Electrical entry in NYT Crossword stumps solvers – Adafruit consulted @DebAmlen @nytimeswordplay @Adafruit

Deb Amlen, New York Times crossword columnist and senior staff editor of Wordplay, writes about the entry that stumped many puzzlers October 22nd, but would be known to many Adafruit readers: Ampere! Here Adafruit provides the answer for Deb:

The electrical measurement known as the AMPERE, or “amp,” has appeared in the New York Times Crossword 103 times, yet many solvers missed this entry in the Tuesday, Oct. 22 crossword puzzle. Let’s take a closer look at it and the way it might be clued so solvers are more likely to get it next time.

An AMPERE is the base unit of electric current in the International System of Units, or SI.

“In practical terms,” says the electronics educational website Adafruit.com, “the AMPERE is a measure of the amount of electric charge passing a point in an electric circuit per unit time.” It was named after André-Marie Ampére (1775-1836), who is considered to be the father of electrodynamics.

The AMPERE is an important part of the useful equation known as Ohm’s law, which helps calculate the voltage, amperage or resistance in an electrical circuit. It is expressed as V (for voltage) = I (for AMPEREs) x R (for resistance).

How It Might Be Clued

Clues that involve wordplay are in bold.

“Current measure,” “Current amount,” “An ‘A’ in physics?,” “Current unit,” “A in physics,” “Electrical unit,” “Subject of current thinking?,” “Noted French physicist,” “French physicist after whom an electric unit is named,” “Fuse unit,” “Law man?,” “French physicist André,” “Coulomb per second,” “Bit of current,” “The Newton of Electricity”

Check out the column and follow @NYTimesWordplay for all the fun.