0730-26 NY Times Crossword 30 Jul 26, Thursday

Bill’s time: 12m 37s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

16A Balkan state that’s been independent since 2008 : KOSOVO

The country name “Kosovo” is an adjectival form of the Serbian word “kos” meaning “blackbird”. The name commemorates the “field of the blackbirds”, the site of a 1389 battle between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. The dispute over Kosovo technically dates back to the implosion of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The capital of Kosovo is Pristina.

18A “Cluster” : CHARLIE SHEEN (C – luster)

Charlie Sheen’s real name is Carlos Irwin Estévez, and he is of course the youngest son of actor Martin Sheen. Charlie was the highest paid actor on television in 2010, earning $1.8 million per episode on the sitcom “Two and a Half Men”. Then of course he blew it and got fired from the show amid stories of alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence. I bet his co-stars were pretty tweaked about the show being canceled, and pretty happy that it was given a second lease of life …

20A Density symbol : RHO

Rho is the symbol used for density, i.e. mass/volume.

23A Do you read me? : NOVEL

Our word “novel”, used for a lengthy work of fiction, comes from the Latin “novella” meaning “new things”.

36A H.S. course covering integrals : AP CALC

Remember doing calculus at school, and all those derivatives and integrals? Well, you probably also remember that an integral calculates the area under a curve (for example), and a derivative calculates the slope of a tangent at a particular point on a curve.

39A ___ trading : DAY

Day trading is the buying and selling of financial instruments within the same day, with all trades being settled by the closing bell. This used to be the realm of professional investors and speculators, but day-trading has become a big fad for at-home traders since the Internet made buying and selling transactions so easy and rapid.

40A “Steam” : SIERRA CLUB (S – team)

The Sierra Club was founded in San Francisco in 1892 by the Scottish conservationist John Muir.

46A Black-and-orange bird : ORIOLE

The songbird called an oriole builds an interesting nest. It is a woven cup-like structure that is suspended from a branch like a hammock, dangling up to 30 feet above the ground.

47A Bob who painted “happy little trees” : ROSS

Bob Ross was an artist and art instructor. Ross created and appeared in the long-running PBS show “The Joy of Painting”, a show which provided instructions for budding artists. He was known for some colorful phrases that he tended to repeat on screen, one of the most famous being “let’s add some happy little trees”.

50A Jackie who co-starred in “Rush Hour” : CHAN

Jackie Chan is an actor from Hong Kong who is noted for his action and martial arts films. When Chan was 17 years old, he featured as a stunt actor in Bruce Lee movies. He also starred in the 1982 Hong Kong action film “Dragon Lord” which includes a fight scene that required an amazing 2900 takes, a record in the movie industry.

“Rush Hour” (1998) is a buddy cop action-comedy film about two mismatched detectives: James Carter (Chris Tucker), a fast-talking LAPD detective, and Lee (Jackie Chan), a disciplined and skilled Hong Kong inspector. Beyond the movie’s success with audiences, “Rush Hour” played a pivotal role in the creation of the popular movie review website Rotten Tomatoes. The site’s founder, Senh Duong, was a dedicated Jackie Chan fan and created the website as a way to gather reviews of Chan’s films, with “Rush Hour” serving as the catalyst for its launch.

52A Top halves of centaurs : MEN

A centaur is a figure from Greek mythology. It is a creature with the upper body of a human and lower body of a horse.

59A City with red buses : LONDON

The red double-decker bus has become a national symbol of England, and is particularly associated with the London transport system. I am proud to say that my godfather was a London bus driver for many years.

60A Big or bad follower : APPLE

Apparently, the first published use of the term “Big Apple” to describe New York City dates back to 1909. Edward Martin wrote the following in his book “The Wayfarer in New York”:

Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.

Over ten years later, the term “big apple” was used as a nickname for racetracks in and around New York City. However, the concerted effort to “brand” the city as the Big Apple had to wait until the seventies and was the work of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau.

61A So-called “Land of a Million Elephants” : LAOS

The present-day nation of Laos can trace its roots back to the historic Lao kingdom of Lan Xang that existed from 1354 to 1707. The full name of the kingdom was “Lan Xang Hom Khao”, which translates as “The Land of a Million Elephants and the White Parasol”.

64A ___ culpa : MEA

Many Roman Catholics are very familiar with the Latin phrase “mea culpa” meaning “my fault”, as it is used in the Latin Mass. The additional term “mea maxima culpa” translates as “my most grievous fault”.

65A Communication aid that helps make sense of the italicized clues : NATO ALPHABET

The NATO phonetic alphabet is also called the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) phonetic alphabet. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie … X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

70A Subj. for immigrants, maybe : ESL

English as a Second Language (ESL)

71A Training aids for a lab, say : TREATS

The Labrador (Lab) breed of dog has been around at least since 1814. The name “Labrador Retriever” is simply a reference to the breed’s origin and behavior. Labs originally “retrieved” from the “Labrador Sea”.

73A ___ pad : SOS

S.O.S is a brand of scouring pads made from steel wool impregnated with soap. The product was invented as a giveaway by an aluminum pot salesman in San Francisco called Ed Cox. His wife gave it the name “S.O.S” as an initialism standing for “Save Our Saucepans”. Note the punctuation! There is no period after the last S, and that is deliberate. When Cox went to register the trademark, he found that “S.O.S.” could not be a trademark because it was used as an international distress signal. So he dropped the period after the last S, and I hope made a lot of money for himself and his wife.

75A Shark’s mark : PATSY

The etymology of the word “patsy” meaning “fall guy” isn’t really understood. One colorful theory suggests that the term comes from an 1890s vaudeville character named Patsy Bolivar. Patsy always got the blame when something went wrong.

Down

1D Church leader : RECTOR

In an ecclesiastical sense, a “rector” is a cleric in charge of a parish or religious institution. In Latin, the word rector means “ruler, director,” coming from “regere”, “to rule.”

6D ___-Ball : SKEE

Skee-Ball is the arcade game in which the player rolls balls up a ramp trying to “bounce” them into rings for varying numbers of points. The game was first introduced in Philadelphia, in 1909.

7D Joel follows it : HOSEA

Hosea was one of the Twelve Prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The Twelve Prophets are also known as the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible.

10D Biblical second coming? : EVE

According to the Bible, Eve was created as Adam’s companion by God, creating her from Adam’s rib.

11D Prima ___ : DONNA

The Italian operatic term “prima donna” is used for the lead female singer in an opera company. “Prima donna” translates from Italian as “first lady”. The lead male singer is known as the “primo uomo”. The term “prima donna assoluta” is reserved for a prima donna who is generally accepted as being an outstanding performer. We tend to use “prima donna” for a female performer who has an inflated ego.

12D University of Cambridge : HARVARD

The Massachusetts city of Cambridge lies just across the Charles River from Boston. The area was settled in 1630, and named “Cambridge” in 1638 in honor of the English university. Cambridge is home to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as Lesley University and Hult International Business School.

13D “Hamlet” noblewoman : OPHELIA

In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Ophelia is courted by Hamlet, the man himself. She is the daughter of nobleman Polonius. Ophelia dies …

14D Developer of a geocentric model of the universe : PTOLEMY

Claudius Ptolemy was an Egyptian of Greek ethnicity who lived in the days when Egypt was ruled by ancient Rome. Ptolemy was, among other things, a mathematician and astronomer. He published a famous treatise on astronomy called “Almagest” which included a list of 48 constellations in a star catalog. The Ptolemaic system described the cosmos geocentrically, with the Earth at the center and other celestial bodies orbiting. Ptolemy also wrote a work titled “Geography”, which compiled much of the geographical knowledge of the Roman Empire at that time. Centuries after Ptolemy died, Christopher Columbus used the maps in “Geography” to aid him on his voyages of discovery.

30D Where Dante’s path to paradise begins : HELL

Dante’s epic narrative poem “Divina Commedia” (Divine Comedy) is divided into three parts: “Inferno”, “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso” (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise).

41D Gospel singer Franklin : ERMA

Erma Franklin was an R&B and gospel singer. She was the elder sister of Aretha Franklin. Erma toured with Aretha for a while, and even recorded backup vocals on her sister’s big hit “Respect”.

42D Like a zoomer after 1997 : BORN

Definitions vary, but it seems that the term “Generation Z” is reserved for the children of “Generation X”, and for the generation that follows the “Millennials” (Generation Y). Gen Zers are also known as “Zoomers”, a portmanteau of “Z” and “boomer” (as in “baby boomer”).

43D Minecraft and World of Warcraft : PC GAMES

Minecraft is a video game that was released in 2011. Apparently, it is the most popular video game of all time, with well over 200 million units sold.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is an online role-playing game (RPG). My son informs me that the game is not that great. Like I would know …

49D High achievers? : STONERS

“Stoner” is a slang term for someone who is a habitual user of cannabis (marijuana).

51D Notable org. with 32 members : NFL

The National Football League (NFL) was founded in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the current name being adopted in 1922. The NFL merged with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970.

69D Director DuVernay : AVA

Ava DuVernay is a filmmaker who became the first African American woman to win the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, a feat she achieved in 2012 for her feature film “Middle of Nowhere”. “Middle of Nowhere” tells the story of a woman who drops out of medical school to focus on her husband when he is sentenced to 8 years in prison. DuVernay also directed the 2014 film “Selma” about the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.