0314-22 NY Times Crossword 14 Mar 22, Monday

Constructed by: Stephen Hiltner
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Neighbors in the Neighborhood

Themed answers are famous TV neighbors:

  • 62A Bygone TV host with a famous “neighborhood” : FRED ROGERS
  • 17A Neighbor on “Family Matters” : STEVE URKEL
  • 28A Neighbor on “Full House” : KIMMY GIBBLER
  • 45A Neighbor on “Home Improvement” : WILSON WILSON

Bill’s time: 5m 23s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

10 It springs eternal : HOPE

Alexander Pope wrote the following lines in “An Essay on Man” in 1734:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

14 Replacement for the franc and lira : EURO

The French franc was made up of 100 centimes, before being replaced by the Euro.

The word “lira” is used in a number of countries for currency. “Lira” comes from the Latin for “pound” and is derived from the British pound sterling, the value of a Troy pound of silver. For example, the lira (plural “lire”) was the official currency of Italy before the country changed over to the euro in 2002.

17 Neighbor on “Family Matters” : STEVE URKEL

“Family Matters” was a sitcom that aired in the late eighties and nineties, and was a spinoff of the sitcom “Perfect Strangers”. Famously, the main character in the show was Steve Urkel, played by Jaleel White. Oddly enough, Urkel did not show up at all in the first half of the first season.

20 Summer suit material : LINEN

The textile known as linen is made from flax fibers. The name “linen” probably comes from “linum”, which is Latin for both “flax” and “textile made from flax”.

22 Online personal journals : BLOGS

Many folks who visit this website regard it as just that, a website. That is true, but more specifically it is referred to as a blog, as I make regular posts (actually daily posts) that then occupy the “front page” of the site. The blog entries are in reverse chronological order, and one can just look back day-by-day, reading older and older posts. “Blog” is a contraction of the term “web log”.

23 Santa ___ winds : ANA

The Santa Ana winds are the very dry air currents that sweep offshore late in the year in Southern California. Because these air currents are so dry, they are noted for their influence over forest fires in the area, especially in the heat of the fall. The winds arise from a buildup of air pressure in the Great Basin that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Under the right conditions, that air spills over the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and basically “falls” down the side of the Sierra range, heading for the ocean. As the air falls it becomes drier and heats up so that relative humidity can fall to below 10% by the time it hits the coast.

24 Letter after sigma : TAU

Tau is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, and the letter that gave rise to our Roman “T”. Both the letters tau (T) and chi (X) have long been symbolically associated with the cross.

28 Neighbor on “Full House” : KIMMY GIBBLER

“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.

34 Ones with negative views on humanity : CYNICS

Antisthenes was a Greek philosopher, and a pupil of Socrates. He was one of the founders of the cynicism school of thought, which holds that the purpose of life is to live in virtuous harmony with nature. The name “cynic” comes from the Greek for “dog”, and that name was originally applied to the cynics as an insult.

37 Unit of resistance : OHM

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied, (V=IR) a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

39 ___ 66 (classic highway) : ROUTE

The famous old highway called Route 66 has largely been replaced by modern interstates. It ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, right through the heart of America, and so it was often called the “Main Street of America”. The road gained notoriety because of Nat King Cole’s song “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66”, and also because of the sixties TV show called “Route 66”.

40 Winter hrs. in St. Louis : CST

The city of St. Louis, Missouri was settled by French explorers in 1763. Sitting on the Mississippi River, it grew into a very busy port. By the 1850s, it was the second busiest port in the country, with only New York moving more freight. St. Louis was named for Louis IX of France. Louis was canonized in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII, and was the only French king to be declared a saint.

43 Exclamation from Homer Simpson : D’OH!

“The Simpsons” is one of the most successful programs produced by the Fox Broadcasting Company. Homer Simpson’s catchphrase is “D’oh!”, which became such a famous exclamation that it has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 2001. “D’oh!” can be translated as “I should have thought of that!”

57 Boise’s home: Abbr. : IDA

Boise, Idaho is the capital and the largest metropolitan area in the state by far. There are a number of stories pertaining to the etymology of the name “Boise”. One is that French trappers called the tree-lined river that ran through the area “la rivière boisée”, meaning “the wooded river”.

Idaho has the nickname “Gem State”, mainly because almost every known type of gemstone has been found there. Idaho is also sometimes called the Potato State, as potatoes are such a popular crop in the state. I’d go for the potatoes over the gems, but that’s probably just me. Oh, and Idaho license plates have borne the slogan “Famous Potatoes” for decades …

59 Writer Joyce Carol ___ : OATES

Joyce Carol Oates is a remarkable writer, not just for the quality of her work (her 1969 novel “them” won a National Book Award, for example) but also for how prolific her output is. She published her first book in 1963 and since then has published over fifty novels as well as many other written works.

62 Bygone TV host with a famous “neighborhood” : FRED ROGERS

The “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” TV show starred Fred Rogers. It was the second-longest running series on PBS television, after that other iconic children’s show “Sesame Street”.

66 Shallowest of the Great Lakes : ERIE

Lake Erie is the fourth-largest of the five Great Lakes by area (Lake Ontario is the smallest). The lake takes its name from the Erie tribe of Native Americans that used to live along its southern shore. Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume and the shallowest, something for which nearby residents must be quite grateful. Being relatively shallow, much of Erie freezes over part way through most winters putting an end to most of the lake-effect snow that falls in the snow belt extending from the lake’s edge.

67 A good one is square : MEAL

A square meal is one that is substantial and nourishing. According to some sources, the phrase “square meal” originated with the Royal Navy, and the square wooden plates on which meals were served. However, this centuries-old practice is an unlikely origin as the phrase was first seen in print in the US, in 1856. An advertisement for a restaurant posted in a California newspaper offers a “square meal” to patrons, in the sense of an “honest, straightforward meal”. The “honest” meaning of “square” was well-established at the time, as in “fair and square”, “square play” and “square deal”.

68 Lesser-played half of a 45 : B-SIDE

The first vinyl records designed to play at 33⅓ rpm were introduced by RCA Victor in 1931, but were discontinued due to quality problems. The first long play (LP) 33⅓ rpm disc was introduced by Columbia Records many years later in 1948, with RCA Victor following up with a 45 rpm “single” the following year, in 1949.

Down

1 Car company with a “T” logo : TESLA

Tesla Motors shortened its name to just “Tesla” in early 2017.

4 Hawk’s opposite : DOVE

The dove is a symbol of peace, and the hawk is a symbol of war.

5 Baton Rouge sch. : LSU

LSU’s full name is Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, and is located in Baton Rouge. LSU was founded in 1860 as a military academy, with then-Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman as superintendent.

Baton Rouge is the capital city of the state of Louisiana. The name “Baton Rouge” is French for “red stick” or “red staff”. The exact reason why such a name was given to the city isn’t really clear.

6 Central room of a Roman house : ATRIUM

In modern architecture, an atrium (plural “atria” or “atriums”) is a large open space usually in the center of a building and extending upwards to the roof. The original atrium was an open court in the center of an Ancient Roman house. One could access most of the enclosed rooms of the house from the atrium.

8 20/20, for example : EYESIGHT

I only understand the expression “20/20 vision” in non-technical terms. Apparently someone with 20/20 vision can see just as well as a standard/normal person at 20 feet from an eye chart. Someone with 20/40 vision can see just as well as a standard/normal person at 40 feet. Someone with 20/100 vision can see just as well as a standard/normal person at 100 feet, and so on. Those of you living in Metric Land use the term 6/6, with the standard distance being 6 meters instead of 20 feet.

9 Aging broadband inits. : DSL

The initialism “DSL” originally stood for Digital Subscriber Loop, but is now accepted to mean (Asymmetric) Digital Subscriber Line. It is a technology that allows Internet service to be delivered down the same telephone line as voice service, by separating the two into different frequency signals.

In Internet terms, the word “broadband” is used to describe Internet access that is faster than dialup. In more broad (pun!) telecommunication terms, “broadband” is used to describe “bandwidth” data transmission that is “broad” enough to carry several signals and several different types of traffic at the same time.

10 Web designer’s code : HTML

The initialism “HTML” stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is the language used to write most Internet web pages (including this one).

12 ___-Pong : PING

Ping-Pong is called table tennis in the UK, where the sport originated in the 1880s. Table tennis started as an after-dinner activity among the elite, and was called “wiff-waff”. To play the game, books were stacked in the center of a table as a “net”, two more books served as “”rackets” and the ball used was actually a golf ball. The game evolved over time with the rackets being upgraded to the lids of cigar boxes and the ball becoming a champagne cork (how snooty is that?). Eventually the game was produced commercially, and the sound of the ball hitting the racket was deemed to be a “ping” and a “pong”, giving the sport its alternative name. The name “Ping-Pong” was trademarked in Britain in 1901, and eventually sold to Parker Brothers in the US.

22 Hairstyle akin to a pageboy : BOB

A bob cut is a short hairstyle in which the hair is cut straight around the head, at about the line of the jaw. Back in the 1570s, “bob” was the name given to a horse’s tail that was cut short, and about a century later it was being used to describe short hair on humans. The style became very popular with women in the early 1900s (as worn by actress Clara Bow, for example), with the fashion dying out in the thirties. The style reemerged in the sixties around the time the Beatles introduced their “mop tops”, with Vidal Sassoon leading the way in styling women’s hair in a bob cut again. Personally, I like it …

What we now know as the “pageboy” hairstyle was apparently one introduced and made famous by the fifties fetish model, Betty Page. Women’s magazines dissociated themselves from the connection with Ms. Page and sold the hairstyle to the public as one historically worn by English pageboys, hence the name. A pageboy hairstyle is sort of like a “long bob cut” I guess. But don’t listen to me; I get a “number one all over” at my local barber shop …

25 Mornings, for short : AMS

The 12-hour clock has been around a long time, and was even used in sundial format in ancient Egypt. Our use of AM and PM dates back to Roman times, with AM standing for Ante Meridiem (before noon) and PM standing for Post Meridiem (after noon). However, the Romans originally used the AM concept a little differently, by counting backwards from noon. So, 2AM to the Romans would be two hours before noon, or 10AM as we would call it today.

29 Dinosaur in Super Mario games : YOSHI

Yoshi is a dinosaur-like character in some Nintendo video games. Yoshi first appeared as a sidekick to Mario and Luigi in the 1991 game called “Super Mario World”.

34 Bird that caws : CROW

Ravens and crows are very similar species, and it can be difficult to tell them apart. Ravens are a little larger and often travel in pairs, whereas crows are a little smaller and are usually seen in larger groups. Crows make a cawing sound, while the raven’s call is more like a croak.

35 Cartoon character who’s “smarter than the av-er-age bear” : YOGI

Yogi Bear made his debut for Hanna-Barbera in 1958, on “The Huckleberry Hound Show” before he was given his own series. Do you remember that collar that Yogi wore around his neck? That was a little trick from the animators. By using the collar, for many frames all they had to do was redraw everything from the collar up, saving them lots and lots of time. Yogi and Boo-Boo lived in Jellystone Park, and made Ranger Smith’s life a misery.

40 Some rodeo riders : COWGIRLS

“Rodeo” is a Spanish word that is usually translated into English as “round up”.

41 Something that brings bad luck : HOODOO

Hoodoo is a traditional African-American folk magic and spirituality that has West African, Native American and European roots. Hoodoo is sometimes confused with Voodoo, especially as they both have West African connections. However, the two practices are very different.

44 Psychedelic inits. : LSD

The term “psychedelic” was coined in 1956 by British-born psychiatrist Humphry Osmond. He proposed the term to describe the effects of taking the drugs LSD and mescaline. He suggested that “psychedelic” be defined as “mind-manifesting”, from the Greek “psyche” (mind) and “delos” (manifest).

50 Gestation locations : UTERI

“Uterus” (plural “uteri”) is the Latin word for “womb”.

The normal gestation period for humans is 280 days, a little over 9 months. The gestation period can be a little shorter, or longer. Back in 1945, a pregnancy was confirmed at 375 days, which is just over 12 months.

51 Typographical flourish : SERIF

Serifs are details on the ends of characters in some typefaces. Typefaces without serifs are known as sans-serif, using the French word “sans” meaning “without” and “serif” from the Dutch “schreef” meaning “line”. Some people say that serif fonts are easier to read on paper, whereas sans-serif fonts work better on a computer screen. I’m not so sure though …

53 Do the breaststroke, e.g. : SWIM

The breaststroke is a style of swimming that is extremely popular with infrequent swimmers as they can keep their heads out of the water for much of the time. It might also be referred to as the “frog stroke”, as the movement of the arms and legs resembles the movements of a frog swimming.

58 Place to get a sandwich : DELI

Meats placed between slices of bread was first called a sandwich in the 18th century, named after the Fourth Earl of Sandwich. The earl was fond of eating “sandwiches” while playing cards at his club.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Little hopper : TOAD
5 Tied, as sneakers : LACED
10 It springs eternal : HOPE
14 Replacement for the franc and lira : EURO
15 Remains : STAYS
16 Narrow : THIN
17 Neighbor on “Family Matters” : STEVE URKEL
19 Brain : MIND
20 Summer suit material : LINEN
21 Plural suffix with good, hood and food : -IES
22 Online personal journals : BLOGS
23 Santa ___ winds : ANA
24 Letter after sigma : TAU
26 Wedding vow : I DO
28 Neighbor on “Full House” : KIMMY GIBBLER
34 Ones with negative views on humanity : CYNICS
37 Unit of resistance : OHM
38 Four-star review : RAVE
39 ___ 66 (classic highway) : ROUTE
40 Winter hrs. in St. Louis : CST
41 Strongly disliked : HATED
42 Gawk at : OGLE
43 Exclamation from Homer Simpson : D’OH!
44 Lets down : LOWERS
45 Neighbor on “Home Improvement” : WILSON WILSON
48 Old cloth : RAG
49 Peculiar : ODD
50 Olympic women’s gymnastics powerhouse : USA
53 What a tree provides on a hot, sunny day : SHADE
57 Boise’s home: Abbr. : IDA
59 Writer Joyce Carol ___ : OATES
61 Secret recording device : WIRE
62 Bygone TV host with a famous “neighborhood” : FRED ROGERS
64 Notion : IDEA
65 Narrow street : ALLEY
66 Shallowest of the Great Lakes : ERIE
67 A good one is square : MEAL
68 Lesser-played half of a 45 : B-SIDE
69 Sort (through) : SIFT

Down

1 Car company with a “T” logo : TESLA
2 ___ the cold (left stranded) : OUT IN
3 Big sports venue : ARENA
4 Hawk’s opposite : DOVE
5 Baton Rouge sch. : LSU
6 Central room of a Roman house : ATRIUM
7 “Well, that takes the ___!” : CAKE
8 20/20, for example : EYESIGHT
9 Aging broadband inits. : DSL
10 Web designer’s code : HTML
11 Youngstown’s home : OHIO
12 ___-Pong : PING
13 Concludes : ENDS
18 Lure : ENTICE
22 Hairstyle akin to a pageboy : BOB
25 Mornings, for short : AMS
27 Bright’s opposite : DIM
28 Toys with tails : KITES
29 Dinosaur in Super Mario games : YOSHI
30 Brain’s counterpart : BRAWN
31 How fashionable people arrive, it’s said : LATE
32 At any point : EVER
33 Crimson and scarlet : REDS
34 Bird that caws : CROW
35 Cartoon character who’s “smarter than the av-er-age bear” : YOGI
36 ___ and void : NULL
40 Some rodeo riders : COWGIRLS
41 Something that brings bad luck : HOODOO
43 Genetic stuff : DNA
44 Psychedelic inits. : LSD
46 Refinery rocks : ORE
47 Rich, rich, rich : LOADED
50 Gestation locations : UTERI
51 Typographical flourish : SERIF
52 Positive quality : ASSET
53 Do the breaststroke, e.g. : SWIM
54 Conceal oneself : HIDE
55 Neighborhood : AREA
56 Successful conclusion to negotiations : DEAL
58 Place to get a sandwich : DELI
60 Improves, as wine : AGES
62 Super-duper : FAB
63 Seeded loaf, often : RYE