1213-24 NY Times Crossword 13 Dec 24, Friday

Bill’s time: 16m 43s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

21 Dorothea who documented the Great Depression : LANGE

Dorothea Lange was a marvelous photographer famous for images that she created during the Great Depression. Lange’s most famous photograph is the beautiful “Migrant Mother”, taken in 1936.

23 What Han Solo never wants to be told : ODDS

Han Solo is the space smuggler in “Star Wars” played by Harrison Ford. Ford was originally hired by George Lucas just to read lines for actors during auditions for “Star Wars”, but over time Lucas became convinced that Ford was right for the pivotal role of Han Solo.

28 Sexually charged title track of a hit 1973 album : LET’S GET IT ON

“Let’s Get It On” is a song by Marvin Gaye, one first recorded in 1973. The song’s lyrics have to be among the most sexually charged in the popular repertoire, and helped to earn Gaye a reputation as a sex icon.

33 Title princess in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera : IDA

“Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant” is a Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera. It was first performed in 1884 at the Savoy Theatre in London that was famous for staging the duo’s works.

35 Something to show for a tow : AAA CARD

The American Automobile Association (AAA) dispatches a lot of tow trucks.

40 Trig ratio : COTAN

The most familiar trigonometric functions are sine, cosine and tangent (abbreviated to “sin, cos and tan”). Each of these is a ratio: a ratio of two sides of a right-angled triangle. The “reciprocal” of these three functions are cosecant, secant and cotangent. The reciprocal functions are simply the inverted ratios, the inverted sine, cosine and tangent. These inverted ratios should not be confused with the “inverse” trigonometric functions e.g. arcsine, arccosine and arctangent. These inverse functions are the reverse of the sine, cosine and tangent.

42 ___ shock (Japan’s term for the video game crash of 1983) : ATARI

Founded in 1972, electronics and video game manufacturer Atari was once the fastest-growing company in US history. However, Atari never really recovered from the video game industry crash of 1983. The name “Atari” was chosen because it is a term used in the Japanese game Go that signifies a move that effectively seals the opponent’s fate.

46 “My heart is like a singing bird / ___ nest is in a water’d shoot”: Christina Rossetti : WHOSE

Christina Rossetti was a poet from England who is perhaps best known for narrative poem “Goblin Market”. The poem first appeared in an 1862 collection of her poetry titled “Goblin Market and Other Poems”, which was illustrated by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

53 Main course? : SEA-LANE

When one thinks of the word “main”, in the context of the sea, the Spanish Main usually comes to mind. Indeed, the use of the more general term “main” to mean “sea”, originates from the more specific “Spanish Main”. “Spanish Main” originally referred to land and not water, as it was the name given to the mainland coast around the Caribbean Sea in the days of Spanish domination of the region.

54 “The Fault in Our Stars” genre, informally : TEENLIT

“The Fault in Our Stars” is a 2012 novel by John Green that was adapted into an extremely successful film of the same name in 2014. Both film and novel are about two teenage cancer patients who fall in love with each other. The title is a rewording of lines spoken by Cassius in the play “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

57 Slack alternative, in brief : MS TEAMS

Slack is a messaging app aimed at businesses. At its core, Slack is an instant messaging system. Slack also provides tools designed to increase collaboration within teams.

58 Major product of Jordan : SNEAKER

“Sneaker” is a common name for an athletic shoe, one that is now used as everyday casual wear. The term “sneaker” is used widely across the US. Back in my homeland of Ireland, the terms “trainer” and “tennis shoe” are more common.

Air Jordan is a Nike brand of shoe (and other apparel) endorsed by NBA great Michael Jordan. The silhouette of a basketball player that features on Air Jordans is known as the “Jumpman” logo.

Down

1 W, for one : HOTEL

The W chain of hotels is a luxury brand owned by Starwood. Aimed at a younger market, the W properties feature modern, minimalist decor. There’s also a “trendy” use of the letter W throughout the hotels. For example, the pool is called “the Wet”, the laundry bag in each is “the Wash” and the concierge goes by the name “Whatever Whenever”.

7 ___Mari (organization method) : KON

Marie Kondo (also known as “Konmari”) runs a very successful organizing consulting business that she founded when she was 19 years old, and while a student at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. She wrote an extremely successful book titled “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” that was first published in 2011. I’ve read it, and acted on at least some of the advice given therein …

8 Office lackey : GOFER

A lackey is someone quite servile, or a male servant. The term probably comes from the Middle French “laquais”, a word used for a footman or servant.

9 Nacre on a nice guitar, say : INLAY

Nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, is the strong iridescent material laid down by some mollusks on the inside of their shells, and it’s also what makes up pearls. The creature lays down nacre as a defensive mechanism, protecting the soft tissue of its body from the rough surface of the outer shell. Similarly, it uses nacre to encapsulate harmful debris or a parasite that penetrates the shell, and that’s how a pearl is formed. Cultured pearls are made by inserting a tissue graft from a donor oyster, around which the nacre is laid down.

10 Dessert made with a double boiler : FLAN

Flan (also “crème caramel”) is a delicious dessert comprising a molded custard topped with a clear caramel sauce. The related crème brûlée is a dessert made from molded custard with a hard, burnt caramel layer on top.

A double boiler (also “bain-marie” or “water bath”) is a piece of equipment used to apply gentle heat. It is commonly used in kitchens on the stove top to melt ingredients (like chocolate) and in the oven to provide moist heat (when baking cheesecake, perhaps).

11 Achilles, e.g. : TENDON

The Achilles tendon is located at the back of the leg, above the heel. The name is a reference to Achilles, the hero of Greek myth who was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel.

12 Cheesy casserole : BAKED ZITI

Cylindrical pasta is known in general as “penne”, and there are many variants. For example, ziti is a particularly large and long tube with square-cut ends. “Penne” is the plural of “penna”, the Italian for “feather, quill”.

22 Test releases : BETAS

In the world of software development, the first tested issue of a new program is usually called the alpha version. Expected to have a lot of bugs that need to be fixed, the alpha release is usually distributed to a small number of testers. After reported bugs have been eliminated, the refined version is called a beta and is released to a wider audience, but with the program clearly labeled as “beta”. The users generally check functionality and report further bugs that are encountered. The beta version feeds into a release candidate, the version that is tested just prior to the software being sold into the market, hopefully bug-free.

26 Statistics calculation : MEAN

In a set of numbers, the mean is the average value of those numbers. The median is the numeric value at which half the numbers have a lower value, and half the numbers a higher value. The mode is the value that appears most often in the whole set of numbers.

31 Soeur de la mère : TANTE

In French, “la tante” (the aunt) is “la soeur de la mère” (the sister of the mother).

39 Singer with the 2009 double-platinum album “Rated R” : RIHANNA

Singer Rihanna was born and grew up on the island of Barbados and moved to the US when she was 16-years-old to pursue a singing career. “Rihanna” is her stage name, as she was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty. The name “Rihanna” is derived from the Welsh name “Rhiannon”. And, Rihanna sometimes goes by the nickname “RiRi”, which is also the name of her line of beauty products.

41 Antarctic penguin : ADELIE

The Adélie penguin is found along the Antarctic coast, and is named after the Antarctic territory called Adélie Land that is claimed by France. Adélie Land was discovered by French explorer Jules Dumont D’Urville in 1840, and he named the territory after his wife Adéle.

44 First airline to fly a jumbo jet : PAN AM

Pan American World Airways (usually just “Pan Am”) started out as a mail and passenger service between Key West, Florida and Havana, Cuba in 1927. From very early in the company’s life it was the de facto representative air carrier of the United States. For many years, Pan Am’s fleet was built around the Boeing 314 Clipper, a long-range flying boat that was one of the largest aircraft around at the time. Pan Am adopted the Clipper as part of its image, even using “clipper” as the call sign for its flights.

The term “jumbo jet” describes a widebody aircraft. The first jumbo was the four-engined Boeing 747 introduced in 1970. Then followed the three-engined McDonnell Douglas DC-10 that same year and the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar a few months later. The Airbus A300 was the first two-engined jumbo, which entered service in 1974.

45 Cars known as Vauxhalls in the U.K. : OPELS

Adam Opel founded his company in 1863, first making sewing machines in a cowshed. Commercial success brought new premises and a new product line in 1886, namely penny-farthing bicycles. Adam Opel died in 1895, leaving his two sons with a company that made more penny-farthings and sewing machines than any other company in the world. In 1899 the two sons partnered with a locksmith and started to make cars, but not very successfully. Two years later, the locksmith was dropped in favor of a licensing arrangement with a French car company. By 1914, Opel was the largest manufacturer of automobiles in Germany. My Dad had an Opel in the seventies, a station wagon (we’d say “estate car” in Ireland) called an Opel Kadett.

47 Count ___, a.k.a. Nosferatu : ORLOK

The full name in English of the 1922 German film starring Max Schreck is “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror”. The movie is an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula”, but as they say, the names have been changed to protect the innocent. The studio could not get the rights to the novel, so changed some key words and names to avoid legal problems. “Nosferatu” is the name used in the film for “vampire”, and Count Dracula becomes “Count Orlok”.

48 Book identifier, often : SPINE

In the US, the convention is to write the title on the spine of a book from top-to-bottom. In most of Europe, the convention is to write the title from bottom-to-top. We have a lot of books in the “library” in our house from both sides of the Atlantic, and so there is much movement of the head from left to right as we glance along our bookshelves.

49 Compound formed from an alcohol and an acid : ESTER

Esters are very common chemicals. The smaller, low-molecular weight esters are usually pleasant smelling and are often found in perfumes. At the other end of the scale, the higher-molecular weight nitroglycerin is a nitrate ester and is very explosive, and polyester is a huge molecule and is a type of plastic. Fats and oils found in nature are fatty acid esters of glycerol known as glycerides.

52 Bean on the screen : SEAN

Sean Bean is an English actor who is perhaps best known in North America for playing Boromir in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Ned Stark in the fantasy TV show “Game of Thrones”. James Bond fans will remember him as the bad guy in “GoldenEye”, the character called Alec Trevelyan.

54 “American Dad!” airer : TBS

“American Dad!” is an adult-oriented animated sitcom. Famously, one of the show’s creators is Seth MacFarlane, who also created “Family Guy”. Personally, I cannot stand either show …