NYU Violets

    In a sports world filled with Wildcats, Bears, and Hawks, New York University (aka "NYU") has a rather unique team nickname - The Violets.

    I learned this while solving the NY Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle.  I needed a 7-letter word for "NYU nickname".  I had the first two letters - V and I, and felt pretty sure the last letter would be an S.  The answer seemed obvious - VIKINGS.

    But that didn't work well, especially once I got the third letter, the O.  So now we have VIO---S.  Root words like Violent and Violate came to mind, but none of their variations fit into seven letters.  I finally decided it could only be VIOLINS.  Maybe NYU is a music school.

    Needless to say, it didn't work either, and eventually the cross-words gave me the answer, VIOLETS.  Later, I looked NYU up in Wikipedia and sure enough, that's their name.  You can read about it here.

    You can make a case for the nickname being a color (like the Cincinnait Reds or the St. Louis Blues), but as Wikipedia notes, the reason for that color at NYU is believed to be the abundance of the violet flowers that used to be there.

    There are other weird team nicknames.  UC-Irvine are the Anteaters, and my local Scottsdale Community College, were officially the Artichokes for a couple decades.  (there's a long story to that).  But a flower?!  C'mon.

    To be fair, NYU uses a Bobcat mascot instead some guy dressed as a giant flower.  But that's kind of a cop-out at best, and makes you have just another humdrum mascot at worst.  So here's to you NYU VIOLETS!!