LA Times Crossword Answers 27 Mar 15, Friday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Jacob Stulberg
THEME: Fly Back … each of the answers to the clues with an asterisk contain the hidden word GNAT, but it is written BACKWARDS. And, we have a crossword version of the old joke, “Waiter, what is the fly doing in my soup”. Answered by “The backstroke, sir!”

30A. With 35-Across, question the starred clues might ask WHAT IS THIS FLY …
35A. See 30-Across … DOING IN MY ANSWER?

44A. Response to 30-/35-Across, and a hint to a hidden word in 14-, 17-, 61- and 66-Across THE BACK STROKE
14A. *1952 #1 hit for Leroy Anderson BLUE TANGO
17A. *Math reciprocal COTANGENT
61A. *”Atomic” Crayola color TANGERINE
66A. *Bogged down ENTANGLED

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 13m 16s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

4. Spartan colonnades STOAS
A stoa was a covered walkway in Ancient Greece. A stoa usually consisted of columns lining the side of a building or buildings, with another row of columns defining the other side of the walkway. The columns supported a roof. Often stoae would surround marketplaces in large cities.

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, famous for her military might. Spartan children had a tough upbringing, and newborn babies were bathed in wine to see if the child was strong enough to survive. Every child was presented to a council of elders that decided if the baby was suitable for rearing. Those children deemed too puny were executed by tossing them into a chasm. We’ve been using the term “spartan” to describe something self-disciplined or austere since the 1600s.

9. Belief of more than a billion ISLAM
Over 50% of the world’s population consider themselves to be adherents of the “big three” Abrahamic religions: Christianity (2-2.2 billion), Islam (1.6-1.7 billion) and Judaism (14-18 million).

14. *1952 #1 hit for Leroy Anderson BLUE TANGO
Leroy Anderson was a composer of light orchestral music, a lot of which was first recorded by the Boston Pops Orchestra. His “Blue Tango” topped the charts in 1951, and became the first instrumental ever to sell over a million copies. Anderson also wrote “Sleigh Ride”, which is a signature piece for the Boston Pops.

17. *Math reciprocal COTANGENT
The most familiar trigonometric functions are sine, cosine and tangent. Each of these is a ratio, a ratio of two sides of a right-angled triangle. The reciprocal of these three functions are secant, cosecant and cotangent. The reciprocal functions are simply the inverted ratios, the inverted sine, cosine and tangent.

22. Fuel economy testing org. EPA
The fuel economy data provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses a testing system that was developed in 1972. That test was designed to simulate typical driving conditions in Los Angeles during rush-hour. However, the EPA only test about 15% of new automobile models, and mainly relies on the fuel economy results provided by the manufacturers. The assumption is that the manufacturers are using the same test, and are presenting accurate information.

33. Zhou __ ENLAI
Zhou Enlai (also Chou En-Lai) was the first government leader of the People’s Republic of China and held the office of Premier from 1949 until he died in 1976. Zhou Enlai ran the government for Communist Party Leader Mao Zedong, often striking a more conciliatory tone with the West than that of his boss. He was instrumental, for example, in setting up President Nixon’s famous visit to China in 1972. Zhou Enlai died just a few months before Mao Zedong, with both deaths leading to unrest and a dramatic change in political direction for the country.

42. Boston Coll. is in it ACC
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)

Boston College is a private Jesuit school located in Chestnut Hill, just a few miles from Boston, Massachusetts. The list of notable Boston College alumni includes Secretary of State John Kerry and former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill.

43. ’90s runner PEROT
Ross Perot graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1953, as president of his class. Perot served his 4-year commitment but then resigned his commission, apparently having become somewhat disillusioned with the navy. He was ranked number 101 on the Forbes 400 List of Richest Americans in 2012, and at that time was worth about $3.5 billion. Back in 1992, Perot ran as an independent candidate for US president. He founded the Reform Party in 1995, and ran as the Reform Party candidate for president in 1996.

51. Medit. land ISR
The area that is now Israel was ruled by the British after WWI as the British Mandate of Palestine. The British evacuated the area after WWII, largely responding to pressure from both Jewish and Arab nationalist movements. The British Mandate expired on 14 May 1948 and the State of israel was established at the same time. This declaration of a new state was followed by the immediate invasion of the area by four Arab countries and the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. A ceasefire was declared after a year of fighting and tension has persisted in the region ever since.

57. Stop on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited route ERIE
Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited train service runs between Chicago and the Northeast. The eastbound train divides in Albany, New York into two sections, one bound for New York City, and one for Boston.

58. Theodore’s first lady EDITH
Edith Carow was the second wife of Theodore Roosevelt and the First Lady of the US when President Roosevelt was in office. Theodore’s first wife was Alice Hathaway Lee who died two days after the birth of their daughter in 1884. Roosevelt proposed to Carow in 1885 and the couple were married in 1886. Carow survived her husband, who died in 1919. The former First Lady briefly came out of retirement during the 1932 presidential election to campaign for President Herbert Hoover, which put Edith in opposition to her cousin-in-law Franklin D. Roosevelt.

61. *”Atomic” Crayola color TANGERINE
In the year 2000 the Crayola company, very cleverly I think, held the “Crayola Color Census 2000” in which people were polled and asked for their favorite Crayola colors. President George W. Bush chose “Blue Bell” and Tiger Woods chose “Wild Strawberry”.

65. Event with pole bending RODEO
The rodeo event known as pole bending involves horse and rider running a serpentine path around six poles arranged in a straight line.

67. “Octopus’s Garden” songwriter STARR
“Octopus’s Garden” is a song released by the Beatles in 1969, one that was written and performed by drummer Ringo Starr. This was only Ringo’s second musical composition and he gets sole credit for the writing, even though it is well established that George Harrison gave him quite a bit of “help”. The idea for the song came to Ringo while he was on holiday with his family in Sardinia. The captain of the boat on which they were staying told Ringo that an octopus would spend its time traveling the seabed collecting shiny objects with which to make itself a garden. I don’t know how true that is, but Ringo seemed to find it inspiring.

Down
1. Start of a children’s song ABCDE
“The Alphabet Song” was copyrighted in 1835 in the US. The tune that goes with the words is the French folk song “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman”, used by Mozart for a set of piano variations. The same tune is used for the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

2. Gluttonous Augustus in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” GLOOP
Augustus Gloop is a German boy with a huge appetite in the Roald Dahl book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. Augustus is the first child to find a golden ticket, giving him a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory and a lifetime supply of Wonka’s candy bars.

3. Posse target OUTLAW
Our word “posse” comes from an Anglo-Latin term from the early 15th century “posse comitatus” meaning “the force of the county”.

4. Stop: Abbr. STN
Station (stn.)

6. Word with man or horse ONE
Maybe “one-man band” or “one-man army”, and maybe “one-horse town” or “one-horse open sleigh”.

7. Latin lambs AGNI
“Agnus” is Latin for “lamb”, as in “Agnus Dei”, which translates as “Lamb of God”.

9. Confessor’s words IT WAS I
The much debated statement “it is I” is actually grammatically correct, and should not be “corrected” to “it is me”. Traditionally, pronouns following linking verbs, such as “is”, “appear” and “seem”, are written in the nominative case. Examples are:

– It is I (who called)
– It was he (who did it)
– It is we (who care)

10. Haberdashery stock SHIRTS
Back in the 14th century a haberdasher was a dealer in small wares. By the late 1800s, the term had evolved to mean a purveyor of menswear, and in particular was associated with the sale of hats.

21. Djibouti neighbor: Abbr. ETH
Ethiopia holds an important position within the nations of Africa, with the capital of Addis Ababa being home to many international organizations that are focused on the continent.

Djibouti is a country in the Horn of Africa, located to the northwest of Somalia, with coasts on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Once known as French Somaliland, the country gained independence from France in 1977. The newly independent nation adopted the same name as Djibouti, the capital city.

23. Canine FANG
The canine teeth of a mammal are also called the eye teeth. The name “canine” is used because these particular teeth are very prominent in dogs. The name “eye” is used because in humans the eye teeth are located in the upper jaw, directly below the eyes.

24. Hun king, in Norse legend ATLI
Atli is a character in the Volsunga Saga of 13th century Icelandic lore. It is believed that the Atli character is loosely based on Attila the Hun.

25. Capital of Shaanxi Province XI’AN
Xi’an, the capital of the Shaanxi province of China, is one of the oldest cities in the country, with history going back over 3,000 years. Today, in contemporary China, Xi’an is figuring at the forefront of the country’s participation in the modern world. China’s second aerospace center is being built in Xi’an, for example, and the city is also home to the world’s largest Internet Cafe/Bar, a facility with over 3,000 computers.

28. “Twittering Machine” artist KLEE
“Twittering Machine” is a watercolor and ink drawing by Swiss-German artist Paul Klee. It depicts some birds on a wire, which is in turn connected to a hand-crank, making a “twittering machine”. You can see the work in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where is regarded as one of the museum’s best-known and treasured pieces.

32. Fools SIMPS
“Simp” is slang for a simple or foolish person.

36. Big name in publishing OCHS
Adolph Ochs was a former owner of “The New York Times”. Ochs had purchased a controlling interest in “The Chattanooga Times” when he was only 19 years of age, and took control of “The New York Times” in 1896 when he was 38 years old. It was Ochs who moved the paper’s headquarters to a new building on Longacre Square in Manhattan, which the City later renamed to the famous “Times Square” after the newspaper. The Ochs-Sulzberger family has owned the paper ever since.

38. Mountain sighting YETI
A yeti is a beast of legend, also called an abominable snowman. “Yeti” is a Tibetan term, and the beast is fabled to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. Our equivalent legend in North America is that of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. The study of animals whose existence have not yet been substantiated is called cryptozoology.

40. Queen dowager of Jordan NOOR
Queen Noor is the widow of King Hussein of Jordan. Queen Noor was born Lisa Halaby in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Najeeb Halaby. Her father was appointed by President Kennedy as the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, and later became the CEO of Pan Am. Lisa Halaby met King Hussein in 1977, while working on the design of Jordan’s Queen Alia Airport. The airport was named after King Hussein’s third wife who had been killed that year in a helicopter crash. Halaby and the King were married the next year, in 1978.

Originally, a dowry was money that was set aside by a man for his wife and children, to be used in the event that he passed away. A widow who receives said money was known as a “dowager”. Over time, “dowry” became a term used for the money, goods or estate that a woman brought into a marriage, and “dowager” came to mean an elderly woman with an elevated social position.

41. Wall St. purchase STK
Stock (stk.)

45. Rattletrap BEATER
“Beater” is slang for an old car that is in poor condition, and is a term that dates back only to the 1980s.

47. “Born on the Bayou” band, briefly CCR
Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) was a rock band from San Francisco that actually played in a Southern rock style, with hits such as “Proud Mary”, “Bad Moon Rising”, “Down on the Corner” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain”.

“Born of the Bayou” is a Creedence Clearwater Revival song that was released as the B-side to their big hit “Proud Mary”.

48. “Mean Streets” co-star KEITEL
Harvey Keitel is an actor from New York City who grew up in Brighton Beach. He is best known for playing “tough guy” roles, as he did in “Reservoir Dogs”, “Pulp Fiction” and “Taxi Driver”.

“Mean Streets” is a crime drama co-written and directed by Martin Scorsese, and released in 1973. The leads in the movie are played Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

53. “2 Broke Girls” setting DINER
“2 Broke Girls” is a sitcom about two young ladies sharing an apartment in Brooklyn, and their attempts to launch a cupcake business. The title characters are played by Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs.

56. Actress Delany DANA
Dana Delaney is an actress from New York who had her big break playing Colleen McMurphy on the TV show “China Beach” in the late eighties. More recently, Delaney played Megan Hunt, the lead role on the drama series “Body of Proof”.

57. Bit of work ERG
An erg is a unit of mechanical work or energy. It is a small unit, as there are 10 million ergs in one joule. it has been suggested that an erg is about the amount of energy required for a mosquito to take off.

58. Triage ctrs. ERS
Emergency rooms (ERs)

“Triage” is the process of prioritizing patients for treatment, especially on a battlefield. The term “triage” is French and means “a sorting”.

62. Some Windows systems NTS
Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7; they’re all based on the Windows NT operating system. There is a common perception that Windows NT (WNT) takes its name from VMS, an earlier operating system developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. “WNT” is what’s called a “Caesar cypher” of “VMS”, as you just augment the letters of VMS alphabetically by one to arrive at WNT. Bill Gates disputes this derivation of the name, and in a 1998 interview stated that the NT originally stood for N-Ten and that the marketing folks at Microsoft revised history by changing it to “New Technology”.

63. Hood’s gun GAT
“Gat” is a slang term for a gun that is derived from the Gatling gun, the precursor to the modern machine gun. The Gatling gun was invented by Dr. Richard J. Gatling in 1861. Apparently he was inspired to invent it so that one man could do as much damage as a hundred, thereby reducing the size of armies and diminishing the suffering caused by war. Go figure …

64. U.S. Army rank abolished in 1815 ENS
Ensign is (usually) the most junior rank of commissioned officer in the US Navy and Coast Guard. The name comes from the tradition that the junior officer would be given the task of carrying the ensign flag.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Long __ AGO
4. Spartan colonnades STOAS
9. Belief of more than a billion ISLAM
14. *1952 #1 hit for Leroy Anderson BLUE TANGO
16. “Done!” THERE!
17. *Math reciprocal COTANGENT
18. Expand WIDEN
19. Numskull DOLT
20. Start of a rumor I HEAR …
22. Fuel economy testing org. EPA
23. Business card word FAX
26. On the table AT STAKE
30. With 35-Across, question the starred clues might ask WHAT IS THIS FLY …
33. Zhou __ ENLAI
34. Wide size EEE
35. See 30-Across … DOING IN MY ANSWER?
42. Boston Coll. is in it ACC
43. ’90s runner PEROT
44. Response to 30-/35-Across, and a hint to a hidden word in 14-, 17-, 61- and 66-Across THE BACK STROKE
50. Pith ESSENCE
51. Medit. land ISR
52. Revised versions: Abbr. EDS
55. Sharp ACRID
57. Stop on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited route ERIE
58. Theodore’s first lady EDITH
61. *”Atomic” Crayola color TANGERINE
65. Event with pole bending RODEO
66. *Bogged down ENTANGLED
67. “Octopus’s Garden” songwriter STARR
68. Holds up LASTS
69. Sch. units YRS

Down
1. Start of a children’s song ABCDE
2. Gluttonous Augustus in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” GLOOP
3. Posse target OUTLAW
4. Stop: Abbr. STN
5. __ sale TAG
6. Word with man or horse ONE
7. Latin lambs AGNI
8. To make sure SO THAT
9. Confessor’s words IT WAS I
10. Haberdashery stock SHIRTS
11. Directed LED
12. Exist ARE
13. Sign on a door MEN
15. Put away EAT
21. Djibouti neighbor: Abbr. ETH
23. Canine FANG
24. Hun king, in Norse legend ATLI
25. Capital of Shaanxi Province XIAN
27. Several A FEW
28. “Twittering Machine” artist KLEE
29. Observer EYER
31. Mother __ HEN
32. Fools SIMPS
35. 2/3, say DATE
36. Big name in publishing OCHS
37. Decorates, in a way ICES
38. Mountain sighting YETI
39. JFK list ARRS
40. Queen dowager of Jordan NOOR
41. Wall St. purchase STK
45. Rattletrap BEATER
46. Hold ANCHOR
47. “Born on the Bayou” band, briefly CCR
48. “Mean Streets” co-star KEITEL
49. How ghost stories are told EERILY
53. “2 Broke Girls” setting DINER
54. Origins SEEDS
56. Actress Delany DANA
57. Bit of work ERG
58. Triage ctrs. ERS
59. Finish, as a letter, perhaps DOT
60. Wyo. neighbor IDA
62. Some Windows systems NTS
63. Hood’s gun GAT
64. U.S. Army rank abolished in 1815 ENS

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