1021-26 NY Times Crossword 21 Oct 26, Wednesday

Bill’s time: 8m 46s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

7A Cumming who won a Tony for “Cabaret” : ALAN

Alan Cumming is a very versatile Scottish actor. Cumming has played some pretty “commercial” roles, like the bad guy Boris Grishenko in “GoldenEye” and Fegan Floop in the “Spy Kids” movies. He also played the unwanted suitor in the fabulous film “Circle of Friends” and won a Tony for playing the emcee in the 1998 Broadway revival of “Cabaret”.

The musical “Cabaret” is based on “I Am a Camera”, a 1951 play written by John Van Druten. In turn, the play was adapted from a novel “Goodbye to Berlin” written by Christopher Isherwood. The action in the musical takes place in the 1930s, in a seedy Berlin cabaret called the Kit Kat Klub. “Cabaret” is a great stage musical, although the 1972 film of the musical isn’t one of my favorites.

14A Not well known : ARCANE

Something that is arcane is understood by only a few, is something that might be described as mysterious.

16A N.H.L.’s Mammoth, on scoreboards : UTA

When the NHL welcomed a relocating team based in Salt Lake City for the 2024-2025 season, the franchise had no name, and used “Utah” as a placeholder. They played the first season as the “Utah Hockey Club”, and players wore “Utah” on their uniforms. A year later, the team became the Utah Mammoth.

19A Alt tab? : LSD

The drug LSD is often sold impregnated into blotting paper. The paper blotter is usually divided into squares with ¼-inch sides, with each square referred to as a “tab”.

31A ___ faire (festival with jousting) : REN

A Renaissance faire (Ren faire) is an outdoor public event in which many participants recreate historical settings by dressing in costume. Usually held in North America, many such fairs are set during the English Renaissance, and more particularly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The definition of “Renaissance” is often stretched quite a bit, with fairs also set during the reign of Henry VIII, and maybe even during medieval times.

47A Chemical suffix that indicates a double bond : -ENE

An alkene is an organic compound made up of carbon and hydrogen atoms. It differs from an alkane in that it has at least one C=C double bond. The simplest alkene is the gas ethylene, a major raw material used in the manufacture of plastics (like polyethylene).

48A “A Nightmare on ___ Street” : ELM

“A Nightmare on Elm Street” is a Wes Craven slasher-horror film that was released in 1984. As I don’t do “slasher” or “horror”, I was surprised to learn that Johnny Depp was in the movie, making his feature film debut.

54A Sneaker brand : AVIA

The Avia brand name for athletic shoes was chosen as “avis” is the Latin word for “bird”, and suggests the concept of aviation. Avia was founded in Oregon in 1979.

55A Province with Niagara Falls: Abbr. : ONT

The mighty Niagara River flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, and forms part of the border between the US and Canada. The river is only about 35 miles long, so some describe it as a “strait”. It has a drop in elevation of 325 feet along its length, with 165 feet of that drop taking place at Niagara Falls.

56A History: A+ : PAST PERFECT

Although we often say “perfect tense” in English, we are usually referring to the “present perfect tense”. The present perfect takes its place alongside the past perfect and future perfect. Verbs in the perfect form use the auxiliary verb “to have” alongside a past participle. For example:

• I had solved the puzzle (past perfect)
• I have solved the puzzle (present perfect)
• I will have solved the puzzle (future perfect)

61A Stephen King’s telekinetic teen of horror : CARRIE

1974’s “Carrie” was Stephen King’s first published novel. The title character is humiliated in a cruel prank during her high school prom in which she ends up covered in the blood of an animal. This trauma leads to a fit of rage, with Carrie slaughtering her classmates and the rest of her hometown’s inhabitants. At least, that’s what I read. I don’t do horror …

63A Short Instagram posting : REEL

Reels is a facility introduced by Instagram in 2020. Essentially, it is a feature that competes with TikTok.

Down

1D Wrecked : KAPUT

“Kaput” is a familiar term meaning “incapacitated, destroyed”, and comes to us from French (via German). The original word “capot” means “not having won a single trick” in the French card game Piquet.

3D Edvard Munch painting, with “The” : … SCREAM

Edvard Munch’s iconic painting “The Scream” actually has multiple versions. There are two painted versions, two pastel versions, and a lithograph stone, with the most famous being the 1893 tempera on cardboard, which can be viewed at the National Museum of Norway, in Oslo.

4D Fifth Avenue retailer : SAKS

Saks Fifth Avenue is a high-end specialty store that competes with the likes of Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus. The original Saks & Company business was founded by Andrew Saks in 1867. The first Saks Fifth Avenue store was opened on Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1924. There are now Saks Fifth Avenue stores in many major cities in the US, as well as in several locations worldwide.

6D Bird that gives pebbles as a courtship gesture : PENGUIN

Penguins are flightless, aquatic birds that spend half their lives on land, and half in the sea. All species of penguins, bar one, live in the southern hemisphere. The one species found north of the equator is the Galápagos penguin that is endemic to the Galápagos Islands located west of Ecuador. Adult male penguins are called cocks, females are hens, and the young are chicks. A group of penguins in the water is a raft, and on land is a waddle. Apt, and cute …

7D Bravo preceder : ALFA

The NATO phonetic alphabet is also called the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) phonetic alphabet. Alfa, Bravo, Charlie … X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.

9D Actress Dowd of “The Handmaid’s Tale” : ANN

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”.

23D Kyiv’s country : UKRAINE

Kyiv is located on the Dnieper River, and is the capital of Ukraine. We still seem to use the spelling “Kiev” sometimes, but the Ukrainian government decided in 1995 to refer to the city as “Kyiv” when using Roman/Latin script.

27D Sch. that’s home to Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village : UVA

The University of Virginia (UVA) was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who then sat on the original Board of Visitors alongside former US Presidents James Madison and James Monroe. In fact, the original UVA campus was built on land near Charlottesville that was once a farm belonging to President Monroe.

29D Birds with a Baltimore species : ORIOLES

The Baltimore oriole is a small bird, the male of which has coloring of black and orange. This coloring resembles the colors in the coat-of-arms of Lord Baltimore, the first Governor of the Province of Maryland, and so the bird was given the name “Baltimore” oriole. It is the state bird of Maryland, and lends its name to the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

30D Physicist Ohm : GEORG

German physicist Georg Ohm gave his name to the standard unit of electrical resistance. He first published his mathematical equation relating current, voltage, and resistance (V=IR, Ohm’s Law) in 1827. Ohm’s theories were so widely dismissed by the scientific community that he was even forced to resign from his college teaching position due to the hostile reception.

34D White tuna : ALBACORE

Skipjack tuna would be considered a medium-sized tuna, growing to about three feet long. Albacore tuna is a little larger.

36D Airline headquartered in Dubai : EMIRATES

Emirates is the largest airline in the Middle East, and operates out of Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates. Emirates has exclusive use of Dubai Airport’s Terminal 3, which was opened in 2008 and is the second largest building in the world by floor space (after the New Century Global Center in Chengdu, China).