0806-24 NY Times Crossword 6 Aug 24, Tuesday

Bill’s time: 9m 07s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

8 Org. in “Outbreak” and “Contagion” : CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is based in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC started out life during WWII as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities. The CDC worries about much more than malaria these days …

14 Grads of Barnard College, e.g. : ALUMNAE

An alumnus (plural “alumni”) is a graduate or former student of a school or college. The female form is “alumna” (plural “alumnae”). The term comes into English from Latin, in which an alumnus is a foster-son or pupil. “Alum” is an informal term used for either an alumna or alumnus.

Barnard College is a private women’s school in New York City. It was founded in 1889 and, since 1900, has been affiliated with Columbia University.

16 First chairman of China : MAO

Mao Zedong (also “Mao Tse-tung”) was born on December 16, 1893 in the Hunan Province of China. As Mao was the son of a peasant farmer, his prospects for education were limited. Indeed he left school at age 13 to work on the family farm but did eventually get to secondary school in Changsha, the provincial capital. In the years following, Mao continued his education in Beijing and actually turned down an opportunity to study in France.

20 Drop anchor : MOOR

When an anchor is “aweigh” or “atrip”, it is just clear of the ocean bottom, has just been lifted.

23 Verb that sounds like its opposite : RAZE

To raze (“rase”, in UK English) is to level to the ground. I’ve always thought it a little quirky that “raise”, a homophone of “raze”, means “build up”.

35 Brusque : TERSE

Someone described as “brusque” is “gruff, abrupt and curt in manner”. The term comes into English from French, in which language it means “lively, fierce”.

43 Wry Mort : SAHL

Mort Sahl is a Canadian-born actor and comedian who moved to the US with his family when he was a child. Sahl became friends with John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy became president, Sahl wrote a lot of jokes for the President’s speeches, although he also told a lot of Kennedy jokes in his acts. After the President was assassinated in 1963, Sahl was intensely interested in finding out who was behind the crime and even got himself deputized as a member of one of the investigating teams. He was very outspoken against the results of the Warren Commission report on the assassination, and soon found himself out of favor with the public. It took a few years for him to make his comeback, and come back he did.

44 Hole in one’s head : SINUS

In anatomical terms, a sinus is a cavity in tissue. Sinuses are found all over the body, in the kidney and heart for example, but we most commonly think of the paranasal sinuses that surround the nose.

46 Obsolescent PC storage medium : CD-ROM

“CD-ROM” stands for “compact disc read only memory”. The name indicates that you can read information from the disc (like a standard music CD for example), but you cannot write to it. You can also buy a CD-RW, which stands for “compact disc – rewritable”, with which you can read data and also write over it multiple times using a suitable CD drive.

58 Actress Kate or Rooney : MARA

Kate Mara is an actress who plays a lead character in the US TV series “House of Cards”. She got her big break with a supporting role in the 2005 Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, in which she played Heath Ledger’s daughter, despite being only four years younger than Ledger. Kate is the sister of fellow actress Rooney Mara, who played the lead in the American version of the film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

Actress Rooney Mara is noted for her role in the 2010 film “The Social Network” and for playing the title character in the 2011 hit movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. Mara has American football in her blood. Her mother’s family founded the Pittsburgh Steelers, and her father’s family founded the New York Giants.

61 Kazan who directed “A Streetcar Named Desire” : ELIA

Elia Kazan won Oscars for best director in 1948 for “Gentleman’s Agreement” and in 1955 for “On The Waterfront”. He was recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when he was given the 1998 Academy Honorary Award citing his lifetime achievement in the industry. Kazan also directed “East of Eden”, which introduced James Dean to movie audiences, and “Splendor in the Grass” that included Warren Beatty in his debut role.

When Elia Kazan directed the 1951 movie “A Streetcar Named Desire”, he was already very familiar with the play as he had directed the original Broadway stage production. Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden starred in the film, reprising the roles they had played on stage. Vivien Leigh played Blanche Dubois in the movie, a role she had played on the London stage.

64 Color TV pioneer : RCA

RCA, or the Radio Corporation of America, played a significant role in the history of television as a pioneer in the industry. RCA developed and introduced the first electronic television system in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair. RCA also created the NTSC (National Television System Committee) broadcast standard, which was adopted in the United States in 1953 and is still used today for analog television broadcasting. Additionally, RCA produced the first color television sets in 1954.

70 Huffington who founded The Huffington Post : ARIANNA

“The Huffington Post” (now “HuffPost”) is a news website founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington. It is a very active site, with 3,000 people contributing blog posts (including many celebrities and politicians), and readers leaving over one million comments every month. “The Huffington Post” was sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million, with Arianna Huffington staying on as editor-in-chief.

71 Bit of work : ERG

An erg is a unit of mechanical work or energy. It is a small unit, with one joule comprising 10 million ergs. It has been suggested that an erg is about the amount of energy required for a mosquito to take off. The term comes from “ergon”, the Greek word for work.

Down

3 Many a resident of Spanish Harlem : NUYORICAN

The word “Nuyorican” refers to the Puerto Rican diaspora and their descendants living in and around New York City. The term is a portmanteau of “New York” and “Puerto Rican”.

The Manhattan district of Harlem is sometimes divided into Central Harlem, West Harlem and East Harlem. East Harlem is also known as “Spanish Harlem”.

5 Serengeti grazer : GNU

The gnu is also known as the wildebeest, and is an antelope native to Africa. “Wildebeest” is a Dutch word meaning “wild beast”.

The Serengeti is a region in Africa located in northern Tanzania and southwest Kenya. The name “Serengeti” comes from the Maasai language and means “Endless Plains”.

6 “The Fall of the House of Usher” monogram : EAP

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is perhaps the most famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839. The story is a Gothic tale, an interview with Robert Usher in his house which literally “falls”, breaks into two and is swallowed up by a lake. Some believe that the story was inspired by events at a real Usher House that once stood on Boston’s Lewis Wharf. When the Usher House was torn down, the bodies of a man and woman were found embracing in a cavity in the cellar, a fact reflected in the story as Robert Usher’s sister is supposedly buried alive in the crypt.

7 Emmy-winning Ward : SELA

Actress Sela Ward turns up in crosswords a lot. She played Teddy Reed in the TV show “Sisters” in the nineties, and was in “Once and Again” from 1999-2002. I don’t know either show, but I do know Ward from the medical drama “House” in which she played the hospital’s lawyer and Greg House’s ex-partner. That was a fun role, I thought. More recently, Ward played a lead role on “CSI: NY” and was a very welcome and much-needed addition to the cast. And, Ward played Dr. Richard Kimble’s murdered wife in the 1993 film version of “The Fugitive”.

10 Brand of orange crackers : CHEEZ-IT

Cheez-it crackers were introduced way back in 1921, and were first sold by the Green & Green Company of Dayton, Ohio.

12 Micronesian nation composed of 200+ islands : PALAU

Palau is a tiny island nation lying 500 miles east of the Philippines, and 2,000 miles south of Japan. Palau was once a Spanish possession and was sold by Spain to Germany in the late 19th century. During WWI, Japan invaded the islands (Japan had declared war on Germany) and was awarded the islands as a territory by the League of Nations at the end of hostilities. In WWII the US took Palau from the Japanese in a bloody battle in 1944. Palau emerged from American administration in 1994 and is now a sovereign state.

Micronesia is one of the three island regions of Oceania, along with Polynesia and Melanesia. The sovereign nations included in the region are the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau. Also in Micronesia are the US territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Wake Island.

13 Individual coral organism : POLYP

Polyps are tiny sea creatures that are found attached to underwater structures or to other polyps. Polyps have a mouth at one end of a cylindrical “body” that is surrounded by tentacles. Some polyps cluster into groups called stony corals, with stony corals being the building blocks of coral reefs. The structure of the reef comprises calcium carbonate exoskeletons secreted by the coral polyps.

27 Co-ops and condos: Abbr. : APTS

Housing co-operatives (co-ops) and condos are similar, but there are important differences. Both co-ops and condos are multi-unit buildings. A condo is a private residence in such a building, with ownership of common areas shared. An owner of a co-op has an interest in the entire multi-unit building, and a contract allowing occupation of a specific unit. So, condo owners own their units, and co-op owners do not.

28 Apple assistant : SIRI

Siri was originally developed as a standalone app by a startup company of the same name. Apple acquired the company in 2010 and integrated the technology into their operating system.

29 Business bigwig : EXEC

A bigwig is someone important. The use of the term “bigwig” harks back to the days when men of authority and rank wore … big wigs.

34 Certain Balkan native : SERB

The Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe is usually referred to as “the Balkans”. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains located in present-day Bulgaria and Serbia. “Balkan” is Bulgarian for “mountain”.

37 Exile of 1979 : SHAH

The last Shah of Iran was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The post-revolution government sought the extradition of the Shah back to Iran while he was in the United States seeking medical care (he had cancer). His prolonged stay in the United States, recovering from surgery, caused some unrest back in Iran and resentment towards the United States. Some say that this resentment precipitated the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the resulting hostage crisis.

40 Cocoon dwellers : PUPAE

A pupa is a stage in the life of some insects. All four stages are embryo, larva, pupa and imago. Pupae can look like little dolls, hence the name. “Pupa” is the Latin for “doll”.

47 ___ culpa : MEA

Many Roman Catholics are very familiar with the Latin phrase “mea culpa” meaning “my fault”, as it is used in the Latin Mass. The additional term “mea maxima culpa” translates as “my most grievous fault”.

50 Coarse-toothed cutter : RIP SAW

In woodworking, a cut across the grain is known as a cross cut. A cut along the grain is called a rip cut. Most saws are designed to perform the best cross cuts, but there is a special rip saw that more easily cuts straight lines along the grain.

52 South American corn patties : AREPAS

An arepa is a cornmeal cake or bread that is popular in Colombian and Venezuelan cuisines in particular. Each arepa has a flat, round shape and is often split to make a sandwich.

53 Ballet rail : BARRE

A barre is a handrail used by ballet dancers for warm-up exercises and to provide support when practicing certain moves.

54 Witty Wilde : OSCAR

Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer who led a very public life in his adopted home of London. Although he was a prolific writer of many forms of literature, Wilde penned only one novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. He was perhaps more renowned in his own time as a dramatist. Several of his plays are performed regularly today, including “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Wilde’s last work was a poem titled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which recounted his time in prison after being convicted of homosexual offenses in 1895 and sentenced to two years’ hard labor. Oscar Wilde died in 1900 at the age of 46 in Paris, destitute.

56 River through Paris : SEINE

The Seine is the river that flows through Paris. It empties into the English Channel to the north, at the port city of Le Havre.

60 ___ Academy, online education nonprofit : KHAN

“Khan Academy” is a not-for-profit organization that aims to provide a “free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere”. Founded by educator Sal Khan in 2006, the academy mainly teaches mathematics and science through the medium of YouTube videos. Check out some of the videos. They are really excellent …

66 Experiencing little to no amorous attraction, informally : ARO

Someone described as aromantic (“aro”, for short) experiences little or no romantic attraction. The opposite of aromanticism is alloromanticism.

67 A.T.M. need : PIN

One enters a Personal Identification Number (PIN) when using an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Given that the N in PIN stands for “number”, then “PIN number” is a redundant phrase. And, given that the M in ATM stands for “machine”, then “ATM machine” is a redundant phrase as well. Grr …!