0311-26 NY Times Crossword 11 Mar 26, Wednesday

Bill’s time: 6m 55s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6A Channel showing committee hearings : C-SPAN

C-SPAN is a privately-funded, nonprofit cable channel that broadcasts continuous coverage of government proceedings. The acronym stands for “Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network”.

15A “Don Giovanni” genre : OPERA

“Don Giovanni” is a comic opera by Mozart, with a libretto in Italian by Lorenzo Da Ponte. The opera follows the adventures of Don Giovanni, a young rakish nobleman who finally comes to a bad end.

16A Container for sardines : TIN

Sardines are oily fish related to herrings. They are also known as pilchards, although in the UK “sardine” is a noun reserved for a young pilchard. Very confusing …

19A Musician Yoko : ONO

Yoko Ono was born in 1933 in Tokyo into a prosperous Japanese family, and is actually a descendant of one of the emperors of Japan. Yoko’s father moved around the world for work, and she lived the first few years of her life in San Francisco. The family returned to Japan, before moving on to New York, Hanoi and back to Japan just before WWII, in time to live through the great firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Immediately after the war the family was far from prosperous. While Yoko’s father was being held in a prison camp in Vietnam, her mother had to resort to begging and bartering to feed her children. When her father was repatriated, life started to return to normal and Yoko was able to attend university. She was the first woman to be accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University.

24A “In 1928, Alexander Fleming at St. Mary’s Hospital in London found mold in his cultures of staphylococcus bacteria …” : PENICILLIN

The antibiotic called penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. He noted that a blue-green mold growing in a Petri dish produced a substance that inhibited the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria, which was growing on the same substrate. The mold was Penicillium notatum, and Fleming named the antibiotic penicillin after the mold. I was lucky enough to visit Fleming’s laboratory on a visit to London some years ago …

30A Answer to the riddle ending “How many are going to St. Ives?” : ONE

You might remember the nursery rhyme “As I was going to St. Ives” from the third “Die Hard” movie, “Die Hard With a Vengeance” as it is used as a riddle in the film’s storyline. The rhyme goes like this:

As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives
Each wife had seven sacks
Each sack had seven cats
Each cat had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St Ives?

There is more than one place called St. Ives in England, but most think the reference is to the seaside town of St. Ives in Cornwall. By the way, the answer to the riddle is “one”, because just the narrator was going to St. Ives, and the rest were characters he met along the way.

31A “Olympia” painter : MANET

Édouard Manet painted “Olympia” in 1863, and the work caused a lot of controversy when it was first shown. Despite the grandiose title, Olympia is actually a courtesan, and that caused offense in the art appreciation circles at that time. I have been lucky enough to have seen the work (which doesn’t offend anyone anymore!) a few times in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

36A “In 1945, Percy Spencer at the Raytheon Manufacturing Company noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted close to a magnetron …” : MICROWAVE OVEN

The microwave oven was invented in 1945 by Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon. While he was standing beside an active radar unit, which used microwaves, he noticed that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. Spencer proceeded to expose various foods to microwaves in tests that would lead to the development of the first commercial microwave oven.

42A Kwik-E-Mart proprietor on “The Simpsons” : APU

“The Problem with Apu” is a 2017 documentary that explores the use of racial stereotypes by focusing on the character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from the animated sitcom “The Simpsons”. The film was written by and stars American stand-up comedian Hari Kondabolu.

44A “In 1943, James Wright at General Electric was attempting to develop synthetic rubber for the war effort …” : SILLY PUTTY

Silly Putty is a silicone polymer that is marketed as a toy, usually sold in an egg-shaped plastic container. It is a remarkable material that can flow like a liquid and can also bounce. Silly Putty was one of those accidental creations, an outcome of research during WWII in search of substitutes for rubber. The substitution became urgent as Japan invaded rubber-producing countries all around the Pacific Rim.

50A Inits. on a police forensic van : CSI

Crime scene investigation (CSI)

52A Like Mercury among all the planets vis-à-vis the sun : NEAREST

Mercury is the smallest of the planets in our solar system, and the nearest to the Sun. It orbits the sun relatively rapidly compared to the other planets, and this fact may have led to it being given the name “Mercury”, the Roman deity who was the speedy messenger to the gods.

55A One to build on : LOT

The “city lot” sense of “lot” is intertwined with the older practice of “casting lots”. Historically, land division was often determined by chance, particularly in early settlements or when distributing land among a group. “Lots” were physical objects, like stones or slips of paper, marked to represent different land parcels. These were drawn randomly, and the “lot” a person received corresponded to the specific piece of land assigned to that marker. This practice of “casting lots” directly led to the use of “lot” as a term for a defined piece of land, eventually giving us the modern usage in “city lot” and “parking lot.”

60A Singer Garfunkel : ART

Singer and actor Art Garfunkel is best-known for the years he spent performing with Paul Simon, although Garfunkel had a successful solo career after the duo split up. As well as singing and acting, he is fond of taking long, long walks while composing poetry. Garfunkel walked across Japan in the early 1980s, and across America in increments from 1983 to 1997. He then walked across Europe, also in increments, from 1998 to 2011.

62A Vaudeville show : REVUE

The Vire is a river that flows through Normandy in France. The poets of the Vire valley were known as the “Vau de Vire”, a term that some say gave rise to our word “vaudeville”.

Down

5D Tennis score after deuce : AD IN

In tennis, if the score reaches deuce (i.e. when both players have scored three points), then the first player to win two points in a row wins the game. The player who wins the point immediately after deuce is said to have the advantage. If the player with the advantage wins the next point then that’s two in a row and that player wins the game. If the person with the advantage loses the next point, then advantage is lost and the players return to deuce and try again. The player calling out the score announces “ad in”, or more formally “advantage in”, if he/she has the advantage. If the score announcer’s opponent has the advantage, then the announcement is “ad out” or “advantage out”. Follow all of that …?

7D With whom the dish ran away in “Hey Diddle Diddle” : SPOON

The nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” has been around at least since the mid-1700s.

Hey diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon,The little dog laughed to see such fun,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.

8D ___ dish : PETRI

Julius Richard Petri was a German bacteriologist and was the man after whom the Petri dish is named. The petri dish can have an agar gel on the bottom which acts as a nutrient source for the specimen being grown and studied, in which case the dish plus agar is referred to as an “agar plate”.

10D Rapper Lil ___ X : NAS

“Lil Nas X” is the stage name of rapper Montero Lamar Hill. He was born and raised just outside of Atlanta. His first hit was “Old Town Road”, which is classified as country rap.

11D Part of Micronesia : ATOLL

Micronesia is one of the three island regions of Oceania, along with Polynesia and Melanesia. The sovereign nations included in the region are the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau. Also in Micronesia are the US territories of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Wake Island.

12D Mount associated with Moses : SINAI

According to the Bible, Mount Sinai is the mountain on which Moses was given the Ten Commandments. The Biblical Mount Sinai is probably not the mountain in Egypt that today has the same name, although this is the subject of much debate. The Egyptian Mount Sinai has two developed routes that one can take to reach the summit. The longer gentler climb takes about 2 1/2 hours, but there is also the steeper climb up the 3,750 “steps of penitence”.

21D Things a vest lacks : SLEEVES

Here’s another word that often catches me out. What we call a vest here in the US is a waistcoat back in Ireland. And, the Irish use the word “vest” for an undershirt.

22D Channel for old westerns : TCM

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is one of my favorite television channels as it delivers just what its name promises, i.e. classic movies.

32D Producer of milk for Roquefort cheese : EWE

Roquefort is a cheese made from sheep milk. It comes from the commune of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon in the South of France.

37D “Movin’ ___” (“The Jeffersons” theme song) : ON UP

“Movin’ on Up”, the theme song to The Jeffersons, was written by Ja’Net Dubois and Jeff Barry. It was performed by Ja’Net Dubois and became somewhat of a hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard R&B chart.

38D McAuliffe’s one-word reply to a German commander’s demand of surrender : NUTS!

The Ardennes Offensive of WWII is better known as the Battle of the Bulge. The “Bulge” name was coined by the American press, citing the “bulge” in the Allied front lines where the battle took place. US forces suffered more casualties in this engagement than in any other battle in the whole war.

43D Polar explorer Richard : BYRD

Rear Admiral Richard Byrd was an officer in the US Navy, famous as an aviator and explorer of the polar regions. Byrd was the first person to cross the South Pole by air, in 1929. Three years earlier, Byrd claimed he had flown over the North Pole, and would have been the first person to have done so if this was true. But whether or not Byrd actually made it over the North Pole continues to be the subject of much debate.

49D Jessica who won an Oscar for “Driving Miss Daisy” : TANDY

Actress Jessica Tandy was famous for playing very American roles, although she started out her career as an English actress. Tandy’s first marriage was to the marvelous English actor Jack Hawkins, but the couple divorced in 1940 and Tandy moved to New York. There she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn whom she married in 1942. Cronyn and Tandy were jointly honored with a special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1994. Tandy won the Best Actress Oscar in 1989 for playing the title role in “Driving Miss Daisy”.

The 1989 movie “Driving Miss Daisy” is based on the 1987 play by Alfred Uhry. Not only did Uhry win the Pulitzer for the play, he also won an Academy Award for the screenplay for the movie. In a famous scene, when Hoke, Miss Daisy’s driver, takes her from Atlanta to Mobile for her brother’s 90th birthday party, Hoke reveals to his passenger that the journey marked the first time he had ever left his home state of Georgia.

53D Ireland, to the Irish : EIRE

“Éire” is the Irish word for “Ireland”. The related “Erin” is an anglicized version of “Éire” and actually corresponds to “Éirinn”, the dative case of “Éire”.