LA Times Crossword 7 Nov 20, Saturday

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Constructed by: Brian E. Paquin
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Theme: None

Read on, or jump to …
… a complete list of answers

Bill’s time: 9m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Actor Richard Anthony Marin, familiarly : CHEECH

The comedy duo Cheech & Chong are made up of Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong. Cheech and Chong worked together from 1971 to 1985, and have been back working together again since 2002. A lot of the duo’s comedy was based on their being stoned on cannabis.

7 TV’s “Moonlighting,” for one : DRAMEDY

“Moonlighting” is a comedy drama detective show from the 1980s that stars Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis as private detectives Maddie Hayes and David Addison. There seems to be general agreement that this was the project that launched Bruce Willis’ career.

15 Bonnie Blue’s birth name, in “Gone With the Wind” : EUGENIE

In the original story of “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler have just one child together. The child, Eugenie Victoria, is nicknamed “Bonnie Blue” after the Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy. In the novel, the baby is given the name by Scarlett’s sister-in-law and eventual best friend Melanie Hamilton Wilkes. In the 1939 movie, the baby is given the nickname by her father Rhett.

16 Eno, for one : ANAGRAM

“Eno” is an anagram of “one”.

Here are some of my favorite anagrams:

  • “Dormitory” and “dirty room”
  • “Elvis” and “lives”
  • “The eyes” and “they see”
  • “Eleven plus two” and “twelve plus one”

18 Mil. break : R’N’R

Rest and relaxation/recuperation/recreation (R&R, R‘n’R)

19 Greek vowel : ETA

Eta is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, and is a forerunner of our Latin character “H”. Originally denoting a consonant, eta was used as a long vowel in Ancient Greek.

20 Venison source : DEER

Venison is the meat of a deer. In days of yore, the term “venison” applied not just to deer, but to any large game. The word ultimately derives from the Latin “venare” meaning “to hunt”.

21 “__ consummation devoutly to be wish’d”: Hamlet : ‘TIS A

Here are some lines from Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy:

To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks1755
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die- to sleep.

23 Ancient Peruvian : INCA

The Inca people emerged as a tribe around the 12th century, in what today is southern Peru. The Incas developed a vast empire over the next 300 years, extending along most of the western side of South America. The Empire fell to the Spanish, finally dissolving in 1572 with the execution of Túpac Amaru, the last Incan Emperor.

25 Mother __ : EARTH

The Greek goddess personifying the earth was Gaea (also “Gaia”, and meaning “land” or “earth” in Greek). The Roman equivalent goddess was Terra Mater, “Mother Earth”.

33 Non-discrimination letters : EOE

Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE)

41 Typical Louis L’Amour work : WESTERN NOVEL

Louis L’Amour was a very successful author of Western novels that he called “frontier stories”. L’Amour probably sold more books in the Western genre than anyone else in the history of the genre.

42 Rd. service club : AAA

The American Automobile Association (AAA) is a not-for-profit organization focused on lobbying, provision of automobile servicing, and selling of automobile insurance. The AAA was founded in 1902 in Chicago and published the first of its celebrated hotel guides back in 1917.

44 Lyon lasses: Abbr. : MLLES

“Señorita” (Srta.) is Spanish, and “Mademoiselle” (Mlle.) is French, for “Miss”.

The city of Lyon in France is sometimes known as “Lyons” in English. Lyon is the second-largest metropolitan area in the country, after Paris. It is located just to the north of the confluence of the Rhône and Saône Rivers.

48 Beetle larvae : GRUBS

The larvae of stag beetles are commonly known as grubs, and the pupa known as the chrysalis. “Grub” is also slang for “food”. The word “grub” has been used in this sense since way back in the 1600s, and is possibly derived from birds eating grubs.

56 Col. neighbor : NEB

Nebraska gets its name from the Platte River which flows through the state. “Nebraska” is an anglicized version of Otoe and Omaha words meaning “flat water”.

59 Jackson dubbed “Queen of Gospel” : MAHALIA

Mahalia Jackson was an African-American gospel singer who was known as the first Queen of Gospel Music. She recorded many records, including 12 that went gold, i.e. sold more than a million copies each.

62 Old rubber? : ALADDIN

“Aladdin” is a famous tale in “Arabian Nights”, also called “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights”. However, there is no evidence at all that the story was in the original collection. It is generally believed that one Antoine Galland introduced the tale when he translated “Arabian Nights” into French in the early 1700s.

65 Metaphor for misfortune : ILL WIND

We’ve all probably heard the phrase “‘tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good”. The poet Ogden Nash made a “punny” statement about the oboe, calling the instrument “an ill wind nobody blows good”. I must say though, I disagree …

66 Advil rival : TYLENOL

Tylenol is a pain-relieving drug with the active ingredient acetaminophen (which is known as “paracetamol” outside of the US).

67 Bill of __ : LADING

A bill of lading is a document issued by a carrier acknowledging receipt of goods and defining the terms controlling transportation of those goods.

The verb “to lade” meaning “to load” comes from an Old English word “hladan”. “Lade” also used to mean “draw water” and indeed gave us our word “ladle”. So “lade” and “ladle” are close cousins.

Down

1 News anchor Chung : CONNIE

Journalist Connie Chung has been a news anchor and reporter for several television networks over the years. Most famously, she was co-anchor on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather in the 1990s. Chung is married to talk show host Maury Povich.

3 Joule part : ERG

An erg is a unit of mechanical work or energy. It is a small unit, with one joule comprising 10 million ergs. It has been suggested that an erg is about the amount of energy required for a mosquito to take off. The term comes from “ergon”, the Greek word for work.

James Joule was an English physicist who spent much of his life working in the family brewing business. Joule used his work in the brewery to study the relationship between heat and mechanical work. In honor of his achievements, his name is used for the unit of energy in the International System of Units (i.e. the joule).

4 Victorian heroine : EYRE

Charlotte Brontë was the eldest of the three Brontë sister authors. Charlotte’s most famous work is the novel “Jane Eyre”, which she published under the pen name Currer Bell. The pen name veiled her gender, but preserved the initials of her real name. After “Jane Eyre” was published, Brontë started to move in the same circles as other successful novelists of the day, including William Makepeace Thackeray and Elizabeth Gaskell. Just two years after Bronte died in her late thirties, it was Gaskell who published the first biography of Charlotte Brontë.

5 Raccoon kin : COATI

A coati is a member of the raccoon family and is also known as the Brazilian aardvark, or the snookum bear. The coati is native to Central and South America, but can also be found in the southwest of the United States.

The raccoon is native to North America. In captivity, raccoons can live to over 20 years of age, but in the wild they only live two or three years. The main causes for the shorter lifespan are hunting and road traffic.

6 Risky aerial act : HUMAN CANNONBALL

In a human cannonball act, a person is fired out of a cannon so that he or she flies through that air and lands in a net or in water. The performer is launched using compressed air these days. Before compressed air cannons were invented in the 1920s, acts used rubber springs to power the launch. The first human cannonball was a 14-year-old English girl named Rossa Matilda Richter who premiered her act at the Royal Aquarium in London in 1877.

7 Kaput : DEAD AS A DOORNAIL

“Kaput” is a familiar term meaning “incapacitated, destroyed”, and comes to us from French (via German). The original word “capot” means “not having won a single trick” in the French card game Piquet.

8 Sticks figure : RUBE

A rube is a person lacking sophistication, someone often described as a country bumpkin. The term derives from the masculine name “Reuben”, which was considered back in the early 1800s to be a typical name used in rural areas.

10 Half a comedy duo : MEARA

Anne Meara married fellow comedic actor Jerry Stiller in 1954. The couple’s children are actors Ben and Amy Stiller. Meara co-starred with Carroll O’Connor and Martin Balsam in the eighties sitcom “Archie Bunker’s Place”, a spin-off from “All in the Family”.

12 Rolled game piece : DIE

The numbers on dice are arranged so that the opposite faces add up to seven. Given this arrangement, the numbers 1, 2 and 3 all meet at a common vertex. There are two ways of arranging the 1, 2 and 3 around the common vertex, a so-called right-handed die (clockwise 1-2-3) or a left-handed die (counterclockwise 1-2-3). Traditionally, dice used in Western cultures are right-handed, whereas Chinese dice are left-handed. Quite interesting …

24 Capital of French Guiana : CAYENNE

Cayenne is a city located at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. Founded in 1643, it is the capital of French Guiana, and overseas department of France. It is likely that the cayenne pepper is named for either the city or the river.

28 Cops : HEAT

Cayenne is a city located at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. Founded in 1643, it is the capital of French Guiana, and overseas department of France. It is likely that the cayenne pepper is named for either the city or the river.

35 “The ‘Burbs” actor : DERN

“The ‘Burbs” is a 1989 comedy movie starring Tom Hanks as a young suburban who suspects that his odd neighbors are ritualistic murderers. The suburban neighborhood used for filming is a set in the Universal Studios backlot. The same set had been used in the 1987 movie “Dragnet”, which also stars Tom Hanks.

38 Plunder : SWAG

“Swag” is “loot, stolen property”, and a term that started out as criminal slang in England in the 1830s. “Swag” is also the name given to the promotional freebies available at some events. That said, there’s an urban myth that the promotional version of “swag” is an acronym standing for “stuff we all get”.

40 Biblical twin : ESAU

Esau was the grandson of Abraham and the twin brother of Jacob, the founder of the Israelites. When Esau was born to Isaac and Rebekah, the event was described with “Now the first came forth, red all over like a hairy garment”. Esau is portrayed later in life as being very different from his brother Jacob, as a hunter and someone who loves the outdoor life.

52 Reese of “Chico and the Man” : DELLA

Della Reese is the stage name of actress, singer and all-round entertainer Deloreese Patricia Early. Her career started as a singer in the fifties and was revived in the nineties when she played the lead character in the TV show “Touched by an Angel”.

“Chico and the Man” is a sitcom that originally aired in the seventies. The title characters were played by Jack Albertson (the Man) and Freddie Prinze (Chico Rodriguez). Sadly, Freddie Prinze committed suicide during the third season. The producers tried to keep the show going by introducing new characters, but it was cancelled at the end of the fourth season due to poor ratings.

55 Ventimiglia of “This Is Us” : MILO

Actor Milo Ventimiglia got his break on TV playing Jess Mariano on the show “Gilmore Girls”. He then played Peter Petrelli on “Heroes”, and Jack Pearson on “This Is Us”.

“This Is Us” is a television drama that debuted in 2016. The storyline centers on three siblings and their parents. Two of the siblings are the surviving members of a triplet pregnancy. The parents decide to adopt a child born on the same day as the surviving siblings. The adopting family is white, and the adopted child is black.

57 __ eagle : BALD

The bald eagle is sometimes referred to as the American eagle. It is both the national bird and the national animal of the USA, and appears on the US Seal.

59 Clever remark : MOT

“Bon mot” translates from French as “good word”. We use “bon mot” (and sometimes just “mot”) to mean “quip, witticism”.

61 Baseball exec Steinbrenner : HAL

Hal Steinbrenner is the principal owner of the New York Yankees baseball team. Hal and his brother Hank inherited the team after their father George Hal Steinbrenner passed away in 2010.

63 SADD concern : DWI

In some states, there is no longer a legal difference between a DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) and a DUI (Driving Under the Influence). Other states retain that difference, so that by definition a DUI is a lesser offence than a DWI.

Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) was founded in Massachusetts in 1981. SADD’s aim is to prevent road traffic accidents by urging students to avoid potentially destructive decisions (such as driving under the influence of alcohol).

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Actor Richard Anthony Marin, familiarly : CHEECH
7 TV’s “Moonlighting,” for one : DRAMEDY
14 Sarcastic comment to a complainer, maybe : POOR YOU
15 Bonnie Blue’s birth name, in “Gone With the Wind” : EUGENIE
16 Eno, for one : ANAGRAM
17 Erodes : ABRADES
18 Mil. break : R’N’R
19 Greek vowel : ETA
20 Venison source : DEER
21 “__ consummation devoutly to be wish’d”: Hamlet : ‘TIS A
23 Ancient Peruvian : INCA
25 Mother __ : EARTH
29 “I don’t believe it!” : YEESH!
31 Hard __ : CASH
33 Non-discrimination letters : EOE
34 Time-saving words? : YADA YADA YADA
38 Made something more desirable : SWEETENED THE POT
41 Typical Louis L’Amour work : WESTERN NOVEL
42 Rd. service club : AAA
43 Ill-advised move : NO-NO
44 Lyon lasses: Abbr. : MLLES
48 Beetle larvae : GRUBS
51 Techie, often : NERD
53 Do an usher’s job : SEAT
54 Symbol of innocence : LAMB
56 Col. neighbor : NEB
58 Matter-of-fact opening? : AS A …
59 Jackson dubbed “Queen of Gospel” : MAHALIA
62 Old rubber? : ALADDIN
64 Winning steadily : ON A ROLL
65 Metaphor for misfortune : ILL WIND
66 Advil rival : TYLENOL
67 Bill of __ : LADING

Down

1 News anchor Chung : CONNIE
2 Sounding rough : HOARSE
3 Joule part : ERG
4 Victorian heroine : EYRE
5 Raccoon kin : COATI
6 Risky aerial act : HUMAN CANNONBALL
7 Kaput : DEAD AS A DOORNAIL
8 Sticks figure : RUBE
9 Match : AGREE
10 Half a comedy duo : MEARA
11 Wrap up : END
12 Rolled game piece : DIE
13 “You betcha!” : YES!
14 It may be a blast : PARTY
22 So far : AS YET
24 Capital of French Guiana : CAYENNE
26 Gather : REAP
27 Well attachment? : -TO-DO
28 Cops : HEAT
30 Word with crime or watch : HATE …
32 Couch potato’s buy : HDTV
35 “The ‘Burbs” actor : DERN
36 “Pardon me … ” : AHEM …
37 Long-distance calls? : YELLS
38 Plunder : SWAG
39 Sign of aging : WEAR
40 Biblical twin : ESAU
45 Introduction : LEAD-IN
46 Letting up : EASING
47 Artist’s aid : STAND
49 Sit on, as a horn : BLARE
50 Elegant room : SALON
52 Reese of “Chico and the Man” : DELLA
55 Ventimiglia of “This Is Us” : MILO
57 __ eagle : BALD
59 Clever remark : MOT
60 “__ ideas?” : ANY
61 Baseball exec Steinbrenner : HAL
63 SADD concern : DWI