0808-18 NY Times Crossword 8 Aug 18, Wednesday

Bill’s time: 7m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11. System for the deaf, for short : ASL

It’s really quite unfortunate that American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) are very different, and someone who has learned to sign in one cannot understand someone signing in the other.

14. Heat setting : MIAMI

The Miami Heat basketball team debuted in the NBA in the 1988-89 season. The franchise name was chosen in a competitive survey, with “Miami Heat” beating out “Miami Vice”.

15. Maytag alternative : AMANA

The Amana Corporation takes its name from the location of its original headquarters, in Middle Amana, Iowa. Today, the Amana name is very much associated with household appliances. The company was founded in 1934 to manufacture commercial walk-in coolers.

The Maytag Washing Machine Company was founded in 1893 by Frederick Maytag, in Newton, Iowa. Over time, the company developed a reputation for reliability, and did a great job marketing the concept. One move they made was to change the address of the corporate headquarters in Newton to “One Dependability Square”. The Maytag repairman in the famous advertising campaign was known as “Ol’ Lonely”, the guy who was never called out because Maytag washers and dryers never broke down. Whirlpool bought Maytag in 2006 and basically shut down all Maytag operations, and now just put the Maytag label on Whirlpool appliances.

16. Teammate of Babe on the 1920s Yankees : LOU

The New York Yankees baseball team of the late twenties had a particularly successful core group of batters. That line-up was nicknamed “Murderers’ Row”. The most famous “Murderers’ Row” played with the 1927 Yankees, and was made up of:

• Earle Combs
• Mark Koenig
• Babe Ruth
• Lou Gehrig
• Bob Meusel
• Tony Lazzeri

17. Word with Peace or press : CORPS

The Peace Corps is an organization of American volunteers that is run by the US government. The Peace Corps was established by President Kennedy in 1961, and has a three-part mission:

1. Providing technical assistance
2. Helping people outside the US to understand American culture
Helping Americans to understand the culture of other countries

18. *Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan : LIGHT BULB

Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb as such. What he came up with was a long-lasting bulb, one that enable the development of electric lighting as a viable alternative to gas- and oil-based illumination. Key to Edison’s success was the use of a carbon filament.

Joseph Swan was a scientist and inventor from England. Swan owes his fame to the development of a successful incandescent light bulb, around the same time that Thomas Edison was patenting his famous bulb design. Swan’s own house, n the northeast of England, was the first in the world to be fitted out with working light bulbs. Swan patented his bulb design in England in 1879, the same year that Edison was awarded his patent in the US.

20. Like margarita glasses : SALTED

No one seems to know for sure who first created the cocktail known as a margarita. The most plausible and oft-quoted is that it was invented in 1941 in Ensenada, Mexico. The barman mixed the drink for an important visitor, the daughter of the German ambassador. The daughter’s name was Margarita Henkel, and she lent her name to the new drink. The basic recipe for a margarita is a mixture of tequila, orange-flavored liqueur (like Cointreau) and lime juice.

23. *Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton : CALCULUS

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”.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a mathematician and philosopher from Leipsig in modern-day Germany. Leibniz is best remembered today for coming up with the basic concepts behind differential and integral calculus around the same time that Isaac Newton was introducing calculus to the world. Indeed, it was Leibniz’s notation that gave us the symbols dx and dy that are still used in calculus by today’s mathematicians.

English polymath Sir Isaac Newton was responsible for so many discoveries in science and philosophy, and is regarded as key to the scientific revolution that led to the birth of what we now call “modern science”. While most of Newton’s discoveries were undisputed, his introduction of the mathematical discipline of calculus was challenged by German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. It seems that Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus simultaneously, but each claimed that other stile his work. That dispute persisted well past the death of both parties.

33. *Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev and Julius Lothar Meyer : PERIODIC TABLE

Dmitri Mendeleev was a Russian chemist. When Mendeleev classified elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns and was able to group elements into his famous 1869 Periodic Table. So powerful was his table that he actually predicted the properties of some elements that had not even been discovered in 1869. Element number 101 is mendelevium and was named after Mendeleev.

Julius Lothar Meyer was a German chemist. Meyer is best known for his work classifying elements in a periodic table. Meyer’s first table predated the periodic table that we use today (developed by Dmitri Mendeleev), but that early table focused on differences in atomic weights, as opposed to atomic numbers. Regardless, but Meyer and Mendeleev were awarded the Davy Medal from the Royal Society in 1882 for their work on the Periodic Law.

40. Countenance : MIEN

One’s mien is one’s bearing or manner. “Mien” shares the same etymological root as our word “demeanor”.

41. Radames’s love, in opera : AIDA

“Aida” is a famous opera by Giuseppe Verdi that is based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Mariette also designed the costumes and stages for the opening performance. The opera was first staged in 1871 in an opera house in Cairo. In the storyline, Aida is an Ethiopian princess brought into Egypt as a slave. Radames is an Egyptian commander who falls in love with her, and then complications arise!

43. Camden Yards athlete : ORIOLE

Oriole Park is home to the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. The full name of the stadium is Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

50. *Leo Szilard and Joseph Rotblat : ATOM BOMB

Leo Szilard was a Hungarian physicist who also worked in Germany, the UK and the US. It was Szilard who composed the famous letter signed by Albert Einstein that was sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 1939 letter warned about the possibility of Germany developing an atomic bomb, and strongly suggested that the US should start its own nuclear program.

Joseph Rotblat was a Polish-British physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during WWII. Prior to his assignment in the US, Rotblat worked on the British program to develop an atomic bomb, a program with the code name “Tube Alloys”.

54. *Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray : TELEPHONE

Alexander Graham Bell was an inventor and scientist from Edinburgh, Scotland who later lived in Canada and the US. Both his wife and his mother were deaf, a fact that led to Bell spending much of life researching hearing and speech. Bell’s work on hearing devices led to the invention of the telephone. Paradoxically, Bell hated the telephone and refused to have one in the study of his home where he worked. I am with him on this one, as I hate the phone …

Elisha Gray was an electrical engineer who is best remembered for developing a prototype telephone. Some have argued that Gray’s telephone design predated those of Alexander Graham Bell, and indeed that Bell stole elements of Gray’s work. However, Bell’s patents withstood several legal challenges. Gray went on to co-found Western Electric, the company that served as the primary supplier of equipment to AT&T for over a century.

62. Emulates a Disney princess : SINGS

As of 2016, there are 11 “official” Disney princesses:

1. Princess Snow White (from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”)
2. Princess Cinderella (from “Cinderella”)
3. Princess Aurora (from “Sleeping Beauty)
4. Princess Ariel (from “The Little Mermaid”)
5. Princess Belle (from “Beauty and the Beast”)
6. Princess Jasmine (from “Aladdin”)
7. Princess Pocahontas (from “Pocahontas”)
8. Princess Mulan (from “Mulan”)
9. Princess Tiana (from “The Princess and the Frog”)
10. Princess Rapunzel (from “Tangled”)
11. Princess Merida (from “Brave”)

63. Disney princess played in film by Emma Watson : BELLE

Disney’s 2017 romantic fantasy film “Beauty and the Beast” is based on the animated movie the same studio released in 1991. In turn, 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast” was an adaptation of the 18th-century version of the fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête” written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens play the title roles in the 2017 film, with both performances garnering critical acclaim.

Emma Watson is the English actress famous for playing Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series of movies. Watson continued her education while pursuing her acting career and studied at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

65. Notre Dame nooks : APSES

Notre-Dame de Paris is the spectacular Gothic cathedral that sits on the Île de la Cité, one of the islands in the middle on the River Seine in Paris. Notre Dame is home to many beautiful and significant artifacts, the most famous of which is the Crown of Thorns supposedly worn by Jesus Christ at his execution, placed in the cathedral in 1239. It’s also home to some magnificent gargoyles on the roof, and you can climb up to the roof and take a very close look at them.

Down

1. Sierra maker : GMC

The GMC Sierra truck is also sold as the Chevrolet Silverado.

2. Carnival setting, informally : RIO

Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil (after São Paulo). “Rio de Janeiro” translates as “January River”. The name reflects the discovery of the bay on which Rio sits, on New Year’s Day in 1502.

The celebration of carnival comes right before the Lenten period in some Christian traditions. It is thought that carnival perhaps arose from the need to “eat and drink up” any excess food and drink before the beginning of Lent.

3. It’s found behind a temple : EAR

The temporal lobe is one of the four main lobes of the brain, the others being the frontal lobe, parietal lobe and the occipital lobe. The temporal lobes (there is one on each side of the brain) are associated with visual memories, understanding language, and emotions. The “temporal” name comes from the fact that the lobes are located behind the temporal bones, the bones beneath the head’s temples. The temples are named from the Latin “tempus” meaning “time”. The idea is that a person’s age shows with greying of the hair at the temples.

8. Dungeons & Dragons figure : MAGE

“Mage” is an archaic word meaning “magician”.

Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a complex role-playing game (RPG) introduced in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules Incorporated (TSR). Dungeons & Dragons was probably the first of the modern role-playing games to be developed, and the most successful. It is still played by lots of people today, including my youngest son …

26. The Goddess of Pop : CHER

“Cher” is the stage name used by Cherilyn Sarkisian. Formerly one half of husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher, she is often referred to as the Goddess of Pop. In her acting career, Cher was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar of 1984 for her performance in “Silkwood”. She went further in 1988 and won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Loretta Castorini in “Moonstruck”.

32. Eating the forbidden fruit, e.g. : SIN

In the Christian tradition, the “fall of man” took place in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This went against the bidding of God, and was at the urging of the serpent. As a result, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden to prevent them becoming immortal by eating from the tree of life. The first humans had transitioned from a state of innocent obedience to a state of guilty disobedience.

35. Nigeria’s biggest export : OIL

Nigeria is in West Africa, and it takes its name from the Niger River which flows through the country. Nigeria is the most populous country on the continent, with over 180 million inhabitants. It is also the most populous member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

36. When repeated, one of the Ramones : DEE

The Ramones were an American punk rock band. The group formed in Forest Hills, New York in the mid-seventies. The band members took on the stage names Dee Dee, Joey, and Johnny Ramone, even though they were not related. Arguably, the Ramones were the first punk rock group, defining the genre. Something else that’s not my cup of tea …

42. L.A.P.D. alert : APB

An All Points Bulletin (APB) is a broadcast from one US law enforcement agency to another.

43. “C’est la vie” : OH WELL

“C’est la vie” is French for “that’s life”.

44. Venetian marketplace : RIALTO

The Rialto is the financial and commercial center of Venice, and has been so for centuries. One of the most famous features of the area is the Rialto Bridge that spans the Grand Canal.

47. Director Browning of the original “Dracula” : TOD

Tod Browning was a Hollywood actor and director whose career spanned the silent and talkie eras. Browning is best remembered as the director of 1931’s “Dracula”, starring Bela Lugosi in the title role, and for his silent film work with Lon Chaney.

48. Blob on a slide : AMOEBA

An ameba (or “amoeba”, as we spell it back in Ireland) is a single-celled microorganism. The name comes from the Greek “amoibe”, meaning change. The name is quite apt, as the cell changes shape readily as the ameba moves, eats and reproduces.

Microscope slides are thin pieces of glass on which are mounted samples for examination. Often a “cover slip”, a smaller and thinner sheet of glass, is placed on top of the sample. Originally called “sliders”, such specimens would “slide” into the gap between the stage and the objective lens on a microscope.

52. Congressional vote wrangler : WHIP

In the world of politics, the party whip is the “heavy”, the person whose job it is to ensure that party members vote according to party policy. “Whip” comes from “whipping in”, a term used in hunting. Any hounds tending to stray from the pack were “whipped in” to prevent them wandering off. “Whipping in” hounds sounds so cruel. “Whipping in” politicians, maybe not so much …

55. “Don’t drink and drive” ad, e.g. : PSA

Public service announcement (PSA)

57. Actor Gibson : MEL

Mel Gibson is an actor who was born in America, and not in Australia as many believe. Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York and moved with his family to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old.

58. Who said “Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up” : ALI

The boxer Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam in 1964. Who can forget Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame for the 1996 games in Atlanta?