NYT Connections April 6, 2025 #665 Hints & Answers

The word 'aloof' has nautical origins, deriving from the Dutch word 'loef' which refers to sailing a ship into the wind. When a ship was described as 'a loef' (to the windward), it meant keeping at a distance from a lee shore or another ship. This physical distancing at sea evolved into our modern usage describing emotional or social distancing.

The concept of utilities as public services dates back to the Roman Empire, which built sophisticated aqueducts to deliver water. However, the modern utility industry as we know it began in the late 19th century with the commercialization of electricity. Interestingly, trash collection is one of the newest utilities to be widely standardized, with many cities only establishing regular municipal waste management in the early to mid-20th century.

The first electrometer was invented in 1747 by William Watson and was used to measure static electricity. However, the more precise gold-leaf electroscope was developed by Abraham Bennet in 1787. Unlike modern digital multimeters, early electrometers required careful observation of the physical movement of gold leaves or other indicators that would react to electrical fields, demonstrating how electrical charges could produce mechanical forces long before scientists fully understood the nature of electricity.

The term 'joint' has remarkably diverse etymology and usage across different contexts. In slang usage (as in 'pizza joint'), it derives from 1930s criminal slang where a 'joint' was a place where illegal activity occurred, like speakeasies during Prohibition. Director Spike Lee deliberately chose to call his films 'Joints' rather than the more common 'A Spike Lee Film' as a way to distinguish his work and connect it to Black vernacular tradition, first using the phrase for his 1986 debut feature 'She's Gotta Have It.'