Solution: Flight simulator - NYT Crossword

This clue is fabulous and this entry is ultra meta, although I didn’t realize it until I started putting this post together. I imagine a “flight simulator” as a floating captain’s chair surrounded by a complex array of dials and toggles. (In a simpler form they date back to the 1920s. Safer than learning on the job to be a pilot.) In this puzzle, it’s an endless flight of steps, a STAIRMASTER. This piece of equipment was invented in the 1980s, when prime-time soap operas featured so many spurned lovers pushing heroines down stairs that people got nervous and wanted a machine to practice keeping their balance on. Notice that this entry happens smack in the middle of a rising set of stairs in the puzzle — right beside a character in a movie that’s full of staircase symbolism.