0719-24 NY Times Crossword 19 Jul 24, Friday - NYXCrossword.com (2024)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 St. Teresa’s birthplace : AVILA

The Spanish city of Ávila is famous for the walled defenses around the old city (“la muralla de Ávila”) that date back to 1090. They were constructed out of brown granite, and are still in excellent repair. There are nine gateways and eighty-towers in all. Even the cathedral built between the 12th and 14th centuries is part of the city’s defenses, so it looks like an imposing fortress.

St. Teresa of Ávila (also known as St. Teresa of Jesus) was a Carmelite nun living in Spain in the 1500s. She is particularly noted for her writings on Christian meditation and mental prayer.

9 Upon which a dragonfly frequently lays its eggs : POND

Dragonflies are predatory insects and love to feed on flies, bees, ants, wasps and mosquitoes. When dragonflies are in their aquatic larval stage, they are known as nymphs or naiads, and live beneath the water’s surface.

15 Strait of ___, narrowest part of the English Channel : DOVER

Calais is a major ferry port in northern France that overlooks the Strait of Dover, which is the narrowest point in the English Channel. The strait is just over 20 miles wide, making Calais the nearest French town to England.

17 Setting of a date for Edward and Vivian in “Pretty Woman” : OPERA

“Pretty Woman” is a great movie; a 1990 romantic comedy starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. The film was originally written as a very dark story, with the female lead not only a prostitute, but also a drug addict. The Disney studio took up the project and demanded that it be rewritten as a modern-day fairy tale, and what a good decision that was …

19 Boyfriend of Nancy Drew : NED

I loved the “Nancy Drew” mysteries as a kid. The “Nancy Drew stories” were written by a number of ghost writers, all of whom went by the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. The character was introduced by publisher Edward Stratemeyer in 1930. Nancy Drew’s boyfriend is Ned Nickerson, a college student from Emerson.

23 Playing a sudden-death round, perhaps : IN OT

In a single-elimination tournament, also called “sudden-death” tournament, losers of a game are eliminated immediately.

29 It might turn red or blue : SWING STATE

On political maps, red states are usually Republican and blue states usually Democrat. The designation of red and blue states is a very recent concept, only introduced in the 2000 presidential election by TV journalist, the late Tim Russert. In retrospect, the choice of colors is surprising, as in other democracies around the world red is usually used to describe left-leaning socialist parties (the reds under the bed!), and blue is used for conservative right-wing parties. In election cycles, swing/battleground states are often depicted in purple.

33 Reaction to a funny text : LMAO

Laughing my a** off (LMAO)

34 Long rides : LIMOS

The word “limousine” derives from the name of the French city of Limoges. The area around Limoges is called the Limousin, and it gave its name to a cloak hood worn by local shepherds. In early motor cars, a driver would sit outside in the weather while the passengers would sit in the covered compartment. The driver would often wear a limousin-style protective hood, giving rise to that type of transportation being called a “limousine”. Well, that’s how the story goes …

35 Farmers business: Abbr. : INS

Farmers Insurance was set up in 1928 as Farmers Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange in Los Angeles. The intent was to provide cheaper insurance to farmers and ranchers, a group that the Farmers’ founders believed to be safer drivers.

36 New York college known for opinion polling : SIENA

Siena College is a Roman Catholic school, a Franciscan liberal arts college founded in 1937 in Loudonville, New York near Albany. The college is named for Saint Bernardino of Siena, a Franciscan friar who lived in the 15th century.

38 Was unfairly criticized, informally : GOT A BAD RAP

A rap sheet is a criminal record. “Rap” is a slang term dating back to the 1700s that means “blame, responsibility” as in “to take the rap”, “bad rap” and “to beat the rap”. This usage morphed into “rap sheet” in the early 1900s.

40 Flipped : WENT BANANAS

The expression “to go bananas”, meaning “to become excited or angry”, is one that I would have imagined had a clear etymology but that doesn’t seem to be the case. A further surprise is that we’ve only been “going bananas” since the sixties, the days of flower power. One apt theory about the hippy roots of the phrase is that there was an unfounded belief that ingesting roasted banana peels had a similar hallucinogenic effect as magic mushrooms.

48 Physiologist whose namesake exercise is part of an Army fitness test : BURPEE

Burpees are strength-training exercises. Each burpee involves a squat thrust followed by a straight stand. The exercise is named for its inventor, physiologist Royal Huddleston Burpee, Sr.

53 Small-time, as stakes : PENNY-ANTE

Penny Ante poker is a game in which bets are limited to a penny, or some other small, friendly sum. The expression “penny-ante” has come to describe any business transaction that is on a small scale.

57 Dinghy destination, perhaps : ISLE

Our term “dinghy” comes from the Hindi “dingi”, a word meaning “small boat”.

Down

2 Holiday time, informally : VACAY

A vacation (“vacay”) might provide some rest and relaxation/recuperation (R&R).

5 “The ___ and the Dove” (Aesop fable) : ANT

Aesop is remembered today as a fabulist, a writer of fables. Aesop lived in ancient Greece, probably around the sixth century BC. Supposedly he was born a slave, somehow became a free man, but then met with a sorry end. Aesop was sent to the city of Delphi on a diplomatic mission but instead insulted the Delphians. He was tried on a trumped-up charge of stealing from a temple, sentenced to death and was thrown off a cliff.

6 Fairy tale elixir : LOVE POTION

An elixir is a solution of alcohol and water that is used to deliver a medicine. The term “elixir” can also be used to mean a medicine that has the power to cure all ills.

8 Currency equivalent to 100 jeon : WON

The Korean won, Chinese yuan, and Japanese yen (all of which are Asian currencies) take their names from the Chinese written character that represents “round shape”.

9 Screw cap alternative : POP-TOP LID

The oldest method of opening a can with a device included in the can’s design is the pull-tab or ring pull, invented in Canada in 1956. The design was long-lived but it had its problems, so the world heaved a sigh of relief with the invention of the stay-on-tab in 1975. The new design led to fewer injuries and eliminated all those used pull-tabs that littered the streets.

11 Name hidden in “hard-line Roman Emperor” : NERO

Nero was Emperor of Rome from 54 to 68 CE, and towards the end of his reign participated in the Olympic Games in the year 67. The Roman leader raced in a ten-horse chariot, of which he lost control and nearly perished after being thrown from the vehicle. Acting and singing were Olympic events back then, and Nero also took part in those competitions. By all accounts, Nero performed badly in every event in which he vied, and yet somehow still managed to win Olympic crowns that he paraded around Rome on his return from Greece. Just before he died, Nero reportedly declared, “What an artist the world is losing in me!”

15 Lorna of romance : DOONE

The novel “Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor” was written by Richard Doddridge Blackmore. R. D. Blackmore was an English novelist, very celebrated and in demand in his day (the late 1800s). His romantic story “Lorna Doone” was by no means a personal favorite of his, and yet it is the only one of his works still in print.

20 River traveled by passenger boats known as dahabeahs : NILE

Africa’s River Nile has two main tributaries, the Blue Nile and White Nile, with the White Nile deemed to be the headwaters of the Nile itself. The most distant source of the White Nile is unknown, so I suppose one might argue that the “source of the Nile” is a mystery.

22 Final Fantasy and others, for short : RPGS

Role-playing game (RPG)

“Final Fantasy” is a series of fantasy role-playing video games that is much-respected in the gaming community. The first game was released back in 1987.

25 Coca-Cola brand : FANTA

The soft drink Fanta has quite an interesting history. As WWII approached, the Coca-Cola plant in Germany had trouble obtaining the ingredients it needed to continue production of the cola beverage, so the plant manager decided to create a new drink from what was available. The new beverage was built around whey (leftover from cheese production) and pomace (left over after juice has been extracted from fruit). The inventor asked his colleagues to use their “imagination” (“Fantasie” in German) and come up with a name for the drink, so they piped up “Fanta!”

26 Acceptance speech cliché : IT’S AN HONOR

“Cliché” is a word that comes from the world of printing. In the days when type was added as individual letters into a printing plate, for efficiency some oft-used phrases and words were created as one single slug of metal. The word “cliché” was used for such a grouping of letters. It’s easy to see how the same word would become a term to describe any overused phrase. Supposedly, “cliché” comes from French, from the verb “clicher” meaning “to click”. The idea is that when a matrix of letters was dropped in molten metal to make a cliché, it made a clicking sound.

27 Site of a New Testament miracle : CANA

According to the Christian Bible, Cana is the place where Jesus performed his first public miracle. Jesus was attending a wedding feast with his mother when the party ran out of wine. Jesus turned water into wine, wine subsequently deemed to be the best served at the feast.

32 Locale with the ZIP code 88888 : NORTH POLE

If you want to send a note to Santa from Canada, he has his own special postal code: “North Pole, HOH OHO”. The US Postal Service suggests that we send mail for Santa to zip code 99705, which directs it to the city of North Pole, Alaska.

48 Neighbor of Java : BALI

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is known as the “Island of the Gods” due to its rich and unique culture, which is steeped in religious and spiritual beliefs.

Java is a large island in Indonesia that is home to the country’s capital, Jakarta. With a population of over 130 million, Java is the most populous island in the world, with even more people than Honshu, the main island of Japan.

53 K-pop sensation of 2012 : PSY

“PSY” is the stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang. PSY became an international star when his 2012 music video “Gangnam Style” went viral on YouTube. That video had over 1 billion views on YouTube in about six months, making it the most viewed YouTube video clip of all time. The title of the song refers to a lifestyle experienced in the Gangnam District of Seoul.

54 Sub-Saharan crop : YAM

Although in the US we sometimes refer to sweet potatoes as “yams”, the yam is actually a completely different family of plants. True yams are more common in other parts of the world than they are in this country, and are especially common in Africa.