1030-25 NY Times Crossword 30 Oct 25, Thursday

Bill’s time: 10m 55s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5A Argentine plain : PAMPA

The pampas are fertile lowlands covering a large part of Argentina, Uruguay and some of Brazil. “Pampa” is a Quechua word meaning “plain”.

10A Prayer leader : IMAM

An imam is a Muslim leader, and often the person in charge of a mosque and/or perhaps a Muslim community.

15A Disney princess who longs to be “part of that world” : ARIEL

In the 1989 Disney animated film “The Little Mermaid”, the title character is given the name “Ariel”. In the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen that dates back to 1836, the Little Mermaid is given no name at all. There is a famous statue of the unnamed Little Mermaid sitting in Copenhagen Harbor, in Andersen’s homeland of Denmark.

17A Either acting sibling Andrew or Elisabeth : SHUE

Actor Andrew Shue was famous for playing Billy Campbell on “Melrose Place”. While filming the show, he was simultaneously playing professional soccer. He turned out for the LA Galaxy in their 1996 inaugural season, and before that he played professionally in Zimbabwe, where he was the only white player in the premier league. Andrew is the brother of fellow actor Elisabeth Shue.

Elisabeth Shue has always been a favorite actress of mine. She has been in several popular films including “The Karate Kid”, “Cocktail”, two of the “Back to the Future” movies, “Leaving Las Vegas”, and my personal favorite “Adventures in Babysitting”. More recently, Shue had a recurring role on the TV crime drama “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”.

18A What pulls out all the stops? : DRANO

To clean out drains we might buy Crystal Drano, which is sodium hydroxide (lye) mixed with sodium nitrate, sodium chloride (table salt) and aluminum. The contents of Drano work in concert to clear the clog. The lye reacts with any fats creating soap which may be enough to break up the clog. Also, the finely-divided aluminum reacts with the lye generating hydrogen gas that churns the mixture. Any hair or fibers are cut by the sharp edges of the nitrate and chloride crystals. Having said all that, I find that boiling water poured down the drain quite often does the job …

19A Food generally known outside the U.S. as “lady’s fingers” : OKRA

The plant known as okra is mainly grown for its edible green pods. The pods are said to resemble “ladies’ fingers”, which is an alternative name for the plant. Okra is known as “ngombo” in Bantu, a name that might give us the word “gumbo”, the name of the southern Louisiana stew that includes okra as a key ingredient.

20A Start illegally, say : HOT-WIRE

To hot-wire a vehicle is to start it by bypassing the keyed ignition.

28A Animal with a white rump : ELK

Wapiti, also known as elk, are one of the largest species of deer found in North America and East Asia. They are social animals and live in herds of up to 400 individuals. The herds are usually led by a dominant male, known as a bull, who defends his harem of females during the mating season.

30A Highlands hat : TAM

A tam o’shanter is a man’s cap worn traditionally by Scotsmen. “Tams” were originally all blue (and called “blue bonnets”) but as more dyes became readily available they became more colorful. The name of the cap comes from the title character of the Robert Burns poem “Tam o’ Shanter”. A pom-pom adorning a tam is known as a toorie.

39A Country sharing the world’s longest international border : CANADA

The Canada-US border is the longest international border in the world. The total length is 5,525 miles. Canada’s border with the lower 48 states is 3,987 miles long, and the border with Alaska extends 1,538 miles.

42A Desirable Vegas couple? : ACES

The stretch of South Las Vegas Boulevard on which most of the big casinos are concentrated is referred to as the “Las Vegas Strip”. The Strip was named for LA’s Sunset Strip by former Los Angeles law enforcement officer Guy McAfee. McAfee was a notoriously corrupt head of the LAPD vice squad in the 1920s and 1930s who ran several brothels and gambling saloons. McAfee moved to Las Vegas in 1939 where he opened several casinos, including the Golden Nugget.

43A Lake in the homeland of the Washoe people : TAHOE

Lake Tahoe (often referred to simply as “Tahoe”) is up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and is located right on the border between California and Nevada. It is the largest alpine lake in the country. Tahoe is also the second deepest lake, with only the beautiful Crater Lake in Oregon being deeper. Given its location, there are tall casinos that sit right on the shore on the Nevada side of the state line where gambling is legal.

47A ___ Blaster (toy) : NERF

Nerf is a soft material used in a whole series of toys designed for “safe” play indoors. The Nerf product is used to make darts, balls and ammunition for toy guns. “NERF” is an acronym, standing for Non-Expanding Recreational Foam.

50A Ones eliciting knee-jerk reactions, informally? : DOCS

The foot naturally kicks forward when the tendon/muscle at the front of the leg is tapped just below the knee. The kick takes place due to a reflex reaction, an impulse sent along nerves from the site of the tap to the spine and back to the leg muscle, without direct involvement of the brain.

51A Exemplar : PARAGON

A paragon is a model of excellence, a peerless example. Ultimately the term “paragon” derives from the Greek “para-” meaning “on the side” and “akone” meaning “whetstone”. This derivation comes from the ancient practice of using a touchstone to test gold for its level of purity by drawing a line on the stone with the gold and comparing the resulting mark with samples of known purity.

57A Likely oriented toward platonic relationships, in brief : ARO

Someone described as aromantic (“aro”, for short) experiences little or no romantic attraction. The opposite of aromanticism is alloromanticism.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote a philosophical treatise on the nature of love called “Symposium”. “Symposium” is the source of the contemporary phrase “Platonic love”.

64A Skater Midori : ITO

Midori Ito is a Japanese figure skater. She was the first woman to land a triple/triple jump and a triple axel in competition. In fact, Ito landed her first triple jump in training when she was only 8 years old. Ito won Olympic silver in 1992, and was chosen as the person to light the Olympic cauldron at the commencement of the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.

66A With 68-Across, “Wicked” song suggested by the answers to the seven starred clues (and whose singer is spelled by the circled letters reading from left to right) : DEFYING …
68A See 66-Across : … GRAVITY

“Defying Gravity” is a song from the musical “Wicked”, famously sung by the character Elphaba. Aptly enough, it was chosen as a wake-up song for a Space Shuttle mission on the day that astronaut Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger was scheduled to carry out a spacewalk.

72A Abjures : ESCHEWS

“To eschew”, meaning “to avoid, shun”, comes from the Old French word “eschiver” that means the same thing.

Down

1D Soup stock in Japanese cuisine : DASHI

Dashi is a style of cooking stock used in Japanese cuisine. Most notably perhaps, “dashi” is the stock that is used as the base for miso soup. Traditional dashi is a fish stock to which is added edible kelp called kombu and shavings of preserved and fermented skipjack tuna called katsuobushi.

3D Washington, Jefferson or Madison : SOUTHERNER

Mount Vernon was the plantation home of President George Washington and his family, located along the banks of the Potomac River near Alexandria, Virginia. The estate was purchased by Washington’s ancestors when it was known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation. It was George Washington’s older half-brother who changed the name to Mount Vernon, in honor of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, an English naval officer.

Thomas Jefferson was born a British subject in 1743 in the Colony of Virginia, one of ten children born to Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph Jefferson. The Jefferson’s had four sons in all, with two dying in infancy. The remaining two sons inherited Peter’s estate, divided between them. Thomas came into 5,000 acres of land, including Monticello, and 20-40 slaves.

James Madison was one of the Founding Fathers, and the fourth President of the US. Madison played a key role in drafting the US Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights, and so is sometimes referred to as the Father of the Constitution. Along with future president Thomas Jefferson, Madison founded the Democratic-Republican Party, which was one of the nation’s first two major political parties along with Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party.

7D The Marlins, on scoreboards : MIA

The Miami Marlins baseball team was founded in 1993 as the Florida Marlins. The franchise changed its name to the Miami Marlins in 2011 when it relocated to the newly constructed Marlins Park.

8D Lewis Carroll or George Orwell : PEN NAME

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.

“George Orwell” was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, the famous British author of the classics “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm”.

9D *It’s used to scrub in the tub : LOOFA

The loofah (also “loofa”, “lufah” and “luffa”, all Arabic words) is a vine, with fruit that’s very popular in Asia and Africa. If the fruit is allowed to mature, it can be processed to remove everything but the more rigid xylem structure (remember your high school botany class?) leaving a soft, sponge-like mass that is used as a skin polisher.

11D Show up unannounced? : MAKE A CAMEO

Even in my day, a cameo role was more than just a short appearance in a movie (or other artistic piece). For the appearance to be a cameo, the actor had to play themself, and be instantly recognizable. With this meaning it’s easy to see the etymology of the term, as a cameo brooch is one with the recognizable carving of the silhouette of a person. Nowadays, a cameo is any minor role played by a celebrity or famous actor, regardless of the character played.

12D *Some Scandinavian money : KRONA

Swedish krona banknotes include the images of some famous Swedes, including Astrid Lindgren (and Pippi Longstocking), Greta Garbo, Ingmar Bergman and Dag Hammarskjöld.

29D *Stand before a meeting : EASEL

The term “easel” comes from an old Dutch word meaning “donkey”, would you believe? The idea is that an easel carries its load (an oil painting, say) just as a donkey would be made to carry a load.

32D *Genre for Aretha Franklin or Usher : R AND B

I think that Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul”, had a tough life. Franklin had her first son when she was just 13-years-old, and her second at 15. In 2008, “Rolling Stone” magazine ranked Franklin as number one on its list of the greatest singers of all time.

“Usher” is the stage name of R&B singer Usher Terry Raymond IV.

37D Chicago exchange, for short : MERC

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the “Merc”) started its life as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board in 1898. The Merc is the site for exchange of commodities, among other things.

38D Certain attachments : PDFS

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents can be shared between users and read using many different applications and platforms, making them more universally accessible than documents saved by one particular program.

40D Flour used in Indian flatbreads : ATTA

Atta is a whole-wheat flour used to make flatbreads in South Asian cuisine, such as chapati and naan. “Atta” is the Hindi or Urdu word for “dough”.

41D Kiss in a telenovela : BESO

A telenovela is a “television novel”, a form of programming that is very popular in Latin America. It is somewhat like a soap opera that has an end in sight, and that runs for less than a year. I like this quote from an executive at Telemundo:

A telenovela is all about a couple who wants to kiss and a scriptwriter who stands in their way for 150 episodes.

44D Calls to court : ARRAIGNS

In the law, to arraign someone is to call that person before a court to answer charges.

45D *Your home : EARTH

The Greek goddess personifying the Earth was Gaea (also “Gaia”, and meaning “land” or “earth” in Greek). The Roman equivalent goddess was Terra Mater, “Mother Earth”.

46D Voice command to an Android device : OK, GOOGLE

Google Assistant is a virtual assistant that can engage in two-way conversation. Google Assistant competes with Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.

51D Fool’s gold : PYRITE

Pyrite is a mineral also known as iron pyrite. Famously, it has an appearance very similar to gold, so has the nickname “fool’s gold”. Pyrite does find its way into some baubles, which go by the name of marcasite jewelry.

55D Left of center? : SOFT C

The “left” letter in the word “center” is a soft letter C (cee).

56D Get ready to have one’s tonsils checked, perhaps : SAY “AH”

The palatine tonsils are located at the back of the human throat. The exact role that tonsils play isn’t completely understood, but it is known that they are in the first line of defense in the body’s immune system. They provide some level of protection against pathogens that are ingested and inhaled.

60D World capital on the world’s longest river : CAIRO

Cairo is the capital city of Egypt. It is nicknamed “The City of a Thousand Minarets” because of its impressive skyline replete with Islamic architecture. The name “Cairo” is a European corruption of the city’s original name in Arabic, “Al-Qahira”.

Depending on definition, the Nile is regarded generally as the longest river on the planet. The Nile forms from two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which join together near Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. From Khartoum the Nile flows north, traveling almost entirely through desert making it central to life for those living along its length.

61D Family name with an eponymous Row, Court, Place and Avenue in New York City : ASTOR

John Jacob Astor was the patriarch of the famous American Astor dynasty. He was the country’s first multi-millionaire, making his fortune in the trade of fur, real estate and opium. In today’s terms, it has been calculated that by the time of his death he has accumulated a fortune big enough to make him the fourth wealthiest man in American history (in the company of the likes of Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Bill Gates, Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller).

62D Composer Jule : STYNE

Jule Styne was an English songwriter who made a name for himself in America with a series of popular musicals. Styne wrote a number of famous songs including “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from “Funny Girl”, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, and “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from “Gypsy”.

69D Fish also known as a batomorph : RAY

Rays are fish with flattened bodies that have gill slits on their underside. There are many, many species of ray, including stingrays and skates. Rays are close relatives of sharks, with both being cartilaginous fish, as opposed to bony fish.