0307-25 NY Times Crossword 7 Mar 25, Friday

Bill’s time: 10m 34s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

16 Chicago politician Emanuel : RAHM

Rahm Emanuel was an Illinois representative in the US House before resigning in 2009 to take up President Obama’s offer to become the White House Chief of Staff. Emanuel moved on from the White House the following year in order to run as a candidate in Chicago’s mayoral election in 2011. He won the 2011 race, and was re-elected in 2015.

17 Crush, e.g. : ORANGE SODA

The Crush brand of soft drinks was formulated in 1916. The first product was an orange-flavored beverage sold as Ward’s Orange Crush.

20 Certain records, for short : LPS

The first vinyl records designed to play at 33⅓ rpm were introduced by RCA Victor in 1931, but were discontinued due to quality problems. The first long play (LP) 33⅓ rpm disc was introduced by Columbia Records many years later in 1948, with RCA Victor following up with a 45 rpm “single” the following year, in 1949.

27 One-eighth of a byte : BIT

In the world of computing, a bit is the basic unit of information. It has a value of 0 or 1. A “byte” is a small collection of “bits” (usually 8), the number of bits needed to uniquely identify a character of text. The prefix mega- stands for 10 to the power of 6, so a megabyte (meg) is 1,000,000 bytes. The prefix giga- means 10 to the power of 9, and so a gigabyte (gig) is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Well, those are the SI definitions of megabyte and gigabyte. The purists still use 2 to the power of 20 for a megabyte (i.e. 1,048,576), and 2 to the power of 30 for a gigabyte.

31 Wax off? : WANE

The verbs “to wax” and “to wane” come from Old English. To wax is to increase gradually in size, strength, intensity or number. To wane is to decrease gradually.

32 Darkens in the light, say : TANS

Melanin is a natural pigment found in most organisms. In humans, melanin is the pigment in the skin, the production of which accelerates in response to UV radiation causing a “tan”. Melanin is also what is released as cephalopod ink, a defensive cloud squirted into the water by squids and octopodes.

33 Pop star with the #1 albums “Sour” and “Guts” : OLIVIA RODRIGO

Olivia Rodrigo is a singer-songwriter who rose to prominence with her 2021 song “Drivers License”, which she also co-wrote. In 2021, Rodrigo played her part in a White House program promoting COVID-19 vaccinations among young people.

36 A real no-name, for short? : ANON

Something onymous is something bearing a name. The term “onymous” was coined in the 1770s as an antonym to the existing word “anonymous”.

37 Lice-to-be : NITS

Lice (singular “louse”) are small wingless insects, of which there are thousands of species. There are three species of lice affecting humans, i.e. head lice, body lice and pubic lice. Most lice feed on dead skin found on the body of the host animal, although some feed on blood. Ick …

43 Admin for an online forum : MOD

Moderator (mod)

44 Cheap beer brand, for short : PBR

Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) is the most recognizable brand of beer from the Pabst Brewing Company. There appears to be some dispute over whether or not Pabst beer ever won a “blue ribbon” prize, but the company claims that it did so at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The beer was originally called Pabst Best Select, and then just Pabst Select. With the renaming to Blue Ribbon, the beer was sold with an actual blue ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle until it was dropped in 1916 and incorporated into the label.

47 German city : STADT

“Stadt” is the German word for “city, town”.

49 Buttery topping for paratha : GHEE

Ghee is clarified butter used in South Asian cuisines. “Ghee” comes from Sanskrit, and translates as “sprinkled”.

Paratha is an unleavened flatbread from the Indian subcontinent that is made using a whole wheat dough. It is a thick, layered bread in which the individual folds of dough have been coated with ghee or oil.

50 Notice of money owed : CHIT

A chit is a note or a short letter. The term “chit” tends to be used these days in the sense of an amount owed (as in a poker game). The word used to be “chitty”, which is now obsolete but was closer to the original Hindi term. I feel a tad obsolete myself, because when we are at school we would be excused from class if we had a “chitty”.

51 Seat of power in Westeros : IRON THRONE

“A Game of Thrones” is the first novel in the series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin titled “A Song of Ice and Fire”. That first novel’s title gives its name to “Game of Thrones”, the incredibly popular HBO television series that uses the storyline from the whole series of books.

54 “The nicest word there is,” per TV’s Laura Ingalls : HOME

Laura Ingalls Wilder was an author from Pepin, Wisconsin who is best remembered for her “Little House” series of children’s novels. The series was based on her own childhood in a pioneer family that moved from Wisconsin to Kansas and back again.

55 Fruity green cocktails : APPLETINIS

An appletini is an apple martini, a cocktail containing vodka and an apple-flavored beverage such as apple brandy. One recipe is:

• 1 part sweet vermouth
• 1 part dry vermouth
• 4 parts vodka
• 3 parts apple juice

56 Creatures that take over Earth in a 1968 film : APES

The “Planet of the Apes” franchise of films is based on a French novel by Pierre Boulle called “La Planète des singes”. The book was published in English as “Monkey Planet”, but was re-released as “Planet of the Apes” when Hollywood had made its choice for a movie title.

57 Glam rock? : MOONSTONE

Moonstone is a mineral that often has numerous colors, with light reflecting internally within the stone. It’s this unique visual effect that gives the gem the name of moonstone.

Down

2 Dances in which chairs are hoisted : HORAS

The hora is a circle dance that originated in the Balkans. It was brought to Israel by Romanian settlers, and is often performed to traditional, Israeli folk songs. The hora (also “horah”) is a regular sight at Jewish weddings. Sometimes the honoree at an event is raised on a chair during the dance.

7 Stereotypically upper-class : WASPY

The not-so-nice acronym “WASP” stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The term is used for Americans with a relatively high position in society, and who are usually of British descent.

8 World Central Kitchen and CARE, in brief : NGOS

Non-governmental organization (NGO)

José Andrés is a Spanish-born celebrity chef who emigrated to the US in 1990. In 2010, he founded the World Central Kitchen NGO in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Haiti. The organization provides meals for people affected by natural disasters.

The Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) is a humanitarian agency that was founded in 1945 in the US as a conglomerate of twenty-two charities with the aim of delivering aid to Europe after WWII. The acronym originally stood for “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe”.

9 “Ice Age” sloth voiced by John Leguizamo : SID

In the “Ice Age” series of animated feature films, the character named “Sid” is a ground sloth, and is voiced by actor John Leguizamo. Sid is a ground sloth who once lived in a tree with other sloths. But, Sid is dull-witted and accident-prone, and so the other sloths want to leave him behind.

13 Ruler divs. : CMS

Centimeter (cm.)

15 Went door to door, in a way : CAROLED

The word “carol” came into English via the Old French word “carole”, which was a “dance in a ring”. When “carol” made it into English, about 1300 AD, the term was used to describe a dance as well as a joyful song. Around 1500 AD, carols that were sung came to be associated with Christmas.

24 Chicken ___ : KIEV

Chicken Kiev may indeed be a Ukrainian dish, one named for the capital city of Kiev. It is a boneless chicken breast rolled around garlic, herbs and butter, breaded and deep fried. It was my Dad’s favorite …

25 Discontinued music players that weigh just over one ounce : NANOS

The iPod Nano was the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There were seven versions of the Nano, until it was discontinued in 2017.

26 Blog feed letters : RSS

Many websites and blogs publish content in a format known as Rich Site Summary (RSS). The “feed” can be read using an RSS reader. The advantage of using an RSS reader is that the user doesn’t have to check the website for new content. That new material is fed to the RSS reader as soon as it is published.

30 Introvert’s need : ALONE TIME

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung popularized the terms “Introvert” and “extrovert”, although he believed that we all have introverted and extroverted sides to us. Nowadays we tend to think of extroversion and introversion as extremes on a continuum. We bloggers, sitting at home glued to our laptops, tend to the introverted end of the scale …

34 Property of matter : INERTIA

Newton’s first law of motion states that a body that is moving maintains the same velocity unless it is acted upon by an external force. That resistance to changing velocity is known as inertia. Johann Kepler introduced the Latin word “inertia” to describe the physical phenomenon in the 17th century. The Latin term translates as “apathy, inactiveness”. We started using the Latin “inertia” in English to mean the same thing only in the 19th century, after the term had bopped around in science texts for a couple of centuries.

35 Certain World of Warcraft mission : RAID

World of Warcraft (WoW) is an online role-playing game (RPG). My son informs me that the game is not that great. Like I would know …

43 ___ Park, California city where Google was founded : MENLO

Menlo Park is a town in the San Francisco Bay Area. The town was built around land previously owned by two Irish immigrants. The pair called their property “Menlo Park”, naming it for Menlo in County Galway, which is where the Irishmen came from.

44 Player of 20-Across : PHONO
[20 Certain records, for short : LPS]

Famously, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, which was a device that recorded sound onto wax phonograph cylinders. The flat disc phonograph record was developed by Emile Berliner, a German-born American inventor. Berliner called his flat disc record player a “gramophone”, and started selling Berliner Gramophone records in 1894.

45 Country with a 75-mile coast along the Gulf of Guinea : BENIN

The Republic of Benin is a country in West Africa. It used to be a French colony, and was known as Dahomey. Dahomey gained independence in 1975, and took the name Benin after the Bight of Benin, the body of water on which the country lies.

The Gulf of Guinea is a large gulf that forms part of the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Africa. One of the gulf’s claims to fame is that it is home to the intersecting point between zero degrees of latitude and zero degrees of longitude, i.e. where the Equator and Prime Meridian cross.

49 Sandpaper feature : GRIT

Records indicate that sandpaper was actually used in China as far back as the 13th century. Back then, it was made from parchment to which sand was bonded using natural gum. Today, there is no “sand” in “sandpaper”, and instead the abrasives used are usually aluminum oxide or silicon carbide.

50 Cupful from China : CHA

“Cha” is a Chinese word meaning “tea”.