0802-24 NY Times Crossword 2 Aug 24, Friday - NYXCrossword.com (2024)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Carrier letters : USS

The abbreviation “USS” stands for “United States Ship”. The practice of naming US Navy vessels in a standard format didn’t start until 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt issued an executive order that addressed the issue.

The first launching of an aircraft from a ship took place way back in 1910. Aviation pioneer Eugene Burton Ely flew a Curtiss Pusher airplane from a temporary platform erected on the bow of the USS Birmingham, which was anchored off Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia. Ely also recorded the first landing on a ship two months later, touching down on a platform on the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay.

18 Stanley Tucci’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada” : NIGEL

“The Devil Wears Prada” is a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger that is set in the fashion industry. One of the main characters in the story is Miranda Priestly, the tyrannical editor-in-chief of the fictional fashion magazine “Runway”. It has been suggested that the Priestly character was inspired by Anna Wintour, the real life editor-in-chief of “Vogue”. Weisberger’s book was adapted into a very successful film with the same title that was released in 2006, with Meryl Streep playing Priestly.

Stanley Tucci is a UK-based American actor. Of his many fine performances, my favorite is in 2009’s “Julie & Julia”, a film in which he plays the husband of celebrity chef Julia Child. Tucci is quite the cook himself in real life and released “The Tucci Cookbook” in 2012. He was also a co-owner of the Finch Tavern restaurant in Croton Falls, New York.

23 Flattest state in the U.S.: Abbr. : FLA

What we know as the US state of Florida, was named by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, who led the first Europeans to the area in 1513. The actual name he used was “La Florida”, Spanish for “the Flowery (Land)”.

31 Forty winks : CATNAP

Back in the early 1800s, folks took “nine winks” when getting a few minutes of sleep during the day. Dr. William Kitchiner extended this concept in his 1821 self-help book “The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life”. He suggested “A Forty Winks Nap”, which we seem to have been taking ever since. Mind you, I’m up to about eighty winks most days …

32 Acted like a maverick : WENT ROGUE

The concept of being one’s own person, going it alone, is popularly known as being a “maverick”. In the days of open range ranching, a maverick was a steer that didn’t carry a brand. An unbranded animal was usually the result of a branded animal giving birth on the open range, with the young growing up without having been captured and claimed by an owner. The use of the name “maverick” comes from Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, who refused to brand his cattle. He stated that he did not want to inflict pain on his cattle, and so laid claim to any cattle on the range that weren’t branded. His stubborn refusal to cooperate with the neighboring ranchers gave rise to our modern description of a single-minded individual as a “maverick”.

35 Server’s question after a drink order : IS PEPSI OK?

“Cola Wars” is a phrase used to describe the competing marketing campaigns of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. co*ke is winning …

37 “Six days ___ thou labor …”: Exodus : SHALT

The Book of Exodus is the second book in the Bible, and deals with Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt. The name “Exodus” comes from the Greek “exodos” meaning “departure”.

47 John Steinbeck’s hometown : SALINAS

John Steinbeck was born not far from here, in Salinas, California in 1902. His most famous novels are probably “The Grapes of Wrath” from 1939, “East of Eden” from 1952 and the novella “Of Mice and Men” from 1937. For his work, Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

53 Constellation named for an instrument : LYRA

Lyra (Latin for “lyre, harp, lute”) is a constellation that includes the star Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. The constellation Lyra is surrounded by the neighboring constellations of Draco, Hercules, Vulpecula and Cygnus.

61 Nathan ___, physicist who collaborated with Einstein on a theory of wormholes : ROSEN

A wormhole is a theoretical shortcut that connects two points in the space-time continuum. Got that …?

Down

5 10-digit no. : TEL

Area codes were introduced in the 1940s. Back then, the “clicks” one heard when dialing a number led to mechanical wear on various pieces of equipment. In order to minimize overall mechanical wear, areas with high call volumes were given the most efficient area codes (lowest number of clicks). That led to New York getting the area code 212, Los Angeles 213 and Chicago 313.

6 Adornment for a kimono : OBI

The lovely Japanese kimono is a garment worn by men, women and children. The word “kimono” translates simply as “thing to wear”, with “ki” meaning “wear” and “mono” meaning “thing”.

8 Decides to leave : STETS

“Stet” is a Latin word meaning “let it stand”. In editorial work, the typesetter is instructed to disregard any change previously marked by writing the word “stet” and then underscoring that change with a line of dots or dashes.

13 Card letters : STL

The St. Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball team plays at Busch Stadium. Busch Stadium is the third stadium in the history of St. Louis to have the Busch name. The first two were named for Gussie Busch, the brewing magnate and former Cardinals team owner. The current stadium is named for the brewery though, and not Gussie per se.

21 Bracketed qualification : SIC

[Sic] indicates that a quotation is written as originally found, perhaps including a typo. “Sic” is Latin for “thus, like this”. The term is more completely written as “sic erat scriptum”, which translates as “thus was it written”.

29 Classic poem whose subject is “a black ocean, leaping and wide” : … STILL I RISE

“And Still I Rise” is a 1978 volume of poetry by Maya Angelou. The collection’s title poem is “Still I Rise”, which ends with:

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

33 First name in cosmetics : ESTEE

Estée Lauder was a very successful businesswoman, and someone with a great reputation as a salesperson. Lauder introduced her own line of fragrances in 1953, a bath oil called “Youth Dew”. “Youth Dew” was marketed as a perfume, but it was added to bathwater. All of a sudden women were pouring whole bottles of Ms. Lauder’s “perfume” into their baths while using only a drop or two of French perfumes behind their ears. That’s quite a difference in sales “volume” …

36 Rae of “American Fiction” : ISSA

Issa Rae is a Stanford University graduate who created a YouTube web series called “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl”. Rae also plays the title role in the series, a young lady named “J”. “Awkward Black Girl” was adapted into an HBO comedy-drama called “Insecure”, in which Issa Rae stars.

“American Fiction” is a 2023 comedy-drama movie based on a 2023 novel by Percival Everett titled “Erasure”. Jeffrey Wright plays a black writer whose publishers reject his latest story as not being “black enough”. The writer reacts to his lack of success by submitting a satirical novel that panders to black stereotypes. To his surprise, and dismay, the book is a great success.

37 Lead-in to “ops” : SYS-

System operator (sysop)

38 Dismissal, informally : HEAVE-HO

“Heave-ho” is a nautical term that was used as a chant when sailors were hoisting a sail, for example. The term has come to mean “dismissal”, as in “give him the old heave-ho”.

52 Flag : TIRE

Our verb “to flag” meaning “to tire” was originally used in the sense of something flapping about lazily in the wind. From this it came to mean “to go limp, droop”, and then “to tire”.

53 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”.

54 Page layout option: Abbr. : LTR

Our paper sizes here in North America don’t conform with the standards in the rest of the world. ISO standard sizes used elsewhere were chosen so that the ratio of width to length is usually one to the square root of two. This mathematical relationship means that when you cut a piece of paper in two each half preserves the aspect ratio of the original, which can be useful in making reduced or enlarged copies of documents. Our standard size of “letter” (ltr., 8.5 x 11 inches) was determined in 1980 by the Reagan administration to be the official paper size for the US government. Prior to this, the “legal” size (8.5 x 14 inches) had been the standard, since 1921.

58 Letters on a first responder vehicle : EMS

Emergency medical services (EMS)