0220-25 NY Times Crossword 20 Feb 25, Thursday

Bill’s time: 10m 57s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6 Say yes, say: RSVP

“RSVP” stands for “répondez s’il vous plaît”, which is French for “answer, please”.

14 Round windows: OCULI

“Oculus” (plural “oculi”) is the Latin word for “eye”, and is a term used in architecture for a circular window.

18 Lynchian or Felliniesque, say: CINEMATIC

David Lynch is a much-respected and lauded American film director. His most famous movies are probably “Eraserhead”, “The Elephant Man”, “Dune” and “Mulholland Drive”. Despite the positive reviews from most critics, I can’t think of one David Lynch film that I’ve really enjoyed …

Federico Fellini was a film director and scriptwriter from Rimini in Italy. Fellini won more Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film than anyone else.

The suffix “-esque” came into English from Italian (“-esco”), which in turn derives from Latin (“-iscus”).

24 ___-relief: BAS

In bas-relief, an image projects just a little above the background, as in perhaps a head depicted on a coin.

32 Ancient Mexican civilization: OLMEC

The Olmecs were an ancient civilization that lived in the lowlands of south-central Mexico from about 1500 BC to about 400 BC.

34 Who said “A dress is a piece of ephemeral architecture”: DIOR

Christian Dior was a highly influential fashion designer who is widely credited with revolutionizing women’s fashion in the post-World War II era. Before he became a fashion designer, Dior worked as an art dealer, and he even ran his own art gallery for a time. There, he and a friend sold works by Pablo Picasso and others.

40 Subreddits, for example: FORA

Reddit.com is a networking and news website that started up in 2005. It is essentially a bulletin board system with posts that are voted up and down by users, which determines the ranking of posts. The name “Reddit” is a play on “read it”, as in “I read it on Reddit”. One popular feature of the Reddit site is an online forum that is similar to a press conference. Known as an AMA (for “ask me anything”), participants have included the likes of President Barack Obama, Madonna, Bill Gates, Stephen Colbert and Gordon Ramsay. President Obama’s AMA was so popular that the high level of traffic brought down many parts of the Reddit site.

44 Broadband connection inits.: DSL

In Internet terms, the word “broadband” is used to describe Internet access that is faster than dialup. In more broad (pun!) telecommunication terms, “broadband” is used to describe “bandwidth” data transmission that is “broad” enough to carry several signals and several different types of traffic at the same time.

48 Singer Winehouse: AMY

Amy Winehouse was a much ridiculed singer from the UK, and whose life was fraught with very public bouts of drug and alcohol abuse. Winehouse’s lifestyle caught up with her in 2011 when she was found dead from alcohol poisoning. The unfortunate singer was only 27 years old when she died, which means she is now viewed as a member of the “27 Club”. This “club” is made up of famous musicians who all died at the age of 27, including Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.

58 ___ Roy, Booker Prize-winning author, 1997: ARUNDHATI

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best-known for her novel “The God of Small Things” published in 1997.

62 Like an H.P. Lovecraft work: EERIE

H. P. Lovecraft was an author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. His books aren’t really my cup of tea …

63 Black gemstone: ONYX

Onyx is a form of quartz that comes in many different shades, but most often it’s the black version that’s used for jewelry. The name “onyx” comes from the Greek word for “fingernail”, as onyx in the flesh color is said to resemble a fingernail.

64 Lowly worker: PEON

A peon is a lowly worker who has no real control over his/her working conditions. The word “peon” comes into English from Spanish, in which language it has the same meaning.

Down

1 Character profile?: FONT

A font is a set of characters used in printing that have the same style. In the days of metal type, all the letters of a given style were cast at same time, i.e. the metal was melted and poured into a single mold. The word “font” comes into English from the Middle French “fonte” meaning “casting”.

2 “Don’t have ___, man!”: A COW

The phrase “don’t have a cow” originated in the fifties, as a variation of the older “don’t have kittens”. The concept behind the phrase is that one shouldn’t get worked up, it’s not like one is giving birth to a cow.

4 ___ Ferrante, author of the “Neapolitan Novels”: ELENA

Elena Ferrante is an Italian author, best known for her 4-part series known as the “Neapolitan Novels”. What is very interesting about “Ferrante” is that the moniker is a pseudonym, and no one seems to know the author’s real name. There is some speculation that “Elena” is in fact a man.

11 Alliance of 32 nations: NATO

“NATO” is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (or “OTAN” in French, “l’Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord”).

12 Enemy alliance of W.W. II: AXIS

Before WWII, Hungary’s prime minister was lobbying for an alliance between Germany, Hungary and Italy and worked towards such a relationship that he called an “axis”. The main Axis powers during the war were Germany, Italy and Japan. However, also included in the relationship were Romania, Bulgaria and the aforementioned Hungary.

19 Exam with a max. score of 528: MCAT

Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)

21 Ex-N.B.A. star ___ Ming: YAO

Yao Ming is a retired professional basketball player from Shanghai who played for the Houston Rockets. At 7’6″, Yao was the tallest man playing in the NBA. He has a cute nickname: “the Ming Dynasty”.

24 Sensational, on Broadway: BOFFO

“Boffo” (sometimes “boff”) is show biz slang for “very successful”, and is a term that dates back to the early sixties.

25 Icy: ALOOF

I suppose one might guess from the feel of the word “aloof” that it has nautical roots. Originally “aloof” meant “to windward” and was the opposite of “alee”. A helmsman might be instructed to stay aloof, to steer the boat into the weather to keep a distance from a lee-shore. It is from this sense of maintaining a distance that aloof came to mean “distant” in terms of personality. Interesting, huh …?

26 Blue man group member?: SMURF

The Smurfs are little blue people created in 1958 by the Belgian cartoonist who went by the pen name Peyo. The Smurfs became famous in the US when Hanna-Barbera used them in a children’s cartoon series. The characters are largely a group of males. The original lineup included just one “Smurfette”, who is wooed by almost all of the boy Smurfs. Later, another female was introduced into the mix called Sassette, and still later along came Granny Smurf.

28 Home to many kings and queens: HOLIDAY INN

The first Holiday Inn hotel opened in 1952. The name for the hotel chain was inspired by the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn” starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. The Holiday Inn chain has been British-owned since 1988.

29 Setting for several Herman Melville works: OCEAN

Herman Melville mined his own experiences when writing his novels. Melville sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1841 on a whaler heading into the Pacific Ocean (a source for “Moby-Dick”). Melville ended up deserting his ship 18 months later and lived with natives on a South Pacific Island for three weeks (a source for “Typee”). He picked up another whaler and headed for Hawaii, where he joined the crew of a US navy frigate that was bound for Boston (a source for “Omoo”).

31 Two of spades?: ESSES

There are two letters S (esses) in the word “spades”.

33 Queen Elizabeth I has one named for her: ERA

The Elizabethan era, the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, is considered by many to be the golden age of English history. It was the age of William Shakespeare and the age of the English Renaissance. Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and the last sovereign of the House of Tudor.

38 Virtual storefront in an online marketplace: ETSY SHOP

Etsy.com was founded in 2005 as a way for artists and craftspeople to sell their handmade goods online, and has since grown to include vintage items and crafting supplies as well. The company’s name is derived from the Italian word “etsi,” which means “oh, yes”? This was a nod to founder Rob Kalin’s love of Italy and his appreciation for the country’s history and artistry.

39 Nine daughters of Greek myth: THE MUSES

In Greek mythology, the muses are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. The number of muses is a subject of debate at times, but the most popular view is that there are nine:

• Calliope (epic poetry)
• Clio (history)
• Erato (lyric poetry)
• Euterpe (music)
• Melpomene (tragedy)
• Polyhymnia (choral poetry)
• Terpsichore (dance)
• Thalia (comedy)
• Urania (astronomy)

Before the adoption of the nine muses of Greek mythology, there were originally three muses, the three Boeotian Muses. These were:

• Mneme (memory)
• Melete (meditation)
• Aoede (song)

44 Chatted on the Gram, say: DM’ED

Instagram (often abbreviated to “Insta”, or “IG”) is a photo-sharing application, one that is extremely popular. Instagram started in San Francisco in 2010. Facebook purchased Instagram two years later, paying $1 billion. The billion-dollar Instagram company had just 13 employees at the time of the sale …

49 San ___, Calif.: MATEO

San Mateo is a city located south of San Francisco, just across the other side of the Bay from where I live. San Mateo is Spanish for Saint Matthew.

50 Follower of the 32-Across: AZTEC
[32A Ancient Mexican civilization: OLMEC]

The Aztec people of Central America dominated the region in the 14th – 16th centuries. Two traits of the Aztec people are oft cited today. They built some magnificent pyramids, and they also engaged in human sacrifice. The two traits were linked in a way … for the consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, 84,400 prisoners were sacrificed over a period of four days.

51 Texas city once known as “Six-Shooter Junction”: WACO

The Texas city of Waco is named for the Wichita people known as the “Waco”, who occupied the area for thousands of years.

54 Only character shown in the final 30 minutes of “2001: A Space Odyssey”: DAVE

In the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Dr. David Bowman (“Dave”) goes up against the spacecraft computer known as “HAL”.

55 Zip: ZERO

The use of the words “zip” and “zippo” to mean “nothing” dates back to the early 1900s, when it was student slang for being graded zero on a test.

57 Locale depicted in Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”: EDEN

Hieronymus Bosch was a Dutch painter who worked late 15th and early 16th centuries. Perhaps his most recognized work is his triptych titled “The Garden of Earthly Delights”.