1229-18 NY Times Crossword 29 Dec 18, Saturday

Bill’s time: 10m 20s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

16. Beam at? : LASE

The term “laser” is an acronym standing for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. It has been pointed out that a more precise name for laser technology is “light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation”, but the resulting acronym isn’t quite so appealing, namely “loser”.

10. 4.93 milliliters: Abbr. : TSP

Teaspoon (tsp.)

15. Two stars, maybe : ITEM

An unmarried couple known to be involved with each other might appear in the gossip columns. This appearance as “an item” in the papers, led to the use of “item” to refer to such a couple, but only since the very early seventies.

19. Mortgage agcy. : FHA

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was set up in 1934 to insure loans made lenders for the building and purchase of homes. The FHA was created in response to the bank failures of the Great Depression, with the intent of creating a more favorable environment for lending.

22. Rejection of a monotheist : GODS

A polytheist is a person who believes in many deities, with the opposite being a monotheist, someone who believes in one god. The ancient Greeks and Romans were polytheists.

23. Take a dive : PLUMMET

To plummet is to plunge downwards. The verb comes from the noun “plummet”, which is an alternative name for a plumb bob. A plumb bob is a weight that is suspended from a string so as to provide a vertical reference line.

25. With all one’s might : AMAIN

“Amain” is an old term meaning “at great speed” or “of great strength”.

30. “Balderdash!” : POPPYCOCK!

It is thought that the relatively gentle term “poppycock”, meaning “nonsense”, comes from a Dutch word for “dung” combined with a Latin word for “excrete”. Not so gentle after all …

“Balderdash” means “senseless jumble of words”. The original balderdash (back before the late 1600s) was a jumbled mix of liquids like maybe beer and wine, or even beer and milk!

34. Palindromic file extension : EXE

In the Windows operating system, a file with the extension .exe is an “executable” file.

35. Oil source : SHALE

Shale oil can be extracted from oil shale (!), although the extraction process is more expensive than that used to produce crude oil.

36. College division : TRIMESTER

“Semester” is a German word from the Latin “semestris”, an adjective meaning “of six months”. We use the term in a system that divides an academic year into two roughly equal parts. A trimester-system has three parts, and a quarter-system has four.

39. Like ogres : FEARED

An ogre is a monster of mythology and folktales that has the appearance of a man, and which eats human beings. The term “ogre” comes to us via French from the name of the Etruscan god Orcus, who feasted on the flesh of humans.

45. Highland bodies : LOCHS

“Loch” is the Scottish Gaelic word for “lake”. The Irish Gaelic word is “lough”, and the Welsh word is “llyn”.

The Scottish Highlands are that part of the country not classified as the Lowlands(!). The Highlands make up the north and west of Scotland.

51. “Essays of ___” : ELIA

The “Essays of Elia” began appearing in “London Magazine” in 1820, and were immediate hits with the public. The author was Charles Lamb, and “Elia” was actually a clerk with whom Lamb worked. The most famous of the essays in the collection are probably “Dream-Children” and “Old China”.

54. John, abroad : EVAN

The name “John” translates into Scottish as “Ian”, into Russian as “Ivan”, into Italian as “Giovanni”, into Spanish as “Juan”, into Welsh as “Evan”, and into Irish as “Seán”.

57. Saves, e.g. : STAT

That would be baseball.

58. Snack usually eaten outdoors : S’MORE

S’mores are treats peculiar to North America that are usually eaten around a campfire. A s’more consists of a roasted marshmallow and a layer of chocolate sandwiched between two graham crackers. The earliest written reference to the recipe is in a 1927 publication called “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts”. Girl Scouts always did corner the market on cookies and the like!

Down

1. Exclamation from a weary employee : TGIF

“Thank God It’s Friday” (TGIF) is a relatively new expression that apparently originated in Akron, Ohio. It was a catchphrase used first by disk jockey Jerry Healy of WAKR in the early seventies. That said, one blog reader wrote me to say that he had been using the phrase in the fifties.

2. “Poison, I see, ___ been his timeless end”: Shak. : HATH

“Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.” is a line from William Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”.

William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” doesn’t end well for the title characters. Juliet takes a potion as a ruse to fool her parents, to trick them into thinking she is dead. The potion puts her in a death-like coma for 24 hours, after which Juliet plans to awaken and run off with Romeo. Juliet’s sends a message to Romeo apprising him of the plan, but the message fails to arrive. Romeo hears of Juliet’s “death”, and grief-stricken he takes his own life by drinking poison. Juliet awakens from the coma, only to find her lover dead beside her. She picks up a dagger and commits suicide. And nobody lives happily ever after …

3. Celestial animal : URSA

The constellation Ursa Major (Latin for “Larger Bear”) is often just called “the Big Dipper” because of its resemblance to a ladle or dipper. Ursa Major also resembles a plow, and that’s what we usually call the same constellation back in Ireland, “the Plough”.

4. Deg. from Kellogg : MBA

The business school at Northwestern University is called the John L. Kellogg School of Management. John L. Kellogg was the son of Will Keith Kellogg of breakfast cereal fame, and John’s foundation made a generous donation in 1979, hence the current name for the business school.

6. Some kick-around wear : LEVIS

Levi Strauss was the founder of the first company in the world to manufacture blue jeans. Levi Strauss & Co. opened in 1853 in San Francisco. Strauss and his business partner were awarded a patent in 1873 for the use of copper rivets to strengthen points of strain on working pants.

12. Subject of the 2018 biography “The Shadow President” : PENCE

Mike Pence served as the 50th Governor of Indiana from 2013 until 2017, when he became the 48th Vice President of the US, in the Trump administration. Famously, Vice President Pence has described himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order”, although he grew up in an Irish Catholic Democrat family.

21. Pair that clicked in film : RUBY SLIPPERS

Judy Garland wore ruby slippers in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”. However, in the original novel by L. Frank Baum, Dorothy wore “Silver Shoes”.

24. ___-eared : LOP

A creature that is lop-eared has bent or drooping ears, like a rabbit or many breeds of dog.

26. California’s ___ Woods National Monument : MUIR

Muir Woods is a National Monument located not too far from here, just north of San Francisco. It is home to enormous old growth Coast Redwood trees. The land was declared a National Monument in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt. The name “Muir Woods” was chosen in honor of the naturalist John Muir.

30. Dwindles : PETERS OUT

The verb phrase “to peter out”, meaning “to fizzle out”, originated in the 1840s in the American mining industry. While the exact etymology isn’t clear, it probably derives from the term “saltpetre”, a constituent of gunpowder.

37. Spec for some bargain tix : SRO

Standing room only (SRO)

41. Direction of a ship : ALEE

Alee is the direction away from the wind. If a sailor points into the wind, he or she is pointing aweather.

42. Ford acquisition of 1999 and sale of 2010 : VOLVO

Volvo is a Swedish manufacturers of cars, trucks and construction equipment. The Volvo name was chosen as “volvo” is Latin for “I roll”.

43. Ark unit : CUBIT

The ancient unit of length called a cubit was chosen as the length of the forearm. In some cultures a cubit was divided into 7 palms, the width of the hand excluding the thumb.

44. Main dinosaur in Pixar’s “The Good Dinosaur” : ARLO

“The Good Dinosaur” is a Pixar movie that premiered in Paris on November 14th, 2015 under the title “Le Voyage d’Arlo”.

47. Counterpart of the Roman god Sol : LUNA

“Luna” is the Latin word for “moon”, and is the name given to the Roman moon goddess. The Greek equivalent of Luna was Selene. Luna had a temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome but it was destroyed during the Great Fire that raged during the reign of Nero.

48. “Triptych Bleu I, II, III,” e.g. : MIRO

Joan Miró was a Spanish artist. Miro immersed himself in Surrealism, so much so that Andre Breton, the founder of the movement, said that Miro was “the most Surrealist of us all”.

A triptych is a work of art divided into three panels. The word “triptych” comes from the Greek adjective for “three-fold”.

50. One gets shared a lot : MEME

A meme (short for “mineme”) is a cultural practice or idea that is passed on verbally or by repetition from one person to another. The term lends itself very well to the online world where links, emails, files etc. are so easily propagated.

52. Plays at work? : DJS

The world’s first radio disc jockey (DJ) was one Ray Newby of Stockton, California who made his debut broadcast in 1909, would you believe? When he was 16 years old and a student, Newby started to play his records on a primitive radio located in the Herrold College of Engineering and Wireless in San Jose. The records played back then were mostly recordings of Enrico Caruso.

53. Meas. for a steno : WPM

Words per minute (WPM)

Stenography is the process of writing in shorthand. The term comes from the Greek “steno” (narrow) and “graphe” (writing).