1226-24 NY Times Crossword 26 Dec 24, Thursday

Bill’s time:10m 36s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4 “Smart” guy : ALEC

Apparently, the original “smart Alec” (sometimes “Aleck”) was one Alec Hoag, a pimp, thief and confidence trickster who plied his trade in New York City in the 1840s.

13 Hawaiian dish with cubed fish : POKE BOWL

Poke is a Native-Hawaiian dish featuring diced raw fish. “Poke” is a Hawaiian word meaning “to slice”.

17 Lawyers, collectively : THE BAR

The legal profession is referred to as “the bar”. The term arose in medieval times when European courtrooms were divided into two with “barring” furniture, basically a wooden rail that separated the public from the participants in the trial.

18 Astronauts’ outpost, for short : ISS

The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular facility that comprises components launched into space by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets, and by American Space Shuttles. The station has been occupied by astronauts and scientists continually since November, 2000.

19 Like the last name of swimming legend Diana Nyad : APT

Diana Nyad is a long-distance swimmer. She holds the distance record for a non-stop swim without a wetsuit, a record that she set in 1979 by swimming from Bimini to Florida. In 1975, Nyad became the fastest person to circle Manhattan in a swim that lasted 7 hours 57 minutes. More recently, in 2013, she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the protection of a shark cage. She was 64 years old when she made that swim!

The Naiads of Greek mythology were water nymphs associated with fountains, wells, springs and streams. The saltwater equivalents of the freshwater Naiads were the Oceanids.

21 Original N.Y.C. subway line : IRT

The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) was the original private operator of the New York Subway when it opened in 1904. The city took over ownership of the system in 1940, but the lines originally operated by the IRT are still known by the IRT moniker.

22 Vampire hunter’s weapon : STAKE

Legends about vampires were particularly common in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans in particular. The superstition was that vampires could be killed using a wooden stake, with the preferred type of wood varying from place to place. Superstition also defines where the body should be pierced. Most often, the stake was driven through the heart, but Russians and northern Germans went for the mouth, and northeastern Serbs for the stomach.

27 Telluride maker (that’s 6,000+ miles away from Telluride) : KIA

The Kia Telluride is a mid-size SUV that was launched in 2019. It is named for the Colorado town of Telluride, and is the largest vehicle that Kia ever made for the US market.

28 Faith Hill hit with the lyric “It’s perpetual bliss” : THIS KISS

Faith Hill is a country singer from Ridgeland, Mississippi. Hill is married to fellow country singer Tim McGraw.

31 Humorist Bombeck : ERMA

Erma Bombeck wrote for newspapers for about 35 years. She produced more than 4,000 witty and humorous columns under the title “At Wit’s End”, with all describing her home life in suburbia.

39 Samira Wiley’s role on “The Handmaid’s Tale” : MOIRA

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a remarkably well-received television adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. The story is set in a future United State after the Second American Civil War. The “Handmaids” are the few remaining fertile women in the world, who are ritually raped and forced to bear children by their masters.

41 A thing of the passed? : OBIT

Our word “obituary” comes from the Latin “obituaris”. The Latin term was used for “record of the death of a person”, although the literal meaning is “pertaining to death”.

42 Wetland fuel source : PEAT BOG

When dead plant matter accumulates in marshy areas, it may not fully decay due to a lack of oxygen or acidic conditions. We are familiar with this in Ireland, because what can form then is peat. If the peat bogs get covered over with sedimentary matter, over time pressure and heat can dry out the peat forming a soft brown material called lignite. Given further heat and pressure, and time, lignite converts to coal. So, lignite is a material with characteristics between peat and coal, and is often called “brown coal”.

44 Breaking the fourth wall, say : META

In recent decades the prefix “meta-” has been used as a standalone adjective. In this sense “meta” means “self-referential”, describing something that refers to itself. For example, “This sentence starts with the word ‘this’ and ends with the word ‘this’” might be called a meta sentence. A movie that is about the making of the very same movie could also be described as meta.

In the theater world, the fourth wall is an imaginary plane at the front of the stage through which the audience experiences the action. When a character acknowledges the existence of the audience, perhaps by addressing them, he or she is said to have broken the fourth wall.

47 Snarkily disparaging : SNIDE

“Snark” is a term that was coined by Lewis Carroll in his fabulous 1876 nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Somehow, the term “snarky” came to mean “irritable, short-tempered” in the early 1900s, and from there “snark” became “sarcastic rhetoric” at the beginning of the 21st century.

50 Dutch banking giant : ING

ING is a huge Dutch banking institution created via a merger in 1991. The company headquarters is in a spectacular building in Amsterdam called simply ING House. “ING” stands for Internationale Nederlanden Groep.

51 Get to 21 first in cornhole, e.g. : WIN

Cornhole is a game in which contestants throw bean bags towards a tilted-up platform with a hole in it. Bags that land in the hole score 3 points, and bags that land on the board score 1 point.

52 Oscar nominee for “Carrie” : SPACEK

Actress Sissy Spacek got her big break in the movies when she played the title role in the 1976 horror movie “Carrie”, which is based on a Stephen King novel. Her most acclaimed role is the lead in the 1980 biopic about Loretta Lynn called “Coal MIner’s Daughter”, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. Spacek’s first cousin was the actor Rip Torn.

“Carrie” is a 1976 horror film based on a Stephen King novel of the same name. Sissy Spacek plays the title role, a breakthrough role for her. I’m afraid I have never seen the movie, because I am afraid of horror films …!

60 “Money talks” : CASH IS KING

Our word “cash” comes from the Middle French “caisse” meaning “money box”.

63 CBS drama with five spinoffs : NCIS

NCIS is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates crimes in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The service gives its name to the CBS TV show “NCIS”, a spin-off drama from “JAG” in which the main “NCIS” characters were first introduced. The original big star in “NCIS” was actor Mark Harmon, playing Supervisory Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

64 In need of salt, say : ICY

Halite is the mineral form of sodium chloride, and is also known as “rock salt”. It is used to melt ice, as salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. Adding salt to icy sidewalks can therefore cause any ice to melt (as long as the ambient temperature isn’t too low). A mixture of halite and ice can also be used to cool things below the freezing point of water, perhaps to make ice cream.

Down

2 Stole onstage : BOA

A stole is a narrow shawl. It can be made of quite light decorative material, but also can be heavier if made of fur.

3 Difficult area of a jigsaw puzzle, maybe : SKY

Jigsaws are saws designed for the cutting of irregular curves by hand. The original jigsaw puzzles were created by painting a picture on a sheet of wood and then cutting the picture into small pieces using a jigsaw, hence the name. Today, almost all jigsaw puzzles are pictures glued onto cardboard. The puzzle pieces are now die-cut, and so there’s no jigsaw involved at all.

5 Lane in DC? : LOIS

Lois Lane has been the love interest of Superman/Clark Kent since the comic series was first published in 1938. Lois and Clark both work for the big newspaper in the city of Metropolis called “The Daily Planet”. The couple finally got hitched in the comics (and on television’s “Lois and Clark”) in 1996. One has to wonder how challenging the crossword is in “The Daily Planet” …

9 Beehive State native : UTE

When Mormon pioneers were settling what is today the state of Utah, they referred to the area as Deseret, a word that means “beehive” according to the Book of Mormon. Today Utah is known as the Beehive State and there is a beehive symbol on the Utah state flag. In 1959, “Industry” was even chosen as the state motto, for the term’s association with the beehive.

10 Toys once marketed as having “Over three billion combinations, but only one solution” : RUBIK’S CUBES

What was originally called the “Magic Cube” became better known as “Rubik’s Cube”, and was named for its inventor Ernő Rubik. Rubik’s Cube is the world’s biggest selling puzzle game, with over 350 million sold in just over 30 years.

11 Chess : check :: go : ___ : ATARI

Go is a strategy board game that was invented in China over 5,500 years ago. Go’s name in Chinese translates as “encircling game”, which reflects the objective of surrounding the largest area on the board.

12 Tempur-Pedic competitor : SERTA

Serta was founded in 1931 when a group of 13 mattress manufacturers came together, essentially forming a cooperative. Today, the Serta company is owned by eight independent licensees in a similar arrangement. Serta advertisements feature the Serta Counting Sheep. Each numbered sheep has a different personality, such as:

• #1 The Leader of the Flock
• #½ The Tweener
• #13 Mr. Bad Luck
• #53 The Pessimist
• #86 Benedict Arnold

14 Early 20th-century composer who introduced the typewriter as a percussion instrument : ERIK SATIE

Erik Satie was a French composer best known for his beautiful composition, the three “Gymnopédies”. I have tried so hard to appreciate other works by Satie but I find them so very different from the minimalist simplicity of the lyrical “Gymnopédies”.

32 Coffeehouse poets : BEATNIKS

The term “beatnik” was coined by journalist Herb Caen in 1958 when he used it to describe the stereotypical young person of the “beat generation”, which is oft associated with the writer Jack Kerouac. That stereotypical beatnik would be playing the bongos, rolling his or her own cigarettes. Male beatniks tended to sport goatees and wear berets.

34 Sweaters and such : KNITS

Until the early 1880s, the word “sweater” applied to clothing worn specifically for weight reduction by “sweating”.

36 401(k) alternatives : IRAS

A 401(k) account resembles an IRA in that contributions can be made from a paycheck prior to the deduction of income taxes. A 401(k) differs from an IRA in that it is an employer-sponsored plan, with payments taken by the employer directly from an employee’s paycheck. Additionally, contributions can be fully or partially matched by an employer.

40 Lewis Carroll’s real last name, hence Lewis’s last name in “Jurassic Park” : DODGSON

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born in 1832 in the village of Daresbury near Warrington in the county of Cheshire, in the northwest of England. And, let’s not forget one of Carroll’s most beloved characters, the Cheshire Cat.

45 Caesar’s first stabber : CASCA

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the 15th (the ides) of March, 44 BC. He was attacked by a group of sixty people in the Roman Senate, and was stabbed 23 times. The first to strike a blow was Servilius Casca, who attacked Caesar from behind and stabbed him in the neck. In Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, Casca utters the words “Speak, hands, for me!” just before making the fatal blow. The following line, uttered by Caesar, is more famous though: “Et tu, Brute?”

48 Bass organs : GILLS

A fish’s gills are the organs equivalent to the lungs of many land animals. The gills can extract oxygen dissolved in water and excrete carbon dioxide.

51 Something that’s often free in airports but expensive on airplanes : WI-FI

“Wi-Fi” is nothing more than a trademark, a trademark registered by an association of manufacturers of equipment that use wireless LAN (Local Area Network) technology. A device labeled with “Wi-Fi” has to meet certain defined technical standards, basically meaning that the devices can talk to each other. The name “Wi-Fi” suggests “Wireless Fidelity”, although apparently the term was never intended to mean anything at all.

54 Köln one : EIN

Cologne is the fourth largest city in Germany, and is known as “Köln” in German.

56 Fast-food chain with 30,000+ locations : KFC

The famous “Colonel” of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fame was Harland Sanders, an entrepreneur from Henryville, Indiana. Although not really a “Colonel”, Sanders did indeed serve in the military. He enlisted in the Army as a private in 1906 at the age of 16, lying about his age. He spent the whole of his time in the Army as a soldier in Cuba. It was much later, in the 1930s, that Sanders went into the restaurant business making his specialty deep-fried chicken. By 1935 his reputation as a “character” had grown, so much so that Governor Ruby Laffoon of Kentucky gave Sanders the honorary title of “Kentucky Colonel”. Later in the fifties, Sanders developed his trademark look with the white suit, string tie, mustache and goatee. When Sanders was 65 however, his business failed and in stepped Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s. Thomas simplified the Sanders menu, cutting it back from over a hundred items to just fried chicken and salads. That was enough to launch KFC into the fast food business. Sanders sold the US franchise in 1964 for just $2 million and moved to Canada to grow KFC north of the border. He died in 1980 and is buried in Louisville, Kentucky. The Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices is indeed a trade secret. Apparently there is only one copy of the recipe, a handwritten piece of paper, written in pencil and signed by Colonel Sanders. Since 2009, the piece of paper has been locked in a computerized vault surrounded with motion detectors and security cameras.

57 “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” org. : FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was set up in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), with the name changing in 1935. The Bureau was set up at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was largely moved to do so after the 1901 assassination of President McKinley, as there was a perception that anarchists were threatening law and order. The FBI’s motto uses the organization’s initialism, and is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity”.

58 Gumshoe : TEC

“Gumshoe” is a slang word used for a private detective or private investigator (P.I.). Apparently the term dates back to the early 1900s, and refers to the rubber-soled shoes popular with private detectives at that time.