0502-26 NY Times Crossword 2 May 26, Saturday

Bill’s time: 17m 20s

Bill’s errors: 3

• DOMED (lobed)
• BAMBINA (babbina!!)
• DANNY (Lanny)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

14A Bare : AU NATUREL

“Au naturel” is a French phrase, one simply meaning “in a natural state”. We use the term in English in the same sense, and also to mean “nude”.

15A Like the Asian elephant vis-à-vis the African elephant : RARER

There are only three species of elephant living today, with all others being extinct. These are the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant (or “Indian elephant”). As is well known, the African elephant is distinguished from the Asian/Indian elephant by its much larger ears. The African bush elephant is the largest living land animal.

24A Walk like a rhino : PLOD

There are five types of rhinoceros that survive today, with the smaller Sumatran Rhino being the most rare. The rhinoceros is probably the rarest large mammal on the planet, thanks to poaching. Hunters mainly prize the horn of the rhino as it is used in powdered form in traditional Chinese medicine.

25A Follower of box or bumper : CAR

A boxcar is a basic railroad car used to carry freight. It’s the one shaped like a big box, with large doors at each side.

Bumper cars are a fairground ride comprising electrically-powered cars that are driven with the intent of bumping into each other. Invented in the US, one of the most successful brands of bumper car is the Dodgem. In fact, the term “dodgem” is used generically instead of “bumper car” outside of North America.

32A Soft rock : SHALE

Shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock formed from the compaction of clay-rich minerals. It has a layered structure and is easily split into thin sheets. Shale often contains fossils, making it valuable to paleontologists.

35A One wrapping up a meal before eating anything? : BOA

Boa constrictors are members of the Boidae family of snakes, all of which are non-venomous. Interestingly, the female boa is always larger than the male.

38A When tripled, a response from Hamlet to Polonius : WORDS

Polonius is an important character in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, one who is eventually killed by Hamlet, albeit in a case of mistaken identity. Polonius has several memorable lines in the play that are oft-quoted today, including “To thine own self be true”, “Brevity is the soul of wit”, and “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”.

39A Winning X or O : TOE

When I was growing up in Ireland we played “noughts and crosses” … our name for the game tic-tac-toe.

45A Establishment that might have a “buck-a-shuck” promotion : RAW BAR

Almost all of the shellfish consumed at a raw bar is not only uncooked, it is also still alive.

To shuck is to remove the husk from (say, an ear of corn) or to remove the shell from (say, an oyster).

46A Actress Donovan of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” : ELISA

Elisa Donovan is an actress from Poughkeepsie, New York. Donovan’s big break came in the film “Clueless”, playing a part that she later played in the television series of the same name.

The hit TV show “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” is based on a comic book series of the same name. The title character is played by actress Melissa Joan Hart. Sabrina lives with her two aunts, Hilda and Zelda, who are both 600 years of age. There’s also a cat called Salem, who has magical powers.

49A Rotisserie-roasted Turkish dish : DONER

The dish known as “doner kebab” comes from Turkish cuisine. It features stacks of seasoned meat roasted on a vertical rotisserie that are sliced off in thin layers as the outside cooks. The concept of using a vertical spit emerged in the mid-1800s. It was in the mid-1900s that doner kebab became a popular fast food.

50A Flip : GO BANANAS

The expression “to go bananas”, meaning “to become excited or angry”, is one that I would have imagined had a clear etymology but that doesn’t seem to be the case. A further surprise is that we’ve only been “going bananas” since the sixties, the days of flower power. One apt theory about the hippy roots of the phrase is that there was an unfounded belief that ingesting roasted banana peels had a similar hallucinogenic effect as magic mushrooms.

Down

1D Composite numbers? : MASHUPS

Mashups are relatively new phenomena, and are songs created by blending elements of two songs to create another. Usually this involves overlaying the vocals of one song over the instrumental track of a second song.

6D “Mulan” antagonists : HUNS

“Mulan” is a 1998 animated feature film made by Walt Disney studios. The film is based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, a woman who takes the place of her father in the army and serves with distinction for twelve years without reward. Disney’s lead character was given the name Fa Mulan. Donny Osmond provided the singing voice for one of the lead characters, after which his sons remarked that he had finally made it in show business as he was in a Disney film.

7D “How We Do (Party)” singer Rita : ORA

“How We Do (Party)” is a 2012 song released by English singer Rita Ora as the lead single from her debut studio album “Ora”, which was released the same year. The song samples the refrain from a 1993 song by the Notorious B.I.G. As a result, when the Notorious B.I.G. was sued for an alleged copyright infringement related to the original song, Rita Ora was also dragged into court. But, the court ruled against the plaintiff, and life moved on.

11D Three-peating N.B.A. champs from 2000 to ’02 : LA LAKERS

A three-peat is the winning of a sports championship three seasons in a row. The term “three-peat” was coined in 1988 by LA Lakers’ player Byron Scott, and then trademarked by Lakers’ head coach Pat Riley. The Lakers were attempting in 1989 to clinch their third championship title in a row at that time, and eventually lost to the Detroit Pistons. The Lakers had to wait until the 2002 season to claim that three-peat.

12D Preceder of Sea or horse : ARABIAN …

The Arabian Sea is an arm of the Indian Ocean that lies off the coasts of Oman, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. It is bounded in the west by Somalia, and in the east by India.

The Arab (also “Arabian”) breed of horse takes its name from its original home, the Arabian Peninsula. Like any animal that humans have over-bred, the horse falls prey to genetic diseases, some of which are fatal and some of which require the horse to be euthanized.

13D Residents without a title : TENANTS

A tenant is a person or entity “holding” property by virtue of lease or rental agreement. The term “tenant” comes from the Latin “tenere” meaning “to hold”.

23D iPod model : NANO

The iPod Nano was the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There were seven versions of the Nano, until it was discontinued in 2017.

25D Heavenly-sounding instrument also known as a bell-piano : CELESTA

A celesta (also “celeste”) is a keyboard instrument in which the keys operate hammers that strike a set of metal plates. The resulting sound is similar to that from a glockenspiel, although it is much softer in tone as the celesta’s plates are suspended over wooden resonators. I’d say that the most famous musical work featuring a celesta is Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from his ballet “The Nutcracker”.

31D Traditional gift for a fifth anniversary : WOOD

Some traditional gifts for wedding anniversaries are:

• 5th: wooden
• 10th: tin
• 15th: crystal
• 20th: china
• 25th: silver
• 30th: pearl
• 40th: ruby
• 50th: gold
• 60th: diamond

33D Call it! : HOTLINE

A famous hotline was used during WWII by President Roosevelt in the White House and Prime Minister Churchill in the Cabinet War Room bunker in London. That link was secured in 1943, marking the world’s very first use of voice encryption. An even more famous hotline was set up between Washington and Moscow in 1963, in the aftermath of the near catastrophic Cuban Missile Crisis. Often referred to as the “red telephone”, the Washington-Moscow hotline has never used phones. Instead, there were teletypewriters at either end, which were later upgraded to telecopiers, and now the parties use emails.

36D Brand whose name doubles as instructions for its product : ONE A DAY

One A Day is a line of multivitamins made by Bayer. It was introduced way back in 1943.

42D Hand grenades, informally : FRAGS

Fragmentation grenade (frag).

Our word “grenade”, used for a small explosive missile, came via French from the word for the pomegranate fruit. The name reflects the similarity between the seed-filled fruit and the powder-filled, fragmentation bomb. Grenades also resemble pineapples in appearance, and so sometimes are called “pineapples”.

43D “Full House” father : DANNY

“Full House” is a sitcom that originally aired from the late eighties through the mid-nineties. It’s all about two men helping a third man raise his three young daughters after his wife is killed by a drunk driver. Bob Saget plays the widowed father, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen play the youngest daughter. A sequel titled “Fuller House” started airing on Netflix in 2016.

45D Film director Johnson : RIAN

Filmmaker Rian Johnson wrote and directed quite a few major films, including “Looper” (2012), “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2017) and “Knives Out” (2019).

48D Credential for many a C.E.O. : MBA

The world’s first Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree was offered by Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, in 1908.