LA Times Crossword 29 Sep 18, Saturday

Bill’s time: 18m 32s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1. Garden lure : SPIDER WEB

The silk that makes up a web is a protein fiber that is “spun” by a spider. Spider silk is about one sixth of the density of steel, but has a comparable tensile strength.

15. It straddles the border of two western states : LAKE TAHOE

Lake Tahoe (often referred to simply as “Tahoe”) is up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and is located right on the border between California and Nevada. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in the country, and the largest lake in general, behind the five Great Lakes. It’s also the second deepest lake, with only the beautiful Crater Lake in Oregon being deeper. Given its location, there are tall casinos that sit right on the shore on the Nevada side of the state line where gambling is legal.

16. Brass, for one : ALLOY

An alloy is a mixture of metals, or a mixture of metal with some other element, that behaves like a metal. Alloys are produced as perhaps cheaper alternatives to pure metals, or as alternatives that have enhanced metallurgical properties. Common examples of alloys are steel, solder, brass, pewter and bronze.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Compare this with bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. Brass and bronze are often mistaken for each other.

19. Kind of gravel : PEA

Gravel is a loose mixture of rock fragments. Gravel is classified by the size of those fragments. For example, pea gravel comprises pea-size rounded stones.

20. What some glasses lack : RIMS

Those would be rimless eyeglasses.

27. Warning after using an iron : FORE!

No one seems to know for sure where the golfing term “fore!” comes from. It has been used at least as far back as 1881, and since then has been called out to warn other golfers that a wayward ball might be heading their way. My favorite possibility for its origin is that it is a contraction of the Gaelic warning cry “Faugh a Ballagh!” (clear the way!) which is still called out in the sport of road bowling. Road bowling is an Irish game where players bowl balls along roads between villages, trying to reach the end of the course in as few bowls as possible, just like in golf!

28. A.L. East squad : TOR

The Toronto Blue Jays baseball franchise was founded in 1977. The Blue Jays are the only team based outside the US to have won a World Series, doing so in 1992 and 1993. And since the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, the Blue Jays are the only Major League Baseball team now headquartered outside of the US.

30. Glove material : LATEX

Latex is a naturally occurring polymer made by some plants, that can also be made synthetically. About one in ten of the flowering plants in the world make the milky fluid called latex. It serves as a defense against insects and is exuded when a plant is injured or attacked by insects. Latex is collected commercially and is the source of natural rubber, which can be used to make things such as gloves, condoms and balloons.

33. Support on the way up : PITON

A piton is a piece of mountaineering equipment, an anchor designed to protect a climber if he or she falls. It is a metal spike driven into a crack in the rock face with a hammer. Pitons have eye holes through which a rope is attached using carabiners. “Piton” is a French word for a “hook”.

34. Cookout choice : BRAT

A bratwurst (sometimes “brat” in the US) is a German sausage. The name comes from “brät-” meaning “finely chopped meat”, and “Wurst” meaning “sausage”.

35. Modicum : BIT

A modicum is a small portion, with “modicum” coming into English from Latin, via Scottish. “Modicum” is Latin for “a little”.

36. One of a nursery rhyme trio : BAKER

The nursery rhyme “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” dates back to at least 1798 when it was first published in London:

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
‘Twas enough to make a man stare.

37. Most successful African-American PGA golfer before Woods : PEETE

Calvin Peete was the most successful African-American golfer on the PGA tour before Tiger Woods hit the circuit. Peete played on the Ryder Cup teams of 1983 and 1985.

41. Armadas on the road : NISSANS

The Armada is an SUV made by Nissan. The luxury version of the Armada is sold by Nissan as the Infiniti QX80.

49. “Battlestar Galactica” commander : ADAMA

On the TV show “Battlestar Galactica”, the commander of the Galactica was Commander Adama. Adama was portrayed by Canadian actor Lorne Greene.

“Battlestar Galactica” is a whole franchise these days based on an original television series that aired in 1978. The executive producer of that first series was Glen A. Larson who had been trying get the show off the ground since the sixties. Larson was finally able to get some finances for his sci-fi show on the back of the success of the 1977 movie “Star Wars”.

Down

3. Many of its products are named for Scandinavian places : IKEA

The furniture chain IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, when he was just 17-years-old. IKEA is an acronym standing for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd (don’t forget now!). Elmtaryd was the name of the farm where Ingvar Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd is his home parish in Sweden.

4. Mountain __ : DEW

If you check the can, you’ll see that “Mountain Dew” is now marketed as “Mtn Dew”.

6. Like much flower symmetry : RADIAL

Radial symmetry is seen in a number of animals and plants. Because of such symmetry, slices through several planes produce two identical pieces. Examples are jellyfish and sea stars from the animal kingdom, and many flowers from the plant kingdom.

9. One who does a waggle dance : BEE

The waggle dance is a behavior exhibited by bees that informs other members of the hive about the direction and distance to a supply of nectar. Apparently the meaning of the dance “moves” are fairly well understood. The direction of the dance relative to the sun indicates the direction to the nectar source. The length of time spent “waggling” in one direction indicates how far away the source is.

13. It’s often used to make paste : ROMA TOMATO

The Roma tomato isn’t considered an heirloom variety but it is very popular with home gardeners, especially those gardeners that don’t have a lot of space. It is a bush type (as opposed to vine type) and needs very little room to provide a lot of tomatoes.

14. Traditional Christmas Eve dish for some : OYSTER STEW

Oyster stew is a dish often associated with Thanksgiving in New England, and associated with Christmas Eve in the South.

24. Elastic wrap brand : ACE BANDAGE

ACE is a brand of elastic bandage that is often used as a compression wrap.

25. Herbivore named for its habitat : PRAIRIE DOG

The prairie dog is a type of ground squirrel that is found in the grasslands of North America. Prairie dogs are so named because they inhabit prairies and because they have a warning call that is similar to the bark of a dog.

26. List on a ticket : PARTY SLATE

In an election, a slate is a group of candidates running on a common platform.

33. Revolutionary pamphleteer : PAINE

Thomas Paine was an English author who achieved incredible success with his pamphlet “Common Sense” published in 1776 which advocated independence of colonial America from Britain. Paine had immigrated to the American colonies just two years before his pamphlet was published, and so was just in time to make a major contribution to the American Revolution.

36. Far from subtle : BLATANT

Something blatant is flagrant, brazenly obvious. The term was coined by Edmund Spenser in his 1596 poem “The Faerie Queene”. Spenser used “blatant” to describe a “thousand-tongued monster”, a metaphor for slander. It has been suggested that Spenser’s term was derived from the Latin verb “blatire” meaning “to babble”.

37. High-tech communications portmanteau : PHABLET

A phablet is a mobile device with that’s a little larger than the average smartphone, but a little smaller than the average tablet. “Phablet” is a portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet”. The first really successful phablet is the Galaxy Note, which was introduced by Samsung in 2011.

42. Rest area array : SEMIS

A “semi” is a “semi-trailer truck”. The vehicle is so called because it consists of a tractor and a half-trailer. The half-trailer is so called because it only has wheels on the back end, with the front supported by the tractor.

46. Old movie dog : ASTA

Asta is the wonderful little dog in the superb “The Thin Man” series of films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy (as Nick and Nora Charles). In the original story by Dashiell Hammett, Asta was a female Schnauzer, but on screen Asta was played by a wire-haired fox terrier called “Skippy”. Skippy was also the dog in “Bringing up Baby” with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, the one who kept stealing the dinosaur bone. Skippy retired in 1939, so Asta was played by other dogs in the remainder of “The Thin Man” films.

50. Low mil. rank : PVT

The lowest military rank of soldier is often called “private” (pvt.). The term comes from the Middle Ages when “private soldiers” were hired or conscripted by noblemen to form a private army. The more generic usage of “private” started in the 1700s.

51. Granada bear : OSO

Granada is a city and province in Andalusia in the south of Spain. Granada should not to be confused with Grenada (note the different spelling), the island nation in the Caribbean that was invaded by the US in 1983.