Rome) : SACRA
The main street of Ancient Rome was known as the Via Sacra (“sacred road”). The Via Sacra ran from the top of Capitoline Hill to the Colosseum.

35. Luau strings : UKES
The ukulele originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.

Nowadays the word “luau” denotes almost any kind of party on the Hawaiian Islands, but to the purist a luau is a feast that always includes a serving of “poi”, the bulbous underground stems of taro baked with coconut milk.

43. Eli : YALE MAN
Elihu Yale was a wealthy merchant born in Boston in 1649. Yale worked for the British East India Company, and for many years served as governor of a settlement at Madras (now Chennai) in India. After India, Yale took over his father’s estate near Wrexham in Wales. It was while resident in Wrexham that Yale responded to a request for financial support for the Collegiate School of Connecticut in 1701. He sent the school a donation, which was used to erect a new building in New Haven that was named “Yale” in his honor. In 1718, the whole school was renamed to “Yale College”. To this day, students of Yale are nicknamed “Elis”, again honoring Elihu.

50. Nikon alternative : LEICA
Leica is a German optics company, famous for production of lenses and cameras. The 1913 Leica was the first practical camera that could use 35mm film, a size chosen because it was already the standard for film used in motion pictures.

Nikon was founded in 1917, a merger of three companies making various optical devices. After the merger, the company’s main output was lenses (including the first lenses for Canon cameras, before Canon made its own). During the war, Nikon sales grew rapidly as the company focused on (pun unintended!) equipment for the military including periscopes and bomb sights.

58. Home to Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World,” informally : MOMA
The founding of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City was very much driven by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller, son of the oil magnate. Working with two friends, Abby managed to get the museum opened in 1929, just nine days after the Wall Street Crash. The MoMA’s sculpture garden bears the name of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and has done so since 1949.

Andrew Wyeth was known as a realist painter and “the painter of the people” in recognition of his popularity with the man in the street. His neighbor, Helga Testorf, posed for a total of 247 paintings over a 14 year period, a series known as “The Helga Pictures”. The remarkable thing is that neither Wyeth’s wife nor Testorf’s husband knew anything about the portrait sessions or the paintings.

“Christina’s World” is an Andrew Wyeth painting that dates back to 1948. The subject of the work is Christina Olson, a woman who suffered from polio that paralyzed her lower body. In the picture, Wyeth painted Christina crawling across a field towards a house in the distance.

59. ___ bene : NOTA
“Nota bene” is the Latin for “note well”

60. Jonathan Swift’s “___ of a Tub” : A TALE
Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and cleric. Swift is most famous perhaps for his 1726 novel “Gulliver’s Travels”, but we Irishmen also remember him also as the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. He was renowned for his wit and satire.

62. Lit ___ : CRIT
Literary studies, also called literary criticism (lit. crit.), is the evaluation and interpretation of literature.

Down
1. House speaker after Hastert : PELOSI
Nancy Pelosi is a former Speaker of the House, the 60th person to hold that position. Ms. Pelosi represents a district not far from here, which covers most of San Francisco. She is the first Californian, the first Italian-American and the first woman to be Speaker of the House. As Speaker, she was also second in line, after the Vice President, to take over if President Obama could not finish his term. That made Nancy Pelosi the highest-ranking female politician in US history.

Dennis Hastert served as Speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Republican in history to hold the office. Hastert resigned his seat in 2007 and now works as a lobbyist.

2. Tin Man’s need : OIL CAN
The movie “The Wizard of Oz” is full of irony. The Scarecrow wants to be intelligent and discovers he is already very smart. The Tin Man wants to be able to love and finds out that he already has a heart. The Lion thinks he is a coward but turns out to be fearless. And the big reveal is that the Wizard of Oz, who is positioned as all-powerful, is actually just a bumbling and eccentric old man.

3. Jerry of “Law & Order” : ORBACH
Jerry Orbach was an American actor, noted for playing one of the lead detectives in “Law & Order” on television. Orbach also provided the voice for the character Lumière in the Disney feature “Beauty and the Beast”.

4. Thing in court : RES
“Res” is the Latin for “thing”. “Res” is used in a lot of phrases in the law.

5. Fine grade of cotton : PIMA
Pima is a soft cotton that is very durable and absorbent. Pima cotton is named after the Pima Native Americans who first cultivated it in this part of the world.

6. “While you live, / Drink!” poet : OMAR
Omar Khayyam was a Persian with many talents. He was a poet as well as an important mathematician, astronomer and physician. A selection of his poems were translated by one Edward Fitzgerald in a collection called “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”.

Here are some lines by 11th-century poet Omar Khayyam:

Then to this earthen Bowl did I adjourn
My Lip the secret Well of Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur’d—“While you live
“Drink!—for once dead you never shall return.”

8. ___ Gatos, Calif. : LOS
The town of Los Gatos is in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The town’s name translates from Spanish to “the Cats” and comes from the old name for the area “Cat’s Corner”. That name is a reference to the cougars that roamed the foothills in which the town is located.

11. Cartoon character on the 3/31/52 cover of Life magazine : LI’L ABNER
“Li’l Abner” was created and drawn by Al Capp for over 43 years starting in 1934. Al Capp stopped producing the strip in 1977, largely due to illness (he died from emphysema two years later). As the strip finished up, he went so far as to apologize to his long-standing fans, saying that he should have stopped 3-4 years earlier as he felt that the quality of his work had gone down in those latter years.

15. Addition mark : CARET
The character known as a caret was originally a proofreading mark, used to indicate where a punctuation mark was to be inserted. “Caret” is Latin for “it lacks”.

20. Venetian explorer John : CABOT
Giovanni Caboto (known in English as “John Cabot”) was an Italian explorer. Cabot is believed to have been the first European to visit North America since the Vikings landed here in the 11th century. Many say that he landed in Newfoundland in 1497.

21. Home of Cocoa Beach : FLORIDA
In the TV show “I Dream of Jeannie”, the astronaut (Larry Hagman) and the genie (Barbara Eden) lived in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Cocoa Beach is a real city that is located close to Cape Canaveral.

32. Scottish port on the Firth of Tay : DUNDEE
The city of Dundee lies on the north bank of the Firth of Tay in Scotland. The origins of the name “Dundee” are a little obscure, although the omnipresent “dùn” in place names all over Scotland and Ireland is the Celtic word for “fort”.

The Firth of Tay is an inlet on the east coast of Scotland into which empties Scotland’s largest river, the Tay. The city of Dundee lies on the Firth, and the city of Perth just inland on the Tay.

36. Nissan make : INFINITI
Acura is a division of the Honda Motor Company, and is Honda’s luxury brand. Infiniti is the equivalent luxury brand for the Nissan Motor Company, and Lexus is the more luxurious version of Toyota’s models.

38. Rapper with the 2002 #1 hit “Hot in Herre” : NELLY
Nelly is the stage name of rap artist Cornell Haynes, Jr. from Austin, Texas.

39. Crunchy breakfast bowlful : KIX
Kix cereal has been around since 1937, would you believe? Kix used to be just puffed grains, processed to give the characteristic shape. Then the decision was made to add sugar to get better penetration into the young kid marketplace. Sad really …

44. Olympic skater Ito : MIDORI
Midori Ito is a Japanese figure skater. Ito was the first woman to land a triple/triple jump and a triple axel in competition. In fact she landed her first triple jump in training, when she was only 8 years old …

45. ___ acid : ACETIC
Acetic acid has the formula CH3CO2H, and is the main component of vinegar.

46. Broadway Joe : NAMATH
The legendary quarterback Joe Namath played most of his professional football games with the New York Jets. Namath had played college football with the University of Alabama but left school without finishing his degree, to play professionally. Many years later he enrolled in Alabama’s External Degree program, and graduated with a BA in December 2007, at 64 years of age. Well done, Joe!

49. Dangerous breakout : E COLI
Escherichia coli (E. coli) are usually harmless bacteria found in the human gut, working away quite happily. However, there are some strains that can produce lethal toxins. These strains can make their way into the food chain from animal fecal matter that comes into contact with food designated for human consumption.

52. 8 on the Beaufort scale : GALE
The Beaufort wind scale is named after Irishman, Sir Francis Beaufort, a Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy. Beaufort was a hydrographer as well as a career navy man.

54. Apple variety : IMAC
The iMac is a desktop computer platform from Apple introduced in 1998. One of the main features of the iMac is an “all-in-one” design, with the computer console and monitor integrated.

55. Zap, in a way : TASE
Victor Appleton wrote a novel for young adults called “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle”. The company that developed the TASER electroshock weapon named its product as a homage to the novel. The acronym TASER stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle”. Interesting, eh?

57. Cheers, on TV : BAR
The wonderful sitcom “Cheers” ran for eleven seasons on NBC, from 1982 to 1993. “Cheers” spawned an equally successful spin-off show called “Frasier”, which also ran for eleven seasons and often featured guest appearances of characters from the original “Cheers”. The Cheers bar was styled on the Bull & Finch Pub in Boston (in which I’ve had a pint of Guinness two!). The owner of the Bill & Finch cleverly agreed to the initial interior and exterior shots, charging only one dollar. Since then he has made millions from selling “Cheers” memorabilia, and also from increased trade.

59. Big maker of A.T.M.’s : NCR
NCR is an American company that has been in business since 1884, originally called the National Cash Register Company. The company has done well in a market where new technologies seem to be constantly disrupting the status quo.

Return to top of page

For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Start of a word ladder whose first and last words are suggested by 36-Across : POOR
5. Ladder, part 2 : POOL
9. Ladder, part 3 : POLL
13. Enya’s homeland : EIRE
14. “___ fool …” : I’M NO
15. Roberts of NPR : COKIE
16. Degrees for foreign attys. : LLBS
17. Yoga equipment : MATS
18. Wolf in Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” : AKELA
19. South American tuber : OCA
20. Verdi’s “___ nome” : CARO
21. Norse love goddess : FREYA
22. Via ___ (main street in ancient Rome) : SACRA
24. Ladder, part 4 : POLE
26. Good baseball hit: Abbr. : DBL
28. Suppress : INHIBIT
31. Still in the oven, say : NOT DONE
33. Abstainer : NONUSER
35. Luau strings : UKES
36. Lucky lotto participant : INSTANT WINNER
39. Place for a skateboarder’s pad : KNEE
40. Worked, in a way : KNEADED
41. “Personally …” : I, FOR ONE
43. Eli : YALE MAN
47. Mark, as a ballot square : X IN
48. Ladder, part 5 : ROLE
50. Nikon alternative : LEICA
51. Bother persistently : NAG AT
53. Commuter’s destination, often : CITY
56. Like 1-Down: Abbr. : DEM
57. Tried to nip : BIT AT
58. Home to Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World,” informally : MOMA
59. ___ bene : NOTA
60. Jonathan Swift’s “___ of a Tub” : A TALE
61. Melodramatic cry : ALAS!
62. Lit ___ : CRIT
63. Ladder, part 6 : RILE
64. Ladder, part 7 : RICE
65. End of the word ladder : RICH

Down
1. House speaker after Hastert : PELOSI
2. Tin Man’s need : OIL CAN
3. Jerry of “Law & Order” : ORBACH
4. Thing in court : RES
5. Fine grade of cotton : PIMA
6. “While you live, / Drink!” poet : OMAR
7. Leading : ON TOP
8. ___ Gatos, Calif. : LOS
9. Prod : POKE
10. “Fine by me” : OKEY DOKE
11. Cartoon character on the 3/31/52 cover of Life magazine : LI’L ABNER
12. Rustic setting : LEA
15. Addition mark : CARET
20. Venetian explorer John : CABOT
21. Home of Cocoa Beach : FLORIDA
23. Salon worker, at times : RINSER
25. Like some streets and tickets : ONE-WAY
27. French article : LES
29. Tightly tied, say : IN A KNOT
30. Ant farm feature : TUNNEL
32. Scottish port on the Firth of Tay : DUNDEE
34. Canonized Fr. woman : STE
36. Nissan make : INFINITI
37. Kind of ward : NEONATAL
38. Rapper with the 2002 #1 hit “Hot in Herre” : NELLY
39. Crunchy breakfast bowlful : KIX
42. Speak to the Senate, say : ORATE
44. Olympic skater Ito : MIDORI
45. ___ acid : ACETIC
46. Broadway Joe : NAMATH
49. Dangerous breakout : E COLI
52. 8 on the Beaufort scale : GALE
54. Apple variety : IMAC
55. Zap, in a way : TASE
57. Cheers, on TV : BAR
58. Spoil : MAR
59. Big maker of A.T.M.’s : NCR

Return to top of page

The Best of the New York Times Crossword Collections
Amazon.com Widgets