0701-23 NY Times Crossword 1 Jul 23, Saturday

Bill’s time: 7m 24s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15 Cheat : BILK

The verb “to bilk”, meaning “to defraud”, comes from the card game of cribbage. “To bilk” in cribbage is to spoil someone’s score.

16 Poet Scott-Heron : GIL

Gil Scott-Heron was a jazz poet and musician who is best remembered as a spoken word performer from the seventies and eighties. Scott-Heron’s most famous work is the poem and song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, the title of which became a popular slogan for the Black Power movements in the sixties.

17 God who is destined to slay the serpent Jörmungandr : THOR

In Norse mythology, Thor was the son of Odin. Thor wielded a mighty hammer and was the god of thunder, lightning and storms. Our contemporary word “Thursday” comes from “Thor’s Day”.

18 “Beowulf” and “Gilgamesh,” for two : EPICS

“Beowulf” is an old epic poem from England, although the story is set in Scandinavia. Beowulf fights a battle, defending the Danish King Hrothgar from the ferocious outcast Grendel. Hrothgar had built a great hall for his people in which they could celebrate; singing, dancing and drinking lots of mead. Grendel was angered by the carousing and attacked the hall, devouring many of the incumbent warriors as they slept. A bit of an extreme reaction to noisy neighbors I’d say …

The “Epic of Gilgamesh” is an epic poem from Mesopotamia. It is one of the earliest known works of literature that has survived. Fragments of the first version of the epic date back to the 18th century BC.

22 “His ___ little mouth was drawn up like a bow” (line from “A Visit From St. Nicholas”) : DROLL

The poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was published anonymously in 1823, and is better known today by its first line “‘Twas the night before Christmas”. Most scholars believe that the poem was written by Clement Clarke Moore, a theologian from New York City. Others say that it was written by Henry Livingston, Jr., a poet from Upstate New York.

24 Forest giant : REDWOOD

The giant sequoia tree is also known as the giant redwood. There’s only one part of the world where you can see giant sequoias growing naturally, and that’s on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. However, there are plenty of examples of giant sequoias that have been planted as ornamentals all over the world.

33 Mulligan : REDO

There doesn’t seem to be a definitive account for the origin of the term “mulligan”, which is most often used for a shot do-over in golf. There are lots of stories about golfers named Mulligan though, and I suspect that one of them may be true …

36 Shift, for one : DRESS

A shift is a dress that is cut above-the-knee and has no clearly-defined waist. This style of dress originated in the 1920s when it was worn by the “flappers”, young women who defied social norms at the time. The shift was comfortable to wear and allowed easy movement, particularly on the dance floor.

42 Dutch scientist with an eponymous “cloud” : OORT

The Oort Cloud is a hypothetical spherical cloud of comets that lies about a light-year from the sun. It is postulated that periodic comets that enter our solar systems (like Halley’s Comet) originate in this cloud.

44 Mark’s replacement : EURO

One of the currencies replaced by the euro was Germany’s Deutsche Mark (known as “deutschmark” in English).

45 NewLeaf potato, e.g., in brief : GMO

A genetically modified organism (GMO) is one with genetic material that has been altered by genetic engineering. One might argue that the oldest form of genetic engineering is selective breeding, the use of animals or plants with desired traits for the creation of the next generation.

46 “Anything Goes” writer Porter : COLE

“Anything Goes” is a musical by Cole Porter, from a book by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, that tells of the goings on aboard an ocean liner sailing from New York to London. Some of the famous songs from the show are “Anything Goes”, “You’re the Top”, “I Get a Kick Out of You” as well as “The Gypsy in Me”.

49 Flinches, but only a little : BATS AN EYELASH

At least as far back as the 1800s, the term “batting” was used in falconry to describe the fluttering of a hawk’s wings while on a perch or a fist, as if the bird intended to fly away. The usage of “batting” extended to the fluttering of a human’s eyelids, giving us the expressions “batting an eye” and “batting an eyelid”.

Down

1 They’re offered seven times a year : SATS

Today, the standardized test for admission to colleges is known as the SAT Reasoning Test, but it used to be called the Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test, which led to the abbreviation “SAT”.

2 Classic Beat Generation roman à clef : ON THE ROAD

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel “On the Road” is largely autobiographical, telling the story of Sal Paradise (Jack K.) and the road trips that he and his friends took across the country in the fifties.

The group of American writers known as the Beat Generation first came to prominence at a poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October of 1955. Five young poets presented their work that day:

• Allen Ginsberg
• Philip Lamantia
• Michael McClure
• Gary Snider
• Philip Whalen

3 Rocks : ICE

“Ice” and “rocks” are slang terms meaning “diamonds”.

4 Popular pet originally from Mongolia : GERBIL

Most species of gerbil are native to arid regions, and in fact used to be called “desert rats”. They make popular household pets because they are very social and friendly by nature. As desert natives, they also have specially adapted kidneys that produce a very small amount of waste so that bodily fluids are preserved.

8 GPS guess : ETA

A global positioning system (GPS) might provide one with an estimated time of arrival (ETA).

13 London-based insurance company : LLOYD’S

Lloyd’s of London isn’t actually an insurance company, but rather is a market where members can get together to spread the risk associated with policies that have been underwritten.

20 Ancestral emblem : TOTEM

“Totem” is a word used to describe any entity that watches over a group of people. As such, totems are usually the subjects of worship. Totem poles are really misnamed, as they are not intended to represent figures to be worshiped, but rather are heraldic in nature, and often celebrating the legends or notable events in the history of a tribe.

25 German food that’s better than it sounds? : WURST

“Wurst” is simply a German word meaning “sausage”.

31 Department store that once sold mail-order houses : SEARS

Richard Sears was a station agent on the railroad. In the late 1800s, he bought up a shipment of unwanted watches that was left at his depot and sold the watches to other agents up and down the line. He was so successful that he ordered more watches and then came up with the idea of using a catalog to promote more sales. Sears hired his first employee in 1887, a watch repairman named Alvah Curtis Roebuck who was brought on to repair watches that were returned. Sear and Roebuck co-founded Sears Roebuck & co. in 1895. By the mid 1900s, Sears was the biggest retailer in the whole country.

37 Ray on one’s TV : ROMANO

Ray Romano is a comic actor and stand-up comedian from Queens, New York. He is perhaps best-known as the star of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Off-screen, Romano can be seen appearing regularly in pro-am golf tournaments. And, he has competed many times in the World Series of Poker.

38 Like some N.S.F.W. content : EROTIC

The abbreviation “NSFW” stands for “not safe/suitable for work”. It’s Internet slang used to describe online content that is best not viewed at work.

43 Bat signal : SONAR

Echolocation, when used by animals, is known as biosonar. The best-known example of an animal using biosonar is probably the bat, although not all species of bat use sounds to locate objects.

46 Fatigues, familiarly : CAMO

Our word “camouflage” (often abbreviated to “camo”) evolved directly from a Parisian slang term “camoufler” meaning “to disguise”. The term was first used in WWI, although the British navy at that time preferred the expression “dazzle-painting” as it applied to the pattern painted on the hulls of ships.

50 Pepper, for one: Abbr. : SGT

“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was the alter-ego of the Beatles, and the title of a famous studio album released in 1967, as well as the name of the album’s title track.

51 Chess ranking system named for a Hungarian physicist : ELO

The Elo rating system is used to compare the skill levels of competing players in games like chess and Scrabble. The system is named for a Hungarian-born professor of physics called Arpad Elo, who was also a master-level chess player active in the US Chess Federation.