1011-25 NY Times Crossword 11 Oct 25, Saturday

Bill’s time: 21m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

17A Symbol for electric flux, in physics : PHI

Phi is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet.

19A What might be smelt? : ROE

“Smelt” is the name given to several types of small silvery fish, with examples being Great Lake smelts and whitebait smelts.

24A Ambitious tactic in bridge : SLAM BID

A grand slam in bridge is the winning of all thirteen tricks by one player. If the player wins twelve tricks, the achievement is called a small slam.

34A Curved plumbing piece : P-TRAP

Most sinks in a home have a P-trap in the outlet pipe that empties into the sewer line. This P-trap has at its heart a U-bend that retains a small amount of water after the sink is emptied. This plug of water serves as a seal to prevent sewer gases entering into the home. By virtue of its design, the U-bend can also capture any heavy objects (like an item of jewelry) that might fall through the plughole. But the “trapping” of fallen objects is secondary to the P-trap’s main function of “trapping” sewer gases.

35A Car touted for its dual efficiency : DIESEL HYBRID

Rudolf Diesel was a German engineer, and the inventor of the diesel engine. Diesel died under mysterious circumstances, having disappeared from a passenger vessel sailing from Antwerp to London. Whether death was due to an accident, suicide or murder is the subject of much speculation.

49A Like some protective sunglasses, in brief : ANTI-UV

At either end of the visible light spectrum are the invisible forms of radiation known as infrared (IR) light and ultraviolet (UV) light. IR light lies just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum, and UV light lies just below the violet end.

53A Youngest-ever QB to win multiple N.F.L. M.V.P. awards (by age 27) : LAMAR JACKSON

NFL player Lamar Jackson was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the 2018 draft. Prior to turning pro, Jackson won the Heisman Trophy while playing for the Louisville Cardinals. IN his rookie season, when he was just 21 years old, he became the youngest quarterback in NFL history to start a playoff game.

Down

2D Taxing times : APRILS

April 15th wasn’t always Tax Day in the US. The deadline for returns was March 1st from 1913-18, when it was moved to March 15th. Tax Day has been April 15th since 1955.

4D East Egg resident in “The Great Gatsby” : TOM

Tom Buchanan is Daisy Fay Buchanan’s husband in “The Great Gatsby”.

East Egg is a fictional location in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby”. It is an exclusive residential area located on Long Island’s north shore, across from another fictional area called West Egg. East Egg is said to be based on the real-life location of Sands Point, Long Island.

7D Seafood staple of New England : SCROD

Scrod is the name given to fish that has been “scrawed” i.e. split open, dried and then broiled.

8D Engineer who supposedly found inspiration while tending to a boiling kettle : WATT

James Watt was a Scottish inventor. He figured prominently in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, largely due to the improvements he made to the fledgling steam engine. The SI unit of power is called the watt, and was named in his honor.

9D Shorthand for a stance : IMO

In my opinion (IMO)

11D Birthplace, as of civilization : CRADLE

Iraq is often called the “Cradle of Civilization” as it was home to Sumer, which was the earliest known civilization on the planet. By 5000 BC the Sumerian people were practicing year-round agriculture and had a specialized labor force. For the first time, a whole race was able to settle in one place by storing food, instead of having to migrate in a pattern dictated by crops and grazing land.

14D Count out for breakfast? : CHOCULA

General Mills introduced us to a whole series of monster-themed breakfast cereals, starting in 1971 with Count Chocula and Franken Berry. Then came Boo Berry, Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy.

27D Johann ___, philosopher who influenced Hegel : FICHTE

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, and one of the founders of the German idealism movement. “Idealism”, in the context of the movement, was the principle that objects did not have properties in themselves, but rather that an object’s properties depended on the person perceiving the object.

30D “Everyone has ___. What’s rare is the courage to follow [it] to the dark places where it leads”: Erica Jong : TALENT

Author Erica Jong’s most famous work is her first: “Fear of Flying”, a novel published in 1973. Over twenty years later, Jong wrote “Fear of Fifty: a midlife memoir”, published in 1994.

34D Forensic unit’s discovery : PRINT

Something described as forensic is connected with a court of law, or with public discussion or debate. The term comes from the Latin “forensis” meaning “of a forum, of a place of assembly”. We mainly use the word today to mean “pertaining to legal trials” as in “forensic medicine” and “forensic science”.

36D Spot to order a witbier or hefeweizen : BRAUHAUS

Hefeweizen is a wheat beer associated with the German state of Bavaria. It is also known as “Weissbier” in Germany, with “Hefeweizen” translating literally as “yeast wheat”, and “Weissbier” as “white beer”. For what it’s worth, true Hefeweizen, with strong banana-clove overtones, is my favorite beer in the world …

37D Very hot and dry : SAHARAN

The name “Sahara” means “desert” in Arabic. The Sahara is just that, a great desert covering almost 4 million square miles of Northern Africa. That’s almost the size of the United States.

38D What the singer Prince Rogers Nelson famously went by : ONE NAME

Singer Prince was born in Minneapolis, and he lived there most of his life. Born Prince Rogers Nelson, his given name honored his father, a jazz musician who used the stage name Prince Rogers. Starting in 1993, he changed his stage name (adopting an unpronounceable symbol) and was often referred to as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” (TAFKAP). He died in 2016 due to an accidental fentanyl overdose at his home and recording studio located just southwest of Minneapolis. The home and studio, known as Paisley Park, is now a museum that is open to the public.

41D With fewer than 11,000 people, the world’s second-least-populous country, after Vatican City : TUVALU

Tuvalu is a Polynesian island nation that was formerly called the Ellice Islands. It lies midway between Hawaii and Australia. Tuvalu is the third least populous sovereign state in the world with under 11,000 inhabitants, ahead of Vatican City and Nauru.

44D Lt. ___ Slothrop, main character in Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” : TYRONE

“Gravity’s Rainbow” is a complex novel by Thomas Pynchon that centers on the design and use of V-2 rockets by Germany towards the end of WWII.

48D Dominatrix’s practice, for short : S AND M

Sadomasochism (S&M)

50D TV sister of Sansa Stark : ARYA

Maisie Williams is the English actress who plays the tomboyish young girl Arya Stark on the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones”.

57D Formula 1 divisions: Abbr. : KMS

In motor racing, the designation “formula” is a set of rules that all participants and cars must abide by. The definition of “Formula One” was agreed back in 1946, with the “one” designating that it is the most advanced of the “formulae”, and the most competitive.