1008-24 NY Times Crossword 8 Oct 24, Tuesday - NYXCrossword.com (2024)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11 ___ culpa : MEA

Many Roman Catholics are very familiar with the Latin phrase “mea culpa” meaning “my fault”, as it is used in the Latin Mass. The additional term “mea maxima culpa” translates as “my most grievous fault”.

14 Pertaining to bees : APIAN

Something described as apian is related to bees. “Apis” is Latin for “bee”.

15 Small bouquets : POSIES

“Poesy” was the name given to a line of verse engraved on the inner surface of a ring. The related word “posy”, for a bouquet of flowers, arose with the notion that giving a posy might be a message of love, just as a poesy inside a ring could have the same meaning.

“Bouquet” comes from the French word for “bunch” in the sense of “bunch of flowers”. In French, the term is derived from an older word describing a little wood or small grove of trees. We started using “bouquet” to mean “perfume from a wine” in the early 1800s.

16 “Be on the lookout” message, for short : APB

An All Points Bulletin (APB) is a broadcast from one US law enforcement agency to another.

17 “Beware of this sausage!”? : FEAR THE WURST (from “fear the worst”)

“Wurst” is simply a German word meaning “sausage”.

20 Genderqueer identity, informally : ENBY

The non-binary (NB, enbie, enby) spectrum of gender identities covers those that do not qualify as exclusively masculine or feminine.

21 Balaam couldn’t move his : ASS

The ass or donkey is mentioned several times in the Bible. One of the most-quoted biblical stories involving an ass is the story of Balaam. Balaam was a diviner who appears in the Book of Numbers in. In one account, Balaam is held to task by an angel for particularly cruel treatment of an ass.

24 French seasoning : SEL

In French, one might put “sel” (salt) on “pommes frites” (French fries).

28 Small drum : TABOR

A tabor is a portable snare drum that is played with one hand. The tabor is usually suspended by a strap from one arm, with the other hand free to beat the drum. It is often played as an accompaniment for a fife or other small flutes. The word “tabor” comes from “tabwrdd”, the Welsh word for “drum”.

31 Like unshorn wool? : ON THE LAMB (from “on the lam”)

To be on the lam is to be in flight, to have escaped from prison. “On the lam” is American slang that originated at the end of the 19th century. The word “lam” also means “beat” or “thrash”, as in “lambaste”. So “on the lam” might derive from the phrase “to beat it, scram”.

43 A.A. Milne youngster : ROO

Like most of the characters in A. A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh”, the kangaroo named “Roo” was inspired by a stuffed toy belonging to Milne’s son Christopher Robin.

45 Charlotte’s first draft for “Some Pig”? : WHAT A BOAR (from “what a bore”)

“Charlotte’s Web” is a children’s novel by author E. B. White. Charlotte is a barn spider, who manages to save the life of a pig named Wilbur. Wilbur is a pet pig, owned by the farmer’s daughter, Fern Arable. The story also includes a gluttonous rat named Templeton who provides some light and comical moments.

48 Book in a cartographer’s collection : ATLAS

The famous Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published his first collection of maps in 1578. Mercator’s collection contained a frontispiece with an image of Atlas the Titan from Greek mythology holding up the world on his shoulders. That image gave us our term “atlas” that is used for a book of maps.

52 Name of Athena’s shield : AEGIS

According to Homer’s “Iliad”, the aegis is either an animal skin or a shield that was carried by Athena and Zeus. The aegis is also described as bearing the head of Gorgon, a female creature with hair made of venomous snakes. The aegis provided some level of protection to the bearer, a concept that has been extended to our contemporary usage of “aegis”. Someone under the aegis of someone else is protected or sponsored by that person.

53 Two up quarks and a down quark : PROTON

A proton is a subatomic particle, with at least one found in the nucleus of every atom. A proton is not a “fundamental particle”, as it itself is made up of three quarks; two up quarks and one down quark.

Quarks are elementary atomic particles that combine to make composite particles called “hadrons”. I’m really only familiar with the really stable hadrons i.e. protons and neutrons. There are six types of quarks (referred to as “flavors”). These flavors are up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. The term “quark” was borrowed from James Joyce’s book “Finnegans Wake”, by physicist Murray Gell-Mann. However, the word coined by Joyce is pronounced “kwark”, and the particle’s name is pronounced “kwork”.

60 Giant squids have ones the size of dinner plates : EYES

Giant squids can be really, really big, possibly growing to over 40 feet in length. Most of that length is taken up by the tentacles, with a mantle growing to about 7 feet.

61 College sr.’s test : GRE

Passing the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is usually a requirement for entry into graduate school here in the US.

67 Building with many wings? : AVIARY

An aviary is a large cage that houses birds, and something described as avian is bird-like or bird-related. “Avis” is Latin for “bird”.

Down

5 Treebeard or Beechbone, in Middle-earth : ENT

Ents are tree-like creatures that live in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in his series of books “The Lord of the Rings”. “Ent” is an Old English word for “giant”.

7 Sch. whose mascot is Mike the Tiger : LSU

The Tigers are the sports teams of Louisiana State University (LSU). They are officially known as the Fightin’ Tigers, and the school mascot is “Mike the Tiger”. The name comes from the days of the Civil War, when two Louisiana brigades earned the nickname the “Louisiana Tigers”. Given the French/Cajun history of Louisiana, the LSU fans use the cheer “Geaux Tigers” instead of “Go Tigers”.

12 Paragons : EPITOMES

The more common meaning of “epitome” is “perfect example of a group, quality, type”. An epitome is also an abstract or summary of a book or article.

A paragon is a model of excellence, a peerless example. Ultimately the term “paragon” derives from the Greek “para-” meaning “on the side” and “akone” meaning “whetstone”. This derivation comes from the ancient practice of using a touchstone to test gold for its level of purity by drawing a line on the stone with the gold and comparing the resulting mark with samples of known purity.

15 Money in Mexico : PESO

The peso is used in many Spanish-speaking countries around the world. The coin originated in Spain where the word “peso” means “weight”. The original peso was what we know in English as a “piece of eight”, a silver coin of a specific weight that had a nominal value of eight “reales”.

34 Novak Djokovic or Nikola Jokic, by birth : SERB

Novak Djokovic is a Serbian tennis player and former world No. 1 ranked player. Djokovic is quite the character on and off the court, earning him the nickname “Djoker”. He is also very popular on the talk-show circuit, all around the world. It helps that Djokovic is fluent in several languages.

Nikola Jokić is a professional basketball player who was born in former-Yugoslavia. He was playing in the Serbian League before being drafted in 2014 by the Denver Nuggets of the NBA. Jokić won a silver medal with the Serbian national team when they lost to the USA in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

41 Actor McGregor : EWAN

Ewan McGregor is a very talented Scottish actor, one who got his break in the 1996 film “Trainspotting”. McGregor’s first big Hollywood role was playing the young Obi-Wan-Kenobi in the “Star Wars” prequels. Less known is his televised marathon motorcycle journey from London to New York via central Europe, Ukraine, Siberia, Mongolia and Canada. The 2004 trip was shown as “Long Way Round” on TV. McGregor did a similar trip in 2007 called “Long Way Down”, which took him and the same traveling companion from the north of Scotland to Cape Town in South Africa.

46 “Little Shop of Horrors” lyricist Howard : ASHMAN

Howard Ashman was a playwright who was better known as a lyricist, especially for Disney movies such as “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin”. Ashman also directed, wrote the book and wrote the lyrics for the 1982 musical “Little Shop of Horrors”.

“Little Shop of Horrors” is a 1982 rock musical based on the cult 1960 film “The Little Shop of Horrors”. The stage musical was adapted into a 1986 film of the same name, directed by Frank Oz. Not my cup of tea …

47 Curiosity and Perseverance, e.g. : ROVERS

There have been several rovers sent to Mars from Earth. The Soviet Union’s Mars 2 landed in 1971, and failed. Mars 3 landed the same year, and ceased operation just 20 seconds after landing. NASA’s Sojourner landed in 1997 (what a great day that was!) and operated from July through September. The British rover Beagle 2 was lost six days before its scheduled entry into the Martian atmosphere. NASA’s Spirit landed in 2004, and operated successfully for over six years before getting trapped in sand and eventually ceasing to communicate. NASA’s Opportunity also landed in 2004, and operated for over fourteen years. And then NASA’s Curiosity made a spectacular, hi-tech landing in 2012 and is continuing to explore the planet today. Based on the Curiosity design, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed in 2021, along with the Mars helicopter named Ingenuity. The China National Space Administration landed its first rover, named Zhurong (“Rover” in English), five months after Perseverance started its mission on the planet.

51 End of a sonnet, often : SESTET

A sonnet is a short poem with varying rhyming schemes but always with 14 lines. The sonnet form has been around at least since the 13th century. The Shakespearean sonnet is composed of three quatrains (4 lines) and a final couplet (2 lines). The Petrarchan sonnet comprises two quatrains (4 lines) followed by a sestet (6 lines), or two tercets (3 lines).

55 Voluminous ref. : OED

The “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) contains over 600,000 “main” entries and 59 million words in total. The longest entry for one word in the second edition of the OED is the verb “set”. When the third edition was published in 2007, the longest entry for a single word became the verb “put”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most-quoted author in the OED is William Shakespeare, with his most quoted work being “Hamlet”. The most-quoted female author is George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans).

60 Cassowary relatives : EMUS

The cassowary is a large, flightless bird found mainly in New Guinea. One species of cassowary is the third tallest bird on the planet, second only to the ostrich and the emu.

63 Cereal with the slogan “Kid-tested. Parent-approved” : KIX

Kix cereal has been around since 1937, would you believe? Kix used to be just puffed grains, processed to give the characteristic shape. Then the decision was made to add sugar to get better penetration into the young kid marketplace. Sad really …

64 Mer contents : EAU

In French, a “mer” (sea) is a large body of “eau” (water).

65 Belgian town known for its mineral baths : SPA

The word “spa” migrated into English from Belgium, as “Spa” is the name of a municipality in the east of the country that is famous for its healing hot springs. The name “Spa” comes from the Walloon word “espa” meaning “spring, fountain”.