0419-25 NY Times Crossword 19 Apr 25, Saturday

Bill’s time: 10m 15s

Bill’s errors:

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

8 Move quickly with the wind, as clouds : SCUD

To scud is a move swiftly as if propelled forward. The term is often used with reference to clouds, scudding across the sky.

22 Actress Mendes of “Ghost Rider” : EVA

I am most familiar with actress Eva Mendes as the female lead in the movie “Hitch”, in which she played opposite Will Smith. Mendes started a relationship with fellow actor Ryan Gosling in 2011, and the couple have two children together.

“Ghost Rider” is a 2007 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film stars Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a motorcycle stuntman who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for curing his father’s cancer. However, the Devil tricks Blaze and transforms him into the Ghost Rider, a flaming skeleton who is bound to hunt down evil. Not my cup of tea …

27 Location of the world’s oldest surviving piano, with “the” : … MET

The Metropolitan Opera (often simply “the Met”) of New York City is the largest classical music organization in the country, presenting about 220 performances each and every year. Founded in 1880, the Met is renowned for using technology to expand its audiences. Performances have been broadcast live on radio since 1931, and on television since 1977. And since 2006 you can go see a live performance from New York in high definition on the big screen, at a movie theater near you …

What was remarkable about the piano when it was invented, compared to other keyboard instruments, was that notes could be played with varying degrees of loudness. This is accomplished by pressing the keys lightly or firmly. Because of this quality, the new instrument was called a “pianoforte”, with “piano” and “forte” meaning “soft” and “loud” in Italian. We tend to shorten the name these days to just “piano”.

35 Need for an international student, often : VISA

A visa is usually a stamp in one’s passport, an indication that one is authorized to enter (and less often, to exit) a particular country. The word “visa” comes into English, via French, from the Latin expression “charta visa” meaning “paper that has been seen”, or “verified paper”.

36 Molecules with the same chemical formula but different structures : ISOMERS

In the world of chemistry, isomers are two compounds with the same chemical formula (i.e. the same atomic constituents), but with a slightly different arrangement of the atoms relative to each other. The differing arrangement of atoms often leads to different chemical properties.

40 Lightly cut? : LASE

The term “laser” is an acronym standing for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. It has been pointed out that a more precise name for laser technology is “light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation”, but the resulting acronym isn’t quite so appealing, namely “loser”.

43 Walking stick, e.g. : INSECT

Insects belonging to the order Phasmatodea are often referred to as stick insects or walking sticks. Their main defense mechanism from predators is camouflage, as all stick insects blend into the background as they look like sticks or leaves. Stick insects vary greatly in size, with one species growing to over 20 inches in length, making it the world’s longest insect.

46 ___ and the Dominos, rock band behind “Layla” and “Bell Bottom Blues” : DEREK

“Layla” is one of the great rock anthems of the seventies, released by Derek and the Dominos as a single in 1971. It is a masterpiece of composition, with the first half of the song a great vehicle for the guitar-playing talents of Eric Clapton. The second half is a beautifully melodic piano coda (a coda … taking up half the length of the track!). To top things off we have the “unplugged” version recorded by Clapton in 1992, a fabulous and inventive variation on the original.

Layla, you’ve got me on my knees.
Layla, I’m begging, darling please.
Layla, darling, won’t you ease my worried mind.

49 Celestial object producing a so-called “lighthouse effect” as it rotates : PULSAR

A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. As the beam is not emitted in all directions, it is only seen from Earth when at particular rotations, hence creating a cycle of pulsed gamma rays known as the lighthouse effect.

51 Go off a cliff, maybe : BASE JUMP

BASE jumping is parachuting off fixed objects such as buildings or cliffs. The term “BASE” is actually an acronym standing for the four types of objects from which parachutists jump: Buildings, Antennas. Spans/bridges, Earth/cliffs.

53 Someone with whom to share un peu de camaraderie : AMI

A male friend in France is “un ami”, and a female friend is “une amie”.

54 B in chemistry class : BORON

Boron is the chemical element with the atomic number of 5 and symbol B. It lies over to the right in Group 13 of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Uncombined, elemental boron is not found naturally on Earth. The boron that is mined is found in oxide form, and not as uncombined boron.

Here is a list of all the single-letter element symbols:

• B = boron
• C = carbon
• F = fluorine
• H = hydrogen
• I = Iodine
• K = potassium
• N = nitrogen
• O = oxygen
• P = phosphorus
• S = sulfur
• U = uranium
• V = vanadium
• W = tungsten
• Y = yttrium

56 Duke residence : DORM

Duke University was founded in 1838 as Brown’s Schoolhouse. The school was renamed to Trinity College in 1859, and to this day the town where the college was located back then is known as Trinity, in honor of the school. The school was moved in 1892 to Durham, North Carolina in part due to generous donations from the wealthy tobacco industrialist Washington Duke. Duke’s donation required that the school open its doors to women, placing them on an equal footing with men. Trinity’s name was changed to Duke in 1924 in recognition of the generosity of the Duke family. Duke’s athletic teams are known as the Blue Devils.

Down

1 ___ Flatow, longtime host of public radio’s “Science Friday” : IRA

Ira Flatow is a science journalist and broadcaster who is perhaps best known as the host of the popular public radio program “Science Friday”. Before “Science Friday”, Flatow hosted the Emmy Award-winning PBS show “Newton’s Apple”.

2 Know-how in negotiations, say : BUSINESS ACUMEN

“Acumen” is such a lovely word, I think, one meaning “keenness of judgment or insight”. “Acumen” is Latin for “point, sting”, the idea being that someone with acumen has mental sharpness.

5 Federal agcy. established during Nixon’s presidency : DEA

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was set up in 1973 while President Nixon was in office.

8 Send up : SPOOF

The word “spoof” came into the language in the 1880s with the meaning “hoax, deception”. The term was coined by British comedian Arthur Roberts as the name for a card game he invented that involved trickery and nonsense. The verb “to spoof” came to mean “to satirize gently” starting in the 1920s.

10 Global news inits. : UPI

Founded in 1958, United Press International (UPI) used to be one of the biggest news agencies in the world, sending out news by wire to the major newspapers. UPI ran into trouble with the change in media formats at the end of the twentieth century and lost many of its clients as the afternoon newspapers shut down due to the advent of television news. UPI, which once employed thousands, still exists today but with just a fraction of that workforce.

14 Film franchise that boosted sales of Ray-Ban sunglasses, for short : MIB

“Men in black” (MIB) are said to have appeared in the past whenever there have been reports of UFO sightings. Supposedly, these men are government agents whose job it is to suppress reports of alien landings. The conspiracy theorists got their day in the movies with the release of a pretty good sci-fi comedy in 1997 called “Men in Black”, starring Will Smith (as Agent J) and Tommy Lee Jones (as Agent K).

Ray-Ban sunglasses were introduced in 1937 for the US Army Air Corps. The Ray-Ban Aviator model of glasses became very popular with the pilots, and apparently with General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was wearing a pair when he was photographed “returning” to the Philippines in WWII. The name “Ray-Ban” was chosen to “reflect” the ability of the sunglasses to stop (“ban”) the ingress of UV or IR “rays” of light.

15 Part of a living arrangement that avoids rush-hour traffic : REVERSE COMMUTE

A regular commute often involves large numbers of people traveling from the suburbs into an urban area where they spend the working day, before traveling back home to the suburbs in the evening. A person with a reverse commute does the opposite, living in an urban area and traveling to and from suburbia for the working day. A reverse commute implies encountering less traffic.

20 Democratic Republic of the Congo, once : ZAIRE

The African nation once called Zaire is a neighbor of Rwanda. The genocide and war in Rwanda spilled over into Zaire in 1996, with the conflict escalating into what is now called the First Congo War. As part of the war’s fallout there was a regime change, and in 1997 Zaire became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

24 Like helium : INERT

Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and the element symbol “He”. It is a gas, lighter than air, and is the second-most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen). Helium was first detected in 1868 as an unknown yellow spectral line during a solar eclipse. As such, the gas was named for “Helios”, the Greek god of the Sun.

34 Scoring plays in rugby : TRIES

In the game of rugby, a try is scored by grounding the ball behind the opposition’s goal line. A try is similar to a touchdown in American football, although in rugby the ball must be manually placed on the ground by the player making the score. The term “try” is used as originally that act of touching the ball to the ground simply qualified a team for a “try at goal”, an opportunity to kick the ball at goal to make the score.

45 Sleeveless medieval garment : TABARD

Tabards were tunics worn by knights over their armor. Often, the tabard was quite colorful and was emblazoned with the knight’s coat of arms. It was this usage of the word “tabard” that gave rise to the Tabard inn, which features in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”.

50 Massages deeply : ROLFS

Rolfing is a trademarked massage technique developed by Ida Pauline Rolf in the fifties.

52 Portmanteau pants : JORTS

Jorts, also known as jean shorts, were originally created by cutting off a pair of jeans to make them more comfortable to wear during hot weather. They became popular in the 1980s, although the term “jorts” didn’t come into use until the early 2000s.

55 Transfer ___ : RNA

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is an essential catalyst in the manufacture of proteins in the body. The genetic code in DNA determines the sequence of amino acids that make up each protein. That sequence is read in DNA by messenger RNA, and amino acids are delivered for protein manufacture in the correct sequence by transfer RNA. The amino acids are then formed into proteins by ribosomal RNA. An added complication is that small changes in the sequence of amino acids specified by DNA sometimes takes place in a process known as RNA editing. This RNA editing occurs after the nucleotide sequence has been transcribed from DNA, but before it is translated into protein.

58 Cross shape : TAU

The Cross of Tau is a variant of the cross symbol used in the Christian tradition. Also known as St. Anthony’s Cross, the Cross of Tau resembles the Greek letter tau, and our letter T. St. Anthony of Egypt bore such a symbol on his cloak, hence the alternate name.

59 Cathedral city in Cambridgeshire : ELY

Ely Cathedral is a famous and beautiful church in the city of Ely in the English county of Cambridgeshire. There is a Gothic door on the north face of the cathedral that was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the man famous as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Christopher Wren had a personal link to the church, as his uncle was the Bishop of Ely.