0722-21 NY Times Crossword 22 Jul 21, Thursday

Bill’s time: 10m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14 “I kissed thee ___ I kill’d thee”: “Othello” : ERE

“I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.” is a line from Shakespeare’s “Othello”. The words are spoken by Othello as he kisses his wife Desdemona whom he has just strangled, and then takes his own life in repentance.

15 T, as in tests : TRUE

An answer (ans.) might be true (T) or false (F).

17 Ones sporting man buns and ironic T-shirts, say : HIPSTERS

Back in the early 40s, hipsters were just folks who were “hip”.

The slang term “hep” meaning “cool” has the same meaning as the later derivative term “hip”. The origins of “hep” seem unclear, but it was adopted by jazz musicians of the early 1900s.

20 Closest living relatives of whales : HIPPOPOTAMUSES

The name “hippopotamus” comes from the Greek for “river horse”. Hippos are the third-largest land mammals, after elephants and rhinos. The closest living relatives to hippos don’t even live on land. They are the whales and porpoises of the oceans.

22 Land of plenty? : ASIA

Most of the world’s population lives in Asia (60%), and Asia is the largest continent in terms of landmass (30% of the world). Asia also has the highest population density (246 people per square mile), and the most populous city on the continent is Shanghai, China.

23 Strikebreakers : SCABS

We first started calling strikebreakers scabs in the early 1800s, and before that a scab was a person who refused to join a trade union (back as early 1777). The word “scab” probably comes from the use of “scab” as a symptom of a skin disease, and so is a term that is meant to insult.

34 Finely ground quartz : SILEX

Silex is a ground stone, nowadays usually limited to finely ground and pure silica. Silex has proved to be very useful over the ages, for example being used as a road surface in Ancient Rome.

35 They enforce discipline among legislators : PARTY WHIPS

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 …

40 Gusto : ZEST

“Gusto” is an Italian word meaning “taste”. We use it in English in the phrase “with gusto” meaning “with great enjoyment”.

44 Like park ranger’s pants, often : KHAKI

“Khaki” is an Urdu word that translates literally as “dusty”. The word was adopted for its current use as the name of a fabric by the British cavalry in India in the mid-1800s.

46 ___ Ziff, Marge’s ex-boyfriend on “The Simpsons” : ARTIE

On the animated television show “The Simpsons”, there is a recurring character named Artie Ziff. Artie is an Internet entrepreneur who is infatuated with his former classmate Marge Simpson. Ziff is voiced by comic actor Jon Lovitz.

47 Kind of gland : ADRENAL

The naturally occurring hormone adrenaline is also known as epinephrine. Adrenaline takes its name from the adrenal glands that produce the hormone. The glands themselves take their name from their location in the body, right on the kidneys (“ad-renes” meaning “near or at the kidneys” in Latin). The alternative name of epinephrine has a similar root (“epi-nephros” meaning “upon the kidney” in Greek).

49 Three sheets to the wind : SMASHED

A sheet is the rope that is used to control a sail on a sailing vessel. The expression “three sheets to the wind” meaning “drunk” dates back to the early 1800s. It likely derives from the notion that a sailboat with three sails, and with all three sheets slipped out of control, would behave like someone who was drunk, and vice versa.

54 Bob of “Full House” : SAGET

Bob Saget is a real enigma to me. Saget made a name for himself playing very sugary roles in TV shows like “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, and yet in the world of stand-up comedy he is known for very blue and raunchy routines.

“Full House” is a sitcom that originally aired from the late eighties through the mid-nineties. It’s all about two men helping a third man raise his three young daughters after his wife is killed by a drunk driver. Bob Saget plays the widowed father, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen play the youngest daughter. A sequel titled “Fuller House” started airing on Netflix in 2016.

56 Common bit of golf attire : POLO

René Lacoste was a French tennis player who went into the clothing business, and came up with a more comfortable shirt that players could use. This became known as a “tennis shirt”. When it was adopted for use in the sport of polo, the shirts also became known as “polo shirts”. The “golf shirt” is basically the same thing.

65 Maker of Brownie Brick Road ice cream : EDY’S

Dreyer’s ice cream sells its products under the name Dreyer’s in the Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states. The company’s founders were William Dreyer and Joseph Edy.

66 4 x 4 : UTE

A utility vehicle is often called a “ute” for short. Nowadays one mainly hears about sport-utes and crossover-utes.

67 Meetings for two : TRYSTS

In the most general sense, a tryst is a meeting at an agreed time and place. More usually we consider a tryst to be a pre-arranged meeting between lovers. The term comes from the Old French “triste”, a waiting place designated when hunting. Further, a tryst taking place at lunchtime is sometimes referred to as a nooner.

68 Muscle targeted by military presses, in brief : DELT

The deltoid “muscle” is actually a group of muscles, the ones that cover the shoulder and create the roundness under the skin. The deltoids (delts) are triangular in shape resembling the Greek letter delta, hence the name.

Down

4 ___ the Autopilot, inflatable balloon character in “Airplane!” : OTTO

The 1980 movie “Airplane!” has to be one of the zaniest comedies ever made. The lead roles were Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) and Elaine Dickinson (played by Julie Hagerty). But it was Leslie Nielsen who stole the show, playing Dr. Barry Rumack. That’s my own humble opinion of course …

6 Symbol that Mac users get by pressing Option + Shift + 2 : EURO

The euro sign (€) looks like a letter C, but with two horizontal lines drawn across the middle. Inspiration for the design comes from the Greek letter epsilon.

8 Home to Planck, Einstein and Heisenberg when they won their Nobel Prizes : WEIMAR

At the end of WWI, the imperial government of Germany was overthrown in the German Revolution of November 1918. Just under a year later, a new constitution was adopted by a national assembly in the city of Weimar. The resulting Weimar Republic lasted until German democracy collapsed in the early 1930s and the Nazi Party came to power.

9 Nightmare personified : INCUBUS

In folklore, a succubus is a female demon that takes on the form of an attractive female in order to seduce unwitting men. The succubus draws energy from the seduced men in order to survive, using sexual intercourse in the same way that a vampire might suck blood for the same purpose. The word succubus derives from the Latin “succubare”, itself from “sub” “cubare” meaning “to lie under”. There is a male equivalent to a succubus, namely an incubus.

10 Petite, for one : DRESS SIZE

“Petite” is the French word for “small”, when applied to a feminine noun.

12 Freudian topics : EGOS

Sigmund Freud created a structural model of the human psyche, breaking it into three parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is that part of the psyche containing the basic instinctual drives. The ego seeks to please the id by causing realistic behavior that benefits the individual. The superego almost has a parental role, contradicting the id by introducing critical thinking and morals to behavioral choices.

13 State since 1845: Abbr. : TEX

The first European flag to fly over the area that we now call Texas was the flag of Spain. The French had a colony there as well, albeit for a short length of time. Mexico controlled the territory for a long time, until Texas became independent in 1836. Texas joined the Union in 1845 (as the 28th state). During the Civil War Texas sided with the Confederate States of America, and then after the war, the Stars and Stripes flew again. That does make “Six Flags over Texas”.

29 Smart ___ : ALEC

Apparently, the original “smart Alec” (sometimes “Aleck”) was one Alec Hoag, a pimp, thief and confidence trickster who plied his trade in New York City in the 1840s.

35 Rodentlike relative of a rabbit : PIKA

A pika is a small mammal with no external tail that lives in many parts of the world. The pika is prone to emitting a high-pitched alarm call as it dives for cover into its burrow, which behavior led to it being nicknamed the “whistling hare”. Taxonomically, the pika does indeed belong to the same order as rabbits and hares.

36 Condition that fidget tools can help with, for short : ADHD

The “official” name for the condition we sometimes still refer to as “attention deficit disorder” (ADD) is “attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD).

43 Stephen of “The Crying Game” : REA

Stephen Rea is an Irish actor from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Rea’s most successful role was Fergus in 1992’s “The Crying Game”, for which performance he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. In “The Crying Game”, Fergus was a member of the IRA. In real life, Rea was married to IRA bomber and hunger striker Dolours Price at the time he made the movie.

“The Crying Game” is a fascinating film that made quite a splash when it was released in 1992. Although it was set in Ireland and the UK, it didn’t do well in cinemas in either country yet made a lot of money over here in the US. I think the politics of the movie were a bit raw for Irish and UK audiences back then. It’s an unusual plot, blending Irish political issues with some raw sexuality questions. I won’t tell you about the “surprise scene”, just in case you haven’t seen it and want to do so.

45 Most asinine : INANEST

Our word “inane” meaning “silly, lacking substance” comes from the Latin “inanitis” meaning “empty space”.

The adjective “asinine” means “stupid, obstinate”, and comes from the Latin for “like an ass”.

52 Upper echelon : ELITE

We use the word “echelon” (ech.) to describe a rank or level, particularly in the military. The term comes from French, in which language it has the same meaning, although the original meaning in Old French is “rung of a ladder”.

60 Texter’s farewell : TTYL

Talk to you later (ttyl)

62 E.P.A.-banned pesticide : DDT

DDT is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (don’t forget now!). DDT was used with great success to control disease-carrying insects during WWII, and when made available for use after the war it became by far the most popular pesticide. And then Rachel Carson published her famous book “Silent Spring”, suggesting there was a link between DDT and diminishing populations of certain wildlife. It was the public outcry sparked by the book, and reports of links between DDT and cancer, that led to the ban on the use of the chemical in 1972. That ban is touted as the main reason that the bald eagle was rescued from near extinction.