0824-24 NY Times Crossword 24 Aug 24, Saturday - NYXCrossword.com (2024)

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Part of a Mideast capital’s name : ABU

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates (states) in the Middle East. Included in the seven are Abu Dhabi and Dubai, with the city of Abu Dhabi being the UAE capital and cultural center.

14 Actress who voiced Mei Lee’s strict mother in Pixar’s “Turning Red” : SANDRA OH

Canadian actress Sandra Oh is very much associated with the role of Dr. Cristina Yang on “Grey’s Anatomy”, and more recently with the role of Eve Polastri on “Killing Eve” . However, my favorite of Oh’s performances are in the movies “Under the Tuscan Sun” and “Sideways”.

“Turning Red” is a 2022 Pixar animated feature about a 13-year-old girl who turns into a giant red panda when she is cursed. Rosalie Chiang voices the girl, and Sandra Oh voices her overprotective mother.

16 Second slide of many a meeting deck : AGENDA

“Agenda” is a Latin word that translates as “things to be done”, coming from the verb “agere” meaning “to do”.

18 “The ___ of suffering is experience”: Harry Truman : REWARD

Harry Truman wanted to go to West Point having served with the Missouri Army National Guard on active duty in WWI, but he couldn’t get in because of his poor eyesight. Young Truman didn’t have the money to pay for college anywhere else. He did manage to study for two years towards a law degree at the Kansas City Law School in the twenties, but he never finished his schooling. So, Harry S. Truman was the last US President (out of a list of ten) who did not have a college degree.

24 Actress Anne of “Wag the Dog” : HECHE

My favorite movie starring the actress Anne Heche is “Six Days Seven Nights”, a romantic comedy in which she plays opposite Harrison Ford. Heche was noted for her difficult private life. She wrote that her father had molested her as a child and gave her a sexually transmitted disease (he later revealed that he was hom*osexual, and died of AIDS). Heche dated comedian Steve Martin for two years, and then lived with comedian Ellen DeGeneres for three. Soon after breaking up with DeGeneres, she started exhibiting eccentric behavior for a while, claiming that she was the daughter of God, and that she would take everyone back to heaven in her spaceship. Heche died in 2022 after suffering horrifying injuries in a car crash.

The 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” is a black comedy starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. It tells the story of a fake war that is manufactured by a Washington spin doctor in order to distract the American electorate. It is based on the novel “American Hero” by Larry Beinhart. In the movie the war is fictitious and the president goes unnamed. In the novel, Beinhart uses Desert Storm as the war in his storyline, and George H. W. Bush as the President.

27 Dried meat product with a rhyming name : TURKEY JERKY

Jerky is meat that has been trimmed of fat and dried. The term “jerky” comes into English via Spanish from the Incan Quechua “ch’arki” meaning “dried flesh”.

29 Digital agreements? : PINKY SWEARS

The use of “pinkie” or “pinky” for the little finger or toe comes into English from “pinkje”, the Dutch word for the same digit. Who knew …?

35 Habitat for sphagnum moss : BOG

Peat moss is actually sphagnum moss that has partially decayed and dried. The term “peat” moss is used as sphagnum moss is often found in “peat” bogs. Sphagnum moss has the ability to store large quantities of water, so the dried form is used by gardeners to condition soil, i.e. to increase the soil’s capacity to retain moisture.

38 Book between Joel and Obadiah : AMOS

Amos is one of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament’s Book of Amos is attributed to him.

39 Sian ___, director of the Best Picture winner “CODA” : HEDER

“CODA” is a 2021 movie, a remake of the 2014 French-Belgian film “La Famille Bélier”. The English-language version stars Emilia Jones as the only hearing member of a deaf family struggling with a fishing business in Gloucester, Massachusetts. “CODA” was the first film distributed by a streaming service (Apple TV+) to win a Best Picture Oscar. The title “CODA” is an acronym standing for “child of deaf adults”.

44 Nephrologist’s specialty : KIDNEY

Nephrology is the medical field specializing in the treatment of kidney problems. “Nephros” is the Greek word for “kidney”.

51 River in the name of a Best Picture winner : KWAI

The river referred to in the movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is actually called the Khwae Yai River, and is in western Thailand. The original novel by Pierre Boulle, “The Bridge Over the River Kwai”, was published in French in 1952, and the wonderful movie released in 1957. Both tell the story of the construction of part of the Burma Railway and a bridge over the river, using prisoners of war as laborers. The film stars William Holden, Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins.

Down

2 Sights along the Gulf Coast : BAYOUS

A bayou is a marshy inlet or outlet of a lake or river, usually with stagnant or slow-moving water. The exact origins of the term “bayou” is uncertain, but it is thought perhaps to come from the Choctaw (a Native American people from the southeast) word “bayuk”, meaning “small stream”.

The Gulf States are the US states bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, i.e. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

4 Creatures often depicted with green skin : ORCS

According to Tolkien, Orcs are small humanoids that live in his fantasy world of Middle-earth (also called “Mordor”). They are very ugly and dirty, and are fond of eating human flesh.

9 “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” writer, 1941 : AGEE

“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” is a book by James Agee, with dramatic photographs by Walker Evans. The book chronicles the plight of sharecropper families in the American South during the Great Depression.

10 Singers do this : SEW

Isaac Singer was not only an inventor, but also an actor. For much of his life, profits made from his inventions supported him while he pursued his acting career. Singer didn’t actually invent the sewing machine, and never claimed to have done so. What he did do, though, was to invent a version of the machine that was practical and easily used in the home.

12 Obsolescent means of music storage : CD RACKS

Something described as “obsolescent” is going out of use, becoming “obsolete”.

21 Batman adversary with a stitched burlap mask : THE SCARECROW

Burlap, also called “hessian”, is a coarse woven fabric made from fibers taken from jute, sisal or hemp plants.

25 Poet who first penned the phrase “no country for old men” : YEATS

American novelist Cormac McCarthy published the novel “No Country for Old Men” in 2005, and saw it adapted into a very successful film of the same name released in 2007. The title comes from the opening line of the William Butler Yeats poem “Sailing to Byzantium”, a poem that we Irish school kids all had to read and learn to recite …

28 Leaps on stage : JETES

A jeté is a leap in ballet, with the term “jeté” coming from the French word “jeter” meaning “to throw”. A “jeté en avant” is a “leap to the front”, towards the audience. A “grand jeté” is a long horizontal jump, a split in the air, leaping from one foot to the other.

30 Spoon : CANOODLE

To canoodle is to indulge in caresses and kisses.

When two people are “spooning”, cuddling in bed perhaps, the person in the back is referred to as the “big spoon”, and the person in front is the “little spoon”.

32 Original parent co. of Fortune and People : TIME INC

“Fortune” is a tri-weekly business magazine that was founded by Henry Luce in 1930, just four months after the 1929 Wall Street Crash. “Fortune” is noted for its annual ranking of companies by revenue, especially the Fortune 500.

There used to be a “People” page in each issue of “Time” magazine. This page was spun-off in 1974 as a publication of its own, which we now call “People” magazine. “People” is noted for its annual special editions with features such as “Best & Worst Dressed” and “Sexiest Man Alive”. The “Sexiest Man Alive” edition now appears at the end of November each year. The first choice for “Sexiest Man” was Mel Gibson, in 1985.

33 Snarky reply to some unsolicited advice : DID I ASK?

“Snark” is a term that was coined by Lewis Carroll in his fabulous 1876 nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Somehow, the term “snarky” came to mean “irritable, short-tempered” in the early 1900s, and from there “snark” became “sarcastic rhetoric” at the beginning of the 21st century.

37 Many Grindr users : GAY MEN

Grindr is a social networking app aimed at gay and bisexual men. Subscribers locate potential partners using the geolocation capabilities of smartphones. A user in a particular location can view a grid showing pictures of fellow subscribers arranged by proximity.

43 Commercial lead-in to bank : CITI-

During the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, the US government rescued Citibank by providing loan guarantees and two payments of $25 billion each. It turns out that the government made a tidy profit on that deal, as Citibank has since repaid the loans in full, along with interest.

45 Diarist who helped edit Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” : NIN

Anaïs Nin was a French author who was famous for the journals that she wrote for over sixty years from the age of 11 right up to her death. Nin also wrote highly regarded erotica and cited D. H. Lawrence as someone from whom she drew inspiration. Nin was married to banker and artist Hugh Parker Guiler in 1923. Decades later in 1955, Nin married former actor Rupert Pole, even though she was still married to Guiler. Nin and Pole had their marriage annulled in 1966, but just for legal reasons, and they continued to live together as husband and wife until Nin passed away in 1977.