0924-26 NY Times Crossword 24 Sep 26, Thursday

Bill’s time: 9m 16s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

17A Canapé topping : ROE

A canapé is a finger food, something small enough to eat in just one bite. In French, “canapé” is actually the word for a couch or a sofa. The name was given to the snack as the original canapés were savories served on toasted or stale bread that supposedly resembled a tiny couch.

20A Cheerios grain : OAT

Cheerios breakfast cereal has the distinction of being the first ready-to-eat oat-based cereal introduced into the market, hitting the grocery store shelves in 1941. Back then, Cheerios were known as CheeriOats.

21A American architect who invented Scrabble while unemployed during the Great Depression : ALFRED BUTTS

The game of Scrabble has been around since 1938, the invention of an architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Butts determined how many tiles of each letter, and the point value of each tile, by analyzing letter distributions in publications like “The New York Times”.

26A Many a Scottish native : GAEL

A Gael is anyone of a race that speaks or spoke one of the Erse tongues. There are actually three Erse languages: Irish, Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) and Scots Gaelic. In their own tongues, these would be “Gaeilge” (in Ireland), “Gaelg” (on the Isle of Man) and “Gaidhlig” (in Scotland).

28A Circuit in which Martina Navratilova holds the most singles titles, in brief : WTA TOUR

Former World No. 1 tennis player Billie Jean King founded the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) in 1973.

Martina Navratilova is a retired tennis player who is thought by many to have been the greatest player of all time. Navratilova won the Wimbledon singles title a record nine times, which is one of many records that she holds. She was born in Czechoslovakia but asked for political asylum in the US in 1975 at 18 years of age. Navratilova was granted temporary residency in the US and as a result was stripped of her Czech citizenship. That Czech citizenship was restored in 2008, making her a dual citizen.

33A Dish featured in Broadway’s “Sweeney Todd” : MEAT PIE

“Sweeney Todd” originally appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful and an 1847 play, later inspiring a 1936 film, a 1973 play, a 1979 musical, and a 2007 movie adaptation. After Sweeney Todd has killed his victims, his partner in crime Mrs. Lovett helped him dispose of the bodies by taking the flesh and baking it into meat pies that she sold in her pie shop. Ugh!

41A Ford or Lincoln : AUTO

Industrialist Henry Ford was born in Michigan, and was the son of an Irish immigrant from County Cork. Ford’s most famous vehicle was the one that revolutionized the industry: the Model T. Ford’s goal with the Model T was to build a car that was simple to drive, and cheap to purchase and repair. The Model T cost $825 in 1908, which isn’t much over $20,000 in today’s money.

Lincoln is a high-end brand belonging to the Ford Motor Company. The Lincoln Motor Company was founded in 1917 by Henry M. Leland, who chose the “Lincoln” name in honor of the celebrated American president. Lincoln was acquired by Ford just five years later, in 1922.

42A Full of vivid detail, as memory : EIDETIC

Someone with an eidetic memory is able to recall images with high precision, usually just for a few minutes. The phenomenon is most often observed in young children. The term was coined by German psychologist Erich Jaensch in 1924, with “eidetikos” being Greek for “pertaining to images”.

47A Actress Rene of “Thor” : RUSSO

Actress Rene Russo is a native of Burbank, California. Russo went to high school (with actor/director Ron Howard), but dropped out in tenth grade. At seventeen, she was given the opportunity to train as a model and within a very short time appeared on the cover of “Vogue”. As her modeling jobs slowed down in her early thirties, Russo made a career change and studied theater and acting. Her debut role was in the 1989 film “Major League.”

The 2011 movie “Thor” is yet another film based on a comic book hero. Even though I won’t be seeing it (I don’t do comics), I must admit it does have an impressive cast. Chris Hemsworth plays Thor, supported by Natalie Portman, Rene Russo, Idris Elba and Anthony Hopkins. And to crown it all, Kenneth Branagh is the director.

53A Bonus score for a bingo (using all seven of one’s tiles) in Scrabble : FIFTY POINTS

In the North American version of Scrabble, laying all seven tiles in one turn earns a 50-point bonus, and is called a “bingo”.

58A Actress Sandra or Ruby : DEE

Actress Sandra Dee started out as a model before moving into film. After a promising start to her career it seemed to peter out, and the public became more interested in her 7-year marriage to Bobby Darin. And of course she will forever be remembered from the song in the movie and stage-show “Grease” called “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee”.

Ruby Dee was an actress and civil rights activist. Her big break early in her career was a role in “The Jackie Robinson Story” from 1950, playing Robinson’s sweetheart and wife. She is perhaps best remembered for co-starring in “A Raisin in the Sun” alongside Sidney Poitier, in “Do the Right Thing” alongside her husband Ossie Davis, and in “American Gangster” in which she played Denzel Washington’s mother.

59A Dr. Seuss’ environmentalist : LORAX

“The Lorax” is a 1971 children’s book written by Dr. Seuss. It is an allegorical work questioning the problems created by industrialization, and in particular its impact on the environment. At one point in the story, the Lorax “speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues”. “The Lorax” was adapted into an animated film that was released in 2012, with Danny DeVito voicing the title character.

He was shortish, and oldish, and brownish and mossy. And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

61A Like Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 : IN F

Johannes Brahms was a leading German composer during the Romantic period. Brahms is one of the “Three Bs”, often grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven.

63A Home to Oral Roberts University : TULSA

Oral Roberts was a pioneer televangelist who started preaching on radio in 1947, and on television in 1954. He founded Oral Roberts University in 1963 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which today has an enrollment of over 3,000 students.

64A Verizon competitor, informally : ATT

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T, Ma Bell) was a subsidiary of the original Bell Telephone Company that was founded by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. AT&T was forced to divest several subsidiaries in 1982 when the company lost an antitrust lawsuit. Those subsidiaries were known as Regional Bell Operating Systems, or “Baby Bells”.

The telecommunications company that we know today as Verizon was founded in 1983 as Bell Atlantic, and was one of the “Baby Bells” that were formed after the breakup of AT&T. Bell Atlantic merged with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX in 1997, and then merged with GTE in 2000 to form Verizon. The new company name is a portmanteau of “veritas” (“truth” in Latin) and “horizon”.

65A Power measures : WATTS

James Watt was a Scottish inventor. He figured prominently in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, largely due to the improvements he made to the fledgling steam engine. The SI unit of power is called the watt, and was named in his honor.

67A The two most valuable Scrabble tiles : BLANK BLANK

The two blank tiles supplied in every game of Scrabble were not part of the original design. The game’s inventor, Alfred Mosher Butts, added them later on to increase the game’s flexibility after finding the initial all-letter version too restrictive.

Down

1D Weightless state, for short : ZERO G

The force of gravity (g-force) that we all feel is referred to as “one G”. As gravity is an accelerating force, acceleration is measured relative to that force of gravity. So, if we are sitting in a vehicle that accelerates at 3G, then we are experiencing a force that is three times that which we feel from the gravitational pull of the earth. Zero G is weightlessness that is experienced when in a spacecraft that is in a continuous state of free-fall around the planet. And yes, I know that gravity is really NOT a force, according to the Theory of General Relativity. We’re Newtonian here …

6D Old and trite : HOARY

The Old English word “har” meant “gray, venerable, old”, and came into English as “hoar” (and later “hoary”) with the same meaning. The term “hoar-frost” dates back to the 13th century, and reflects the similarity of the white feathers of frost to the gray/white of an old man’s beard.

7D Wavelength symbol : LAMBDA

The letter lambda, the 11th in the Greek alphabet, is equivalent to our Latin letter L. An uppercase lambda resembles the caret character on a keyboard.

10D Belmont entry : COLT

Belmont Park is a horse racing track located just outside New York City in Elmont. The facility is home to the celebrated Belmont Stakes, the third race in the season that makes up the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. The track is named for one of the original investors, financier and horse breeder August Belmont Jr.

24D Biblical figure with a notoriously bad hair day? : SAMSON

Delilah is the love, and eventual temptress, of Samson according to the Bible. Delilah was engaged by the Philistines to betray Samson by determining the secret of his great strength. Samson lied to her three times, but on the fourth asking he told Delilah the truth, that he did not cut his hair. Delilah then persuaded Samson to shear his locks and so allowed him to be captured by his enemies. Over the centuries, it has been usual to depict Delilah actually cutting off her husband’s hair, but the Bible actually says that she allowed a man to do the deed while Samson was sleeping.

31D Hamburger connection? : UND

“Und” is German for “and”.

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany (after Berlin), and the third largest port in Europe (after Rotterdam and Antwerp).

34D Vies for a roster spot : TRIES OUT

Our word “roster”, meaning “list, register”, actually comes from the same root as our word “roast”, would you believe? “Roster” came into English from the Dutch “rooster”, meaning “table, list”. An alternative use of the Dutch “rooster” was “gridiron”, from the “roosten” meaning “to roast”. The connection is that a roster of names is often listed on a sheet of paper that has grid lines resembling the marks left by a gridiron on roasted meat. Quite interesting …

39D Addams Family cousin : ITT

In the television sitcom “The Addams Family”, the family has a frequent visitor named Cousin Itt. He is a diminutive, hair-covered relative who communicates entirely in a rapid, high-pitched squeak. Cartoonist Charles Addams never featured the character in his “New Yorker” panels, and he was introduced in the 1964 TV premiere.

40D Record held by the Spruce Goose for over 70 years, at 320 feet : WINGSPAN

“Spruce Goose” is the familiar name given to the Hughes H-4 Hercules heavy transport plane, just one example of which was ever constructed. As the plane was built during WWII, wood was used instead of aluminum due to a shortage of the metal. That actual wood used was birch, but critics still used “Spruce Goose” as the name had a better ring to it. The Hercules the largest wingspan for over 70 years until the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch, which first flew in 2019, surpassed it with a wingspan of 385 ft. You can go see the Spruce Goose at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

44D Straight-horned antelopes : ORYXES

The oryx is a large antelope species, mainly found in Africa but also in the Arabian Peninsula. One species was introduced by man into the White Sands Missile Range. As a result, the oryx is now considered an invasive species in the neighboring White Sands National Monument.

48D Kind of cavity : SINUS

In anatomical terms, a sinus is a cavity in tissue. Sinuses are found all over the body, in the kidney and heart for example, but we most commonly think of the paranasal sinuses that surround the nose.

49D Frère de la mère : ONCLE

In French, an “oncle” (uncle) is married to a “tante” (aunt), and both are members of the “famille” (family).

54D Part of the Corn Belt : IOWA

The Corn Belt (sometimes “Grain Belt”) is a region in the Midwest where, since the mid-1800s, corn has been the major crop. Geographically, the Corn Belt covers Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and parts of Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri. About 40% of the world’s corn production comes from the region, and most of that production is used for the feeding of livestock.

56D Patisserie pastry : TART

A patisserie is a French bakery that sells pastries, or “tartes”.

57D Stun, in a way : TASE

Victor Appleton wrote a novel for young adults called “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle”. The company that developed the TASER electroshock weapon partly named its product as a homage to the novel. The acronym “TASER” stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle”.

59D Thunder setting, in brief : NBA

The Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team arrived in 2008 after relocating from Seattle, where they were named the SuperSonics. The “Thunder” name was chosen as a reference to Oklahoma City’s exposure to the storms of Tornado Alley, and to the 45th Infantry Division “Thunderbirds” who were headquartered there until 1968.