0119-26 NY Times Crossword 19 Jan 26, Monday

Bill’s time: 6m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5A Old-fashioned butter maker : CHURN

Butter churns are devices that convert cream into butter. The churn agitates the cream mechanically, disrupting milk fat. Clumps of disrupted milk fat form larger and larger fat globules. Eventually, the mixture separates into solid butter and liquid buttermilk.

10A Branded cotton swab : Q-TIP

Cotton swabs were originally marketed under the name “Baby Gays”. This was changed in 1926 to “Q-Tips”, with the Q standing for “quality”.

14A Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan : OMAR

Ilhan Omar has been representing Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in the US House since 2019. At that time, she became one of the first two Muslim women, as well as the first Somali American, to serve in the US Congress.

17A 1972 song by Elton John : TINY DANCER

The 1971 Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” was written by John himself, with lyrics by Bernie Taupin. Apparently the “tiny dancer” in the song is a character reminiscent of the young ladies that Taupin met in California in 1970.

19A Luxury auto whose logo is four overlapping rings : AUDI

The predecessor to today’s Audi company was called Auto Union. Auto Union was formed with the merger of four individual entities: Audi, Horch, DKW and Wanderer. The Audi logo comprises four intersecting rings, each representing one of the four companies that merged.

25A Comedian Wong : ALI

Ali Wong is a stand-up comedian from San Francisco who is a protégé of Chris Rock. She made two very successful Netflix stand-up specials “Baby Cobra” and “Hard Knock Wife”, and also worked as a writer for the hit sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat”.

29A 1985 song by John Cougar Mellencamp : SMALL TOWN

John Mellencamp started to use the stage name Johnny Cougar in 1976, a name that evolved into John Cougar, and then to John Cougar Mellencamp in the eighties. In 1992 the “Cougar” was dropped altogether and Mellencamp has been performing under his own name since then. Mellencamp was married to former supermodel Elaine Irwin for eighteen years, but the two decided to split. Mellencamp’s longtime girlfriend is actress Meg Ryan.

37A Cosmonaut Gagarin : YURI

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space when his spacecraft Vostok I made a single orbit of the Earth in 1961. Sadly, Gagarin died only seven years later in a plane crash.

41A R&B singer whose album “SOS” spent 100+ weeks in the Billboard top 10 : SZA

“SZA” is the stage name of American singer Solána Imani Rowe. The name is essentially a creative code where each letter stands for a powerful word: Sovereign/Self/Savior, Zig-Zag, and Allah.

43A Element used in bronze : TIN

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Compare this with bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Brass and bronze are often mistaken for each other.

50A 1987 song by Billy Joel and Ray Charles : BABY GRAND

Billy Joel is the fourth-best selling solo artist in the US, after Garth Brooks, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. Joel’s name has been associated with two supermodels in his life. He dated Elle Macpherson, and wrote two songs about their relationship: “This Night” and “And So It Goes”. Joel’s second wife was Christie Brinkley, to whom he was married from 1985 to 1994. Brinkley appeared in the title role in the music video for “Uptown Girl”.

Ray Charles came up with his stage name by dropping the family name from his real moniker “Ray Charles Robinson”. His life was a wild ride, and was well-represented in the excellent 2004 biopic called “Ray” starring Jamie Foxx in the title role. Ray Charles was married twice and fathered 12 children with nine different women. As I said, a wild ride …

55A Martial arts studios : DOJOS

The Japanese word “dojo” translates literally as “place of the way”. Originally the term applied to training halls that were found in or beside temples. The teaching in a dojo was not limited to the martial arts, but in the Western world we use the dojo as the name for a training facility for judo, karate and the like.

57A Disheveled : UNKEMPT

The word “unkempt” means “disheveled, not well-combed”. It derives from the Old English word “cemban” meaning “to comb”. The opposite to the more common “unkempt” is … “kempt”.

61A Caribbean island with a liqueur named for it : CURACAO

The Country of Curaçao is a Caribbean island in the Lesser Antilles, lying about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. For centuries, Curaçao was a Dutch colony. Since 2010, it has been an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

66A Capital of Arkansas … or a description of 17-, 29- and 50-Across? : LITTLE ROCK

The city of Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas, and is located in the center of the state. Early French travelers used a small rock formation on the Arkansas River as a landmark, a formation that they named “La Petite Roche” (The Little Rock) in 1722. “The Little Rock” actually lies across the river from a large bluff known as “Big Rock”, which was once the site of a rock quarry.

68A In ___ land (daydreaming) : LA-LA

“La-la land” is a euphemism for a state of unconsciousness or a dreamworld.

Down

1D ___ Jail (space on a Monopoly board) : GO TO

In the game of Monopoly, there are three ways that a player can end up in jail:

1. Landing directly on the “Go to Jail” space
2. Throwing three consecutive doubles in one turn
3. Drawing a “Go (Directly) to Jail” card from Chance or Community Chest

3D Vampire’s tooth : FANG

Legends about vampires were particularly common in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans in particular. The superstition was that vampires could be killed using a wooden stake, with the preferred type of wood varying from place to place. Superstition also defines where the body should be pierced. Most often, the stake was driven through the heart, but Russians and northern Germans went for the mouth, and northeastern Serbs for the stomach.

4D Auditions : TRYOUTS

A trial performance to appraise the merits of an entertainer is known as an audition. When a group of entertainers is involved, the informal term “cattle call” might be used instead of “audition”. The idea is that those auditioning are often corralled into a single, large room (like “cattle”) prior to performing.

7D ___ code (what most product packages have) : UPC

The initialism “UPC” stands for Universal Price Code or Universal Product Code. The first ever UPC-marked item to get scanned in a store was on June 26, 1974 at 08:01 a.m. at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

8D Google Maps options: Abbr. : RTES

Google Maps was developed as a web mapping service for desktops. The (wonderful!) Google Maps mobile app was released in 2008, and is now the most popular smartphone app in the world.

12D Where the N.F.L.’s Colts play, informally : INDY

The Indianapolis Colts professional football team has been in Indiana since 1984. The team traces its roots back to the Dayton Triangles, one of the founding members of the NFL created in 1913. The Dayton Triangles relocated and became the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1930, and then the Brooklyn Tigers in 1944. The team merged with the Boston Yanks in 1945, and then played in Boston. The Yanks were moved to New York in 1949, and then to Dallas in 1952 as the Dallas Texans. The Texan franchise moved to Baltimore in 1953, forming the Colts. The Colts made their last move in 1984, to Indianapolis. Whew!

18D Insults : DISSES

“Dis” (also “diss”) is a slang term meaning “insult” that originated in the eighties. It is a shortened form of “disrespect” or “dismiss”.

22D Springfield is its capital: Abbr. : ILL

Springfield is the capital of the state of Illinois. The city is the third to have been designated capital. When Illinois became a state in 1818, the capital was Kaskaskia. The following year the capital was moved to Vandalia. 18 years later it was finally moved to Springfield, a move that was championed by Abraham Lincoln.

24D Org. with notoriously long lines : DMV

In most states, the government agency responsible for vehicle registration and the issuing of driver’s licenses is called the DMV. This initialism usually stands for the Department of Motor Vehicles, but there are “variations on the theme”. For example, in Arizona the responsible agency is called the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD), and in Colorado the familiar abbreviation “DMV” stands for Division of Motor Vehicles.

26D Biblical spy for Moses : CALEB

According to the Bible, after fleeing Egypt the Hebrews were led by Moses to the promised land of Canaan. Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan (one from each of the Twelve Tribes) to report on what awaited them. Ten spies returned with exaggerated stories of giants who would kill the Hebrew army if it entered Canaan. Two spies, Caleb and Joshua, came back with valid reports that the Hebrews could inhabit the area. As a result of the false reports from the ten spies, the Hebrews did not enter Canaan but instead wandered the desert for another forty years, before they finally took up residence in the promised land. At the end of the forty years, Caleb and Joshua were the only adults that survived the forty-year journey, a reward from God for their obedience.

27D South American flatbread : AREPA

An arepa is a cornmeal cake or bread that is popular in Colombian and Venezuelan cuisines in particular. Each arepa has a flat, round shape and is often split to make a sandwich.

28D Lesser-played part of a 45 : SIDE B

The first vinyl records designed to play at 33⅓ rpm were introduced by RCA Victor in 1931, but were discontinued due to quality problems. The first long play (LP) 33⅓ rpm disc was introduced by Columbia Records many years later in 1948, with RCA Victor following up with a 45 rpm “single” the following year, in 1949.

30D ChatGPT and Google Gemini, for two : AIS

ChatGPT is an advanced AI language model developed by OpenAI. It uses a vast amount of text data to understand and generate human-like text responses to a wide range of prompts and questions. You can ask it to write stories, explain complex topics, translate languages, or even help you with coding.

31D Word before space or Mongolia : OUTER

The exploration and use of outer space is governed by the Outer Space Treaty that came into force in 1967. The initial signatories were the US, UK and USSR, and now 102 nations are party to the treaty. For the purposes of the treaty, outer space begins at the Kármán line, a theoretical sphere that lies at an altitude of 100km above the Earth’s sea level.

The East Asian nation of Mongolia lies between Russia to the north and China to the south. With an area of over 600,000 square miles and a population of about 3 million people, Mongolia is the most sparsely populated sovereign nation on the planet. Almost half of the Mongolian populace lives in the capital city of Ulan Bator.

32D Spot to find a pulse : WRIST

One’s pulse is the rhythmic throbbing of arteries that is usually detected at the wrist or the neck. The contraction of the heart creates a pressure wave in the blood that moves the arterial walls, which is detected as the pulse.

35D Device for starting an engine : SPARK PLUG

The spark plug, a crucial component in internal combustion engines, was invented in 1860 by Belgian-French engineer Étienne Lenoir. He developed it for his internal combustion engine, which burned a mixture of coal gas and air.

42D Former vice president who won a Nobel Peace Prize : AL GORE

Former Vice President Al Gore was a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 in recognition for his work in climate change activism. He also won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for his book on climate change called “An Inconvenient Truth”. The documentary of the same name that was spawned by the book won an Academy Award. In addition, Gore won an Emmy as co-owner of Current TV, an independent news network.

45D Test taken at the 24-Down : EYE EXAM
[24D Org. with notoriously long lines : DMV]

The commonly used eye chart (that starts with the letters “E FP TOZ LPED”) is called a Snellen chart. The test is named after its developer Herman Snellen, who introduced it way back in 1862.

56D Novelist Verne : JULES

Jules Verne really was a groundbreaking author. Verne pioneered the science-fiction genre, writing about space, air and underwater travel, long before they were practical and proved feasible. Verne is the second-most translated author of all time, with only Agatha Christie beating him out.

57D The N.C.A.A.’s Bruins : UCLA

The Bruins are the athletic teams representing the University of California, Los Angeles. When the school was founded in 1919, as the Southern Branch of the University of California, the nickname “Cubs” was used by the football team. The “Cubs” name was chosen as the school was regarded as the younger partner of the California Bears in the existing University of California, Berkeley. That name was changed to “Grizzlies” in 1923, and finally to Bruins in 1926.

58D Biblical ark builder : NOAH

According to the Bible’s Book of Genesis, Noah was instructed to build his ark 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. That’s about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.

67D Airport screening grp. : TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)