0727-23 NY Times Crossword 27 Jul 23, Thursday

Bill’s time: 8m 19s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14 Locale of the house depicted in “American Gothic” : IOWA

The iconic Grant Wood work titled “American Gothic” was painted in 1930. It depicts a farmer holding a pitchfork standing beside his spinster daughter. Grant used his sister as a model for the daughter, and his dentist as a model for the farmer. You can see “American Gothic” on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. You can also visit the house depicted in the painting, in the city of Eldon, Iowa. Perhaps predictably, the house is located on what is now called American Gothic Street.

15 Vaughn of “True Detective” : VINCE

“True Detective” is a crime drama made by HBO that has an interesting format. Each series has its own narrative and cast. The show seems to be attracting some great actors. The first season was led by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and the second by Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams.

19 17-Across + 18-Across = 19-Across : CORE (EPICENTER)

The epicenter is the point on the surface of the Earth that is directly above the focus of an earthquake.

25 Once menos tres : OCHO

In Spanish, “once menos tres” (eleven minus three) is “ocho” (eight).

35 32-Across + 33-Across = 35-Across : VERSE (LIMERICK)

No one knows for sure how the limerick got its name, although there does seem to be agreement the name does indeed come from the city or county of Limerick in Ireland. Try this one for size:

There was a young lady named Bright
who traveled much faster than light.
She set out one day
in a relative way,
and came back the previous night.

37 Where gummy bears were invented : GERMANY

Gummy bears were a 1920s creation of a confectioner from Bonn, Germany named Hans Riegel, Sr. They were originally sold as Dancing Bears, and back then were made from gum arabic (hence the generic name “gummy” bears). The gum arabic was eventually replaced with gelatin, which remains a key ingredient to this day.

39 Hollywood’s Howard : RON

Ron Howard sure has come a long way since playing Opie Taylor on “The Andy Griffith Show”. He has directed some fabulous movies including favorites of mine like “Apollo 13”, “The Da Vinci Code” and “A Beautiful Mind”, the latter earning Howard a Best Director Oscar.

40 Locale for the hustle and the funky chicken : DISCO

Discotheques first appeared during WWII in Occupied France. American-style music (like jazz and jitterbug dances) was banned by the Nazis, so French natives met in underground clubs that they called discotheques where records were often played on just a single turntable. After the war, these clubs came out into the open. One famous Paris discotheque was called “Whiskey a Gogo”. In that Paris disco, non-stop music was played using two turntables next to a dance-floor, and this concept spread around the world.

The hustle is a genre of disco dance that was popular in the seventies. The dance form really took off when Van McCoy released a song called “The Hustle”, to which an accompanying line dance became a big craze in 1975.

44 Oscar nominee for “Pollock” and “The Truman Show” : ED HARRIS

Ed Harris is a very talented actor, one noted for two great performances in movies about the US Space Program. Harris played John Glenn in “The Right Stuff” in 1983, his “breakthrough” role. Twelve years later he had a “stellar” performance as flight director Gene Kranz in “Apollo 13”.

“Pollock” is a biographical film about American artist Jackson Pollock that was released in 2000. Ed Harris played Pollock, and he also directed the movie. Indeed, this was a very personal project for Harris, as he wanted to make the film after reading a biography about Pollock some ten years earlier.

“The Truman Show” is an interesting film starring Jim Carrey as a man who, although unaware of the fact, is living and starring in a life-long reality TV show.

46 Flock members : GEESE

A collection of geese is referred to as a “gaggle” when on the ground. When geese are in V-formation in flight, they are referred to collectively as a “skein”.

48 Foreign refusal : NEIN

In German, one might answer “ja” (yes) or “nein” (no).

53 In which one dot represents an “a” : BRAILLE

The Braille system of reading and writing was devised in 1825 by Louis Braille, who was himself afflicted with blindness. Braille characters are composed of six positions or dots, each arranged in two columns of three dots each. Every dot can be raised or not raised, given a total of 64 possible characters.

66 Early 20th-century art movement : DADA

Dadaism thrived during and just after WWI, and was an anti-war, anti-bourgeois and anti-art culture. The movement was launched in Zurich, Switzerland by a group of artists and writers who met to discuss art and put on performances in the Cabaret Voltaire. The same group frequently expressed disgust at the war that was raging across Europe.

Down

4 Enzyme in dairy pills : LACTASE

The sugar known as lactose is a disaccharide, comprising a molecule of galactose combined with a molecule of glucose. Lactose is a major component in milk, and it is broken down in the body by an enzyme called lactase. The production of lactase used to diminish over time in humans, as babies stopped nursing and transitioned to solid food. Many human populations have evolved to maintain lactase production throughout life, a response to the inclusion of animal milk in the diet. Individuals and populations that do not have the genes enabling lifelong production of lactase are said to be lactose intolerant.

9 Set up again for billiards : RERACK

The name of the game billiards comes from the French word “billiard” that originally described the wooden cue stick. The Old French “bille” translates as “stick of wood”.

10 Bars for checking people out : UPC CODE

The initialism “UPC” stands for Universal Price Code or Universal Product Code. The first ever UPC-marked item to get scanned in a store was on June 26, 1974 at 08:01 a.m. at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

11 Fruit in the liqueur patxaran : SLOE

The sloe is the fruit of the blackthorn bush, and the main flavoring ingredient in sloe gin. A sloe looks like a small plum, but is usually much more tart in taste.

21 The 2% of “2%” : FAT

The fatty component of milk is known as butterfat (sometimes “milkfat”). To be labeled whole milk, the butterfat content must be at least 3.25%. Low-fat milk is defined as milk containing 0.5-2% fat, with levels of 1% and 2% commonly found on grocery store shelves. Skim milk must contain less than 0.5% fat, and typically contains 0.1%.

23 Car with a “bowtie” logo : CHEVY

Louis-Joseph Chevrolet was a Swiss race car driver who co-founded the Chevrolet Motor Car Company in 1911. To this day, the company logo is a stylized Swiss cross, in honor of Chevrolet’s Swiss roots.

25 Actor Werner of “Jules and Jim” : OSKAR

Oskar Werner was an actor from Austria who is probably best known for playing the character Fiedler alongside Richard Burton in 1965’s marvelous film “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”. He also played the lead role of Guy Montag in 1966’s “Fahrenheit 451”.

27 Group that often holds religious services in barns : AMISH

The Amish are members of a group of Christian churches, and a subgroup of the Mennonite churches. The Amish church originated in Switzerland and Alsace in 1693 when it was founded by Jakob Ammann. It was Ammann who gave the name to the Amish people. Many Amish people came to Pennsylvania in the 18th century.

29 Root in potpourri : ORRIS

Orris root is a basic ingredient in many perfumes, one providing a so-called “base note”. It is also an ingredient in some brands of gin.

The French term “pot pourri” translates literally to “rotten pot”, but in France it used to mean “stew”. Over time, the term “potpourri” evolved in English usage to mean a “medley”, and eventually a mixture of dried flowers and spices.

30 Route from Me. to Fla. : US-ONE

US Route 1 runs from Fort Kent in Maine right down to Key West in Florida.

32 Haul aboard : LADE

The verb “to lade” meaning “to load” comes from an Old English word “hladan”. “Lade” also used to mean “draw water” and indeed gave us our word “ladle”. So “lade” and “ladle” are close cousins.

37 Bridge columnist Charles : GOREN

Charles Goren was a world champion bridge player from Philadelphia. Goren published many books on the game, and had a daily bridge column that appeared in almost 200 newspapers. He even had a weekly column in “Sports Illustrated”. Goren introduced several techniques and systems that eventually became part of the modern Standard American bidding system that is used by many bridge players today (including me!).

38 N.F.L. team nicknamed Big Blue : NY GIANTS

The New York Giants (NYG) football team plays home games in MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a stadium shared with the New York Jets (NYJ). The Giants are the only team remaining from a group of five that joined the league in 1925. For many years, the Giants shared team names with the New York Giants MLB team, before the baseball franchise moved to San Francisco after the 1957 season.

41 Card game that uses jokers : CANASTA

The card game canasta originated in Uruguay apparently, with “canasta” being the Spanish word for “basket”. In the rummy-like game, a meld of seven cards or more is called a canasta.

49 Showcase Showdown guesstimate : PRICE

“The Price is Right” game show started airing in its current format in 1972, with Bob Barker hosting. Drew Carey took over as host in 2007. There was an earlier version of the show that had a somewhat different format, and it aired from 1956 to 1965. Apparently, “The Price is Right” is the longest running TV game show in the world.

51 Some cats : TOMS

A group of cats can be referred to as a clowder or a glaring. A male cat is a tom or tomcat, and a neutered male is a gib. An unaltered female cat is a queen, and a spayed female might be referred to informally as a molly. A young cat is a kitten.

54 Her first word was “Bart” : LISA

Lisa Simpson is Bart’s brainy younger sister on TV’s “The Simpsons”. Lisa is voiced by actress Yeardley Smith. In a 2008 episode of the show, Lisa enters a crossword tournament. Crossword celebrities Merl Reagle and Will Shortz make appearances in that episode, basically playing cartoon versions of themselves.

55 Oklahoma city NNW of Oklahoma City : ENID

Enid, Oklahoma takes its name from the old railroad station around which the city developed. Back in 1889, that train stop was called Skeleton Station. An official who didn’t like the name changed it to Enid Station, using a character from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”. Maybe if he hadn’t changed the name, the city of Enid would now be called Skeleton, Oklahoma! Enid has the nickname “Queen Wheat City” because it has a huge capacity for storing grain, the third largest grain storage capacity in the world.

58 Health abbr. : RDA

Recommended Daily Allowances (RDAs) were introduced during WWII, and were replaced by Recommended Daily Intakes (RDIs) in 1997.

60 Code material : DNA

The two most common nucleic acids are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), both of which play crucial roles in genetics. The DNA contains the genetic instructions used to keep living organisms functioning, and RNA is used to transcribe that information from the DNA to protein “generators” called ribosomes.