0912-26 NY Times Crossword 12 Sep 26, Saturday

Bill’s time: 14m 24s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

20A “Thick ___ Brick” (1972 Jethro Tull album) : AS A

Jethro Tull is a rock band from the UK, formed in 1967 and active today. The band used the name of an 18th-century, English agriculturist.

21A Earth’s pull, informally : ONE 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 …

23A Thumbs-down votes in the Duma : NYETS

A duma is a representative assembly in Russia. The related Russian word “dumat” means “to think, consider”.

28A Justice who’s the subject of the 2026 biography “Revenge for the Sixties” : ALITO

Associate Justice Samuel Alito was nominated to the US Supreme Court by President George W. Bush. Alito is the second Italian-American to serve on the Supreme Court (Antonin Scalia was the first). Alito studied law at Yale and while in his final year he left the country for the first time in his life, heading to Italy to work on his thesis about the Italian legal system.

34A First full word sung in “The Alphabet Song” : AND

“The Alphabet Song” was copyrighted in 1835 in the US. The tune that goes with the words is the French folk song “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman”, used by Mozart for a set of piano variations. The same tune is used for the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

40A Common ___ : ERA

The designations Anno Domini (AD, “Year of Our Lord”) and Before Christ (BC) are found in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The dividing point between AD and BC is the year of the birth of Jesus, with AD 1 following 1 BC without a year “0” in between. The AD/BC scheme dates back to AD 525, and gained wide acceptance soon after AD 800. Nowadays a modified version has become popular, with CE (Common/Christian Era) used to replace AD, and BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) used to replace BC.

41A Rowing machines, in gym lingo : ERGS

An indoor rowing machine is often referred to as an ergometer (or simply “erg”). However, the term “ergometer” really applies to a device that measures the amount of work performed.

42A “Schitt’s Creek” matriarch : MOIRA

“Schitt’s Creek” is a very entertaining Canadian sitcom created by two of the four leading actors: Dan Levy and his father Eugene Levy. The other two leads are played by Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy. It is about a very wealthy family who lose their money and relocate to a small town called Schitt’s Creek, which they had once purchased as a joke. Recommended …

45A Rout, in computer game lingo : PWN

“To pwn” is online gamer-speak for “to own, defeat easily”. It’s likely that “pwn” evolved from “own” as it is a common typo caused by the close proximity of the o- and p-keys on a computer keyboard. “Pwn” is pronounced like “pone”.

48A Toothbrush handle? : ORAL-B

The Oral-B toothbrush was introduced to the world in 1950, designed by a California periodontist. The first “model” was the Oral-B 60, a name given to reflect the 60 tufts in the brush. In 1969, the Oral-B was the first toothbrush to get to the moon as it was the toothbrush of choice for the crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

56A Punnily named production company behind TV’s “Insecure” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show” : HOORAE

Issa Rae rose to prominence with her highly popular web series “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl”, which premiered in 2011. This led to her co-creating and starring in the acclaimed HBO comedy series “Insecure”, which garnered her multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. She’s also expanded into film roles and has her own media company: Hoorae.

58A Common sleep aid : WHITE 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.

62A Labor, e.g.: Abbr. : DEPT

The US Department of Labor (DOL) was founded as the Bureau of Labor in 1889 under the Department of the Interior. The Bureau’s status was elevated to Cabinet level by President William Howard Taft in 1913, with a bill he signed on his last day in office. The DOL has been headquartered in the Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C. since 1975. The building was named for Frances Perkins who served as Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945 and who was the first female cabinet secretary in US history.

Down

2D ___ acid : AMINO

There are 20 different types of amino acids that make up proteins. However, only 11 of them can be synthesized by the human body, while the remaining nine essential amino acids must be obtained from food sources.

3D Kind of photography lens for a close-up : MACRO

A macro lens is one that is used for shooting very small subjects, so that the resulting image is usually larger than life size.

6D Playwright Moss ___ : HART

Moss Hart was a playwright and theater director from New York City. Hart wrote a memoir called “Act One” that told of his childhood and his struggle to achieve success on Broadway. The book was adapted into a 1963 film and a stage play that premiered in 2014.

7D Gymnast Raisman : ALY

Aly Raisman is a retired gymnast. She captained the US gold-winning teams in the Olympics in 2012 (“The Fierce Five”) and in 2016 (“The Final Five”).

10D Mid-March V.I.P., informally : ST PAT

There is a fair amount known about Saint Patrick, some of which comes from two letters written in his own hand. St. Patrick lived in the fifth century, but was not born in Ireland. He was first brought to Ireland at about 16 years of age from his native Britain, by Irish raiders who made him a slave for six years. Patrick managed to escape and returned to his homeland where he studied and entered the Church. He went back to Ireland as a bishop and a missionary and there lived out the rest of his life. There seems to be good evidence that he died on March 17th (now celebrated annually as Saint Patrick’s Day), although the year is less clear. The stories about shamrock and snakes, I am afraid they are the stuff of legend.

11D “Surf” food in Japan, or “turf” animal in Spain : TORO

In a sushi restaurant, the dish called “toro” is the fatty tissue from the belly of the bluefin tuna.

In Spanish, the “toro” (bull) might charge at “el capote rojo” (the red cape).

27D Actors unsuited for subtle roles : HAMS

The word “ham”, describing a performer who overacts, is a shortened form of “hamfatter” and dates back to the late 1800s. “Hamfatter” comes from a song in old minstrel shows called “The Ham-Fat Man”. It seems that a poorly performing actor was deemed to have the “acting” qualities of a minstrel made up in blackface.

35D Simoleon : CLAM

“Clam” is a slang term for “dollar”. It has been suggested that “clam” is a throwback to the supposed use of clams as units of currency in ancient cultures.

Lettuce, cabbage, kale, dough, bread, scratch, cheddar, simoleons, clams and moola(h) are all slang terms for money.

37D Labor pain? : SCAB

We first started calling strikebreakers scabs in the early 1800s, and before that a scab was a person who refused to join a trade union (back as early as 1777). The word “scab” probably comes from the use of “scab” as a symptom of a skin disease, and so is a term that is meant to insult.

38D Journalist Larson who wrote “The Splendid and the Vile” : ERIK

Erik Larson is a journalist, most notably contributing features to “The Wall Street Journal” and “TIME” magazine. Larson is also a very successful author of nonfiction books, such as “The Devil in the White City” (about the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893) and “Dead Wake” (about the sinking of the Lusitania).

43D Godzilla adversary : MOTHRA

Mothra is a giant moth-like monster that made its big-screen debut in the 1961 film “Mothra”. Mothra turns up quite often in “Godzilla” movies.

44D Longhorn’s rival : SOONER

In college football, the rivalry between the Oklahoma Sooners (University of Oklahoma) and the Texas Longhorns (University of Texas) is sometimes referred to as the Red River Shootout. The Red River forms part of the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma, and has been the subject of conflict between the two states in the past. And so, the moniker “Red River Shootout” is used for the rivalry between the two schools.

47D Acidic : LOW PH

As we all recall from chemistry class, a pH of 7 is considered neutral. Anything less than 7 is an acid, and anything above 7 is a base.