LA Times Crossword Answers 6 Nov 13, Wednesday

CROSSWORD SETTER: Gareth Bain
THEME: Record Deal … each of today’s themed answers starts with the name of a record company:

18A. *Madonna VIRGIN MARY (giving “Virgin Records”)
23A. *Ivy League professional school COLUMBIA LAW (giving “Columbia Records”)
37A. *Fruity dessert with sweetened crumbs APPLE BROWN BETTY (giving “Apple Records”)
52A. *”The Lord of the Rings” genre EPIC FANTASY (giving “Epic Records”)

58A. Prize for an aspiring musical artist, perhaps from the first word of the answer to a starred clue RECORD DEAL

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 7m 37s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

5. King who raged to Edgar on the heath LEAR
Edgar is a key figure in William Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear”. Edgar is the legitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, a powerful man in england. Edgar is tricked by his brother, which leads to his exile. Edgar returns in disguise as a mad beggar, and in his disguise is able to help both his father and King Lear himself.

9. Turbaned Punjabis SIKHS
Sikhism is a religion that was founded in the 15th century in the Punjab region, which straddles the India-Pakistan border. Even though Sikhism was established relatively recently, it is now the fifth-largest organized religion in the world.

14. Matty or Felipe of baseball ALOU
Felipe Alou is a former professional baseball player and manager. Alou managed the Montreal Expos from 1992 to 2001, and the San Francisco Giants from 2003 to 2006. Alou was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and came to the US to play for the Giants in 1955. Felipe’s brothers Matty and Jesús followed him to the US, and into Major League baseball.

15. Puffs additive ALOE
Puffs is a brand of facial tissue that is produced by Procter & Gamble.

16. Pistons great Thomas ISIAH
Isiah Thomas played his whole professional basketball-playing career with the Detroit Pistons, and he is now the head coach with Florida International University’s Golden Panthers. When you’re out shopping for popcorn, keep an eye out for the Dale & Thomas brand, as it’s co-owned by Isiah Thomas.

17. Hog product LARD
Fat, when extracted from the carcass of an animal, is called “suet”. Untreated suet decomposes at room temperature quite easily so it has to be “rendered” or purified to make it stable. Rendered fat from pigs is what we call “lard”. Rendered beef or mutton fat is known as “tallow”.

18. *Madonna VIRGIN MARY (giving “Virgin Records”)
Virgin Group is a huge multinational company that operates in the arenas of travel, entertainment and lifestyle. The company was started by Richard Branson and a partner as a record shop in 1970. The founders chose the name “Virgin” as they considered themselves “virgins” in the business world.

23. *Ivy League professional school COLUMBIA LAW (giving “Columbia Records”)
Columbia University is an Ivy League school in New York City. Columbia’s athletic teams are called the Lions, thought to be a reference to the lion on the English coat of arms. Prior to the American Revolution, Columbia was called King’s College as it was chartered by King George II in 1754.

Columbia Records was founded in 1888 as the Columbia Phonograph Company, which distributed and sold Edison phonographs and phonograph cylinders. The company was based in the District of Columbia, which location gave the company its name. Columbia is the oldest record company in the world, or I should say, the oldest company in the business of pre-recorded sound (as the “record” came after 1888).

26. PC brain CPU
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the main component on the “motherboard” of a computer. The CPU is the part of the computer that carries out most of the functions required by a program. Nowadays you can get CPUs in everything from cars to telephones.

31. Sci-fi hybrid CYBORG
“Cyborg” is an abbreviation for “cybernetic organism”, a being that is made up of both organic and synthetic parts.

33. Running or jumping GERUND
A gerund is a form of a verb that can be used as a noun. For example, the gerund of the verb “to act” is “acting”, as in the phrase “we really enjoyed the acting”.

36. Mideast flier EL AL
El Al Israel Airlines is the flag carrier of Israel. The term “el al” translates from Hebrew as “to the skies”.

37. *Fruity dessert with sweetened crumbs APPLE BROWN BETTY (giving “Apple Records”)
Brown Betty is a simple dessert made from apples (usually) with sweetened crumbs on top, and then baked.

The Beatles founded their own record label in 1968, calling it Apple Records. When singles were released, the A-side had the image of a Granny Smith apple on the label, with the B-side label showing the midsection of the same apple cut in half. Cute …

42. Wrath, in a hymn IRAE
“Dies Irae” is Latin for “Day of Wrath”. It is the name of a famous melody in Gregorian Chant, one that is often used as part of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass.

44. Green stuff DO-RE-MI
Do-re-mi is a slang term for cash. The term is American in origin and dates back to the 1920s. “Do-re-mi” is likely to be a pun on “dough”, another slang term for cash or money.

47. Transfer __ RNA
Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) is an essential catalyst in the manufacture of proteins in the body. The genetic code in DNA determines the sequence of amino acids that make up each protein. That sequence is read in DNA by messenger RNA, and amino acids are delivered for protein manufacture in the correct sequence by what is called transfer RNA. The amino acids are then formed into proteins by ribosomal RNA.

52. *”The Lord of the Rings” genre EPIC FANTASY (giving “Epic Records”)
“The Lord of the Rings” is a series of three epic fantasy films adapted from the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. The films were produced and directed by Peter Jackson in a project that lasted a full eight years. All three movie were shot simultaneously, and entirely In New Zealand, which is Jackson’s homeland. “The Lord of the Rings” series is his the highest-grossing film series of all time. The third of the three movies in the series is “The Return of the King”, which won 11 Oscars. That ties the record for the most Academy Awards won by a movie, alongside “Ben-Hur” and “Titanic”.

56. Liszt or Schubert FRANZ
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer and a fabulous pianist. Particularly towards the end of his life, Liszt gained a tremendous reputation as a teacher. While he was in his sixties, his teaching jobs caused him to commute regularly between the cities of Rome, Weimar and Budapest. It is quite remarkable that a man of such advanced age, and in the 1870s, could do so much annual travel. It is estimated that Liszt journeyed at least 4,000 miles every year!

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was an Austrian composer, particularly noted for his large portfolio of lieder (songs). Schubert is also famous for his “Unfinished Symphony”. Schubert’s Symphony No. 7 was was left as a draft after he passed away, and as such was “unfinished”. However, it was more complete than his Symphony No. 8 which is the one we know as “The Unfinished”.

63. Avatar of Vishnu RAMA
In the Hindu tradition, the god known as Vishnu has seven different avatars i.e. incarnations or manifestations. Rama is the seventh of these avatars.

64. Congo critter with striped legs OKAPI
The okapi is closely related to the giraffe, although it does have markings on its legs and haunches that resemble those of a zebra. The okapi’s tongue is long enough to reach back and wash its eyeballs (eek!), and can go back even further to clean its ears inside and out.

65. Golden St. campus UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) gets more applications from students than any other university in the country. UCLA also has more students enrolled than any other university in the state.

66. Grace ender AMEN
The word “amen” is translated as “so be it”. “Amen” is said to be of Hebrew origin, but it is likely to be also influenced by Aramaic and Arabic.

68. Use FedEx, say SHIP
FedEx began operations in 1973 as Federal Express, but now operates very successfully under it’s more catchy abbreviated name. Headquartered in Memphis with its “SuperHub” at Memphis International Airport, FedEx is the world’s largest airline in terms of tons of freight flown. And due to the presence of FedEx, Memphis Airport has the largest-volume cargo operation of any airport worldwide.

69. Male deer HART
Nowadays a “hart” is a male red deer, over five years old.

Down
1. Versailles attraction PALACE
Versailles is a city located just 10 miles from the center of Paris. It is famous of course as home to the magnificent Palace of Versailles. The palace started out as a hunting lodge built in the village of Versailles in 1624, built for Louis XIII. Louis XIII extended the lodge into a full-blown château, but it was Louis XIV who expanded it into one of the largest palaces on the planet. Louis XIV moved the royal court from Paris to Versailles starting in 1678.

2. Los __: Manhattan Project site ALAMOS
The town of Los Alamos, New Mexico takes its name from the Spanish for “the poplars” or “the cottonwoods”. Famously, it is home to Los Alamos National Laboratory which was founded during WWII to work on the Manhattan Project, the development of the first atomic bomb. The town of Los Alamos didn’t exist as such, until it was planned and constructed to support the employees working on development of the bomb.

The Manhattan project was of course the joint US-Canada-UK project to develop an atomic bomb during WWII. Initially, the Army headquarters for the program was located on the 18th floor of a building on Broadway in New York City. Eventually, because of that first location, the project adopted the Manhattan name.

4. Invasive vine KUDZU
Kudzu is a climbing vine that is native to southern Japan and southeast China. “Kudzu” is derived from the Japanese name for the plant, “kuzu”. Kudzu is a vigorously growing weed that chokes other plants by climbing all over them and shielding them from light. Kudzu was brought to the US from Asia for the Japanese pavilion in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. It was marketed as an ornamental, especially in the southeast of the country, and now is all over the region. Kudzu earned itself the nickname “the vine that ate the South”.

5. WC LAV
Our word “lavatory” originally referred to a washbasin, and comes from the Latin “lavatorium”, a place for washing. In the 1600s a “lavatory” came to mean a washroom, and in the 1920s a toilet.

When I was growing up in Ireland, a “bathroom” was a room that had a bath and no toilet. The separate room with the commode was called “the toilet” or sometimes the W.C. (the water closet). Apparently the term closet was used because in the 1800s when homeowners started installing toilets indoors they often displaced clothes and linens in a “closet”, as a closet was the right size to take the commode. It has been suggested that the British term “loo” comes from Waterloo (water-closet … water-loo), but no one seems to know for sure. Another suggestion is that the term comes from the card game of “lanterloo” in which the pot was called the loo!

6. Actor Roth ELI
Eli Roth is one of a group of directors of horror movies known quite graphically as “The Splat Pack”. I can’t stand “splat” movies and avoid them as best I can. Roth is also famous for playing Donny Donowitz in the Quentin Tarantino movie “Inglourious Basterds”, a good film I thought, if you close your eyes during the gruesome bits.

7. Arterial trunk AORTA
The aorta originates in the heart and extends down into the abdomen. It is the largest artery in the body.

11. Rio automaker KIA
Kia have making the subcompact model called a Rio since 2000.

19. Computer that may use Snow Leopard IMAC
Apple introduced the Mac OS X Operating System in 2000. Each version of this operating system has had a code name, and until recently that code name is always a type of big cat. The versions and code names are:

– 10.0: Cheetah
– 10.1: Puma
– 10.2: Jaguar
– 10.3: Panther
– 10.4: Tiger
– 10.5: Leopard
– 10.6: Snow Leopard
– 10.7: Lion
– 10.8: Mountain Lion
– 10.9: Mavericks (named for a surfing location in California)

Interestingly, the earlier beta version was called Kodiak, after the bear, and not a cat at all.

21. Toastmaster EMCEE
The term “emcee” come from “MC”, an acronym standing for Master or Mistress of Ceremonies.

26. Firearms pioneer COLT
Samuel Colt was fascinated as a young man by the science behind gunpowder and its used in weapons. He decided early on in his life, that he would respond to the challenge of the day, how to achieve the impossible, a weapon that fire more than the two times available at the time using a double-barreled rifle. He came up with the concept of the revolver while at sea, modeling his design on the spoked wheel that steered the ships on which he served. His revolver made him a very rich man in his own lifetime. By the time he died in 1862, his estate was valued at around $15 million. Can you imagine? $15 million back in 1862?

27. Backside PRAT
“Prat” is a relatively new word for me, a slang term for the buttocks apparently …

34. Pierre, e.g. NOM
“Nom” is the French word for “name”.

35. Friend of Snow White DWARF
In the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale called “Snow White”, the seven dwarfs were not given any names. The names were added for the 1937 classic Disney film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. The seven dwarfs are:

– Doc (the leader of the group)
– Grumpy (that would be me, according to my wife …)
– Happy
– Sleepy
– Bashful
– Sneezy
– Dopey

37. Verdi opera with pyramids AIDA
“Aida” is a famous opera by Giuseppe Verdi, actually based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Mariette also designed the costumes and stages for the opening performance. The opera was first staged in 1871 in an opera house in Cairo. In the storyline, Aida is an Ethiopian princess brought into Egypt as a slave. Radames is an Egyptian commander who falls in love with her, and then of course complications arise!

40. NPR correspondent Totenberg NINA
Nina Totenberg is a very able legal affairs correspondent who works for National Public Radio. Totenberg’s main focus is on the activities of the US Supreme Court. Famously, she was the journalist who uncovered the allegations of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas made by Anita Hill.

45. “__ Melodies”: Warner Bros. shorts MERRIE
“Merrie Melodies” was a series of cartoons distributed by Warner Brothers, first introduced in 1931 and last produced in 1969.

46. Tablet debut of 2010 IPAD
Apple’s iPad has really pervaded our lives since it was introduced in 2010. We probably won’t see many pilots walking around airports laid down with briefcases chock full of paperwork anymore. Alaska Airlines replaced all that paperwork in 2011 so that now each pilot carries an iPad weighing 1½ pounds instead of a briefcase weighing perhaps 25 pounds.

48. Land on an isthmus PANAMA
The nation that we now know as Panama sits on an isthmus that formed about 3 million years ago. The isthmus was the result of a land bridge forming between North and South America as two tectonic plates of the Earth’s crust slowly collided. Man first attempted to create a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama in 1881, but the 48-mile long Panama Canal only opened for business in 1914.

The word “isthmus” (plural “isthmi”) comes the Greek word for “neck”. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land that usually connects two large land masses. The most notable examples of the formation are the Isthmus of Corinth in the Greek peninsula, and the Isthmus of Panama connecting North and South America.

49. Chemical relative ISOMER
In the world of chemistry, isomers are two compounds with same chemical properties and the same atomic constituents, but with a slightly different arrangement of the atoms relative to each other.

53. River near Karachi INDUS
The Indus river rises in Tibet and flows through the length of Pakistan and empties into the Arabian Sea, the part of the Indian Ocean lying to the west of the Indian subcontinent. The Indus gives its name to the country of India as “India” used to be the name of the region (which paradoxically is now in modern-day Pakistan) along the eastern banks of the river.

Karachi is the largest city in Pakistan. Karachi was the country’s capital when Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947. The capital was moved to Rawalpindi in 1958, and then to the newly built city of Islamabad in 1960.

54. Austerlitz native CZECH
“Austerlitz” is the historic name for the Czech town of Slavkov u Brna. The town famously gave its name to the Battle of Austerlitz, which took place a few miles to the west of the town.

The Battle of Austerlitz (in the modern-day Czech Republic) was fought between the French Empire and the combined forces of the Russian Empire and Holy Roman Empire. The result was a decisive victory for the French forces, led by Emperor Napoleon I. The Russian forces, under Tsar Alexander I, were granted safe passage back to their home sole. The Holy Roman Empire forces had been led by Emperor Francis II, and as a result of the defeat he abdicated the Imperial throne and the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist.

55. Holy ark contents TORAH
The Torah ark is found in a synagogue, and is the ornamental container in which are stored the Torah scrolls. The word “Torah” best translates as “teaching”, I am told.

59. __ out a living EKE
To “eke out” means to “make something go further or last longer”. So, you can eke out your income by cutting back on expenses.

61. Onetime ring king ALI
Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam in 1964. Who can forget Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame for the 1996 games in Atlanta? Ali was presented with a gold medal during those ’96 Games, a replacement for the medal he won at the 1960 Olympics. He had thrown the original into the Ohio River as a gesture of disgust after being refused service at a “whites only” restaurant.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Lies as a whole? PACK
5. King who raged to Edgar on the heath LEAR
9. Turbaned Punjabis SIKHS
14. Matty or Felipe of baseball ALOU
15. Puffs additive ALOE
16. Pistons great Thomas ISIAH
17. Hog product LARD
18. *Madonna VIRGIN MARY (giving “Virgin Records”)
20. Leave open-mouthed AMAZE
22. Gets under control TAMES
23. *Ivy League professional school COLUMBIA LAW (giving “Columbia Records”)
26. PC brain CPU
29. Skier’s challenge ESS
30. Tuna holder CAN
31. Sci-fi hybrid CYBORG
33. Running or jumping GERUND
36. Mideast flier EL AL
37. *Fruity dessert with sweetened crumbs APPLE BROWN BETTY (giving “Apple Records”)
42. Wrath, in a hymn IRAE
43. Writes to, nowadays EMAILS
44. Green stuff DO-RE-MI
47. Transfer __ RNA
48. Orchestra site PIT
51. Say more ADD
52. *”The Lord of the Rings” genre EPIC FANTASY (giving “Epic Records”)
56. Liszt or Schubert FRANZ
57. Plaque honoree DONOR
58. Prize for an aspiring musical artist, perhaps from the first word of the answer to a starred clue RECORD DEAL
63. Avatar of Vishnu RAMA
64. Congo critter with striped legs OKAPI
65. Golden St. campus UCLA
66. Grace ender AMEN
67. Concise TERSE
68. Use FedEx, say SHIP
69. Male deer HART

Down
1. Versailles attraction PALACE
2. Los __: Manhattan Project site ALAMOS
3. Pink shades CORALS
4. Invasive vine KUDZU
5. WC LAV
6. Actor Roth ELI
7. Arterial trunk AORTA
8. Kingly REGAL
9. Like the village blacksmith’s hands SINEWY
10. Philosophies ISMS
11. Rio automaker KIA
12. Laugh syllable HAR
13. Shunning the spotlight, maybe SHY
19. Computer that may use Snow Leopard IMAC
21. Toastmaster EMCEE
24. Caustic comeback BARB
25. Accustom (to) INURE
26. Firearms pioneer COLT
27. Backside PRAT
28. Hard to look at UGLY
32. Nectar collectors BEES
33. High spirits GLEE
34. Pierre, e.g. NOM
35. Friend of Snow White DWARF
37. Verdi opera with pyramids AIDA
38. Nudge PROD
39. Tex’s bud PARD
40. NPR correspondent Totenberg NINA
41. Short on taste BLAND
45. “__ Melodies”: Warner Bros. shorts MERRIE
46. Tablet debut of 2010 IPAD
48. Land on an isthmus PANAMA
49. Chemical relative ISOMER
50. Oppressive ruler TYRANT
53. River near Karachi INDUS
54. Austerlitz native CZECH
55. Holy ark contents TORAH
56. Dandies FOPS
58. Decompose ROT
59. __ out a living EKE
60. One may be hired CAR
61. Onetime ring king ALI
62. Track circuit LAP

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