1222-22 NY Times Crossword 22 Dec 22, Thursday

Constructed by: David Steinberg
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Reveal Answer: Roundabout Route

Themed answers come in three parts. Each one of the three starts with CAR, but has a different ending depending on which exit you take from the black square (ROUNDABOUT) abutting that CAR. Complicated, I know …

  • 6D Indirect path taken 12 times in this puzzle : ROUNDABOUT ROUTE
  • 26A First exit: Milk containers • Second exit: Rebounded, in billiards • Third exit: Wheeled (away) : CARTONS – CAROMED – CARTED
  • 54A First exit: Salad bar bowlful • Second exit: French watchmaker • Third exit: Thanksgiving role : CARROTS – CARTIER – CARVER
  • 5D First exit: Floor covers • Second exit: Addition signs? • Third exit: Checking the IDs of : CARPETS – CARETS – CARDING
  • 66D First exit: Writer Lewis • Second exit: Santana of Santana • Third exit: Dead meat : CARROLL – CARLOS – CARRION

Bill’s time: 12m 42s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Whom Abraham nearly sacrificed : ISAAC

According to the Bible, Abraham’s son Isaac was born to Abraham’s wife Sarah when she was beyond her childbearing years and when Abraham was 100 years old. Isaac himself lived until he was 180 years old. When Isaac was just a youth, Abraham was tested by Yahweh (God) and told to build an altar on which he was to sacrifice his only son. At the last minute, an angel appeared and stopped Abraham, telling him to sacrifice a ram instead.

6 Softball stat : RBI

Run batted in (RBI)

The sport we know today as softball was created as an indoor version of baseball. The first game was played on Thanksgiving Day in Chicago. Back then, a “soft” ball was indeed used, but the name “softball” wasn’t adopted until 1926.

9 Concrete example? : SLAB

The terms “cement”, “mortar” and ”concrete” are related, and tend to get confused at times. Cement is a binder that hardens over time and binds other materials together. Cement mixed with a fine aggregate forms mortar, a workable paste used to bind building blocks together. Cement mixed with sand and gravel forms concrete, a pourable slurry that hardens into an extremely robust building material.

13 Sykes of “The Upshaws” : WANDA

Wanda Sykes is a very successful American comedian and comic actress. Interestingly, Sykes spent her first five years out of school working for the NSA. I saw her perform in Reno some years ago, and she is very, very funny.

14 Something to toss but not throw away : COIN

The two sides of a coin are known as the “obverse” and the “reverse”. The obverse is commonly referred to as “heads”, as it often depicts someone’s head. The reverse is commonly called “tails”, as it is the opposite of “heads”.

15 Org. in 2016’s “Hidden Figures” : NASA

“Hidden Figures” is an excellent 2016 film based on a book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. Both book and film tell the story of female African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA during the Mercury and Apollo programs in the 1960s.

19 Pedometer unit : STEP

A pedometer is an instrument worn by a runner or walker that measures the number of steps taken. The name of the device comes from “pes”, the Latin for “foot”.

21 Cheri once of “S.N.L.” : OTERI

Cheri Oteri was the SNL (“Saturday Night Live”) cast member who regularly appeared with Will Ferrell in the skit featuring a pair of Spartan cheerleaders.

26 First exit: Milk containers • Second exit: Rebounded, in billiards • Third exit: Wheeled (away) : CARTONS – CAROMED – CARTED

A carom is a ricochet, the bouncing of some projectile off a surface. “Carom” has come to describe the banking of a billiard ball, the bouncing of the ball off the side of the table.

27 Tuna that’s often seared : AHI

Yellowfin and bigeye tuna are usually marketed as “ahi”, the Hawaiian name. They are both big fish, with yellowfish tuna often weighing over 300 pounds, and bigeye tuna getting up to 400 pounds.

35 Dinosaur bone preserver : TAR

A tar pit is an unusual geological feature created by leakage of bitumen from below ground to the earth’s surface creating a pool of natural asphalt. One of the most famous of these occurrences is the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.

The La Brea Tar Pits are located right in the heart of the city of Los Angeles. At the site there is a constant flow of tar that seeps up to the surface from underground, a phenomenon that has been around for tens of thousands of years. What is significant is that much of the seeping tar is covered by water. Over many, many centuries animals came to the water to drink and became trapped in the tar as they entered the water to quench their thirst. The tar then preserved the bones of the dead animals. Today a museum is located right by the Tar Pits, recovering bones and displaying specimens of the animals found there. It’s well worth a visit if you are in town …

37 John ___ : DOE

Though the English court system does not use the term today, “John Doe” first appeared as the “name of a person unknown” in England in 1659, along with the similar “Richard Roe”. An unknown female is referred to as “Jane Doe ”, and the equivalent to Richard Roe is Jane Roe (as in Roe v. Wade, for example). Variants of “John Doe” used outside of the courts are “Joe Blow” and “John Q. Public”.

39 June gift recipient : DAD

Father’s Day was added as an official holiday in 1972, although bills to create the holiday had been with Congress since 1913. By rights, the holiday should be called “Fathers’ Day” (note the punctuation), but the bill that was introduced in 1913 used the “Father’s Day” spelling, and that’s the one that has stuck.

42 Blight victim : ELM

Dutch elm disease is a fungus devastating to all species of elm trees that is transmitted by the elm bark beetle. The disease is thought to have originated in Asia and is now rampant in Europe and North America. Even though there is a hybrid of elm known as the Dutch elm, the disease isn’t named after the tree. Rather, the disease is called “Dutch” as it was identified in 1921 by a phytopathologist (plant pathologist) in the Netherlands.

A “blight” is a disease caused by some infective organism that results in the rapid browning of the plant due to the death of tissues such as leaves, branches and flowers. One of the most famous of such diseases is the potato blight caused by the fungus-like microorganism Phytophthora infestans. It was potato blight that caused the Great Famine in Ireland, which led to the death of about a million people and the mass emigration of about a million more between 1845 and 1852.

45 Some history listings : URLS

An Internet address (like NYXCrossword.com and LAXCrossword.com) is more correctly called a uniform resource locator (URL).

48 Thousandth of a gig : MEG

In the world of computing, a bit is the basic unit of information. It has a value of 0 or 1. A “byte” is a small collection of “bits” (usually 8), the number of bits needed to uniquely identify a character of text. The prefix mega- stands for 10 to the power of 6, so a megabyte (meg) is 1,000,000 bytes. The prefix giga- means 10 to the power of 9, and so a gigabyte (gig) is 1,000,000,000 bytes. Well, those are the SI definitions of megabyte and gigabyte. The purists still use 2 to the power of 20 for a megabyte (i.e. 1,048,576), and 2 to the power of 30 for a gigabyte.

50 One going to court : LOVER

To court someone is to woo them, to offer homage. One might do something similar at a royal court, hence the use of the term.

52 The Powerpuff Girls, e.g. : TRIO

“The Powerpuff Girls” is a children’s animated television show that airs on the Cartoon Network.

53 Dude : BRO

Our term “dude” arose as slang in New York City in the 1880s, when it was used to describe a fastidious man. In the early 1900s, the term was extended to mean “city slickers”, easterners who vacationed in the West. The first use of the term “dude ranch” was recorded in 1921.

54 First exit: Salad bar bowlful • Second exit: French watchmaker • Third exit: Thanksgiving role : CARROTS – CARTIER – CARVER

Cartier is a manufacturer of jewelry and watches based in Paris that has had a long association with royalty and the very rich. According to King Edward VII, Cartier is “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers” (note the British-English spelling of “jeweller”!).

57 English king called “the Great” : ALFRED

Alfred the Great was the King of Wessex in the latter part of the ninth century, and the dominant ruler in the whole of England. Wessex was the familiar name of the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the southwest of Britain.

59 Maker of the 2600 game console : ATARI

The kids today probably don’t realize that we had a video game console back in the seventies, and it wasn’t a Nintendo nor was it a PlayStation. The Atari 2600 game system introduced the idea of separating out computing hardware (the console) from the game code (a cartridge). The same concept persists to this day, although cartridges have been displaced by discs and downloads.

61 Hard-boiled film genre : NOIR

The expression “film noir” has French origins, but only in that it was coined by a French critic in describing a style of Hollywood film. The term, meaning “black film” in French, was first used by Nino Frank in 1946. Film noir often applies to a movie with a melodramatic plot and a private eye or detective at its center. Good examples would be “The Big Sleep” and “D.O.A”.

66 Funny O’Donnell : ROSIE

We don’t get to see Rosie O’Donnell on the screen very much these days. She had a very successful chat show that ran from 1996 to 2002. My favorite performance of hers on the big screen is in a supporting role to Meg Ryan in the 1993 movie “Sleepless in Seattle”.

67 Pretzel feature : KNOT

Pretzels originated in Europe and are especially popular in Southern Germany where a pretzel is known as “Brezel”. Pretzels were introduced into the US in the 1800s by immigrants from Germany and Switzerland who came to be known over here as the Pennsylvania Dutch.

69 Big sportswear brand : ASICS

ASICS is a Japanese company based in Kobe that produces athletic gear, including running shoes. The company name comes from the first letters of the Latin phrase “anima sana in corpore sano”, which translates to “a healthy soul in a healthy body”.

70 Knights, e.g. : SIRS

Kneel, and a monarch might “dub thee a knight” if you’re lucky. “Dub” is a specific term derived from Old English that was used to mean “make a knight”. As the knight was also given a knightly name at the same time, “dub” came to mean “give someone a name”.

71 French beverage : THE

In French, a “tasse” (cup) might contain perhaps “thé” (tea) or “café” (coffee).

Down

2 Top of the holiday season? : SANTA HAT

The name “Santa Claus” is American English, and came into the language as a phonetic variant of “Sinterklaas”, the Dutch for “Saint Nicholas”.

5 First exit: Floor covers • Second exit: Addition signs? • Third exit: Checking the IDs of : CARPETS – CARETS – CARDING

Identity document (ID)

6 Indirect path taken 12 times in this puzzle : ROUNDABOUT ROUTE

There are more traffic circles in France than in any other country in the world. However, the UK has more traffic circles per mile of road than any other nation. The term “traffic circle” is generally used in the US, while “roundabout” is commonly used in Britain and Ireland.

7 ___-watch : BINGE

I’m a big fan of binge-watching, the practice of watching perhaps two or three (even four!) episodes of a show in a row. My wife and I will often deliberately avoid watching a recommended show live, and instead wait until the whole series has been released online. I’m not a big fan of “tune in next week …”

10 Cutting beams : LASERS

The term “laser” is an acronym standing for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”. It has been pointed out that a more precise name for laser technology is “light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation”, but the resulting acronym isn’t quite so appealing, namely “loser”.

14 Forensic inits. : CSI

Something described as forensic is connected with a court of law, or with public discussion or debate. The term comes from the Latin “forensis” meaning “of a forum, of a place of assembly”. We mainly use the word today to mean “pertaining to legal trials” as in “forensic medicine” and “forensic science”.

18 Molson’s partner in beer : COORS

Adolph Coors founded the Coors brewing company in 1873, in Golden, Colorado. Coors was originally from the Rhine Province in Prussia, and worked in various brewers around what is today Germany before immigrating to the US in 1868. Despite all of his success as a brewer here in America, Coors ended up taking his own life in 1929, by jumping to his death out of a hotel window.

The Molson Brewery in Montreal is the oldest brewery in North America, having been established in 1786. In fact, Molson (now owned by Coors) is the second oldest company in Canada, after the Hudson’s Bay Company.

23 “We come in peace” speakers, in brief : ETS

Extraterrestrial (ET)

25 Follower of Fannie, Ginnie or Sallie : … MAE

The Federal National Mortgage Association is commonly called “Fannie Mae”, a play on the initialism “FNMA”. Fannie Mae was founded during the Great Depression as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.

“Ginnie Mae” is the familiar nickname for the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), a government-owned corporation created in 1968 with the objective of promoting home ownership. The “Ginnie Mae” nickname is derived from the “GNMA” abbreviation.

“Sallie Mae” is a nickname for SLM Corporation that was created in 1972 by the US government as the Student Loan Marketing Association. By 2004, the government had severed all its ties with Sallie Mae. Today, SLM is basically a profit-focused lender.

40 Those who consume it become immortal, according to myth : AMBROSIA

In Greek mythology, according to Homer anyway, the drink of the gods was nectar, and their food was ambrosia.

44 Noisy scan, for short : MRI

MRI scans can be daunting for many people as they usually involve the patient lying inside a tube with the imaging magnet surrounding the body. Additionally, the scan can take up to 40 minutes in some cases. There are some open MRI scanners available that help prevent a feeling of claustrophobia. However, the images produced by open scanners are of lower quality as they operate at lower magnetic fields.

47 Note that sounds like a music genre : SOL

The sol-fa syllables are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la & ti.

Soul music originated in the United States and was born out of gospel music and rhythm & blues. I read one quotation that describes soul as “music that arose out of the black experience in America”.

50 Course in which you might learn “cave canem” : LATIN I

“Cave canem” is Latin for “beware of the dog”.

56 Methuselah’s old man : ENOCH

There are two Enoch’s mentioned in the Bible. One was Enoch, son of Cain and grandson of Adam. The second was Enoch, great-grandfather of Noah and father of Methuselah.

Methuselah was the son of Enoch and the grandfather of Noah, and the man in the Bible who is reported to have lived the longest. Methuselah passed away seven days before the onset of the Great Flood, and tradition holds that he was 969 years old when he died.

58 First class, informally? : FROSH

“Frosh” is a slang term for a college freshperson (formerly “freshman”). We call such a person a “fresher” back in Ireland …

66 First exit: Writer Lewis • Second exit: Santana of Santana • Third exit: Dead meat : CARROLL – CARLOS – CARRION

“Lewis Carroll” was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born in 1832 in the village of Daresbury near Warrington in the county of Cheshire, in the northwest of England. And, let’s not forget one of Carroll’s most beloved characters, the Cheshire Cat.

Carlos Santana is a Mexican-American rock guitar player, famous for heading the band called Santana who melded rock music with Latin and African themes.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Whom Abraham nearly sacrificed : ISAAC
6 Softball stat : RBI
9 Concrete example? : SLAB
13 Sykes of “The Upshaws” : WANDA
14 Something to toss but not throw away : COIN
15 Org. in 2016’s “Hidden Figures” : NASA
16 What smoke coming out of the ears may signal in a cartoon : ANGER
17 Investments that can’t be recovered : SUNK COSTS
19 Pedometer unit : STEP
20 [Correct!] : [DING!]
21 Cheri once of “S.N.L.” : OTERI
22 Back-exposing top : HALTER
24 Show, briefly : DEMO
26 First exit: Milk containers • Second exit: Rebounded, in billiards • Third exit: Wheeled (away) : CARTONS – CAROMED – CARTED
27 Tuna that’s often seared : AHI
28 “Later!” : TA-TA!
30 Creative, in a way : ARTSY
32 Dapper ___, iconic hip-hop couturier : DAN
33 Stick with a soft tip : SWAB
34 -speak : -ESE
35 Dinosaur bone preserver : TAR
37 John ___ : DOE
39 June gift recipient : DAD
42 Blight victim : ELM
45 Some history listings : URLS
48 Thousandth of a gig : MEG
50 One going to court : LOVER
52 The Powerpuff Girls, e.g. : TRIO
53 Dude : BRO
54 First exit: Salad bar bowlful • Second exit: French watchmaker • Third exit: Thanksgiving role : CARROTS – CARTIER – CARVER
55 Ticket specification : TIER
57 English king called “the Great” : ALFRED
59 Maker of the 2600 game console : ATARI
61 Hard-boiled film genre : NOIR
63 Bun : ROLL
64 Skip a round : SIT ONE OUT
66 Funny O’Donnell : ROSIE
67 Pretzel feature : KNOT
68 Has a role : ACTS
69 Big sportswear brand : ASICS
70 Knights, e.g. : SIRS
71 French beverage : THE
72 Chinwags : CHATS

Down

1 Cry after getting fooled : I WAS HAD!
2 Top of the holiday season? : SANTA HAT
3 Name derived from the Greek for “messenger” : ANGELINA
4 Very capable : ADEPT
5 First exit: Floor covers • Second exit: Addition signs? • Third exit: Checking the IDs of : CARPETS – CARETS – CARDING
6 Indirect path taken 12 times in this puzzle : ROUNDABOUT ROUTE
7 ___-watch : BINGE
8 Sign : INK
9 Obnoxious sort : SNOT
10 Cutting beams : LASERS
11 One way to be led : ASTRAY
12 Universal ___ income : BASIC
14 Forensic inits. : CSI
18 Molson’s partner in beer : COORS
20 No-win situation : DRAW
23 “We come in peace” speakers, in brief : ETS
25 Follower of Fannie, Ginnie or Sallie : … MAE
29 Little bit : TAD
31 California congressman ___ Lieu : TED
36 Crank (up) : REV
38 Go wrong : ERR
40 Those who consume it become immortal, according to myth : AMBROSIA
41 Broken-down : DERELICT
43 Admit : LET IN
44 Noisy scan, for short : MRI
46 One avoiding eye contact, maybe : LIAR
47 Note that sounds like a music genre : SOL
49 Unholy : GODLESS
50 Course in which you might learn “cave canem” : LATIN I
51 Delivery specialist? : ORATOR
54 Winery supply : CASKS
56 Methuselah’s old man : ENOCH
58 First class, informally? : FROSH
60 Goes bad : ROTS
62 “___ time” : IT’S
65 “Let’s ___!” : EAT
66 First exit: Writer Lewis • Second exit: Santana of Santana • Third exit: Dead meat : CARROLL – CARLOS – CARRION