0623-26 NY Times Crossword 23 Jun 26, Tuesday

Bill’s time: 7m 20s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Swiss currency : FRANC

Not only is the Swiss franc legal tender in Switzerland, it is also the money used in Liechtenstein and the Italian exclave of Campione d’Italia.

6A Kind of clef used for the viola : ALTO

“Clef” is the French word for “key”. In music, a clef is used to indicate the pitch of the notes written on a stave. The bass clef is also known as the F-clef, the alto clef is the C-clef, and the treble clef is the G-clef.

17A Menzel with a Tony for “Wicked” : IDINA

Actress and singer Idina Menzel came to public attention when she was a member of the original Broadway cast of “Rent”. She is known on the small screen for playing Shelby Corcoran on the musical TV show “Glee”. On the big screen, her most noted performance was as the voice actor behind Queen Elsa in the Disney hit “Frozen”. It is Menzel who sings the Oscar-winning song “Let It Go” in “Frozen”.

18A ___ fresca (Latin American refreshment) : AGUA

An agua fresca is a blended drink made with sugar and water flavored with fruit, cereal, flowers or seeds. Traditional aguas frescas are sold by street vendors, especially in Mexico and the American Southwest. Common flavorings are hibiscus and tamarind.

19A Neural signal conductor : AXON

A nerve cell is more correctly called a neuron. The long nerve fiber that conducts signals away from the neuron is known as the axon. The axon is surrounded by a myelin sheath, which acts as an electrical insulator and which increases the rate the impulses pass along the axon.

24A Grp. that adjusts oil production : OPEC

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

35A The Rev. Leonard Clement, in an Agatha Christie novel : VICAR

Agatha Christie (née Miller) is the best-selling novelist of all time, having sold about 2 billion copies worldwide in total. The only books to have sold in higher volume are the works of William Shakespeare and the Bible.

36A Hide ___ hair : NOR

The phrase “neither hide nor hair” means “nothing whatsoever”. This peculiarly American phrase arose in the mid 1800s, and paradoxically may have its origins in a much older English expression that means exactly the opposite. The older “in hide and hair” meant “wholly, entirely”.

39A Target of Glade or Febreze : ODOR

Glade is a brand of air fresheners that was introduced in 1956.

The odor-eliminating product we know today as Febreze was developed in the early nineties. It is produced by Procter & Gamble.

41A Deices, as a road : SALTS

Halite is the mineral form of sodium chloride, and is also known as “rock salt”. It is used to melt ice, as salt water has a lower freezing point than pure water. Adding salt to icy sidewalks can therefore cause any ice to melt (as long as the ambient temperature isn’t too low). A mixture of halite and ice can also be used to cool things below the freezing point of water, perhaps to make ice cream.

43A Notable features of the Charleston, S.C., skyline : STEEPLES

In general terms, a steeple is a tall tower on a building, often a church. More specifically, a steeple can be made up of several distinct parts:

1. Tower: the base of the steeple, which can often house a clock.
2. Belfry: the part that holds bells, often part of church steeples
3. Lantern: a decorative, windowed structure that admits light into the steeple
4. Spire: the tall, slender top

45A Like some roofs : GABLED

The gable is the triangular portion of a building’s wall that is defined by the intersection of the two slopes of the roof.

48A Member of an ancient Peruvian empire : INCA

The Inca Empire was known as the Tawantinsuyu, which translates as “land of the four quarters”. It was a federal organization with a central government that sat above four “suyu” or “quarters”, four administrative regions.

58A Nondairy spread : OLEO

Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France announced a competition to develop a substitute for butter, a substitute that would be more accessible to the lower classes and more practical for the armed forces. A French chemist called Hippolyte Mege-Mouries came up with something he called oleomargarine in 1869, which was eventually manufactured under the trade name “margarine”. The name “oleomargarine” also gives us our generic term “oleo”.

59A “Blue” locale in a 1977 Linda Ronstadt classic : BAYOU

“Blue Bayou” is a lovely ballad written by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson, released in 1963 by Orbison. Although the song never made it to the top of the charts over here in the US, it did in Ireland! Linda Ronstadt recorded a famous cover version in 1977. In baseball parlance, a fastball is sometimes called a “Linda Ronstadt”, as it is a pitch that “blew by you …”

62A Montréal traffic sign : ARRET

“Arrêt” is the French word for “stop”.

The original name of Montreal was “Ville-Marie”, meaning “City of Mary”. “Ville-Marie” is now the name of a borough in the city, the borough which includes the downtown area and “Old Montreal”. The present-day city covers most of the Island of Montreal (in French, “Île de Montréal”) that is located where the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers meet. The name “Montreal” comes from the three-headed hill that dominates the island and is called “Mount Royal”.

63A Peak in Greek myth : OSSA

Mount Ossa in Greece is located between Mount Pelion in the south, and the famed Mount Olympus in the north. Mount Ossa is also known as Kissavos.

Down

1D Bank-protecting agcy. : FDIC

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Banking Act of 1933. The legislation established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), intended to be a temporary government corporation that provided insurance on deposits made by customers of qualified financial institutions. The first accounts to be covered, in 1934, had an insurance limit of $2,500. Since the financial crisis of 2008, that limit is $250,000.

3D Tel ___ : AVIV

Israel’s Tel Aviv is known as the “White City” because of its many Bauhaus-style buildings. In fact, it has the largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings in the world, with over 4,000 buildings in this style. Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 as a suburb of the ancient port city of Jaffa.

4D Number of digits in a Social Security number : NINE

A Social Security Number (SSN) is divided into three parts, i.e AAA-GG-SSSS. Originally, the Area Number (AAA) was the code for the office that issued the card. Starting in 1973, the Area Number reflected the ZIP code from which the application was made. The GG in the SSN was the Group Number, and the SSSS number the Serial Number. This is all moot today. Since 2011, SSNs have been assigned randomly. Some random numbers, however, have been excluded from use, i.e. Area Numbers 000, 666 (!) and 900-999.

7D Apple’s apple, for one : LOGO

The logo of Apple, the computer company, is a silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. The company’s original logo featured a picture of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.

10D New York’s ___ Island : STATEN

Staten Island is part of New York City and is the least populous of the city’s five boroughs. The island was originally called Staaten Eylandt by Henry Hudson and was named after the Dutch parliament, the Staaten Generaal.

29D It took more than 70 yrs. to complete its first edition : OED

Work started on what was to become the first “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) in 1857. Several interim versions of the dictionary were published in the coming years with the first full version appearing, in ten bound volumes, in 1928. The second edition of the OED appeared in 1989 and is made up of twenty volumes. The OED was first published in electronic form in 1988 and went online in 2000. Given the modern use of computers, the publishing house responsible feels that there will never be a third print version of the famous dictionary.

31D Follower of the Gospels? : ACTS

The Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book of the Christian New Testament. It is believed that the author of the Gospel of Luke was the same person who wrote “Acts”.

32D Most dangerous animal in Maine, it’s said : MOOSE

The moose is the largest species in the deer family, and can stand almost at 7 feet at the shoulder. Moose are a little unusual in that they are solitary animals, unlike other deer who tend to move in herds. We use the term “moose” here in North America, but confusingly, the same animal is referred to as “elk” in British English.

38D Comet discovered in 1995 : HALE-BOPP

Comet Hale-Bopp was an unusually bright comet that was observable in the night sky for 18 months in the late 1990s. The comet was discovered in 1995 by professional astronomer Alan Hale and amateur observer Thomas Bopp, hence the name. Famously, claims were made that there was an alien spaceship travelling behind Hale-Bopp. 39 members of a San Diego religious cult called Heaven’s Gate committed mass suicide in 1997 in order to reach the spacecraft.

42D Region of Oakland and Alameda : EAST BAY

The city of Oakland, located in the San Francisco Bay Area, was explored by the Spanish starting in 1772 and eventually settled in 1820. The area now known as Oakland was called “Encinal” by those early settlers, which translates as “oak grove”, giving the city its name.

44D Plus other things, in Latin : ET ALIA

“Et alii” (et al.) is the equivalent of “et cetera” (etc.), with “et cetera” being used in place of a list of objects, and “et alii” used for a list of names. “Et al.” can stand for “et alii” (a group of males, or males and females), “et aliae” (a group of women) and “et alia” (a group of neuter nouns, or a group of people where the intent is to retain gender-neutrality).

49D Vetoes : NOES

The verb “veto” comes directly from Latin and means “I forbid”. The term was used by tribunes of ancient Rome to indicate that they opposed measures passed by the Senate.

51D Jazzy Fitzgerald : ELLA

Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

53D “Hyde and ___” (1955 Bugs Bunny short) : HARE

Bugs Bunny debuted in the 1940 animated short “A Wild Hare”. Since then, Bugs has appeared in more films than any other cartoon character.

54D Literary Jane : EYRE

“Jane Eyre” is a classic 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë, published under the pseudonym “Currer Bell”. It’s a coming-of-age tale in which the title character endures a harsh childhood and education before becoming a governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane falls in love with her brooding employer, Mr. Rochester, but there’s a rocky road to travel before the couple finally get to the altar.

56D The “R” of R.B.G. : RUTH

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) served on the US Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg was the second woman to join the Court, and was nominated by President Bill Clinton. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. During that time she did not miss one day on the bench. In 2009 Justice Ginsburg had surgery for pancreatic cancer, and was back to work 12 days later. She had left-lung lobectomy to remove cancerous nodules in 2018, which forced Justice Ginsburg to miss oral argument in January 2019, for the first time since joining the court 25 years earlier. She finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2020. Much of Ginsburg’s life is recounted in the excellent 2018 movie “On the Basis of Sex”.