1020-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 20 Oct 16, Thursday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Music direction meaning “with the bow” : ARCO
“Arco” is a musical direction instructing a string player to return to normal bowing technique after a passage played using some other technique (perhaps pizzicato).

10. Some servers : IBMS
In the world of computer science, a computer accessing a service is called a “client”. The service is provided on a computer called a “server”. These days, clients and servers often communicate via the Internet. I am typing up this blog post on my laptop (the client) and am connected via the Internet to the Google Drive service that resides on a computer somewhere (the server).

16. “Star Trek: T.N.G.” crew member : TROI
Deanna Troi is a character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” who is played by the lovely Marina Sirtis. Sirtis is a naturalized American citizen and has what I would call a soft American accent on the show. However, she was born in the East End of London and has a natural accent off-stage that is more like that of a true Cockney.

21. One turned on by a rock star? : AMP
An electric guitar, for example, needs an amplifier (amp) to take the weak signal created by the vibration of the strings and turn it into a signal powerful enough for a loudspeaker.

23. One for the money? : UNUM
From 1776, “E pluribus unum” was the unofficial motto of the United States. The phrase translates from Latin as “Out of many, one”. It was pushed aside in 1956 when an Act of Congress designated “In God We Trust” as the country’s official motto. “In God We Trust” had appeared on US coins since 1864, but was only introduced on paper currency in 1957.

27. Peter the Great, Mother Teresa and Bob Marley, palindromically : A TSAR, A NUN, A RASTA
Peter the Great was perhaps the most successful of the Romanov tsars, famous for modernizing Russia and expanding the country’s sphere of influence, creating the Russian Empire. He ruled from 1682 until his death in 1725.

Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in the city that is now called Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. At birth she was given the names Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (“Gonxha” means “little flower” in Albanian). She left home at the age of 18 and joined the Sisters of Loreto, and headed to Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham in Dublin, Ireland in order to learn English. Her goal was to teach in India, and English was the language used there for instruction by the nuns. After Mother Teresa passed away in 1997 she was beatified by Pope John Paul II, a step on the road to canonization. In order for her to be beatified there had to be documented evidence of a miracle that was performed due to her intercession. The miracle in question was the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of a woman due to the application of a locket containing a picture of Mother Teresa. Documentation of a second miracle is required for her to be declared a saint. The canonization process seems to well underway, with Pope Francis recognizing a second miracle in December 2015.

I must admit that I don’t really know much about Rastafarianism. I do know that a “Rasta”, like Bob Marley, is a follower of the movement. Some say that Rastafarianism is a religion, some not. I also know that it involves the worship of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia.

34. The last of the Pillars of Islam : HADJ
Followers of the Muslim tradition believe in the Five Pillars of Islam, five obligatory acts that underpin Muslim life. The Five Pillars are:

1. The Islamic creed
2. Daily prayer
3. Almsgiving
4. Fasting during the month of Ramadan
5. The pilgrimage to Mecca (haj) once during a lifetime

36. Last word in the Gettysburg Address : EARTH
I visited Gettysburg for the first time in 2010, and goodness me what a moving place that is. As I discovered on my visit, there are five known copies of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and all of them differ in some way or another, so I suppose the exact words spoken will never be known. Martin Luther King Jr. evoked Abraham Lincoln’s words in another of America’s iconic addresses, his “I Have a Dream” speech. Lincoln’s speech began with “Four score and seven years ago …”, and King’s speech began with “Five score years ago …” as a nod to the Gettysburg Address.

I admit to having profound respect and admiration for great speeches delivered by great men and women. Forgive me as I reproduce here the full text of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.”

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

44. “Topaz” novelist, 1967 : URIS
The 1967 Leon Uris novel “Topaz” was adapted into a 1969 movie of the same name directed by Alfred Hitchcock. “Topaz” is a little unusual for a Hitchcock work as it doesn’t feature a big Hollywood name, and it wasn’t particularly well received at the box office.

46. Kia subcompact : RIO
Kia have making the subcompact model called a Rio since 2000.

52. Many lab rats : ALBINOS
An “albino” is an organism lacking normal pigmentation. The term comes from “albus”, Latin for “white”.

53. ___ Moss (women’s clothing label) : ELLA
Ella Moss is a fashion brand. The brand isn’t the name of a real person, but was the creation of designer Pamella Protzel.

54. Sam of “Jurassic Park” : NEILL
Sam Neill is a very talented actor from New Zealand. I really enjoyed Neill in a 1983 television miniseries called “Reilly, Ace of Spies”, about a British spy operation during WWI. He is perhaps better-known for his roles in the movies “Omen III”, “Dead Calm”, “Jurassic Park” and “The Hunt for Red October”.

“Jurassic Park” is a 1990 novel by Michael Crichton that was adapted into a hugely successful movie by Steven Spielberg in 1993. One of the main premises of the novel is that dinosaur DNA could be harvested from mosquitoes trapped in amber (fossilized tree resin), the DNA coming from the dinosaur blood consumed by the mosquitoes. The dinosaur DNA is then sequenced and used to create clones of the original beasts. A clever idea, but apparently not very practical from what I’ve read …

61. That tropical entry could not have captured first place in the fruit competition, palindromically : NO WAY A PAPAYA WON
The papaya is the fruit of the Carica papaya, a large tree-like plant that is native to southern Mexico and Central America. One traditional use of papaya is as a meat tenderizer. The fruit and sap contain the enzyme papain that breaks down meat fibers. Papain is used today as a component of powdered meat tenderizers.

64. Dash : ELAN
Our word “élan” was imported from French, in which language the word has a similar meaning to ours, i.e “style” or “flair”.

65. Cause of some cries from the crib : COLIC
Baby colic is a condition in which a baby cries for no apparent reason for extended periods. At least one study has shown that breastfed babies are about half as likely to suffer from colic.

66. Advanced high school class, informally : CALC
The Latin word “calculus” was originally used for a reckoning or an account, and originally applied to a pebble that was used to maintain a count. The Latin word came from the Greek for a pebble, “khalix”.

67. Monopoly expense : RENT
The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman called Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

69. Stevenson villain : HYDE
Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was first published in 1886. There are many tales surrounding the writing of the story including one that the author wrote the basic tale in just three to six days, and spent a few weeks simply refining it. Allegedly, Stevenson’s use of cocaine stimulated his creative juices during those few days of writing.

Down
1. Ferrara who directed “Bad Lieutenant,” 1992 : ABEL
Abel Ferrara is a screenwriter and film director noted for his work on independent movies. Ferrara’s best-known film is probably the 1990 crime drama “King of New York” starring Christopher Walken.

2. San ___ (resort locale) : REMO
The Italian city of San Remo sits on the Mediterranean, right on the border with France. In Italian the city is named Sanremo, just one word, although the spelling of “San Remo” dates back to ancient times.

3. Got together for a party? : CAUCUSED
A “caucus” is a meeting of supporters of a particular political group. It is believed that the term was first used in the original North American colonies.

4. ___ Baiul, 1994 Winter Olympics figure skating gold medalist : OKSANA
Oksana Baiul is a Ukrainian figure skater, the 1994 Olympic champion. Baiul had a rough start to her life as her father deserted her and her mother when she was just two years old, and then her mother died when she was thirteen. Her grandparents had died earlier so she was left as an orphan, sleeping on a cot in her hometown ice rink.

5. Rx overseer : FDA
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approves drugs for specific conditions. It is quite legal for a healthcare professional to prescribe an approved medication for a use that is different to the FDA-approved indication. This usage of the drug is described as “off-label”.

There seems to some uncertainty about the origin of the symbol “Rx” that’s used for a medical prescription. One explanation is that it comes from the astrological sign for Jupiter, a symbol put on prescriptions in days of old to invoke Jupiter’s blessing to help a patient recover.

6. Henry Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament,” e.g. : ARIA
“Dido’s Lament” is an aria from Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas”.

The opera “Dido and Aeneas” was written by English Baroque composer Henry Purcell. The story was taken from Virgil’s epic poem “Aeneid” and tells of the love affair between Dido, the Queen of Carthage, and Aeneas, the Trojan hero.

8. Help for one with serious allergies : EPIPEN
EpiPen is a brand name of epinephrine auto-injector. An EpiPen delivers a measured dose of epinephrine, usually for the treatment of an allergic reaction.

13. Time out? : SIESTA
We use the word “siesta” to describe a short nap in the early afternoon, taking the word from the Spanish. In turn, the Spanish word is derived from the Latin “hora sexta” meaning “the sixth hour”. The idea is that the nap is taken at “the sixth hour” after dawn.

26. 1960s western starring Clint Eastwood : RAWHIDE
The actor and director Clint Eastwood is a native of San Francisco, California. As many of us perhaps remember, Eastwood’s big break was playing the supporting role of Rowdy Yates in the TV show “Rawhide” in the late fifties and early sixties. He then became the face of the spaghetti western genre of movie in the sixties, most notably in the classic “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. In later years Eastwood has branched out into directing and producing with remarkable success. And of course in the late eighties he also served as mayor of his hometown, Carmel-by-the-Sea.

27. Tree with “helicopter seeds” : ASH
“Helicopter seed” and “whirlybird” are familiar names given to a type of fruit more correctly called a samara. A samara has a flattened wing or wings made of papery tissue from the ovary wall. These wings enable the wind to carry the seed farther from the parent tree. Samaras are produced by several species of tree and shrub, including elm and ash trees.

28. Spot of ___ : TEA
I guess the reference here is to the oft quoted English phrase “a spot of tea”. Mind you, I’ve only ever heard that said in jest …

29. Long in Hollywood : NIA
Nia Long is an American actress, probably best known for playing Will Smith’s sometime girlfriend and fiancee Lisa Wilkes on the TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”.

30. Jesse who lost the governor’s race to Ronald Reagan in 1970 : UNRUH
Jesse M. Unruh was a Democratic politician who stepped down as Speaker of the California State Assembly in order to campaign for the state’s governorship. Famously, Unruh lost that race to the incumbent, Governor Ronald Reagan.

39. Where some long runs take place : BROADWAY
The reference here is to long runs of show on Broadway, New York City’s theater district.

41. One who has trouble passing the bar? : SOT
Our word “sot” comes from the Old English “sott”, meaning “fool”. The word “sot” started to be associated with alcohol and not just foolery in the late 1500s.

47. Worker with hides : TANNER
Leather is of course made from animal skins. When the flesh, fat and hair is removed from the skin and it is dried, the resulting product is called “rawhide”. Further treatment of the skin with chemicals that permanently alter the protein structure of the skin is called “tanning”, and the resulting product is “leather”.

49. Luke’s Jedi mentor : OBI-WAN
Obi-Wan Kenobi is one of the more beloved of the “Star Wars” characters. Kenobi was portrayed by two fabulous actors in the series of films. As a young man he is played by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor, and as an older man he is played by Alec Guinness.

50. 14-legged crustacean : ISOPOD
Isopods are small crustaceans (meaning they have exoskeletons), with seven pairs of legs. Examples would be woodlice and pill bugs. The name “isopod” comes from the Greek “iso” (same) and “pod” (foot). All isopods have seven pairs of jointed limbs.

56. “The Persistence of Memory” artist : DALI
“The Persistence of Memory” is probably Salvador Dalí’s most famous work, featuring the celebrated “melting clocks”. And you can see it in the MoMA in New York City.

62. Home Depot competitor : ACE
The Ace Hardware chain of stores was founded in 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. The name “Ace” was chosen after “ace” fighter pilots from World War I.

The Home Depot is the largest home improvement retail chain in the US, ahead of Lowe’s. Home Depot opened their first two stores in 1979. The average store size if just over 100,000 square feet. The largest Home Depot outlet is in Union, New Jersey, and it is 225,000 square feet in size. That’s a lot of nuts and bolts …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Music direction meaning “with the bow” : ARCO
5. What a physiognomist studies : FACES
10. Some servers : IBMS
14. Cardinal feature : BEAK
15. Window treatment : DRAPE
16. “Star Trek: T.N.G.” crew member : TROI
17. “Supposedly, some Australian birds can participate in the America’s Cup,” palindromically : EMUS SAIL, I ASSUME
20. What all politics is said to be : LOCAL
21. One turned on by a rock star? : AMP
22. Can’t take : HATES
23. One for the money? : UNUM
25. Tending to wear away : ERODENT
27. Peter the Great, Mother Teresa and Bob Marley, palindromically : A TSAR, A NUN, A RASTA
31. Go with : SEE
32. Superficially injure : SKIN
33. Word with bar or blanket : WET
34. The last of the Pillars of Islam : HADJ
36. Last word in the Gettysburg Address : EARTH
38. Goes back : EBBS
42. Silence fillers : UMS
44. “Topaz” novelist, 1967 : URIS
46. Kia subcompact : RIO
47. “My concealment of that footwear was so unfortunate,” palindromically : TOO BAD I HID A BOOT
52. Many lab rats : ALBINOS
53. ___ Moss (women’s clothing label) : ELLA
54. Sam of “Jurassic Park” : NEILL
55. Praise that’s not prose : ODE
58. Resulted in : LED TO
61. That tropical entry could not have captured first place in the fruit competition, palindromically : NO WAY A PAPAYA WON
64. Dash : ELAN
65. Cause of some cries from the crib : COLIC
66. Advanced high school class, informally : CALC
67. Monopoly expense : RENT
68. Official pronouncement : EDICT
69. Stevenson villain : HYDE

Down
1. Ferrara who directed “Bad Lieutenant,” 1992 : ABEL
2. San ___ (resort locale) : REMO
3. Got together for a party? : CAUCUSED
4. ___ Baiul, 1994 Winter Olympics figure skating gold medalist : OKSANA
5. Rx overseer : FDA
6. Henry Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament,” e.g. : ARIA
7. Composed : CALM
8. Help for one with serious allergies : EPIPEN
9. Host : SEA
10. “We’re on!” : IT’S A DATE!
11. Savages : BRUTES
12. Second cousin? : MOMENT
13. Time out? : SIESTA
18. Offensive words : SLURS
19. Strengthen, with “up” : SHORE
24. Gets by : MAKES DO
26. 1960s western starring Clint Eastwood : RAWHIDE
27. Tree with “helicopter seeds” : ASH
28. Spot of ___ : TEA
29. Long in Hollywood : NIA
30. Jesse who lost the governor’s race to Ronald Reagan in 1970 : UNRUH
35. Ecstatic : JUBILANT
37. Prefix with cycle : TRI-
39. Where some long runs take place : BROADWAY
40. Science class, informally : BIO
41. One who has trouble passing the bar? : SOT
43. Virile : MANLY
45. Venture (forth) : SALLY
47. Worker with hides : TANNER
48. World Cup chant : OLE OLE!
49. Luke’s Jedi mentor : OBI-WAN
50. 14-legged crustacean : ISOPOD
51. Turn white, maybe : BLEACH
56. “The Persistence of Memory” artist : DALI
57. It’s a long story : EPIC
59. Related : TOLD
60. Never to be repeated : ONCE
62. Home Depot competitor : ACE
63. Pretense : ACT

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