0725-26 NY Times Crossword 25 Jul 26, Saturday

Bill’s time: 18m 16s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Fashionable spots? : POLKA DOTS

A polka-dot pattern is one featuring an array of filled circles, usually of the same size and color. There doesn’t seem to be any connection between the name of the pattern and the polka dance, other than both the dance and the pattern gaining popularity around the same time, in the mid-nineteenth century.

10A Meeting that’s been cut short? : SESH

Session (abbreviated to “sess.” formally, and “sesh” informally)

14A Device used in making snow cones : ICE CRUSHER

A sno-cone (also “snow cone”) is just a paper cone filled with crushed ice and topped with flavored water. Italian ice is similar, but different. Whereas the flavoring is added on top of the ice to make a sno-cone, Italian ice is made with water that is flavored before it is frozen.

18A Group with the hits “Honey, Honey” and “Money, Money, Money” : ABBA

“Money, Money, Money” is a 1976 hit song for Swedish pop group ABBA. The lyrics are basically a narration by a woman who works hard but struggles to make ends meet, and so deserves a well-off man as a partner. As the song says, “It’s a rich man’s world”.

20A Alternative to caps: Abbr. : ITAL

Italic type leans to the right, and is often used to provide emphasis in text. The style is known as “italic” because the stylized calligraphic form of writing originated in Italy, in Venice.

21A Emmy winner Ann of “The Handmaid’s Tale” : DOWD

Actress Ann Dowd is perhaps best known to television audiences for portraying Patricia “Patti” Levin in the supernatural drama series “The Leftovers”, and Aunt Lydia Clements in the dystopian series “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a remarkably well-received television adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. The story is set in a future United States after the Second American Civil War. The “Handmaids” are the few remaining fertile women in the world, who are ritually raped and forced to bear children by their masters.

27A Lab in one’s house, maybe : PET

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”.

30A Ingredient in Swedish knäckebröd : RYE

RyKrisp is a brand of rye crisp bread that was introduced in 1904 by Swedish immigrant Arvid Peterson. It is a Swedish style cracker that is known in Scandinavia as “knäckebröd” meaning “crisp bread”.

36A Rite-of-passage events for high schoolers : PROMS

A prom is a formal dance held upon graduation from high school (we call them “formals” over in Ireland). The term “prom” is short for “promenade”, the name given to a type of dance or ball.

41A Waft fragrant smoke around : CENSE

To cense is to perfume with incense. Such a lovely word …

42A Actress Taylor-Joy : ANYA

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy had quite the international upbringing. She was born in Miami, and raised in Buenos Aires and then London. She is perhaps best known for playing the title character in the 2020 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma”, and the lead role in the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”.

<

44A Prey for a mountain lion : ELK

Male elks are called bulls, and females are known as cows. Bull elks are known for their very loud screaming, which is called bugling. Cow elks are attracted to bulls that bugle more often and most loudly.

53A Co-founder of the A.C.L.U.’s Women’s Rights Project, familiarly : RBG

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) created the Women’s Rights Project in 1972. One of the founders of the project was future Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

61A The so-called “hurricane bird,” because of its reputation for seeking shelter from storms at the last possible moment : IBIS

The ibis is a wading bird that was revered in ancient Egypt. “Ibis” is an interesting word grammatically speaking. You can have one “ibis” or two “ibises”, and then again one has a flock of “ibis”. And if you want to go with the classical plural, instead of two “ibises” you would have two “ibides”!

62A Knockout alternative : ROUND ROBIN

The original use of the term “round-robin” was in signing documents. The idea was that multiple signatures were added to a controversial document in an arrangement that disguised the name of the “ring leader” of those endorsing the letter’s contents.

64A “Santa Claus in Camp” artist, 1863 : NAST

Thomas Nast was an American caricaturist and cartoonist. He was the creator of the Republican Party elephant and the image of the plump and jocular Santa Claus that we use today, and he helped popularize the iconic visual representation of Uncle Sam.

66A Like koalas, in Australia : GREY

Koalas are not bears, but are marsupials, which means they carry their young in a pouch. They are known for their diet of eucalyptus leaves, which are toxic to most other animals. To cope with this, koalas have a special digestive system that allows them to break down the toxins and extract the nutrients from the leaves. Koalas are one of the sleepiest animals in the world, sleeping up to 20 hours a day. This is because eucalyptus leaves provide very little energy.

Down

1D One of a nursery rhyme quintet : PIGGY

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.

2D Seat of Marion County, Fla. : OCALA

The city of Ocala, Florida was founded near a historic village with the same name. In the local Timucua language “Ocala” means “Big Hammock”. Back in the 1890s, Ocala was famous for its oranges, with over one third of that fruit shipped from Florida coming from the city. Also, thoroughbred horse farming in Florida started in Ocala, back in 1943. Some folks today call Ocala the “Horse Capital of the World”, but I bet that’s disputed by others …

3D Jim Croce’s ___ Brown, who is “meaner than a junkyard dog” : LEROY

“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” is a song written and first performed by Jim Croce. It was a number-one hit for him in 1973. The song was inspired by a real-life Leroy Brown, who was someone that Croce met while serving in the US Army.

Jim Croce’s most successful songs were “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle”. Like so many great singers it seems, Croce died in a plane crash. He was killed along with five others just after takeoff when the small commercial plane in which he was traveling hit a tree, possibly because the pilot had a heart attack. Croce died just a few days before the release of his album “I Got a Name”.

4D 1980s Chrysler innovation : K-CAR

Chrysler introduced K-cars in the early 1980s at a time when demand for large cars with V8 engines was plummeting. Post-oil crisis consumers were seeking low-cost, fuel-efficient vehicles, which brought Chrysler to the brink of bankruptcy. It was the economical 4-cylinder, front-wheel drive platform that singlehandedly delivered the company into profitability within a couple of years. K-cars were designed to carry 6 passengers, on two bench seats. Remember taking a corner a little too fast on those seats, in the days when no one wore seat belts?

5D It’s made of diamonds : ARGYLE

The argyle pattern is based on the Campbell tartan. The Campbell clan is based in the Argyll region (note the spelling) in the west of Scotland, giving the Argyle pattern its name.

7D Actor/playwright Davis who wrote “Purlie Victorious” : OSSIE

Ossie Davis was a prominent actor and civil rights activist. He married his wife, fellow actor Ruby Dee, in 1948. They remained together until his death in 2005, making their marriage one of the longest-lasting in Hollywood history. Davis was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement, and a close friend of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Davis delivered a powerful eulogy at the latter’s funeral in 1965.

9D Ward of “Sisters” : SELA

Sela Ward is an Emmy-winning actress in shows like “Sisters” and “House”. In 1995, she was considered for the role of a Bond girl in “GoldenEye” but was reportedly told by the casting director, “What we really want is Sela, but Sela ten years ago”. Ironically, Pierce Brosnan, the new Bond, was older than Ward at the time. It’s a very sad business, in a very sad world …

“Sisters” is a drama TV show that originally aired in the nineties. “Sisters” was groundbreaking television in that it was the first primetime show to focus on women and women’s issues. The four title characters are Alex, Teddy, Georgie and Frankie Reed, played by Swoosie Kurtz, Sela Ward, Patricia Kalember and Julianne Phillips.

10D A great deal : SCADS

The origin of the word “scads”, meaning “lots and lots”, is unclear. That said, “scads” was used to mean “dollars” back in the mid-1800s.

24D Shingles problem that a set of nails might address : ITCH

Chickenpox is a viral infection, and a classic disease of childhood most commonly caught by 4-10 year olds. There is a complication that can arise later in life as the virus sometimes reactivates to cause shingles.

33D Ambient sound said to be more soothing than its “white” counterpart : PINK NOISE

The background sound produced by an untuned radio can be referred to as white noise. It is also called “static”, because it is caused by the discharge of “static electricity”, with those discharges mainly taking place in the lower atmosphere.

37D Tally of those driven home, for short : RBIS

Runs batted in (RBIs)

39D Color of an ovarian cancer awareness ribbon : TEAL

The beautiful color teal takes its name from the duck called a teal, which has dark greenish-blue (teal) markings on its head and wings.

46D Kind of 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”.

50D Easily set off : TESTY

Somebody described as testy is touchy, irritably impatient. The term “testy” comes into English from Old French, ultimately deriving from “testu” meaning “stubborn, headstrong”, literally “heady”. So, our word “testy” comes from the same root as the French word “tête” meaning “head”.

54D Game day sight : BLIMP

There is an important difference between an airship like the Goodyear Blimp and an airship like a zeppelin. The latter is a rigid structure with an internal framework that helps maintain the shape of the airbag, whereas the former uses the pressure of the helium gas inside the airbag to give it shape.

55D Pool set? : GENES

The set of all genes in a particular population is known as the “gene pool”, a term coined in Russian by geneticist Aleksandr Sergeevich Serebrovskii in the 1920s. In general, the larger the gene pool, the more diverse and robust the population.

58D They might be thrown out if they run : HOSE

The word “hose” meaning “covering for the leg” has the same roots as the contemporary German word “Hose” meaning “trousers, pants”.

60D Philip with two National Book Awards : ROTH

Author Philip Roth’s two most famous works are probably his 1959 novella “Goodbye, Columbus” for which he won a National Book Award, and his extremely controversial 1969 novel “Portnoy’s Complaint”. The latter title was banned in some libraries in the US, and was listed as a “prohibited import” in Australia. The controversy surrounded Roth’s treatment of the sexuality of the main character, a young Jewish bachelor undergoing psychoanalysis for his “complaint”.