0108-26 NY Times Crossword 8 Jan 26, Thursday

Bill’s time: 11m 37s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A ___ canto : BEL

“Bel canto” is a term used in Italian opera, the literal translation of which is “beautiful singing”. The term specifically describes a style of singing that emphasizes beauty of tone over dramatic power.

8A Photographer Diane : ARBUS

Diane Arbus was a photographer famous for producing black & white images of the unusual and less than savory aspects of life. The 2006 movie “Fur” presents a fictionalized account of her life and work, with Nicole Kidman playing Arbus.

13A Wide-open Q&A : AMA

Ask me anything (AMA)

16A “Nonverbal “well done”” : HIGH FIVE (F to D = HIGH DIVE)

The celebratory gesture that we call a “high five” is said to have been invented by former baseball players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke when they were both playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s.

18A Well-known scheme designer : PONZI

Charles Ponzi was born in Lugo, Italy in 1882 and arrived in the US in 1903, flat broke having gambled away all his money on the voyage to Boston. Ponzi devised a scheme to buy what were known as “international reply coupons” through friends in Italy, which he had sent to him in the US so that he could redeem them on this side of the Atlantic. As the value in the US was greater than that in Italy, he could make a handsome profit. This was in itself an “illegal” transaction, buying an asset in one market at a low price, then immediately selling it in another market at a higher price. But it’s what he did next that became known as a Ponzi Scheme. He couldn’t redeem his coupons quickly enough due to red tape so he approached other investors, initially friends, and had them give him cash so that he could buy more coupons in Italy. He promised the investors he would double their money, which they did initially. Many people wanted to get in on the scheme seeing that Ponzi was able to make the new investors a profit and double the money of the original investors. Eventually, somebody did the math and word started to get out that the investment was risky, so the number of new investors started to fall. Without sufficient new investors Ponzi couldn’t double the money of his latest investors, and the whole scheme unraveled.

19A One of the two Boolean values, in programming : TRUE

Boolean logic is a logic system used in computers. The system takes its name from the man who devised it in 1854, George Boole. Boolean logic is used by many Internet search engines. Using Boolean logic in a search you can combine words into one search term “like this” by using quotation marks. You can also search for pages that contain “term one” but not “term two” by searching for “term one” – “term two”.

20A Disney princess whose name is one letter off from a common princess accessory : TIANA

“The Princess and the Frog” is an animated feature released in 2009 by Walt Disney Studios. The film is set in New Orleans in the twenties. A waitress named Tiana kisses a prince who had been turned into a frog, and then she herself turns into a frog.

22A Gimlet base : GIN

A gimlet is a relatively simple cocktail that is traditionally made using just gin and lime juice. The trend in more recent times is to replace the gin with vodka.

23A Dundee dissent : NAE

The city of Dundee lies on the north bank of the Firth of Tay in Scotland. The origins of the name “Dundee” are a little obscure, although the omnipresent “dùn” in place names all over Scotland and Ireland is the Celtic word for “fort”.

27A What Neapolitan ice cream is divided into : THIRDS

Neapolitan ice cream is made up of blocks of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Perhaps stating the obvious, Neapolitan ice cream is assumed to be of Italian origin, from the city of Naples …

32A Benefactor with a limited number of grants? : GENIE

The “genie” in the bottle (or lamp) takes their name from “djinn”. “Djinns” were various spirits considered lesser than angels, with people exhibiting unsavory characteristics said to be possessed by djinn. When the book “The Thousand and One Nights” was translated into French, the word “djinn” was transformed into the existing word “génie”, because of the similarity in sound and the related spiritual meaning. This “génie” from the Arabian tale became confused with the Latin-derived “genius”, a guardian spirit thought to be assigned to each person at birth. Purely as a result of that mistranslation the word genie has come to mean the “djinn” that pops out of the bottle. A little hard to follow, I know, but still quite interesting …

42A Cathedral recess : APSE

A cathedral is the church at the center of a Christian diocese or episcopate. The name “cathedral” comes from the “cathedra” that it houses, the “seat” of the bishop. That seat is more like a throne.

44A Tallahassee sch. : FSU

Florida State University (FSU) is located in Tallahassee, the state capital of Florida. The school’s athletic teams are known as the Seminoles (sometimes the “‘Noles”). The team name was chosen in 1947 by the students in a vote, and alludes to the Seminole people of Florida.

47A Tea traders? : YENTAS

“Yenta” (also “Yente”) is actually a female Yiddish name. In Yiddish theater “yenta” came to mean a busybody, a gossip.

To spill the beans is to divulge a secret. The expression first appeared in American English, in the early 1900s. The phrase arose as an alternative to “spoil the beans” or “upset the applecart”. The similarly meaning phrase “spill the tea” is more prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic.

58A ___-free : SCOT

The phrase “scot-free” means “free from punishment, restraint or obligation”. The term derives from the Old English “scotfreo” meaning “exempt from royal tax”, with “scot” being a royal tax.

65A Mexican street food typically served with cheese, chili and lime : ELOTE

Corn in a cup (“elote en vaso”, or simply “elote”) is a Mexican street food. It is made with fresh corn kernels mixed with mayonnaise, cheese, lime and chile.

66A Hit TV series set at the fictional William McKinley High School : GLEE

The TV show “Glee” has proven to be very popular. The storyline focuses on a high school glee club in Lima, Ohio called New Directions.

67A Cpl. or sgt. : NCO

A non-commissioned officer (NCO) might be a sergeant (sgt.) or a corporal (cpl.).

69A Fictional lover of Rochester : EYRE

“Jane Eyre” is a classic 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, published under the pseudonym “Currer Bell”. It’s a coming-of-age tale in which the title character endures a harsh childhood and education before becoming a governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane falls in love with her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester, but there’s a rocky road to travel before the couple finally get to the altar.

70A Many Ph.D.s-to-be, for short : TAS

Teaching Assistants (TAs)

Down

1D Bangkok currency : BAHT

The baht is the currency of Thailand. One baht is subdivided into 100 satang.

2D Doha dignitary : EMIR

Doha is the capital city of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The name “Doha” translates from Arabic as “big tree” or “roundness”.

3D Heineken subsidiary whose name means “small bodies of water” : LAGUNITAS

The Lagunitas Brewing Company was founded in 1993 and takes its name from Lagunitas, California where the brewery was originally located. Famously, the brewery has been associated with the use of marijuana. There used to be a tradition of a weekly party at which marijuana was openly smoked. The State of California went so far as to shut down operations in 2005 for twenty days while they investigated alleged cannabis dealing. No charges were filed, and the Lagunitas later brought out a beer called “Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale”.

5D One who eats crisps and uses a loo : BRIT

French fries are called “chips” back in Ireland, where I grew up. And what we call “chips” in the US are known as “crisps” in Britain and Ireland. In France, French fries are known as “pommes frites” (fried potatoes).

It has been suggested that the British term “loo”, meaning “toilet”, comes from “Waterloo” (water closet … water-loo), but no one seems to know for sure. Another suggestion is that the term comes from the card game of “lanterloo”, in which the pot was called the loo!

9D Small hopper in the Hundred Acre Wood : ROO

Hundred Acre Wood is where Winnie-the-Pooh lives with his friends. According to a map illustrating the books by A. A. Milne, Hundred Acre Wood is part of a larger forest, with Owl’s house sitting right at the center. Piglet also lives in the Hundred Acre Wood, in a beech tree next to a sign that says “TRESPASSERS W”. Piglet says this is short for Trespassers William, which is his grandfather’s name.

11D Open, as a fanny pack : UNZIP

In Britain and Ireland, a “fanny pack” is called a “bum bag”. The use of the word “bum” is considered more polite than the word “fanny”, which has a very rude meaning in that part of the world. In North America, we sometimes use the term “butt pack” for the same thing.

28D Instrument originating in ancient Sumer : HARP

The primary materials used to make a harp are wood for the frame, and gut or wire for the strings. The frame is triangular. The top of the triangle is the crossbar or neck, to which the strings are secured and can be adjusted in tension to fine-tune the pitch. The other end of the strings are held by the soundboard, the side of the triangular frame that is hollow, allowing the body of the harp to resonate when strings are plucked. The long side of the triangular frame is the column or pillar, the purpose of which is to hold up the neck under the tension of the strings.

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.

36D “In da Club” rapper : FIFTY CENT

Rap star 50 Cent’s real name is Curtis James Jackson III, and is from South Jamaica in Queens, New York. 50 Cent had a rough life starting out, first dealing drugs at the age of 12. He dropped his illegal activities to pursue a rap career, but still fell victim to an assailant who pumped nine bullets into him. The alleged shooter was himself shot three weeks later, and died. 50 Cent’s alleged attacker was a bodyguard and close friend of Mike Tyson.

37D Parks in history : 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 people. 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.

38D Albatross, so to speak : ONUS

An albatross is sometimes a metaphor for a psychological burden. This usage comes from the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In the story, an albatross is following a ship, a sign of good fortune. Then the “ancient mariner” shoots the albatross with a crossbow, an act that will bring a curse on the ship. The other sailors punish the mariner by forcing him to wear the dead albatross around his neck.

46D PlayStation alternatives : XBOXES

The Xbox line of video game consoles is made by Microsoft. The original Xbox platform was followed by Xbox 360 and more recently by Xbox One. Microsoft’s Xbox competes directly with Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo’s Wii.

48D So-called “father of the American cartoon” : NAST

Thomas Nast was an American caricaturist and cartoonist. He was the creator of the Republican Party elephant, the Democratic Party donkey, Uncle Sam and the image of the plump and jocular Santa Claus that we use today.

49D Like the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey : OAKEN

The actual name for the Gothic church we know as Westminster Abbey is the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Westminster. The Abbey is a favored location for coronations and royal weddings and burials.

50D It takes a bow in a concert hall : VIOLA

The viola looks like and is played like a violin, but is slightly larger. It is referred to as the middle voice in the violin family, lying between the violin and the cello.

51D Sir ___ Hercules John : ELTON

Elton John’s real name is Reginald Dwight. Sir Elton was knighted in 1998, not for his music per se, but for his charitable work. He founded his own Elton John AIDS Foundation back in 1992.

52D Indigenous people at the center of 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” : OSAGE

“Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” is a 2017 book about the Osage murders written by journalist David Grann. The victims of the killing spree were wealthy Osage people who owned land beneath which were lucrative oil deposits. After an investigation by the newly formed FBI, cattle rancher and crime boss William King Hale was found guilty of masterminding the scheme. Martin Scorsese adapted the book into the hit 2023 film “Killers of the Flower Moon”.

53D ___ green : KELLY

Kelly green is a strong yellowish green, and was given its name back in the early 1900s. Apparently, the name was chosen because green is popular in Ireland, and Kelly is a common Irish family name.

59D Sea creature that can weigh 400 pounds at birth : ORCA

Orcas, also known as killer whales, are actually members of the dolphin family. They are the largest members of this family and can weigh up to 6 tons.

60D Possessive of a Chinese menu? : TSO’S

General Tso’s chicken is an American creation, and a dish often found on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. The name General Tso may be a reference to General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing Dynasty, but there is no clear link.

62D Zeta follower : ETA

Eta is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, and is a forerunner of our Latin character “H”. Originally denoting a consonant, eta was used as a long vowel in Ancient Greek.