NYXCrossword.com

Bill’s time: 20m 28s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

19 Signal to snap : HUT

The quarterback (QB) starts each play in football with a snap (also called a “hike”). He announces to his teammates the exact moment of the snap by calling out signals, usually including the word “hut” one or more times in a prearranged sequence.

20 Kind of workout class : SPIN

Exercise classes that feature indoor cycling are usually referred to as “spin classes”. Apparently, “spinning” is a trademarked term owned by a company called Mad Dogg Athletics. That said, there are a lot of folks out there using “spinning” as a generic term.

21 Longtime judge on “Britain’s Got Talent” and “America’s Got Talent” : SIMON COWELL

Simon Cowell was invited to be a judge on “Pop Idol”, a British show that spawned “American Idol”. Cowell was then asked to take part in the US spin-off, and we haven’t stopped seeing him since …

NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” is part of a global franchise based in the UK. The original show is called “Britain’s Got Talent”, and the whole franchise is owned by Simon Cowell. The first host of “America’s Got Talent” was Regis Philbin (2006), followed by Jerry Springer, Nick Cannon, Tyra Banks and Terry Crews.

30 Plant with lance-shaped leaves : ALOE

Aloe vera has a number of alternate names that are descriptive of its efficacy as a medicine. ancient Egyptians knew it as the plant of immortality, and Native Americans called it the wand of heaven.

33 Fords discontinued in 1959 : EDSELS

The Edsel brand of automobile was named for Edsel Ford, son of Henry. Sadly, the name “Edsel” has become synonymous with “failure”, which was no fault of Edsel himself who had died several years before the Edsel line was introduced. When the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel on 4 September 1957, Ford proclaimed the day to be “E Day”.

36 One wearing stripes : REF

Back in the early 17th century, a referee was someone who examined patent applications. We started using the same term for a person presiding over a sporting event in the 1820s. “Referee” is a derivative of the verb “to refer”, and literally describes someone who has the authority to make a decision by “referring” to a book, archive etc.

37 “Thanks for sharing … not!” : TMI!

Too much information (TMI)

38 Gender prefix : CIS-

The term “cisgender” is used as the opposite of “transgender”. Cisgender people have a gender identity that matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

41 Mixtape medium : CASSETTE

The French for “box” is “casse”. So, a “cassette” is a “little box”.

Even though tapes are no longer used, the term “mixtape” still describes any homemade collection of musical tracks. The less retro term for the same thing might be “playlist”.

44 Wicked stuff? : WAX

That would be the wick of a candle.

45 Jazz singer Carmen : MCRAE

Carmen McRae was a jazz singer from Harlem in New York City. McRae’s inspiration was singer Billie Holiday, whom McRae met when she was 17 years old.

46 City in the Pacific Northwest with a Russian-sounding name : MOSCOW, IDAHO

In its early days, the city of Moscow, Idaho was known as Paradise Valley, with the name change taking place in 1875. The choice of “Moscow” seems unexplained, but it is more likely related to Moscow, Pennsylvania than Moscow, Russia. Moscow is home to the University of Idaho.

51 Musician Brian : ENO

Brian Eno is a musician, composer and record producer from England who first achieved fame as the synthesizer player with Roxy Music. As a producer, Eno has worked with David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads and U2.

52 The tiniest bit : ONE IOTA

Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet, and one that gave rise to our letters I and J. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small, as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

60 Big name in sports betting : FANDUEL

DraftKings and FanDuel are companies offering fantasy sports games and leagues.

62 Globe, for one : THEATRE

The Globe Theatre was built in London in 1599, and was used mainly for staging works by William Shakespeare and his theater company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. The theater was destroyed by fire in 1613. A second Globe was built on the site a year later, and it remained open until 1642. The original theater was reconstructed on a nearby site by the Thames and opened in 1997. I had the privilege of seeing a fabulous performance of “As You Like It” in Shakespeare’s Globe (as the new theater is called) about a decade ago. Seeing a play in that remarkable theater is tremendous entertainment, much recommended for anyone visiting London.

Down

2 German pronoun : ICH

Ich is the German for “I”, as in “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), the famous words of support uttered by President John F. Kennedy (JFK) in 1963 in a speech in West Berlin.

3 Ire : CHOLER

Choler is anger, irritability. Choler (also “cholera”) was one of the body’s four basic substances of medieval science, the so-called four humors. All diseases were caused by these four substances getting out of balance. The four humors were:

• Black bile (melancholia)
• Yellow bile (cholera)
• Phlegm (phlegma)
• Blood (sanguis)

4 1, 2, 3, etc. : WHOLE NUMBERS

In mathematics, the whole numbers are the natural, counting numbers (1, 2, 3, etc), with the important inclusion of the number zero. Zero is usually excluded from the list of “natural numbers”.

6 Leads of “La La Land”? : ELS

The leading letters in the words “La La Land” are letters L (els).

8 Procedure performed by an OB : AMNIO

Amniocentesis (“amnio” for short) is the prenatal test which involves the removal of a small amount of the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus using a hypodermic needle. The fluid naturally contains some fetal cells, the DNA of which can then be tested to determine the sex of the child and to check for the presence of genetic abnormalities.

9 Popular backyard game : CORNHOLE

Cornhole is a game in which contestants throw bean bags towards a tilted-up platform with a hole in it. Bags that land in the hole score 3 points, and bags that land on the board score 1 point.

13 Detroit ___, nickname for Malcolm X : RED

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925. He told his own life story in the incredibly successful book “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, on which he collaborated with author Alex Haley. Malcolm Little changed his name when he joined the Nation of Islam, choosing “X” to represent the African family name that he could never know.

22 Ingenuous person : NAIF

A naïf is someone who is naive, as “naïf” is the French word for “naive”.

So often in literature, movies and on stage, there is an innocent woman at the center of the story. Such stock characters came to be known as “ingénues”, a term derived from the French adjective “ingénu” meaning innocent, virtuous, candid and “ingenuous”.

24 Spider-Man adversary played by Jamie Foxx : ELECTRO

“Jamie Foxx” is the professional name used by Eric Marlon Bishop, an actor from Terrell, Texas. Foxx is a very versatile entertainer. He is an Oscar-winning actor (for playing the title role in “Ray”), and a Grammy Award winning musician. He is also a stand-up comedian and a talk-radio host.

25 Novel parodied by Umberto Eco’s “Granita” : LOLITA

Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” has a famously controversial storyline, dealing with a middle-aged man’s obsession and sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze. 38-year-old professor Humbert Humbert privately refers to Dolores as “Lolita”. Although “Lolita” is considered a classic today, after Nabokov finished it in 1953 the edgy subject matter made it impossible for him to find a publisher in the US (where Nabokov lived). In 1955, he resorted to publishing it in English at a printing house in Paris. Publication was followed by bans and seizures all over Europe. A US printing house finally took on the project in 1958, by which time the title had such a reputation that it sold exceptionally quickly. “Lolita” became the first book since “Gone with the Wind” to sell over 100,000 copies in its first three weeks in stores.

Umberto Eco was an Italian writer who is probably best known for his novel “The Name of the Rose”, published in 1980. In 1986, “The Name of the Rose” was adapted into a movie with the same title starring Sean Connery.

28 Laptop brand : LENOVO

Lenovo is a Chinese manufacturer of computers that was founded as “Legend” in 1984. The name was changed to “Lenovo” in 2002. “Lenovo” is a portmanteau of “Le” (from “Legend”) and “novo” (Latin for “new”). IBM sold off its personal computer division to Lenovo in 2005.

33 Letters on an ambulance : EMS

Emergency medical services (EMS)

40 Creature of fantasy : ORC

Orcs are mythical humanoid creatures that appear in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. Since Tolkien’s use of orcs, they have also been featured in other fantasy fiction as well as in fantasy video games.

49 Artoo-___ : DETOO

Artoo’s proper name is R2-D2 (also “Artoo-Detoo”). R2-D2 is the smaller of the two famous droids from the “Star Wars” movies. British actor Kenny Baker, who stood just 3 feet 8 inches tall, was the man inside the R2-D2 droid for the first six of the “Star Wars” movies.

55 Journalist Tarbell : IDA

Ida Tarbell was a teacher and what we would call today an “investigative journalist”, although back in her day she was known as a “muckraker”. Her most famous work is her 1904 book “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. It is an exposé that is credited with hastening the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911. She also wrote several books about President Abraham Lincoln.

57 Former AT&T competitor : MCI

MCI was a giant telecom company that suffered a similar fate to Enron, and around about the same time. MCI was formed with the merger of MCI Communications and WorldCom in 1997, and eventually became the second-largest, long-distance provider in the US. MCI’s stock price fell in 2000 and, in maneuvers designed to protect the price, the company committed illegal acts. MCI’s larger-than-life CEO Bernie Ebbers (formerly of WorldCom) served 13 years of a 25-year sentence, before being released due to a decline in health. He died one month later.