0610-24 NY Times Crossword 10 Jun 24, Monday

Bill’s time: 4m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

12 General ___ chicken : TSO’S

General Tso’s chicken is an American creation, and a dish often found on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. The name General Tso may be a reference to General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing Dynasty, but there is no clear link.

17 Gemstone with a “fire” variety : OPAL

Fire opals are almost transparent, unlike other opals that are richly iridescent. Although almost transparent, fire opals usually have a warm yellow, orange or red color. The most famous fire opals are also called Mexican fire opals, and come from the state of Querétaro in north-central Mexico.

22 Novelist Jaffe : RONA

Rona Jaffe was an American novelist perhaps most famous for two of her books, “The Best of Everything” and “Mazes and Monsters”. “The Best of Everything” was published in 1958 and has been compared with the HBO television series “Sex and the City” as it depicts women in the working world. “Mazes and Monsters” was published in 1981 and explores a role-playing game similar to Dungeons & Dragons and the impact it has on players.

25 Cleaning implement for bunnies? : DUST MOP

What we call “dust bunnies” in American English, have similar inventive names in other languages. The Finns know them as sheep, the Germans wool mice, the Hungarians dust kittens, the Italians dust cats, and the Swedish dust rats.

48 Mushroom’s reproductive cells : SPORES

A mushroom isn’t a complete living organism per se but rather is one part of a fungus, and is the fruiting body that is responsible for distributing reproductive spores. The mushroom generally has three main components: the stipe (or “stem”), the pileus (or “cap”) and the lamellae (or “gills”) under the cap which distribute the spores.

50 ___ and switch : BAIT

The term “bait-and-switch” describes a kind of fraud engaged in by disingenuous retailers. Customers are drawn in (baited) by advertising products at an extremely attractive price. Once the customer visits the store in search of the deal, he or she discovers that the advertised goods aren’t in fact available. A deceptive salesperson then guides (switches) the customer to a similar and higher-priced item.

52 Put into a Word document, say : TYPE UP

Microsoft Word was introduced in 1981 as Multi-Tool Word for Xenix (Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system). I used to be a power user of Word, but now use Google Docs for all of my word processing needs.

57 Like hard plaster : SET

Plaster made using gypsum is commonly referred to as plaster of Paris. The original plaster of Paris came from a large deposit of gypsum mined at Montmartre in Paris, hence the name.

58 Home of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil : EDEN

In the Christian tradition, the “fall of man” took place in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This went against the bidding of God, and was at the urging of the serpent. As a result, Adam and Eve were banished from Eden to prevent them from becoming immortal by eating from the tree of life. The first humans had transitioned from a state of innocent obedience to a state of guilty disobedience.

67 Rhyme for “Chevy” in Don McLean’s “American Pie” : LEVEE

A levee is an artificial bank, usually made of earth, that runs along the length of a river. It is designed to hold back river water at a time of potential flooding. “Levée” is the French word for “raised” and is an American term that originated in French-speaking New Orleans around 1720.

Don McLean released his greatest hit, “American Pie”, back in 1971. Despite the song’s iconic position in the pop repertoire, McLean has been remarkably reticent about its origins and the meaning of the lyrics. We do know that it was inspired by the death of Buddy Holly in a plane crash (“the day the music died”). McLean has also told us that he first read about the death of his idol when delivering newspapers the day after the crash (“February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”). Although the lyrics have been analyzed and interpreted in depth by many, McLean’s stance remains that it is just a poem set to music.

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die

68 Painful toy to step on : LEGO

Lego produces some wonderful specialized sets with which you can build models of celebrated structures, including:

• The Statue of Liberty (2,882 pieces)
• The Sydney Opera House (2,989 pieces)
• The Eiffel Tower (3,428 pieces)
• Tower Bridge (4,295 pieces)
• The Taj Mahal (5,922 pieces)

70 Counterparts of dahs : DITS

Samuel Morse came up with the forerunner to modern Morse code for use on the electric telegraph, of which he was the co-inventor. Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. The most common letters are assigned the simplest code elements e.g. E is represented by one dot, and T is represented by one dash. When words are spelled aloud in Morse code, a dot is pronounced as “dit”, and a dash is pronounced as “dah”.

71 Guinness world record holder for “English word with the most meanings” : SET

The “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) contains over 600,000 “main” entries and 59 million words in total. The longest entry for one word in the second edition of the OED is the verb “set”. When the third edition was published in 2007, the longest entry for a single word became the verb “put”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most-quoted author in the OED is William Shakespeare, with his most quoted work being “Hamlet”. The most-quoted female author is George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans).

Down

3 Frogs’ wartier cousins : TOADS

The “warts” on the skin of a toad have no relation to the viral infection that can occur on human skin. A toad’s warts are colored bumps that are believed to help the animal blend more effectively into its environment.

4 H.S. test result that can translate into college credit : AP SCORE

Advanced Placement (AP)

5 Part of a tennis match : SET

Our modern sport of tennis evolved from the much older racquet sport known as real tennis. Originally just called “tennis”, the older game was labeled “real tennis” when the modern version began to hold sway. Real tennis is played in a closed court, with the ball frequently bounced off the walls.

6 Bygone Russian ruler : TSAR

Tsars ruled Russia from the 16th century to the early 20th century. The first Tsar was Ivan the Terrible, who ruled from 1547 to 1584. The last Tsar was Nicholas II, who ruled from 1894 to 1917.

15 Strongly desire : YEN FOR

The word “yen”, meaning “urge”, has been around in English since the very early 1900s. It comes from the earlier word “yin” imported from Chinese, which was used in English to describe an intense craving for opium.

23 Striped swimmer named for a heavenly being : ANGELFISH

There are several species of fish known as angelfish. Each is brightly colored with a laterally compressed body.

28 Agcy. that monitors workplace hazards : OSHA

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

31 Mathematical grouping using curly brackets : SET

In mathematics, a set is defined as a collection of distinct objects. Remember those Venn diagrams at school? Each of the circles in a Venn diagram represents a set.

37 Volleyball move before a spike : SET

In volleyball, each team can only touch the ball a maximum of three times before it returns to the other side of the net. The three contacts are often a “bump” (a preliminary pass) and a “set” (setting up the attacking shot) followed by a “spike” (a shot into the opposing court).

41 Deep brass instrument : TUBA

The tuba is the lowest-pitched of all brass instruments, and one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra (usually there is just one tuba included in an orchestral line-up). “Tuba” is the Latin word for “trumpet, horn”. Oom-pah-pah …

44 Like England between the ninth and 15th centuries : FEUDAL

Feudalism was a legal and military system that flourished in medieval Europe. Central to the system were the concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. Lords would grant fiefs (land or rights) to vassals in exchange for allegiance and service.

49 Shot out, as lava : SPEWED

Lava is a phenomenon that results from the eruption of magma from a volcano. Depending on the type of lava and the volcano it comes from, lava can reach temperatures of up to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius). That’s hot enough to melt steel …

59 Blue race in “Avatar” : NA’VI

In James Cameron’s epic “Avatar”, the “blue people” are the Na’vi, the indigenous species that lives on the lush moon called Pandora. The main Na’vi character featured in the film is the female Neytiri. According to Cameron, Neytiri was inspired by the character played by Raquel Welch in the movie “Fantastic Voyage” and the comic book character Vampirella.