The goddess of dawn is way more popular in crosswords than her colleagues like Zeus, Poseidon, Demeter, and Hermes. Even the more crossword-friendly ARES and HERA aren’t as useful as her vowel-to-consonant ratio. Most crosswords that use her, though, shrug her off with a perfunctory “Dawn goddess” clue.
EOS does have stories of her own, and like ERE, she can be a window into the world of the classics…or, less often, an inhabitant of one’s own toiletry kit.
The dawn goddess was, much like Aphrodite, neither a militant virgin nor a victim in classical myth: she was the pursuer, not the pursued. Her most notable lovers were the Trojan prince Tithonus, to whom she got Zeus to grant eternal life (but, oops, not eternal youth) and Cephalus, who was already married, but whaddayagonnado. (What Eos was gonna do was play some trust games with Cephalus and his wife as twisted and antiromantic as anything in Gone Girl.)
(Exactly how willing the gods’ and goddesses’ mortal paramours are is always a little debatable in the lore, especially since deific mind control could be involved. But I prefer to think of them as the ancient equivalent of red-hot celebrities—there’d be some young hotties who’ll say no to a one-night stand with them if they offer, but not too many. If you’d like a more warm and fuzzy version of the myths from someone who knows how consent works, give Webtoon’s Lore Olympus a try.)
Eos may’ve been a little too much like Aphrodite, whom some say cursed her with lust for mortals as punishment for horning in on Aphrodite’s own lover Ares. But since Aphrodite controls everybody’s lusts, that seems a little tautological.
In a toiletry kit, EOS stands for “Evolution Of Smooth,” the lip balm and skin care brand with the odd egglike containers. Those who feel women’s concerns should be better represented in crosswords might pay attention to this label—as colorful as Eos-the-goddess’s stories are, they aren’t exactly feminist literature.
There’s a Canon camera bearing the name, and Canon is still the market leader in camera sales. Good for wildlife photography and “content creation,” it’s set to release a new model shortly, from the looks of things.
NASA’s Earth Observing System is, you know, nothing much, just the largest and best set of eyes we have on what’s happening to our own planet. I’d really like to rank this higher, and I might even want it to have the #1 spot, except that (sigh) far too few people know about it…including yours truly, when I sat down to research this list.
The Entrepreneurial Operating System is a solid management philosophy introduced in the book Traction in 2007 by Gino Wickman. I fell asleep twice typing that, but 100,000 businesses claim its ethos as their own, so I guess it got some…traction (rim shot).
The Volkswagen convertible is in a lot of clue databases, but ceased production in 2016 due to an advanced case of nobody-buying-it-itis.