0917-24 NY Times Crossword 17 Sep 24, Tuesday

Bill’s time: 8m 35s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Tuckered out : BEAT

The exact etymology of the verb “to tucker”, meaning “to tire”, seems to be uncertain. However, it seems to have originated in New England, and at least dates back to the 1830s.

5 Edinburgher or Glaswegian : SCOT

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, and a really beautiful city. In days gone by, it might not have been quite so charming. Like many cities, plumes of smoke hung over Edinburgh when coal and wood fires weren’t regulated. To this day, the city has the nickname “Auld Reekie”, Scots for “Old Smoky”.

Glasgow sits on the River Clyde, and is the largest city in Scotland and. Back in the Victorian Era, Glasgow earned a reputation for excellence in shipbuilding and was known as “Second City of the British Empire”. Glasgow shipyards were the birthplaces of such famous vessels as the Lusitania, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth. People from Glasgow are known as Glaswegians.

15 Brand owned by Purina : ALPO

Alpo is a brand of dog food introduced by Allen Products in 1936, with “Alpo” being an abbreviation for “Allen Products”. Lorne Greene used to push Alpo dog food in television spots, as did Ed McMahon and Garfield the Cat, would you believe?

Ralston Purina was founded in 1894 as Purina Mills, and originally supplied feed for farm animals. Most of Purina’s brand names include the word “Chow”, e.g. Purina Dog Chow, Purina Horse Chow and Purina Pig Chow. There’s even a Purina Monkey Chow.

16 ___ Holmes, teen detective played by Millie Bobby Brown : ENOLA

“The Enola Holmes Mysteries” is a series of detective novels for young adults by American author Nancy Springer. The title character is the 14-year-old sister of 34-year-old Sherlock Holmes, the detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Springer’s novels were adapted into a 2020 film “Enola Holmes” that Netflix picked up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw this one, and the sequel, and enjoyed both …

17 “AB negatve” or “B poditive”? : BLOOD TYPO (from “blood type”)

Here is an approximate distribution of blood types across the US population:

• O-positive: 38 percent
• O-negative: 7 percent
• A-positive: 34 percent
• A-negative: 6 percent
• B-positive: 9 percent
• B-negative: 2 percent
• AB-positive: 3 percent
• AB-negative: 1 percent

21 “Naughty” and “Nice,” e.g. : LISTS

Santa checks his list for those who are naughty and those who are nice.

22 Dessert drink made from frozen grapes : ICE WINE

Ice wine is a sweet dessert wine that is produced using grapes that have frozen on the vine. The grapes must be harvested very quickly and pressed in a cold environment while still frozen. Because it is only the water in the grapes that freezes, the juice from the pressing is more highly concentrated, containing more sugar and other dissolved solids. Most of the world supply of ice wine comes from Canada and Germany.

25 Wrinkle-faced dogs : PUGS

The pug is a dog breed of Chinese origin. Our last family pet was a boxer/pug cross, and was a good-looking mutt!

27 Islanders and Sharks, for short : NHL’ERS

The New York Islanders are an NHL team, one of three such franchises in the New York City area (along with the New Jersey Devils and the New York Rangers). When the team was founded in 1972, it was designated as a “Long Island franchise”, and it was expected to be named the Long Island Ducks, but “New York Islanders” it was to be.

The San Jose Sharks hockey team play their home games at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, a venue that we locals call “the Shark Tank”.

28 Odysseus vis-à-vis Ulysses? : SAME HERO (from “same here”)

“Odysseus”, the hero of Greek mythology, is also known by his Latin name “Ulysses”.

32 Father/son surname in Chicago politics : DALEY

Richard J. Daley was the Mayor of Chicago for 21 years (1955-1976), making him the longest-serving mayor for the city in history. His son, Richard M. Daley, was mayor from 1989 to 2011, and was the city’s second-longest serving mayor.

33 Singer Patsy : CLINE

Patsy Cline was a country music singer who managed to cross over into the world of pop music where she enjoyed great success. Cline is one of a long list of musical legends who died in plane crashes. Cline was 30 years old when she was killed in 1963 in a Piper Comanche plane piloted by her manager, Randy Hughes. Hughes and Cline decided to make that last flight despite warnings of inclement weather, and it was a severe storm that brought down the plane in a forest outside Camden, Tennessee.

40 ___ blanche : CARTE

The phrase “carte blanche” was imported from French in the early 1700s, when it was used to mean “blank paper” (in French it means “white paper”). Later in the century, the term came to mean “full discretionary power”, which is how we use the phrase today.

41 Surprising answer to the question “What is Ecuador’s most populous city?” : NOT QUITO (from “not quite”)

The full name of the capital city of Ecuador is San Francisco de Quito. It is the second highest administrative capital city in the world, after La Paz, Bolivia.

45 Late-night host who coined the word “truthiness” : COLBERT

Stephen Colbert is a political satirist who hosted his own show on Comedy Central, “The Colbert Report”, before taking over the “Late Show” when David Letterman retired. Colbert’s first love was theater, and so he studied to become an actor. Fans of the “Lord of the Rings” films might know that Colbert makes a cameo appearance in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. Don’t blink though, or you’ll miss it …

51 Capital of Vietnam : HANOI

The Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi was known as Thang Long from 1010 to 1428. “Thang Long” translates as “Ascending Dragon”.

52 Prom transport that keeps breaking down? : LEMON LIMO (from “lemon-lime”)

Long before we associated the term “lemon” with a defective car, it was used to describe defective items in general.

56 Illegally seize : USURP

To usurp is to seize and hold by force. The term “usurp” comes to us from Latin via French, from “usus” (a use) and “rapere” (to seize).

57 Demeanor : MIEN

One’s mien is one’s bearing or manner. “Mien” shares the same etymological root as our word “demeanor”.

58 Prominent part of a bowline knot : LOOP

As an ex-sailor, I have a thing about knots, and the bowline … it’s one of my favorites. It’s a simple but effective loop knot, the one that’s made by “the frog coming out of the pond, going around the tree, and going back into the pond”. There is also a sliding version called a running bowline.

59 Hockey fake-outs : DEKES

A deke, also known as a dangle, is a technique used to get past an opponent in ice hockey. “Deke” is a colloquial shortening of the word “decoy”.

Down

1 Texter’s “Hang on a sec” : BRB

Be right back (brb)

4 Cloying : TOO SWEET

To cloy is to cause distaste by oversupplying something that would otherwise be pleasant, especially something with a sweet taste.

5 Luxurious fabrics : SATINS

The material known as “satin” takes its name from “Zayton”, the medieval Arabic name for the Chinese port city of Quanzhou. Quanzhou was used for the export of large amounts of silk to Europe.

6 Basketball great Drexler : CLYDE

Clyde Drexler is a retired NBA player who was nicknamed “Clyde the Glide”. He was a member of the US “Dream Team” who won gold in the 1992 Summer Olympics.

7 Research on a rival, in D.C.-speak : OPPO

In the world of politics, “oppo” is “opposition research”. The idea is to collect information on one’s opponent that can be used against him or her.

11 Certain pretzel shapes : RODS

Pretzels originated in Europe and are especially popular in Southern Germany where a pretzel is known as “Brezel”. Pretzels were introduced into the US in the 1800s by immigrants from Germany and Switzerland who came to be known over here as the Pennsylvania Dutch.

13 Treats, as animal hide : TANS

Leather is made from animal skins. When the flesh, fat and hair is removed from the skin and it is dried, the resulting product is rawhide. Further treatment of the skin with chemicals that permanently alter the protein structure of the skin is known as tanning, and the resulting product is leather.

18 Eating it with meat isn’t kosher : DAIRY

According to Jewish dietary laws, kosher food is fit to eat, and food that is not fit to eat is referred to as treif (or “tref”). The usage of “kosher” has extended to include anything considered legitimate.

22 Like some tigers, rhinoceroses and elephants : INDIAN

Tigers are the largest of all the cat species. They are referred to as “apex predators” (as are lions and humans, for example), meaning that tigers are at the top of the food chain and aren’t the prey of any other animal.

There are five types of rhinoceros that survive today, with the smaller Javan Rhino being the most rare. The rhinoceros is probably the rarest large mammal on the planet, thanks to poaching. Hunters mainly prize the horn of the rhino as it is used in powdered form in traditional Chinese medicine.

There are only three species of elephant living today, with all others being extinct. These are the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant (or “Indian elephant”). As is well known, the African elephant is distinguished from the Asian/Indian elephant by its much larger ears. The African bush elephant is the largest living land animal.

24 Page of Hollywood : ELLIOT

Canadian actor Elliot (formerly “Ellen”) Page came to prominence playing the female lead in the 2007 hit film “Juno”. Page also played the female lead in one of my favorite films of recent time, namely 2010’s “Inception”. Elliot came out as a gay woman in 2014, and then as a trangender man in 2020.

33 “Rushmore” and “Clerks,” for two : CULT FILMS

“Rushmore” is a 1998 comedy-drama film co-written by Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson, with the latter also directing. Lead roles are played by Jason Schwartzman, Olivia Williams and Bill Murray.

“Clerks” is a 1994 black comedy movie that was shot on a budget of under $28,000. It grossed over three million dollars in theaters.

36 Abandon one’s social plans : BAIL

The phrase “to bail out” (sometimes just “to bail”) means to leave suddenly. We’ve been using the term since the early thirties, when it originated with airline pilots. To bail out is to make a parachute jump.

40 Jost of “Saturday Night Live” : COLIN

Comedian Colin Jost is perhaps best known as co-host of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live” (SNL), along with Michael Che (and how great are they together?). Offscreen, Jost shared a dorm with 2020 US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and ended up portraying him on “SNL”. While on the “SNL” cast, Jost met actress Scarlett Johansson on one of the occasions she hosted the show. They married in 2020.

42 Brand popularity metric : Q SCORE

Q Score is a measurement used in the world of marketing. The Q Score for a brand or company is its appeal, how highly it is regarded. The Q stands for “quotient”.

43 “Get ready for a bomb!” : GO LONG!

A bomb is a long pass in American football, for which a receiver would have to “go deep”.

45 Celebrity appearance, say : CAMEO

Even in my day, a cameo role was more than just a short appearance in a movie (or other artistic piece). For the appearance to be a cameo, the actor had to play himself or herself, and be instantly recognizable. With this meaning it’s easy to see the etymology of the term, as a cameo brooch is one with the recognizable carving of the silhouette of a person. Nowadays, a cameo is any minor role played by a celebrity or famous actor, regardless of the character played.

46 ___ Barak, former prime minister of Israel : EHUD

Ehud Barak served as Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, taking over from Benjamin Netanyahu. Barak left office after he called a special election for Prime Minister and lost the vote to Ariel Sharon. Barak resigned from the Knesset and took an advisory job with the US company Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and did some security-related work with a private equity company. In 2007, Barak took over leadership of Israel’s Labor Party.

48 Arctic native : INUK

The Inuit people live in the Arctic, in parts of the US, Russia, Greenland and Canada. A member of the Inuit people is known as an “Inuk”.

50 Astronaut Armstrong : NEIL

Neil Armstrong was the most private of individuals. You didn’t often see him giving interviews, unlike so many of the more approachable astronauts of the Apollo space program. His famous, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind” statement; that was something that he came up with himself, while Apollo 11 was making its way to the moon.