LA Times Crossword 3 Aug 19, Saturday

Advertisement

Constructed by: Kyle Dolan
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Theme: None

Bill’s time: 7m 12s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 “The Howdy Doody Show” cry adopted by ’60s California surfers : COWABUNGA!

“Cowabunga” is an exclamation adopted by surfers in the sixties. The original use of “cowabunga” was on television, a catchphrase of Chief Thunderthud in “The Howdy Doody Show” in the fifties. The term got even more exposure in the nineties when it was adopted by the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.

16 Mozart work : OPERA

The Austrian composer’s full name was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The name “Wolfgang” translates literally as “wolf journey”. “Amadeus” translates as “love god”!

19 Antonio’s “Evita” role : CHE

“Evita” was the follow-up musical to “Jesus Christ Superstar” for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Both of these works were originally released as album musicals, and very successful ones at that (I remember buying them when they first came out). “Evita” was made into a film in 1996, with Madonna playing the title role and Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce playing her husband Juan Perón.

Antonio Banderas is an actor from Málaga in Andalusia on the southern coast of Spain. Banderas’s breakthrough role in Hollywood was the gay lover of the Tom Hanks character in 1993’s “Philadelphia”. He was married for 20 years to actress Melanie Griffith, whom he met in 1995 while filming “Two Much”.

21 Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester __” : PSALMS

“Chichester Psalms” is a choral work by Leonard Bernstein that uses extracts from the Hebrew Book of Psalms as the libretto. The piece was commissioned for a choir festival held at Chichester Cathedral in England in 1965, hence the name.

23 Echolocation users : BATS

Echolocation, when used by animals, is known as biosonar. The best-known example of an animal using biosonar is probably the bat, although not all species of bat use sounds to locate objects.

24 Ancient provincial governor : SATRAP

“Satrap” is an old Persian name for a provincial governor. In modern English usage, a satrap is a world leader who is heavily influenced by a superior power.

31 Helvetica cousin : ARIAL

Helvetica and Arial are fonts.

33 Market letters : IGA

The initialism “IGA” stands for “Independent Grocers Alliance”, and is a chain of supermarkets that extends right around the world. IGA’s headquarters is in Chicago. The company uses the slogan “Hometown Proud Supermarkets”.

34 British breakfast dish with an onomatopoeic name : BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

Bubble and squeak is a dish that originated in the UK. The basic dish is made from leftover mashed potato and cabbage, which are mixed together and pan-fried. The dish is so named because the cabbage can make bubbling and squeaking noises as it cooks. We have a similar dish in Ireland called colcannon. I love colcannon, absolutely love it …

Onomatopoeia is the naming of something by vocally imitating the sound associated with it. Examples of onomatopoeia are chirp, clash, click and hiccups.

42 Rejections : VETOES

The verb “veto” comes directly from Latin and means “I forbid”. The term was used by tribunes of ancient Rome to indicate that they opposed measures passed by the Senate.

44 Ramen flavoring : MISO

Miso is the name of the seasoning that makes miso soup. Basic miso seasoning is made by fermenting rice, barley and soybeans with salt and a fungus to produce a paste. The paste can be added to stock to make miso soup, or perhaps to flavor tofu.

Ramen is a noodle dish composed of Chinese-style wheat noodles in a meat or fish broth flavored with soy or miso sauce. Ramen is usually topped with sliced pork and dried seaweed. The term “ramen” is also used for precooked, instant noodles that come in single-serving, solid blocks.

48 Protective excavation : MOAT

A moat is a protective trench that surrounds a castle, say, or an exhibit in a zoo. A moat may or may not be filled with water.

49 Coast Guard pickup : SOS

The combination of three dots – three dashes – three dots, is a Morse signal first introduced by the German government as a standard distress call in 1905. The sequence is remembered as the letters SOS (three dots – pause – three dashes – pause – three dots). That said, in the emergency signal there is no pause between the dots and dashes, so “SOS” is really only a mnemonic. Similarly, the phrases “Save Our Souls” and “Save Our Ship” are also mnemonics that were introduced after the SOS signal was adopted.

The US Coast Guard (USCG) has the distinction of being the country’s oldest continuous seagoing service. The USCG was founded as the Revenue Cutter Service by Alexander Hamilton in 1790.

52 __ Unido: United Kingdom, in Spain : REINO

“Estados Unidos” is Spanish for “United States”, and “Reino Unido” is Spanish for “United Kingdom”.

55 Thomas’ veep : AARON

Aaron Burr was the third vice-president of the US from 1801 to 1805, and served under Thomas Jefferson. In the final year of his term in office, Burr fought an illegal duel and killed his political rival Alexander Hamilton. Burr was charged with several crimes as a result, but those charges were eventually dropped. The Democratic-Republican Party had already decided not to nominate Burr as candidate for vice president to run alongside Jefferson in the 1804 election, largely because the relationship between Vice President Burr and President Jefferson was so poor. The subsequent fallout resulting from the killing of Alexander Hamilton effectively ended Burr’s political career.

56 Pittsburgh Steelers’ founder : ART ROONEY

Art Rooney was the son of Irish immigrants who left the country during the Potato Famine. Rooney founded the Pittsburgh Pirates football team in 1933, a team that was to become the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1940.

Down

1 Subj. with integrals : CALC

In the world of calculus, the integration function calculates the area between a curve and the x-axis or y-axis.

2 Tweeter’s “conversely” : OTOH

On the other hand (OTOH)

7 Arms treaty subj. : N-TEST

Nuclear test (N-test)

8 __ therapy : GENE

Gene therapy is an experimental technology used to treat disease. The basic principle is to transplant genes into a patient’s cells in order to cure a disease caused by the absence of those genes.

9 Were present? : ARE

The verb “were” becomes “are” in the present tense.

12 Color similar to turquoise : TEAL

The beautiful color teal takes it name from the duck called a teal, which has dark greenish-blue (teal) markings on its head and wings.

21 Spread things : PATES

Pâté is a rich spreadable paste made from a mixture of ground meat and fat, to which various vegetables, herbs and spices may be added. The most famous version of the paste is pâté de foie gras, which is made from the fattened livers of geese (“foie gras” means “fat liver” in French).

22 __ League : ARAB

The Arab League was formed in 1945 in Cairo with six founding members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. As a result of events during the 2011 Arab Spring, the Arab League has suspended Syria’s membership.

23 Maroon 5 and Ben Folds Five : BANDS

Maroon 5 is a rock band from LA. Most of the band members met in high school where they formed a garage band called Kara’s Flowers in 1995. The band reformed as Maroon 5 in 2001 and were a big hit almost straight away. Personally, I haven’t heard of them outside of crosswords …

Ben Folds Five was a rock group for Chapel Hill, North Carolina that was active, on and off, from 1993 until 2003. Ben Folds formed the group, and despite the name, it comprised just three members.

24 Fencing option : SABER

A saber (sometimes “sabre”) is a sword with a curved blade and a relatively large hand guard. It is thought that the term originated with the Hungarian verb “szabni” meaning “to cut”.

25 Home of Queen Beatrix International Airport : ARUBA

Aruba is one of the so-called ABC Islands located off the northern coast of Venezuela. “ABC Islands” is a name given to the three westernmost islands of the Leeward Antilles in the Caribbean. The nickname comes from the first letters of the island names: Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao. All three of the ABC Islands are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Queen Beatrix International Airport serves Oranjestad, the capital of Aruba in the Caribbean Sea. The airport was named in 1955 for Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands. The name was “upgraded” in 1980 after Princess Beatrix ascended to the Dutch throne.

26 “In the Heat of the Night” detective : TIBBS

“In the Heat of the Night” is a 1967 film based on a 1965 novel of the same name by John Ball. Both tell the story of an African American detective from Philadelphia was gets involved in a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi. The Oscar-winning film stars Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The most famous line in the movie is “They call me MISTER Tibbs!” This line was used as the title of a 1970 sequel, with Sidney Poitier reprising his role of police detective Virgil Tibbs.

27 “Houses of Parliament” series painter : MONET

From 1899 to 1901, French artist Claude Money made several visits to London, England. During that time, Money four series of paintings of landmarks in the city. Included in this portfolio of work is a series of 19 painting of the Houses of Parliament, all of which share the same viewpoint.

28 Kids’ song refrain : E-I-E-I-O

There was an old American version of the English children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (E-I-E-I-O) that was around in the days of WWI. The first line of the older US version goes “Old MacDougal had a farm, in Ohio-i-o”.

32 Jay Gatsby’s love : DAISY

“The Great Gatsby” is a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that tells of the prosperous life of Jay Gatsby during the Roaring 20s. Gatsby develops an obsessive love for Daisy Fay Buchanan, a girl he met while serving during WWI, and meets again some years later after he has improved his social standing.

42 Drug in the film “Love & Other Drugs” : VIAGRA

Cialis and Viagra are not just brands competing against each other, they also have differing active ingredients. Viagra is a trade name for Sildenafil citrate, and Cialis is tadalafil. Both drugs are used to treat erectile dysfunction, and more recently to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension.

“Love & Other Drugs” is a 2010 movie inspired by the book “Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman” by Jamie Reidy. Stars of the film are Jake Gylenhall and Anne Hathaway.

44 Alpes features : MONTS

In French, the “Alpes” (Alps) is a large range of “monts” (mountains).

47 Cork’s home : EIRE

Cork is the largest and most southerly county in Ireland. The county is named for the city of Cork, which is the second largest in the country. Cork is sometimes referred to as “the Rebel County”, which alludes to the region’s resistance to British rule. Tourists flock to Cork for several reasons, not least as it is home to the famous Blarney Stone as well as Cobh, the port from which so many Irish emigrants left for countries like Australia, Canada and the United States.

48 Kate of “House of Cards” : MARA

Kate Mara is the actress who plays a lead character in the US TV series “House of Cards”. Kate is the sister of fellow actress Rooney Mara, who played the lead in the American version of the film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

The hit TV show “House of Cards” is a political drama that highlights ruthless manipulation within the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. The show is an adaptation of a BBC miniseries of the same name, which in turn is based on a novel by Michael Dobbs.

50 Jackie’s designer : OLEG

French-born, American fashion designer Oleg Cassini had two big names particularly associated with his designs. In the sixties he produced the state wardrobe for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and he was also the exclusive designer for Hollywood’s Gene Tierney, who was Cassini’s second wife.

51 Leonard __: Roy Rogers : SLYE

Cowboy actor and singer Roy Rogers’ real name was Leonard Franklin Slye, and his nickname was “King of the Cowboys”. Roy Rogers married Dale Evans in 1947. Evans’ nickname was “Queen of the West”.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 “The Howdy Doody Show” cry adopted by ’60s California surfers : COWABUNGA!
10 Ask : PUT TO
15 How horses may run during warmups : AT A CANTER
16 Mozart work : OPERA
17 Reason for an R rating, perhaps : LOVE SCENE
18 Pigtails : PLAIT
19 Antonio’s “Evita” role : CHE
20 Coding logic word : ELSE
21 Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester __” : PSALMS
22 Marginally : A BIT
23 Echolocation users : BATS
24 Ancient provincial governor : SATRAP
27 Calculating bunch? : MATH TEAM
31 Helvetica cousin : ARIAL
32 Gift recipient : DONEE
33 Market letters : IGA
34 British breakfast dish with an onomatopoeic name : BUBBLE AND SQUEAK
37 Fade : EBB
38 Hangs on a rack : DRIES
39 Combine : UNITE
40 Most rough, in a manner of speaking? : RASPIEST
42 Rejections : VETOES
43 Like some bridal dresses : LACY
44 Ramen flavoring : MISO
45 Conceived, with “up” : DREAMT …
48 Protective excavation : MOAT
49 Coast Guard pickup : SOS
52 __ Unido: United Kingdom, in Spain : REINO
53 “Darn!” : HANG IT ALL!
55 Thomas’ veep : AARON
56 Pittsburgh Steelers’ founder : ART ROONEY
57 Combine : BLEND
58 Takes the inside track : HAS AN EDGE

Down

1 Subj. with integrals : CALC
2 Tweeter’s “conversely” : OTOH
3 It may break on sand : WAVE
4 Big heart : ACE
5 It has paths for runners : BASEBALL DIAMOND
6 Detach, as some jewelry : UNCLIP
7 Arms treaty subj. : N-TEST
8 __ therapy : GENE
9 Were present? : ARE
10 Proposes : POPS THE QUESTION
11 Headlining a music festival, say : UP LAST
12 Color similar to turquoise : TEAL
13 Cut back : TRIM
14 Food rich in manganese : OATS
21 Spread things : PATES
22 __ League : ARAB
23 Maroon 5 and Ben Folds Five : BANDS
24 Fencing option : SABER
25 Home of Queen Beatrix International Airport : ARUBA
26 “In the Heat of the Night” detective : TIBBS
27 “Houses of Parliament” series painter : MONET
28 Kids’ song refrain : E-I-E-I-O
29 Colorful quartz : AGATE
30 Creates : MAKES
32 Jay Gatsby’s love : DAISY
35 Not slouching : ERECT
36 Biblical preposition : UNTO
41 Anticipate : PLAN ON
42 Drug in the film “Love & Other Drugs” : VIAGRA
44 Alpes features : MONTS
45 Uninspiring : DRAB
46 Not in one’s head : REAL
47 Cork’s home : EIRE
48 Kate of “House of Cards” : MARA
49 Time measure : SAND
50 Jackie’s designer : OLEG
51 Leonard __: Roy Rogers : SLYE
53 “Yeah, right!” : HAH!
54 Nail holder : TOE

31 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword 3 Aug 19, Saturday”

  1. LAT: DNF 60:00, 8 errors. Too much insanity in this one for me to understand. WSJ: 22:12, no errors. Newsday: DNF, 38:23. The usual with all the write-overs but at least I got the last 5 rows. Today was another good illustration that I can’t do crossword puzzles.

  2. Went rather quickly for me for a Saturday puzzle. No errors after a
    few “start-overs”. Got the three long answers right away and that helped
    a lot.

  3. LAT: 11:33, no errors; only missteps were “KAWABUNGA” before “COWABUNGA” (don’t know if I had seen that spelled out before) and “DANG IT ALL” before “HANG IT ALL” (which I would say is a bit less common), but both were quickly corrected by crossing entries.

    WSJ: 18:32, no errors.

    Newsday’s “Saturday Stumper”: 1:13:21, with a one-square error that I could have corrected easily if I had spent another minute checking my work. Another brutally difficult puzzle from those folks … 😳.

    And, again, I’m delighted to have the late-week puzzles behind me … time for a long hike … 😜

  4. Lat: 25 minutes but stupidly had “cowabunka” stuck in my head and thus got that wrong along with the more stupid oversight of “kene” instead of “gene.”

  5. Update for Bill- Melanie and Antonio divorced a few years ago. You might want to look her up.
    Re 49A: SOS is also used for “Same old (stuff).”
    Good puzzle. Learned a couple of things, like Roy Rogers’s real name. Did you know Trigger’s real name was Irving Teitelbaum?
    Have the Saturday puzzles gotten easier, or have I gotten smarter?

    1. Thanks, Michael. I’m always way behind on my celeb news. All fixed now. I appreciate the help.

    2. “Did you know Trigger’s real name was Irving Teitelbaum?”

      Was that sarcasm or just a little horseplay? Always a good idea to put a winking emoticon following tongue in cheek humor. ;-D>

  6. Easiest Saturday ever, and fun. Thanks, I needed that.

    I would likely not have finished if my husband hadn’t known Art Rooney.

    I’m a little too young for Howdy Doody, but Snoopy said it too, so I got it right away, and now I know where it came from. Cowabunga, Dude!

  7. 20:22. I had “aqua” before TEAL and LACe before LACY but otherwise this went smoothly. Long answers were kind. 7 minutes for Bill?? Sheesh.

    My only issue with 2D OTOH is wondering how many people that use Twitter actually know what “conversely” means??

    Kate MARA trivia – Her grandfather was Wellington Mara who used to own the NY Giants of the NFL, and her great great grandfather (or something like that) was indeed ART ROONEY who owned the Pittsburgh Steelers (now his son does) and who also appears in this movie…

    Best –

  8. What is this??? NOBODY ever *says* or ever *said* “Hang it all”. That’s a pure invention. I only got it because HAH makes sense on the cross (but barely much more sense, since it’s more of a blurted exclamation than it is a word.

    Poor puzzle. Even poorer editing and judgment. I’m hoping Rich Norris won’t get to be as bad as Shortz over at the NY Times.

      1. What others? I’ve just spent more than half an hour going over and over the clues and, with few exceptions, I don’t see anything but a lot of gimmes and near-gimmes (and even the exceptions seem to me to have reasonable clues).

        So what might one have trouble with? COWABUNGA might be an age-related gimme. “Chichester PSALMS” was only marginally familiar, but it came to mind readily enough. SATRAP is a word I learned long ago (from crossword puzzles, I think). ARUBA as the home of a certain airport would have been more difficult if I hadn’t recently seen it (and gotten it) in another crossword puzzle. Virgil TIBBS is unforgettable if you’ve ever seen the movie, but the movie came out a long time ago. BUBBLE AND SQUEAK might sound pretty weird if you’d never seen it before, but it’s as familiar to me as “bangers and mash” (two English dishes with weird names that I learned long ago). I didn’t know MONET painted the Houses of Parliament, but I knew that the name of a painter was required and his name fit. OLEG Cassini may be familiar to me from the days of JFK and Jackie, but he also gets into a lot of crossword puzzles. I knew Roy Rogers’ original last name was the same as that of a minister who lived near us when I was a kid, but I still had to get a couple of letters through crosses before SLYE came to me. I didn’t know ART ROONEY at all, but I got most of the letters from crosses (including the first “R” from Kate MARA, which popped into my head unbidden from somewhere in that crossword lizard brain Jeff talks about).

        So what did you get hung up on? And what clues did you think were so poor?

        1. >So what did you get hung up on?

          More or less the entire right side from 10D onward, though a small part or two before that.

          >And what clues did you think were so poor?

          In solving, I had issues with 18A, 21A, 27A, 33A, 34A, 53A, 10D, 11D, 14D, 21D, 50D, and 51D though I could throw many others in there given my memory doing this Friday night. Just way too much non-descriptiveness as to make the clues totally worthless, especially in the face of a lot of the arcana like 21A, 34A, 50D, and 51D. That happens repeatedly on all grids (and chiefly why I can’t solve Saturday Newsdays or Croces, the clues ultimately are meaningless and communicate nothing so I end up entering a lot of wrong words guessing what the constructor means and never get into the grids), but this one was much more worse than usual. I probably could have clumsily stumbled in my random guesses of words into a solution in probably the 1:10:00 to 1:20:00 range (ironically I had the left half of the grid at 7 minutes and change), but I got tired and fed up with messing with it – and probably why I stopped on the Newsday.

          As I keep saying, crosswords are a bastion of extremely poor communication. Poor communication on the part of the constructor is not my problem as a solver.

          As for cluing issues, two were ultimately pointed out, but 33A can easily fit into the category along with 18A and 53A.

  9. Well, I am glad that I am not the only dissenter. DNF; did not really start.
    I knew Art Rooney, but could not think of Roy Rogers’ last name. Not a
    good puzzle for me.

    Looking for Monday.

  10. My mess was the NE. DNF that section as I had aqua, not teal, and a lot of poor guessing with the rest of it. Plus I had “dang it all.” BUT I did better today than Fridays! So there……..

  11. Can someone please explain 18 Across? If the clue is the plural “pigtails,” how can the answer be the singular “plait?”

    And, yes, I think “Dang it all” is the better answer, but that’s why I don’t create crosswords — and I don’t finish them in 7 minutes. Wow, Bill!

    1. >If the clue is the plural “pigtails,” how can the answer be the singular “plait?”

      This is another one of the instances of messed up cluing in this puzzle. A plait is “a single length of hair or other flexible material made up of three or more interlaced strands; a braid.” according to the dictionary. Pigtails by definition is plural (a such thing as a pigtail exists on a human head), hence the proper answer is PLAITS.

      1. I agree abt the Pigtails/PLAIT issue- not the same thing. It was one of those answers I really didn’t want to fill in that way.

      2. If you go to a hairdresser and ask him or her to “put my hair in a plait”, it means that you want pigtails. (Do a Google search on “hair in a plait” and you’ll see what I mean.) I think, if I had been editing the puzzle, I might have quibbled with the clue, but I can see how it was intended. In any case, I view this as a pretty minor nit-pick.

        And, just for the record, I have never, ever, gone to a hairdresser for any purpose whatsoever … 😜.

        1. I think I’ll try that. In 3 weeks when I go in for my regular trim, I’ll tell Steve I want it in a plait. Will he tell me my hair isn’t long enough, or will he ask his wife to take over?

  12. 32:16 no errors…I grew up with Howdy Doody…I can sing the song all the way through and know a lot of the characters but cowabunga escapes my memory….one day someone is going to come up with a puzzle that has no foreign words or phrases in it…..most likely not in my lifetime

  13. Howdy Doody, everybody!
    Kennison’s explanation of PLAIT seems very modren to me. I think the reason I did so well on today’s is because I’m not to modren. I zipped through til I got to the SW, where I hit SLYE and ART ROONEY (that’s sports, anyway).
    I did have Nukes before NTEST. If all Saturdays were like this, I’d be happy.

  14. Howdy Doody, Snoopy, Bart Simpson, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles … “cowabunga” is pan-generational.

  15. Pretty tough Saturday, for me; took about an hour or so, with no errors. After yesterday’s whiff I gave this one an extra effort. Since I had CALC, OTOH and WAVE I quickly got COWABUNGA, which more or less got me BASEBALL…

    Just had to change onLAST to help get OPERA. Also had to change geodE to AGATE ad ARIeL. Didn’t know PSALMS, MARA, SLYE at all and a few other things only vaguely.

  16. Salutations!!🦆

    Cheated for three words near the NE — just frustrated that I couldn’t get it!! Finished the rest without incident. Long answers came easily. Didn’t know SLYE or SATRAP. Fun solve overall.

    Glenn, girls wear pigtails a lot — I did.

    HANG IT ALL may not be super common but I’ve heard it.

    IT’S A PUZZLE!!! So, we puzzle….🤔

    Be well~~🚋⚾️

Comments are closed.