0515-26 NY Times Crossword 15 May 26, Friday

Bill’s time: 11m 54s

Bill’s errors: 3

• TELUGE (Telucu)
• CAPE (cane!)
• SEA GRAPES (sea cranes)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A To the ___ (as much as possible) : HILT

The hilt of a weapon is its handle. One might push in the blade of a knife to the hilt, to the maximum degree.

15A Vintage bike feature : BANANA SEAT

A banana seat is a long saddle on a bicycle, often seen on what are called wheelie bikes.

18A Wych ___ (tree type) : ELM

The Wych elm is also known as the Scots elm. It is the most common species of elm found in Europe. The term “wych” comes from the Old English “wice” meaning “pliant, supple”. The word “wice” also gives rise to our word “wicker”.

19A Miss Doolittle of “Pygmalion” : ELIZA

“Pygmalion” is a witty and thought-provoking play by George Bernard Shaw that explores social class and transformation in early 20th-century England. Paradoxically perhaps, it premiered in Vienna in 1913, with the first stage production performed in German. The play centers on Professor Henry Higgins, a pompous phonetics expert who wagers that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, into a refined lady simply by changing her speech. Most of us are more likely to have seen the musical adaptation of “Pygmalion” that goes by the title “My Fair Lady”.

20A Civil rights activist Williams, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. : HOSEA

Hosea Williams was a minister and civil rights leader who was a friend and associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. Williams served in Europe during WWII, and spent a year in hospital due to wounds received in a Nazi bombing. When he returned home, he was beaten up by a gang of white men for drinking from a fountain marked “Whites Only”. Presumed dead, he was loaded into a hearse. The hearse driver noticed that Williams was barely breathing, and drove him over 100 miles to a veterans’ hospital that would accept black patients. Williams spent another month in hospital recuperating from his wounds incurred in the US.

21A Splits apart : CLEAVES

I’ve always found “to cleave” an interesting verb. When used with an object, to cleave something is to split it, as when using a cleaver. When used without an object, to cleave is to cling, to adhere, as in “to cleave to one’s principles in the face of adversity”. Although not exactly so, the two definitions seem to have opposite meanings to me …

23A Annual coll. basketball competition : NIT

The NCAA holds two National Invitation Tournaments (NIT) each season, both being men’s college basketball events.

25A Class for some aspiring bilinguals, in brief : ESL

English as a Second Language (ESL)

30A Harps on : BELABORS

To harp on something is to talk about it too much. The original expression with the same meaning was “to harp on the same string”, which is a reference to the musical instrument.

33A MacMurray of “Double Indemnity” : FRED

“Double Indemnity” is a classic film noir released in 1944 and starring Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck. Based on the James M. Cain novella of the same name, it’s all about a woman who kills her husband for insurance money. The title “Double Indemnity” refers to the double payout clause in the life insurance policy in the event of an accidental death. And that’s what the wife tried to show investigators, that the death was accidental.

42A Sierra, e.g. : GMC

The GMC Sierra truck is also sold as the Chevrolet Silverado.

47A Duane ___ (New York-based pharmacy chain) : READE

The chain of drug and convenience stores in New York City known as Duane Reade was founded in 1960 by three brothers. The first three stores were serviced by a warehouse in lower Manhattan located on Broadway between Duane and Reade streets, streets that gave the chain its name.

49A Figures in “Puss in Boots” and “Hop-o’-My-Thumb” : OGRES

“Puss in Boots” is a fairy tale from Europe, the earliest recording of which is in a collection of stories by Giovanni Francesco Straparola that dates back to the 1550s. The title character has been used in subsequent works; he makes an appearance in Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Sleeping Beauty”, and more recently in the “Shrek” series of animated films.

Down

1D Big name in meal prep kits : HOME CHEF

Home Chef is a company that delivers meal kits to consumers. The fresh ingredients are pre-measured, and the kit includes cooking instructions.

5D Material for the blue eyebrows on the mask of Tutankhamen, in brief : LAPIS

Lapis lazuli is a blue, semi-precious stone mined mainly in Afghanistan. “Lapis Lazuli” is Latin for “stone of Lazhward”, referring to the Persian name for the location where the stone was mined. Our word “azure”, a shade of blue, has the same root.

“King Tut” is a name commonly used for the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. Tutankhamun may not have been the most significant of the pharaohs historically, but he is the most famous today largely because of the discovery of his nearly intact tomb in 1922 by Howard Carter. Prior to this find, any Egyptian tombs uncovered by archaeologists had been ravaged by grave robbers. Tutankhamun’s magnificent burial mask is one of the most recognizable of all Egyptian artifacts.

6D Mother of Don Juan : INEZ

Lord Byron wrote the poem “Don Juan” based on the legend of Don Juan the libertine. For the poem, Byron created the character Donna Inez, Don Juan’s mother. Supposedly Inez was based on Byron’s own wife, Annabella Milbanke.

Don Juan is a flighty character who has been featured by a number of authors, poets and composers, including Molière, Byron, and Mozart. In the underlying legend, Don Juan ends up talking to the statue of the dead father of one of his conquests. He dines with the ghost of the dead man and when shaking the hand of the ghost he is dragged away to hell. We now use the term “Don Juan” to describe any womanizer or ladies’ man.

8D Brian of ambient music : ENO

Brian Eno was one of the pioneers of the genre of ambient music. He composed an album in 1978 called “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, which was the first in a series of four albums with an ambient theme. Eno named the tracks, somewhat inventively, 1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2.

9D Part of a bass in a jug band : WASHTUB

A jug band features a jug player, as well as others playing ordinary objects perhaps modified to make sound. One such instrument is the washtub bass. The “tub” is a stringed instrument that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. A washboard might also be used in a jug band, as a percussion instrument. The ribbed surface of the washboard is usually scraped using thimbles on the ends of the fingers.

12D Eponym for a lounge chair : EAMES

Charles and Ray Eames were a husband-wife team of furniture designers. One of the more famous of their designs is the Eames lounge chair that comes with an ottoman. This trendy piece of furniture featured in a late episode of the television show “Frasier”. In the show, Frasier’s Dad remarks that the Eames chair is so comfortable that he might have gotten rid of his tatty old recliner a long time ago.

22D Puma rival : ADIDAS

The Adidas brand dates back to when Adolf “Adi” Dassler started making his own sports shoes in his mother’s laundry room in Bavaria after returning from WWI. With his brother, Adi founded Dassler shoes. The company’s big break came in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, when Adi persuaded American sprinter Jesse Owens to use his shoes, and with the success of Jesse Owens came success for the fledgling shoe company. After WWII the brothers split, acrimoniously. Adi’s brother, Ru-dolf Da-ssler, formed “Ruda” shoes (later to become Puma), and Adi Das-sler formed “Adidas”.

24D Setting for the graphic novel series “Persepolis” : IRAN

“Persepolis” is a series of French comic strips by Iranian-born French cartoonist Marjane Satrapi that were published as a graphic novel in the early 2000s. The title refers to the ancient capital of the Persian Empire. The strips are autobiographical in nature, and depict the author’s early life during and after the Islamic Revolution.

28D Competitor of the early Chevrolet 490 : MODEL T

The Ford Model T was the first really affordable car that was offered for sale, and it was produced from 1908 to 1927. It was the Model T that ushered in the era of assembly line production, which greatly cut down the cost of manufacture. Its engine was designed to run on petrol, kerosene or ethanol. Ford stated in 1909 that “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black”. In actual fact, from 1908 through 1913, the Model T wasn’t available in black, and only gray, green, blue and red. The “black only” strategy applied from 1914.

39D Friend of Nancy Drew : BESS

The “Nancy Drew” mystery stories were produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The founder of the Syndicate hired a team of writers to produce the “Nancy Drew” novels, but listed the author of each book as the fictional Carolyn Keene.

44D Baseball’s Stengel : CASEY

Casey Stengel was a professional baseball player, playing from 1912-1925 and managing from 1934-1965. Stengel was born in Kansas City. He had German heritage, and so was called “Dutch” for much of his early life. As he acquired fame on the baseball field, Stengel was given the nickname “Casey”, largely because he came from Kansas City (“KC”) and also because of the popularity of the poem “Casey at the Bat”. He was a smart and erudite guy when it came to baseball, so sportswriters tended to call him “The Old Professor”.

46D Sing like Michael Bublé : CROON

Michael Bublé is a singer from Burnaby in British Columbia. He is of Italian descent on his father’s side. Bublé has held dual Italian-Canadian citizenship since 2005. He dated English actress Emily Blunt for a while, and she sang background vocals and the final verse for his 2007 version of “Me and Mrs. Jones”. Also, Bublé wrote his 2007 song “Everything” for Blunt.

48D Threads : DUDS

“Duds” is an informal word meaning “clothing”. The term comes from the word “dudde” that was used around 1300 as the name for a cloak.

50D Food item whose name comes from the Greek for “turn” : GYRO

A gyro is a traditional Greek dish of meat roasted on a tall vertical spit that is sliced from the spit as required. Gyros are usually served inside a lightly grilled piece of pita bread, along with tomato, onion and tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber sauce).