A workaday Wednesday theme of four things represented by the letter K:
So let's just quickly talk about these in order, since they're all pretty interesting.
The K for strikeout comes from the very earliest days of baseball, when a guy named Henry Chadwick set out to document the game in print back in the 1850s! He had already used "S" for "Sacrifice," so he used the last letter of the word struck ("struck" was commonly used back then to indicate that a player had been put down on three strikes) instead. And I'm not sure if it was him or if it was decided later that a backwards K would indicate that the batter did not swing on the third strike.
The K for THOUSAND comes straight from Greek, where "kilo" means thousand. Do not confuse with Latin's Roman numeral M, which also means thousand (from "milia"), and which led to mille in French and Italian, mil in Spanish, and even "mile" in English. (from mille passus, "a thousand steps." Their steps were obviously longer than ours, if we imagine that a step could be about a yard, since we have 1760 in a mile.)
Sometimes people claim that the K in CYMK came about in a way similar to the K in baseball - that "B" was already taken by blue, but most printers will argue that the K stands instead for "key color." The key color being that holding the finest detail in a multi-plate printing, and that used to register all other plates. So the K could, theoretically, be any color at all, but for all practical, modern purposes, it means black.
Finally, Latin (well, neo-Latin) gets its comeuppance, as the K used for POTASSIUM comes from "kalium."
So there you have it. A relatively modest amount of theme today allows for lots of zazzle. To wit, SWIZZLE (Kind of stick) and BUZZSAW (Noisy circular cutters). DIRTCHEAP (Costing almost nothing) (crossing THOUSAND!) is fun, and any reference to Hamlet is A-OK in my book. (ELSINORE (Castle in "Hamlet"))
A very satisfactory Wednesday.
- Horace
Great analysis Horace! I had never heard of the printer ink colour thing, nor the meaning of CYMK, and that's a fascinating history of K for 'strikeout'! All these years I've seen people putting up backwards 'K's and I never twigged to the reason.
ReplyDeleteI've been battling a nasty flu for the past four days, and have had a hard time concentrating on these crosswords, resulting in very lackadaisical results (slow, and lots of stupid mistakes basically). But either I'm shaking it or this was a particularly easy Wednesday as it only took me 2:45, which, according to the website's stats page, is the fastest Wed ever for me.
Thanks for the analysis, Horace, especially the stuff on baseball's K for strike! I just looked up Henry Chadwick -- fascinating guy.
ReplyDeleteThe only K of which I was previously unaware was the printer ink designation. The one that I purchase says BLACKINK right on it. I'll have to pay more attention next time to see if there is mention of a K. Fine puzzle, taking me one second shorter to finish off than Tuesday's. I'd rather have had TITAN clued with the moon of Saturn since that is where the remains of one of my namesakes resides, but I knew the football reference regardless. Sue and I will briefly be in JAPAN next week.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if a printer cartridge would explicitly use the CMYK terminology, but you would possibly see it in software which drives printers (as an alternative to RGB or whatever the other choices are). See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model
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