1130-22 NY Times Crossword 30 Nov 22, Wednesday

Constructed by: Addison Snell
Edited by: Will Shortz

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Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Not OK; a Few Ks

Themed answers are all clued with a “K”:

• 20 K, in baseball : STRIKEOUT
• 27 K, in a salary listing : THOUSAND
• 42 K, on a printer cartridge : BLACK INK
• 53 K, on the periodic table : POTASSIUM

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Bill’s time: 7m 22s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Target of modern splicing : GENE

Recombinant DNA is DNA made under laboratory conditions. The recombination technique (sometimes referred to as “gene splicing”) brings together genetic material from multiple sources. The sources of that genetic material might be from a different part of the same gene, or even from the gene of a different organism. The end result is a new, man-made, genetic combination.

10 Campus courtyard : QUAD

A university often features a central quadrangle (quad).

14 Skateboarder’s prop : RAIL

The activity of skateboarding emerged in California in the fifties. Enthusiasts made their own boards, by attaching roller skates to boards. Back then, skateboarding was referred to as “sidewalk surfing”.

15 Skateboarder’s hop : OLLIE

An ollie is a skateboarding trick invented in 1976 by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand. Apparently it’s a way of lifting the board off the ground, while standing on it, without touching the board with one’s hands. Yeah, I could do that …

16 Language of Pakistan : URDU

Urdu is one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and is one of the 22 scheduled languages in India. Urdu partly developed from Persian and is written from right to left.

18 One in a mall : STORE

Surprisingly (to me!), our word “mall”, meaning “shady walk” or “enclosed shopping space”, comes from the Italian for “mallet”. All of our shopping-style malls are named for “The Mall” in St. James’s Park in London. This tree-lined promenade was so called as it used to be a famous spot to play the croquet-like game called “pall-mall”. The game derived its name from the Italian for ball (palla) and mallet “maglio”. The London thoroughfare called the Mall still exists, at one end of which is Buckingham Palace. Indeed, parallel to the Mall is a street called Pall Mall.

20 K, in baseball : STRIKEOUT

In baseball, the traditional abbreviation used for a strikeout is a letter K (kay).

27 K, in a salary listing : THOUSAND

One K, one grand, one thousand dollars.

38 Road shoulder : BERM

A berm is a narrow ledge, one usually at the top or bottom of a slope. The term “berm” is also used as the shoulder of a road in some parts of the United States. It can also describe a physical barrier of some kind. For example, berms can be constructed along a highway to protect those living and working nearby from noise pollution.

39 Lager alternative : ALE

The many, many different styles of beer can generally be sorted into two groups: ales and lagers. Ales are fermented at relatively warm temperatures for relatively short periods of time, and use top-fermenting yeasts, i.e. yeasts that float on top of the beer as it ferments. Lagers ferment at relatively low temperatures and for relatively long periods of time. Lagers use bottom-fermenting yeasts, i.e. yeasts that fall to the bottom of the beer as it ferments.

41 Like the contents of an MP3 file : AUDIO

MP3 is an audio coding format, the most common format used for music stored on digital audio players. MP3 files are compressed and “lossy”, meaning that some audio information is lost when the file is generated. For this reason, MP3 files are about 1/11 of the size of the equivalent music files found on CD.

42 K, on a printer cartridge : BLACK INK

Four-color printing uses four different color inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The black ink is also known as the “key”. The first letter of the colors (with black being ”key”) give the more common name for four-color printing, namely CMYK.

44 Online competitor of Us Weekly : TMZ

TMZ.com is a celebrity gossip website launched in 2005 by producer Harvey Levin. “TMZ” stands for “thirty-mile zone”, a reference to the “studio zone” in Los Angeles. The studio zone is circular in shape with a 30-mile radius centered on the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard.

“Us Weekly” is a celebrity gossip magazine that was first published in 1977 as “Us”. Originally issued every two weeks, “Us” became a monthly magazine in 1991, and moved to a weekly format in 2000.

50 Locale of the 1964 and 2020 Summer Olympics : JAPAN

The 1964 Summer Olympic Games were held in Tokyo, and were the first Olympics held in Asia. The 1940 games had been scheduled for Tokyo, but they were moved to Helsinki after Japan invaded China, and eventually were canceled completely due to WWII. The 1964 Olympics were also the first games in which South Africa was barred due to the apartheid system in sports.

The 2020 Summer Olympics were rescheduled from 2020 to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They finally took place in Tokyo. Tokyo first hosted the Olympics in 1964.

53 K, on the periodic table : POTASSIUM

Here is a list of all the single-letter element symbols:

• B = boron
• C = carbon
• F = fluorine
• H = hydrogen
• I = Iodine
• K = potassium
• N = nitrogen
• O = oxygen
• P = phosphorus
• S = sulfur
• U = uranium
• V = vanadium
• W = tungsten
• Y = yttrium

55 Sultanate on the Arabian Sea : OMAN

Qaboos bin Said al Said was Sultan of Oman, until his death in 2020, after coming to power in a coup in 1970 by deposing his own father. Qaboos had no children, and no agreed heir. After his death, the country’s Defense Council opened a letter left by Qaboos that named his successor, his cousin Haitham bin Tariq.

56 Nashville-based footballer : TITAN

The Tennessee Titans are a football team based in Nashville. The team relocated to Nashville from Houston in 1997. They were called the Tennessee Oilers for two seasons, before adopting the “Titans” moniker.

57 Lhasa ___ : APSO

The Lhasa apso breed of dog originated in Tibet and is named after “Lhasa” (the capital city) and “apso” (a Tibetan word meaning “bearded”). The Lhasa apso has been around since 800 BC and is one of the oldest breeds in the world, one very closely related to the ancestral wolf.

58 Contested title on “Game of Thrones” : KING

“A Game of Thrones” is the first novel in the series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin titled “A Song of Ice and Fire”. That first novel’s title gives its name to “Game of Thrones”, the incredibly popular HBO television series that uses the storyline from the whole series of books.

59 Unit of parsley : SPRIG

In Britain and Ireland, parsley is listed as one of the four essential herbs. And those would be “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme”.

60 Figure skater Katarina : WITT

Katarina Witt is a retired figure skater who represented her homeland of East Germany, winning Olympic golds in 1984 and 1988. After the reunification of Germany, Witt gained access to the files held on her by the East German secret police. Her file contained 3,000 pages of information about her life since she was eight years old.

61 Unlikely place for a coin flip to land : EDGE

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”.

62 Showy garden flower : PEONY

The flowering plant called a peony is named for Paean, the mythical physician to the Greek gods.

63 Eye irritation : STYE

A stye is a bacterial infection of the sebaceous glands at the base of the eyelashes, and is also known as a hordeolum.

Down

3 Dragster’s fuel, familiarly : NITRO

“Laughing gas” is a common name for nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is used as an anesthetic, particularly by dentists. It is also used in motor racing to increase the power output of engines. Laughing gas was first synthesized by the English chemist Joseph Priestley, but it was Humphry Davy who discovered its potential as an anesthetic. Once it was realized that the gas could give the patient a fit of the giggles, “laughing gas parties” became common among those who could afford them.

4 Castle in “Hamlet” : ELSINORE

Elsinore is the castle that William Shakespeare used as the setting for his play “Hamlet”. Elsinore is based on the actual Kronborg castle in the Danish city of Helsingør (anglicized as “Elsinore”).

6 “Tiny Dancer” singer John : ELTON

The 1971 Elton John song “Tiny Dancer” was written by John himself, with lyrics by Bernie Taupin. Apparently the “tiny dancer” in the song is a character reminiscent of the young ladies that Taupin met in California in 1970.

7 Baseball’s Felipe, Matty, Jesus or Moises : ALOU

Felipe Alou is a former professional baseball player and manager. Alou managed the Montreal Expos from 1992 to 2001, and the San Francisco Giants from 2003 to 2006. Alou was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and came to the US to play for the Giants in 1955. Felipe’s brothers Matty and Jesús followed him to the US, and into Major League baseball.

10 Home of the New York Mets : QUEENS

Queens is the largest borough in New York City, and is today coterminous with Queens County. Queens is an amazingly diverse location in terms of ethnicity. There is a population of over 2 million people, with almost 50% of that population being foreign-born. Apparently there are over 130 native languages spoken in the area. Queens was named for Catherine of Braganza (from Portugal), Queen consort of King Charles II of England.

12 “House of Gucci” actor Driver : ADAM

Adam Driver is an actor perhaps best known to TV audiences for playing Adam Sackler on the show “Girls” that airs on HBO. Driver’s movie career got a huge boost in 2015 when he played villain Kylo Ren in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.

22 “Better Call ___” (“Breaking Bad” prequel) : SAUL

“Better Call Saul” is a spin-off drama series from the hit show “Breaking Bad”. The main character is small-time lawyer Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk, who featured in the original series. “Better Call Saul” is set six years before Goodman makes an appearance in the “Breaking Bad” storyline. The lawyer’s real name is James Morgan McGill, and his pseudonym is a play on the words “S’all good, man!”

27 Bounce one’s booty : TWERK

Twerking is a dancing move in which someone (usually a woman) shakes her hips up and down causing a lot of “wobbling”. It’s possible that “twerk” is a portmanteau of “twist” and “jerk”. The term may have been coined back in the early 2000s with the song “Whistle While You Twurk” released by the Ying Yang Twins. Twerking became a real phenomenon in 2013 when Miley Cyrus posted a video of herself twerking in a unicorn suit to the 2011 song “Wop” by J. Dash. That video went viral on YouTube, amassing over 4 million views in no time at all.

“Booty” is a slang term for the buttocks.

29 Sushi seaweed : NORI

Nori is an edible seaweed that we used to know as “laver” when we were living in Wales. Nori is usually dried into thin sheets. Here in the US, we are most familiar with nori as the seaweed used as a wrap for sushi.

32 Room in Clue : HALL

Clue is a board game that we knew under a different name growing up in Ireland. Outside of North America, Clue is marketed as “Cluedo”. Cluedo was the original name of the game, introduced in 1949 by the famous British board game manufacturer Waddingtons. There are cute differences between the US and UK versions. For example, the man who is murdered is called Dr. Black (Mr. Boddy in the US), one of the suspects is the Reverend Green (Mr. Green in the US), and the suspect weapons include a dagger (a knife in the US), and a spanner (a wrench in the US). I think it’s a fabulous game, a must during the holidays …

37 Tibia’s location : SHIN

The tibia is the shinbone, and is the larger of the two bones right below the knee. It is the strongest weight-bearing bone in the human body. “Tibia” is the Roman name for a Greek flute and it is thought that the shinbone was given the same name because flutes were often fashioned out of the shinbones of animals.

38 Noisy circular cutters : BUZZ SAWS

“Buzz saw” is a term sometimes used for a circular saw, especially one in a sawmill that is dedicated to making crosscuts (cuts across the grain) in cordwood.

43 Word with spare or sea : … CHANGE

A sea change is a change of great significance. The phrase was coined by William Shakespeare in “The Tempest”. The full quotation is:

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.

50 A shaggy dog story is a long one : JOKE

A shaggy dog story is one that rambles, hints at a punchline, and then fails to deliver.

56 Recipe amt. : TSP

Teaspoon (tsp.)

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Target of modern splicing : GENE
5 Is ahead of : LEADS
10 Campus courtyard : QUAD
14 Skateboarder’s prop : RAIL
15 Skateboarder’s hop : OLLIE
16 Language of Pakistan : URDU
17 Partner of crafts : ARTS
18 One in a mall : STORE
19 “Zounds!” : EGAD!
20 K, in baseball : STRIKEOUT
22 Looks : SEEMS
23 Call a radio show, say : PHONE IN
24 Family group : CLAN
26 Go (for) : OPT
27 K, in a salary listing : THOUSAND
31 Infographic component : CHART
34 Grow larger : SWELL
35 Deep grief : WOE
36 Definitely not well done : RARE
37 Embezzle, e.g. : STEAL
38 Road shoulder : BERM
39 Lager alternative : ALE
40 Pointy : SHARP
41 Like the contents of an MP3 file : AUDIO
42 K, on a printer cartridge : BLACK INK
44 Online competitor of Us Weekly : TMZ
45 Back : HIND
46 Kind of stick : SWIZZLE
50 Locale of the 1964 and 2020 Summer Olympics : JAPAN
53 K, on the periodic table : POTASSIUM
55 Sultanate on the Arabian Sea : OMAN
56 Nashville-based footballer : TITAN
57 Lhasa ___ : APSO
58 Contested title on “Game of Thrones” : KING
59 Unit of parsley : SPRIG
60 Figure skater Katarina : WITT
61 Unlikely place for a coin flip to land : EDGE
62 Showy garden flower : PEONY
63 Eye irritation : STYE

Down

1 Understand : GRASP
2 Terran’s home planet : EARTH
3 Dragster’s fuel, familiarly : NITRO
4 Castle in “Hamlet” : ELSINORE
5 Freak out : LOSE IT
6 “Tiny Dancer” singer John : ELTON
7 Baseball’s Felipe, Matty, Jesus or Moises : ALOU
8 Costing almost nothing : DIRT CHEAP
9 Call, as a wager : SEE
10 Home of the New York Mets : QUEENS
11 Strongly suggest : URGE
12 “House of Gucci” actor Driver : ADAM
13 Disappointing fireworks : DUDS
21 Didn’t discard : KEPT
22 “Better Call ___” (“Breaking Bad” prequel) : SAUL
25 Laze : LOLL
27 Bounce one’s booty : TWERK
28 Wonderstruck : AWED
29 Sushi seaweed : NORI
30 Free trial version : DEMO
31 What might get you in a pinch? : CRAB
32 Room in Clue : HALL
33 Tiler’s calculation : AREA
34 Vertical water conduit : STANDPIPE
37 Tibia’s location : SHIN
38 Noisy circular cutters : BUZZ SAWS
40 Where to apply moisturizer : SKIN
41 French pals : AMIS
43 Word with spare or sea : … CHANGE
44 Like some country music : TWANGY
46 What tomato sauce may do to a shirt : STAIN
47 “That’s enough out of you!” : ZIP IT!
48 Maybe too amorous : LUSTY
49 Overplay, in a way : EMOTE
50 A shaggy dog story is a long one : JOKE
51 In the thick of : AMID
52 It hurts : PANG
54 Uno al ___ (each other: Sp.) : OTRO
56 Recipe amt. : TSP

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