0105-26 NY Times Crossword 5 Jan 26, Monday

Bill’s time: 5m 53s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6A Volcanic coating that buried Pompeii : ASH

The ancient city of Pompeii is situated close to Naples in Italy. Pompeii was destroyed in AD 79 by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. The city was completely lost from that time, and was only rediscovered in 1748. Excavations have uncovered the remarkably well-preserved buildings and roads, and Pompeii now attracts over 2 million visitors annually.

13A Listlessness : ENNUI

“Ennui” is the French word for “boredom”, and is a term that we now use in English. It’s one of the few French words we’ve imported and haven’t anglicized, and actually pronounce “correctly”.

19A Actor Reeves who plays John Wick : KEANU

“John Wick” is a 2014 action movie starring Keanu Reeves in the title role. Reeves plays a retired hitman who goes on a killing spree to avenge the murder of his dog. There’s quite a body count …

21A Wrestler-turned-actor with a trademark do : MR. T

Mr. T’s real name is Laurence Tero Tureaud. Mr. T is famous for many things, including the wearing of excessive amounts of jewelry. He started this habit when he was working as a bouncer, wearing jewelry items that had been left behind by customers at a nightclub so that the items might be recognized and claimed. It was also as a bouncer that he adopted the name Mr. T. His catch phrase comes from the movie “Rocky III”. In the film, before he goes up against Rocky Balboa, Mr. T says, “No, I don’t hate Balboa, but I pity the fool”. He parlayed that line into quite a bit of success. He had a reality TV show called “I Pity the Fool”, and produced a motivational video called “Be Somebody … or Be Somebody’s Fool!”.

24A 1976 film with Robert De Niro as an alienated cabbie : TAXI DRIVER

“Taxi Driver” is a remarkable 1976 movie directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro. The film is remarkable for some great performances, but also for sparking an attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan. Would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr. tried to kill the President in order to impress Jodie Foster. Hinckley had been obsessed with Foster since seeing her performance in the film as child prostitute Iris Steensma.

30A Op-___ (newspaper pieces) : EDS

“Op-ed” is an abbreviation for “opposite the editorial page”. Op-eds started in “The New York Evening World” in 1921 when the page opposite the editorials was used for articles written by a named guest writer, someone independent of the editorial board.

32A Aristocrat : NOBLE

An aristocracy is a state in which the power of government is placed in the hands of a privileged few. The term “aristocracy” ultimately comes from the Greek “aristos” meaning “excellent” and “kratos” meaning “rule”. In ancient Greece, aristocracy was compared favorably with a monarchy, the idea being that the best-qualified few would serve better than an individual who inherited power. More recently, particularly during the French Revolution, aristocracy has been compared unfavorably with democracy.

41A Burr who dueled with Hamilton : AARON

Aaron Burr was the third vice-president of the US, and served under Thomas Jefferson from 1801 to 1805. In the final year of his term in office, Burr fought an illegal duel and killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton. Burr was charged with several crimes as a result, but those charges were eventually dropped. The Democratic-Republican Party had already decided not to nominate Burr as candidate for vice president to run alongside Jefferson in the 1804 election, largely because the relationship between Vice President Burr and President Jefferson was so poor. The subsequent fallout resulting from the killing of Alexander Hamilton effectively ended Burr’s political career.

42A Wane : EBB

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.

46A Mark Twain, for Samuel Langhorne Clemens : PEN NAME

“Samuel Langhorne Clemens” was the real name of the author Mark Twain. Twain wasn’t the only pen name used by Clemens. Early in his career he signed some sketches as “Josh”, and signed some humorous letters that he wrote under the name “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”. The name of Mark Twain came from the days when Clemens was working on riverboats on the Mississippi. A riverboatman would call out “by the mark twain” when measuring the depth of water. This meant that on the sounding line, according to the “mark” on the line, the depth was two (“twain”) fathoms, and so it was safe for the riverboat to proceed.

51A Losing general at Appomattox : LEE

The Battle of Appomattox Court House was the last engagement by the Army of Northern Virginia, led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Immediately after the battle, Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. When the two men met for the signing of the surrender documents, even though the pair were acquaintances, it was the first time they had seen each other in almost 20 years. Grant started off the conversation by discussing a previous meeting they had during the Mexican-American War, when they were fighting on the same side.

52A Relating to a son or daughter : FILIAL

Something “filial” is related to a son or daughter. The term comes from Latin, in which language “filius” means “son” and “filia” means “daughter”.

53A Fanny ___, central figure in Broadway’s “Funny Girl” : BRICE

The 1968 movie “Funny Girl” stars Barbra Streisand in the title role of Fanny Brice. The real Fanny Brice was a theater and film actress, and “Funny Girl” is very loosely based on her life story. Fanny Brice was born into a Hungarian Jewish family in New York City, with the real name of Fania Borach.

56A Poet Dickinson : EMILY

Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1800 poems in her lifetime, with less than a dozen published before she died in 1886. Emily’s younger sister discovered the enormous collection, and it was published in batches over the coming decades.

57A Gridiron success … or, when read as two words, the conclusion to the sequence formed by the starts of 16-, 24-, 34- and 48-Across : TOUCHDOWN or TOUCH DOWN

We never used the word “gridiron” when I was growing up in Ireland (meaning a grill used for cooking food over an open fire). So, maybe I am excused for taking two decades living in the US to work out that a football field gridiron is so called because the layout of yard lines over the field looks like a gridiron used in cooking.

63A Home with a dome : IGLOO

The Inuit word for “house” is “iglu”, which we usually write as “igloo”. The Greenlandic (yes, that’s a language) word for “house” is very similar, namely “igdlo”. The walls of igloos are tremendous insulators, due to the air pockets in the blocks of snow.

Down

1D Spider’s creation : WEB

The silk that makes up a web is a protein fiber that is “spun” by a spider. Spider silk is about one sixth of the density of steel, yet has a comparable tensile strength.

2D Peace promoter Yoko : ONO

John Lennon and Yoko Ono married at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. The couple decided to use the inevitable publicity surrounding their wedding and honeymoon to promote peace in the world. They honeymooned in the Presidential Suite of the Amsterdam Hilton, inviting the world’s press to join them and to witness their “bed-in”. They spent the week talking about peace, and an end to war. The marriage and bed-in is chronicled by the Beatles in their song “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. A few weeks after the marriage, Lennon adopted the middle name “Ono” by deed poll.

3D Cell’s messenger material : 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.

4D Istanbul native : TURK

Istanbul, Turkey (formerly “Byzantium” and “Constantinople”) is the only metropolis in the world that is situated on two continents. The city extends both on the European side and on the Asian side of the Bosphorus river.

7D Crazy Horse’s people : SIOUX

Crazy Horse’s Lakota name translates literally into English as “His Horse is Crazy or Spirited”. He was one of the tribal war party leaders at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand. Crazy Horse surrendered to the US Army in 1877. He was fatally stabbed while in custody, apparently trying to escape after having surrendered. The circumstances surrounding his death are still shrouded in controversy.

9D Port-au-Prince’s country : HAITI

Port-au-Prince is the capital city of Haiti, located on the western coast of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. One of the main tourist attractions in the city is the “Marché en Fer” (Iron Market), where vendors sell everything from traditional Haitian crafts to fresh produce. The building is called the Iron Market because it is constructed largely using cast iron. It was built in Paris, intended for use as a railroad station in Cairo. When that deal fell through, the president of Haiti purchased the building and brought it to the island in 18981.

11D Looked lasciviously : LEERED

“Lascivious” is such an appropriate-sounding word, I always think. It means “lecherous, salacious”.

20D Spicy marinade with chili peppers : ADOBO

In Spanish and Mexican cuisine, a dish prepared adobo-style has been marinated in a mixture containing paprika, oregano, salt, garlic and vinegar. “Adobo” is Spanish for “marinade, seasoning”.

Our verb “to marinate” comes from the French “mariner” meaning “to pickle in sea brine”, which in turn comes from the Latin “marinus” meaning “of the sea”. So, “marinade” is related to “marine”.

21D Exam for a doctor-to-be : MCAT

Medical College Admission Test (MCAT)

22D Parks honored in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall : ROSA

Rosa Parks was one of a cadre of brave women in days gone by who refused to give up their seats on a bus to white women. It was the stand taken by Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955 that sparked the Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott. President Clinton presented Ms. Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. When she died in 2005, Rosa Parks became the first ever woman to have her body lie in honor in the US Capitol Rotunda.

23D Walrus’s long tooth : TUSK

Tusks are the front teeth of certain animals that grow continuously. The tusks of wild pigs, hippos and walruses are elongated canine teeth. The tusks of elephants are elongated incisors.

25D Composer Stravinsky : IGOR

Composer Igor Stravinsky’s most famous works were completed relatively early in his career, when he was quite young. His three ballets “The Firebird”, “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring” were published in 1910-1913, when Stravinsky was in his early thirties.

32D Org. for Patriot games : NFL

The New England Patriots football team was founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots. The “Patriots” name was selected from suggestions made by football fans in Boston. The team played at several different stadiums in the Boston area for just over ten years, before moving to their current home base in Foxborough, Massachusetts. At the time of the move, the “Boston” name was dropped and changed to “New England”.

33D Actor McGregor with a Golden Globe for “Fargo” : EWAN

Ewan McGregor is a very talented Scottish actor, one who got his break in the 1996 film “Trainspotting”. McGregor’s first big Hollywood role was playing the young Obi-Wan-Kenobi in the “Star Wars” prequels. Less known is his televised marathon motorcycle journey from London to New York via central Europe, Ukraine, Siberia, Mongolia and Canada. The 2004 trip was shown as “Long Way Round” on TV. McGregor did a similar trip in 2007 called “Long Way Down”, which took him and the same traveling companion from the north of Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.

“Fargo” is a TV series inspired by the 1996 film of the same name by the Coen brothers. The small-screen version first aired in 2014, with the credits including Joel and Ethan Coen as executive producers. Each season of the show features a new cast. The 2014 cast is led by Billy Bob Thornton, the 2015 cast by Kirsten Dunst, and the 2017 cast by Ewan McGregor. Each episode, and indeed the original film, includes the on-screen claim that “This is a true story”. However, that claim is in fact untrue.

35D Pertaining to development in the womb : FETAL

The word “fetus”, used for an unborn young animal, comes from Latin, as one might expect. “Fetus” is the Latin word for the act of hatching or bringing forth a young animal or child. The mistaken spelling “foetus” is seen occasionally, but there’s no historical basis for adding that “o”.

38D City surrounding Vatican City : ROME

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state that is walled off within the city of Rome. Vatican City is about 110 acres in area, and so is the smallest independent state in the world. With about 800 residents, it is also the smallest state in terms of population. Although the Holy See dates back to early Christianity, Vatican City only came into being in 1929. At that time, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed a treaty with the Holy See on behalf of the Kingdom of Italy that established the city-state.

42D Overly refined : EFFETE

Something effete is degenerate, infertile, no longer productive. “Effete” comes from the Latin “ex-fetus”, literally “out of offspring”.

43D “Yikes!,” to a Brit : BLIMEY

When I was a kid in London, a pretty common expression of surprise was “gor blimey”, a euphemism for “God blind me”.

47D Rock’s Carmen or Clapton : ERIC

Can you believe that the great Eric Clapton only had one chart-topper in the US? In 1974, Clapton released a cover version of the Bob Marley classic “I Shot the Sheriff” and ended up selling more copies of that song than Bob Marley did himself. Clapton is the only person to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times: once as a member of the Yardbirds, once as a member of the supergroup Cream, and once as a solo artist.

49D Earthy deposits by a river : SILTS

Today, we mostly think of silt as a deposit of sediment in a river. Back in the mid-1400s, silt was sediment deposited by seawater. It is thought that the word “silt” is related to “salt”, as found in seawater.

57D “___ better to have loved and lost …” : ‘TIS

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the Poet Laureate for much of the reign of Queen Victoria. There are many phrases we use today that were first penned by Tennyson, including:

• ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all
• Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die

58D Passé : OLD

“Passé” is a French word, meaning “past, faded”. We’ve imported the term into English, and use it in the same sense.