NYT Connections April 11, 2025 #670 Hints & Answers

While sunshine helps our bodies produce vitamin D, it's technically not a vitamin source in the traditional sense - our skin synthesizes vitamin D when exposed to UVB rays. This makes vitamin D unique among vitamins, as it's the only one our bodies can produce naturally with sufficient sun exposure. It's also why vitamin D is sometimes called 'the sunshine vitamin.'

This naming convention in retail became particularly popular in the post-World War II consumer boom of the 1950s and 1960s. Retailers used location suffixes to convey a sense of comprehensiveness and authority in their product category. One of the most successful examples was 'Toys "R" Us,' which originally began as 'Children's Supermart' before founder Charles Lazarus rebranded it to better communicate the idea of a complete toy destination.

The current 50-star design of the American flag was created by Robert G. Heft as a high school project in 1958, when he was just 17 years old. Heft's design initially received a B- grade from his teacher, who later changed it to an A after President Eisenhower selected the design from thousands of submissions. Heft's flag became official on July 4, 1960, and has now been the longest-used version of the American flag in U.S. history.

"Go Kart" was originally spelled as two separate words. The term was coined in the late 1950s when the first small racing kart was created by Art Ingels in California. The name reportedly came about when someone described the vehicle as something that 'goes like a cart,' which was then shortened to 'go-kart' and eventually merged into 'gokart' in some regions. The simplicity of go-karts made them popular worldwide, and they became the starting point for many professional racing careers, including Formula 1 champions like Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.