LA Times Crossword Answers 6 Oct 2017, Friday

Constructed by: Jeffrey Wechsler

Edited by: Rich Norris

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Theme: Added Debts

Debts may take the form of IOUs. Today’s themed answers are common two-word phrases with the suffix -IOUS added to the first word:

• 67A. They traditionally appear in red … and in another form in 20-, 32-, 40- and 53-Across : DEBTS

• 20A. Agricultural college facility? : STUDIOUS FARM (from “stud farm”)
• 32A. One who got in before a crash? : FURIOUS TRADER (from “fur trader”)
• 40A. Lancelot bragging about his exploits? : TEDIOUS KNIGHT (from “Ted Knight”)
• 53A. What theater districts offer? : COPIOUS SHOWS (from “cop shows”)

Bill’s time: 9m 26s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies

Across

1. Best-selling book generally not on best-seller lists : BIBLE

The Bible is the best-selling book of all time, with annual sales running at about 100 million copies.

9. Early automaker : OLDS

Ransom Eli Olds was a pioneer in the automotive industry, and the founder of the Oldsmobile and REO brands. Olds introduced the first modern stationary assembly line (Henry Ford’s famous innovation was the moving assembly line).

16. Heist haul : LOOT

“Loot” is the name given to anything taken by dishonesty or force, particularly during war. The term came into English from the Hindi “lut” meaning “goods taken from an enemy”.

17. Magoo’s malady : MYOPIA

A myope is someone suffering from myopia, short-sightedness. Far-sightedness or long-sightedness is known as hypermetropia or hyperopia .

Mr. Quincy Magoo is a wonderful cartoon character voiced by Jim Backus. Backus is probably equally well-known for playing Mr. Magoo as well as Thurston Howell, III on “Gilligan’s Island”. Mr. Magoo first appeared on the screen in a short called “The Ragtime Bear” in 1949. His persona was at least in part based on the antics of W. C. Fields. Backus originally used a fake rubber nose that pinched his nostrils in order to create the distinctive voice, although in time he learned to do the voice without the prop. My absolute favorite appearance by Mr. Magoo is in “Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol”, a true classic from the sixties. There was a movie adaptation of “Mr Magoo” released in 1997, with Leslie Nielsen playing the title role.

20. Agricultural college facility? : STUDIOUS FARM (from “stud farm”)

The word “stud”, meaning “a male horse kept for breeding”, is derived from the Old English word “stod”, which described a whole herd of horses. The term “stud” can be used figuratively for a “ladies’ man”.

30. Madrid-to-Paris dir. : NNE

Madrid is the largest city in Spain and the capital. Madrid is located very close to the geographical center of the country. It is the third-largest city in the European Union (after London and Paris). People from Madrid called themselves Madrileños.

The French capital of Paris is named for the Parisii, a Celtic Iron Age people that lived in the area on the banks of the River Seine.

31. Rose in a field : PETE

Pete Rose was a talented baseball player who holds the record for all-time Major League hits. Rose’s nickname was “Charlie Hustle”. In recent years of course his reputation has been tarnished by admissions that he bet on games in which he played and managed.

36. Achilles __ : TENDON

The Achilles tendon is located at the back of the leg, above the heel. The name is a reference to Achilles, the hero of Greek myth who was invulnerable in all of his body except for his heel.

40. Lancelot bragging about his exploits? : TEDIOUS KNIGHT (from “Ted Knight”)

Sir Lancelot was one of the knights in the legend of King Arthur and the Round Table. Lancelot was the most trusted of Arthur’s knights when it came to battle, but off the field he had a poorer reputation. Famously, Lancelot had an affair with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife.

Ted Knight was the actor best known for playing the slow-witted news anchor Ted Baxter on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Knight’s most famous role on the big screen was Judge Elihu Smails in the 1980 comedy “Caddyshack”.

44. “The BFG” author : DAHL

“The BFG” is a 1982 children’s book by Welsh author Roald Dahl. The initialism in the title stands for “Big Friendly Giant”. Dahl dedicated “The BFG” to his daughter Olivia, who had passed away at the age of 7 in 1962.

46. Intelligence org. : NSA

National Security Agency (NSA)

47. Dutch genre painter : STEEN

Jan Steen was a painter from the Netherlands who was active in the Dutch Golden Age, the 17th century. Steen’s most famous work is probably “The Feast of Saint Nicholas”, which we can see at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

48. Juillet’s season : ETE

In French, “juillet” (July) is a month in the “été” (summer).

49. KFC option : BREAST

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)

52. Red __ : SEA

There are four seas named for colors in English:

• the Yellow Sea
• the Black Sea
• the Red Sea
• the White Sea.

62. Gospel travelers : MAGI

“Magi” is the plural of the Latin word “magus”, a term applied to someone who was able to read the stars. Hence, magi is commonly used with reference to the “wise men from the East” who followed the star and visited Jesus soon after he was born. In Western Christianity, the three Biblical Magi are:

• Melchior: a scholar from Persia
• Caspar: a scholar from India
• Balthazar: a scholar from Arabia

Down

2. Columbia, e.g. : IVY

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.

4. Enlarged Revlon ad image : LIPS

Revlon was founded in the depths of the Great Depression in 1932, by Charles and Joseph Revson. The “S” in the Revson name was replaced by the “L” from Charles “Lachman”, a chemist who partnered with the two brothers.

6. MLBer at AT&T Park : SF GIANT

AT&T Park is a baseball stadium located on San Francisco Bay that is home to the San Francisco Giants. It opened for business in 2000, replacing Candlestick Park as the Giants’ home stadium.

9. “Frozen” snowman : OLAF

In the 2013 animated film “Frozen”, Olaf is a happy-go-lucky snowman who provides a lot of comic relief in the movie. Olaf is voiced by actor and comedian Josh Gad.

11. “Little” Dickens title character : DORRIT

“Little Dorrit” is a novel by Charles Dickens, a satirical work that takes potshots at the government and society of the day.

12. Obstruct : STYMIE

The word “stymie” comes from golf, and is a situation in which one’s approach to the hole is blocked by an opponent’s ball. We use the term more broadly for a distressing situation.

14. Author Bellow : SAUL

Saul Bellow was the only writer to have won the National Book Award three times. He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Bellow was a Canadian-born American writer, and among his most famous works were “Herzog” and “Humboldt’s Gift”.

28. Revolutionary first name : FIDEL

Fidel Castro studied law at the University of Havana and there became a follower of left-wing ideals. He launched his first rebellion against Cuban president Fulgencio Batista in 1953, which landed him in jail for a year. He later led rebels in a guerrilla war against the Cuban government, which led to the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of Batista in 1959. Castro took control of the country, and immediately formed a strong relationship with the Soviet Union. Concern over the alliance in the US led to the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. There followed the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Fidel Castro started to transfer power to his brother Raúl in 2008, and passed away in 2016.

29. Child subject : FOOD

Julia Child was an American chef who is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public. During WWII, Julia Child joined the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the predecessor to the CIA. She worked for the OSS in Washington, Ceylon and China. While in the OSS, she met her husband Paul Child who was also an OSS employee. Paul joined the Foreign Service after the war, and it was his posting to France that created the opportunity for Julie to learn about French cuisine. If you haven’t seen it, I highly, highly recommend the movie “Julie & Julia”, one of the best films of 2009. Meryl Streep does a fabulous job playing the larger-than-life Julia Child.

34. Prize for Indy : ARK

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” is, in my humble opinion, the best of the Indiana Jones franchise of movies. This first Indiana Jones film was released in 1981, produced by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. Harrison Ford was Spielberg’s first choice to play the lead, but Lucas resisted as he was concerned that he would be too closely associated with the actor (as Ford played Han Solo in “Star Wars”, and also appeared in Lucas’s “American Graffiti”). Tom Selleck was offered the role but he couldn’t get out of his commitments to “Magnum, P.I.” Eventually Spielberg got his way and Ford was hired, a good thing I say …

35. Oxford figures : DONS

A don is tutor or fellow at a university, especially at Oxford and Cambridge in England.

The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. The exact date of the school’s founding is uncertain, although teaching was recorded there as early as 1096. Back in the early 1200s, the authorities from the town of Oxford hanged two Oxford University scholars following the death of a woman. There followed a dispute between the townsfolk and the university that resulted in many academics leaving Oxford. Many ended up in Cambridge, leading to the founding of the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two universities a similar status today, and are often referred to jointly as “Oxbridge”.

39. Italian peak : ETNA

Mount Etna on the island of Sicily is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy. Etna is about 2 1/2 times the height of its equally famous sister, Mt. Vesuvius. Mt. Etna is home to a 110-km long narrow-gauge railway, and two ski resorts.

42. Toyota’s Ky. plant, e.g. : US ASSET

Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK) is an automobile manufacturing facility located in Georgetown, Kentucky. The factory opened in 1986, when it was Toyota’s first car manufacturing plant in the US.

45. Like some Alban Berg works : ATONAL

Alban Berg was a composer from Austria. He was one of the members of what is called the Second Viennese School, along with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Weber. This group embraced the concept of atonality, something which frankly is beyond me …

49. Tiny Tim, for one : BOY

Tiny Tim is the nickname of Timothy Cratchit, the little disabled boy in the Charles Dickens novella “A Christmas Carol”.

50. Rene of “Thor” : RUSSO

The very talented actress Rene Russo is a native of Burbank, California. Russo went to highschool (with actor/director Ron Howard), but dropped out in tenth grade. At seventeen, she was given the opportunity to train as a model and within a very short time appeared on the cover of “Vogue”. As her modelling jobs slowed down in her early thirties, Russo made a career change and studied theater and acting. I am so glad she did, as Rene Russo is one of my favorite actresses …

51. Vegan staple : TOFU

Tofu is another name for bean curd, and is a Japanese word meaning just that … bean that has curdled. Tofu is produced by coagulating soy milk, using either salt or something acidic. Once the protein has coagulated, the curds are pressed into the familiar blocks. Personally I love tofu, but my wife, she absolutely hates it …

54. Hipbones : ILIA

The sacrum and the two ilia are three bones in the human pelvis.

56. Ginza quaff : SAKE

We refer to the Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice as “sake”. We’ve gotten things a bit mixed up in the West. “Sake” is actually the word that the Japanese use for all alcoholic drinks. What we know as sake, we sometimes refer to as rice wine. Also, the starch in the rice is first converted to sugars that are then fermented into alcohol. This is more akin to a beer-brewing process than wine production, so the end product is really a rice “beer” rather than a rice “wine”.

Ginza is a district in Tokyo that is noted for its western shops, and especially the leading fashion stores.

“Quaff” is both a verb and a noun. One quaffs (takes a hearty drink) of a quaff (a hearty drink).

60. Sinus doc : ENT

Ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT)

61. Driller’s deg. : DDS

Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS)

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Complete List of Clues and Answers

Across

1. Best-selling book generally not on best-seller lists : BIBLE

6. Benchmark: Abbr. : STD

9. Early automaker : OLDS

13. Won’t go near : AVOIDS

15. Back again : FRO

16. Heist haul : LOOT

17. Magoo’s malady : MYOPIA

18. Ended up off the mark : GONE AWRY

20. Agricultural college facility? : STUDIOUS FARM (from “stud farm”)

22. Polling abbr. : PCT

25. Arrive at hastily, as a conclusion : LEAP TO

26. Sundial marking : VII

27. Content of little substance : FLUFF

30. Madrid-to-Paris dir. : NNE

31. Rose in a field : PETE

32. One who got in before a crash? : FURIOUS TRADER (from “fur trader”)

36. Achilles __ : TENDON

37. Take turns : ROTATE

40. Lancelot bragging about his exploits? : TEDIOUS KNIGHT (from “Ted Knight”)

44. “The BFG” author : DAHL

46. Intelligence org. : NSA

47. Dutch genre painter : STEEN

48. Juillet’s season : ETE

49. KFC option : BREAST

52. Red __ : SEA

53. What theater districts offer? : COPIOUS SHOWS (from “cop shows”)

57. Financial workers : ANALYSTS

58. Like merciless opponents : FEARED

62. Gospel travelers : MAGI

63. Get : SEE

64. Not nice at all : UNKIND

65. Urgent request : PLEA

66. Decline, with “out” : OPT

67. They traditionally appear in red … and in another form in 20-, 32-, 40- and 53-Across : DEBTS

Down

1. Loud sound : BAM!

2. Columbia, e.g. : IVY

3. “That’s lousy!” : BOO!

4. Enlarged Revlon ad image : LIPS

5. Reduce a sentence, say : EDIT

6. MLBer at AT&T Park : SF GIANT

7. Highway pursuer : TROOPER

8. Bakery item with some shortening? : DONUT

9. “Frozen” snowman : OLAF

10. What most pitchers have, as batters : LOW AVERAGES

11. “Little” Dickens title character : DORRIT

12. Obstruct : STYMIE

14. Author Bellow : SAUL

19. What that is in Spain : ESO

21. Scout groups : DENS

22. [It just vanished!] : PFFT!

23. Answer guide? : CLUE

24. Get on with one’s life : TURN THE PAGE

28. Revolutionary first name : FIDEL

29. Child subject : FOOD

31. It’s not big in France : PETIT

33. Verse lead-in : UNI-

34. Prize for Indy : ARK

35. Oxford figures : DONS

38. Fare-well link : THEE

39. Italian peak : ETNA

41. Like the simplest process : ONE-STEP

42. Toyota’s Ky. plant, e.g. : US ASSET

43. Old-school diplomatic accessory : SASH

44. Pack up the tents and supplies : DECAMP

45. Like some Alban Berg works : ATONAL

49. Tiny Tim, for one : BOY

50. Rene of “Thor” : RUSSO

51. Vegan staple : TOFU

54. Hipbones : ILIA

55. Direct (one’s way) : WEND

56. Ginza quaff : SAKE

59. Barbecue morsel : RIB

60. Sinus doc : ENT

61. Driller’s deg. : DDS

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