LA Times Crossword 10 Jun 22, Friday

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Constructed by: Billy Bratton
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Upstarts

Themed answers all START with “UP-”, and end with a common phrase:

• 60A Social climbers, and what the answers to the starred clues literally have : UPSTARTS

• 18A *Occasion to pin back one’s coif? : UPDO TIME (UP + DO TIME)
• 26A *Catchy part of a virtuous song? : UPRIGHT HOOK (UP + RIGHT HOOK)
• 38A *People born during the Era of Good Feelings? : UPBEAT GENERATION (UP + BEAT GENERATION)
• 47A *Evening spent downloading the latest OS? : UPDATE NIGHT (UP + DATE NIGHT)

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

Bill’s time: 10m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Kilauea flow : LAVA

Kilauea is one of the five active volcanoes that form the Big Island of Hawaii. It erupted almost continuously starting in 1983, until it entered a period of inactivity following a months-long explosive event in 2018.

5 Clear dishes from : BUS

A busboy is a person who assists a waiter, mainly by clearing tables. The verb “to bus” arose in the early 1900s and is probably a reference to the wheeled cart that was used to carry dishes.

8 Jammies : PJS

Our word “pajamas” (sometimes “PJs” or “jammies”) comes to us from the Indian subcontinent, where “pai jamahs” were loose fitting pants tied at the waist and worn at night by locals and ultimately by the Europeans living there. And “pajamas” is another of those words that I had to learn to spell differently when I came to America. On the other side of the Atlantic, the spelling is “pyjamas”.

11 Hosp. figures : DRS

A doctor (dr.) might be found in a hospital (hosp.).

16 Like many Berbers : SAHARAN

The name “Sahara” means “greatest desert” in Arabic. The Sahara is just that, a great desert covering almost 4 million square miles of Northern Africa. That’s almost the size of the United States.

The Berber peoples live in North Africa, west of the Nile. Most of the Berbers can now be found in Morocco.

18 *Occasion to pin back one’s coif? : UPDO TIME (UP + DO TIME)

A coif is a hairdo. The term “coif” comes from an old French term “coife” describing a skull-cap that was worn under a helmet back in the late 13th century.

20 Mediterranean country : ISRAEL

The land 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.

22 Mixed martial artist Rousey : RONDA

Ronda Rousey is a mixed martial artist, and the first US woman to win an Olympic medal in judo. Rousey is a popular person online, with hers being the third-most searched name on Google in 2015 (after Lamar Odom and Caitlyn Jenner).

32 Arboreal marsupial : KOALA

The koala bear really does look like a little bear, but it’s not even closely related. The koala is an arboreal marsupial and a herbivore, native to the east and south coasts of Australia. Koalas aren’t primates, and are one of the few mammals other than primates who have fingerprints. In fact, it can be very difficult to tell human fingerprints from koala fingerprints, even under an electron microscope. Male koalas are called “bucks”, females are “does”, and young koalas are “joeys”. I’m a little jealous of the koala, as it sleeps up to 20 hours a day …

Marsupials are mammals that carry their young in a pouch. Better-known marsupials are kangaroos, koalas, wombats and Tasmanian devils. As you can probably tell from this list, most marsupials are native to the Southern Hemisphere.

33 “You betcha” : NATCH

“Natch” is a slang term meaning “naturally, of course”. “Natch” is simply a shortening of the word “‘naturally”, and was first recorded at the end of WWII.

34 Garage door opener brand : GENIE

Genie is a manufacturer of garage door openers based in Alliance, Ohio.

35 Org. that includes the TSA : DHS

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

38 *People born during the Era of Good Feelings? : UPBEAT GENERATION (UP + BEAT GENERATION)

The Era of Good Feelings lasted from about 1816 to 1824, during the administration of President James Monroe. The term described the feeling of bipartisanship that permeated politics at that time, largely due to President Monroe deliberately downplaying differences between the parties in Washington. One can only dream …

The group of American writers known as the Beat Generation first came to prominence at a poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October of 1955. Five young poets presented their work that day:

• Allen Ginsberg
• Philip Lamantia
• Michael McClure
• Gary Snider
• Philip Whalen

43 Battery measures : VOLTS

The volt is a unit of electric potential, or voltage. I always think of electrical voltage as something like water pressure. The higher the pressure of water (voltage), the faster the water flows (the higher the electric current that flows).

44 Biblical mount : SINAI

According to the Bible, Mount Sinai is the mountain on which Moses was given the Ten Commandments. The Biblical Mount Sinai is probably not the mountain in Egypt that today has the same name, although this is the subject of much debate. The Egyptian Mount Sinai has two developed routes that one can take to reach the summit. The longer gentler climb takes about 2 1/2 hours, but there is also the steeper climb up the 3,750 “steps of penitence”.

45 Bernie in his mittens, Keanu playing with puppies, etc. : MEMES

When Senator Bernie Sanders attended the inauguration of Joe Biden in January of 2021, he was faced with an outdoor event on a cold winter’s day. Sanders sat himself on a folding chair, a well-insulated winter jacket, and patterned mittens. The image of him went viral, with folks editing it and incorporating the senator into famous movie scenes.

One celebrated Internet meme is a clip of a BuzzFeed interview with Canadian actor Keanu Reeves. In the video, Reeves answers the interviewers questions, while at the same time playing with pups that were up for adoption. He does a great job dividing his attention between the pups and the questions.

47 *Evening spent downloading the latest OS? : UPDATE NIGHT (UP + DATE NIGHT)

I think of an operating system (OS) as that piece of software that sits between the hardware on my computer and the programs that I choose to run. Developers of application programs don’t really have to worry about being able to “talk to” the countless different types of hardware found in the wide variety of computers that are manufactured, they just need to talk to the handful of operating systems that are out there, like Windows, Android, MAC and Unix. The operating system takes care of the rest.

52 Manhattan option : RYE

The cocktail called a manhattan is made from whiskey, sweet vermouth and Angostura bitters. I favor my own version of a brandy manhattan, using brandy, sweet vermouth and orange bitters.

67 Keystone bumbler : KOP

The Keystone Cops (sometimes “Keystone Kops”) were a band of madcap policemen who appeared in silent movies. A 1914 short film called “A Thief Catcher” that was believed lost was rediscovered in 2010. “A Thief Catcher” featured the magnificent Charlie Chaplin in an early role as a Keystone Cop.

68 Mauna __ : LOA

Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii is the largest volcano on the planet (in terms of volume). The name “Mauna Loa” is Hawaiian for “Long Mountain”.

Down

1 “Geaux Tigers!” sch. : LSU

The Tigers are the sports teams of Louisiana State University (LSU). They are officially known as the Fightin’ Tigers, and the school mascot is “Mike the Tiger”. The name comes from the days of the Civil War, when two Louisiana brigades earned the nickname the “Louisiana Tigers”. Given the French/Cajun history of Louisiana, the LSU fans use the cheer “Geaux Tigers” instead of “Go Tigers”.

2 High point of a trip to Europe? : ALP

There are eight Alpine countries:

• Austria
• Slovenia
• France
• Switzerland
• Liechtenstein
• Germany
• Monaco
• Italy

3 YouTube clip, for short : VID

YouTube is a video-sharing website that was launched in 2005 by three ex-PayPal employees. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Yep, $1.65 billion, less than two years after it was founded …

4 Mine, in Montréal : A MOI

“À moi” (literally “to me”) is French for “mine”.

The original name of Montreal was “Ville-Marie”, meaning “City of Mary”. “Ville-Marie” is now the name of a borough in the city, the borough which includes the downtown area and “Old Montreal”. The present-day city covers most of the Island of Montreal (in French, “Île de Montréal”) that is located where the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers meet. The name “Montreal” comes from the three-headed hill that dominates the island and is called “Mount Royal”.

5 Capital in the Levant : BEIRUT

Beirut is the capital city of Lebanon. After WWI, Lebanon was placed under administrative control of the French and Beirut flourished as a financial center in the Middle East and as a major world tourist destination. The city was devastated in the Lebanese Civil War that raged from 1975 to 1990, but reconstruction has restored the city to much of its former glory, making it a major cultural center once again.

The Levant is the geographic region that lies east of the Mediterranean, covering modern-day Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt. The term is sometimes also used synonymously with the Near East. Syria and Lebanon, when under French rule, were called the Levant States, a name still used at times for the two nations. As one might expect, the word Levant comes from French and was the Middle French word for “the Orient”. The term was used for the Orient as it described lands to the east, where the sun rises (from “lever”, the French word meaning “to rise”). Really, quite interesting …

8 LAX setting : PST

Pacific Standard Time (PST)

Los Angeles International Airport is the sixth busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and the busiest here on the West Coast of the US. The airport was opened in 1930 as Mines Field and was renamed to Los Angeles Airport in 1941. On the airport property is the iconic white structure that resembles a flying saucer. This is called the Theme Building and I believe it is mainly used as a restaurant and observation deck for the public. The airport used to be identified by the letters “LA”, but when the aviation industry went to a three-letter standard for airport identification, this was changed to “LAX”. Apparently, the “X” has no significant meaning.

11 Pipe cleaner : DRANO

To clean out drains we might buy Crystal Drano, which is sodium hydroxide (lye) mixed with sodium nitrate, sodium chloride (table salt) and aluminum. The contents of Drano work in concert to clear the clog. The lye reacts with any fats creating soap which may be enough to break up the clog. Also, the finely-divided aluminum reacts with the lye generating hydrogen gas that churns the mixture. Any hair or fibers are cut by the sharp edges of the nitrate and chloride crystals. Having said all that, I find that boiling water poured down the drain quite often does the job …

12 Internet stranger : RANDO

“Rando” is a slang term describing a “random person”. The term tends not to be used flatteringly.

13 Quarterback maneuver : SNEAK

A “quarterback sneak” is a play in American football in which the quarterback runs (usually just a few yards) forward behind his offensive line as it moves forward.

15 The Colorado fourteeners, e.g.: Abbr. : MTS

In the US, a “fourteener” is a mountain that is 14,000 feet or more in height above sea level. Most of the fourteeners are in Colorado (53), with the second largest group being in California (12).

17 Hana Airport greeting : ALOHA

Hana Airport on the east shore of the island of Maui has the airport code “HNM”. It is used primarily for commuter traffic. Most commercial passenger flights in and out of Maui use Kahului Airport (OGG) on the island’s northern shore.

23 Facial cavity : SINUS

In anatomical terms, a sinus is a cavity in tissue. Sinuses are found all over the body, in the kidney and heart for example, but we most commonly think of the paranasal sinuses that surround the nose.

30 Letters in ancient history : BCE

The designations Anno Domini (AD, “year of Our Lord”) and Before Christ (BC) are found in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The dividing point between AD and BC is the year of the conception of Jesus, with AD 1 following 1 BC without a year “0” in between. The AD/BC scheme dates back to AD 525, and gained wide acceptance soon after AD 800. Nowadays a modified version has become popular, with CE (Common/Christian Era) used to replace AD, and BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) used to replace BC.

35 Currency of Serbia and Jordan : DINAR

The dinar is the official currency in many countries, such as Iraq, Tunisia, Bahrain and Serbia. The gold dinar dates back to the early days of Islam, with the name deriving from the Roman currency called “denarius” meaning “ten times” (as it was originally a coin worth ten asses).

36 White with frost : HOARY

The Old English word “har” meant “gray, venerable, old”, and came into English as “hoar” (and later “hoary”) with the same meaning. The term “hoar-frost” dates back to the 13th century, and reflects the similarity of the white feathers of frost to the gray/white of an old man’s beard.

39 Large volume : TOME

“Tome” first came into English from the Latin “tomus” which means “section of a book”. The original usage in English was for a single volume in a multi-volume work. By the late 16th century, “tome” had come to mean “large book”.

40 Singer Campbell : GLEN

I went to a Glen Campbell concert in Reno many, many years ago, and I was surprised by how many hits the man had over the years. He really was one of the original crossover artists between country and popular music, as evidenced by his winning Grammy Awards in both categories in 1967. That year he won the country award for “Gentle on My Mind” and the pop award for “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”.

46 Mississippi source : ITASCA

Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota is the main source of the Mississippi River. Known by Native Americans as “Elk Lake”, the name was changed by Henry Schoolcraft, who led the 1832 expedition to find the source of the Mississippi River. The name “Itasca” is formed from the Latin words for “truth” (ver-ITAS) and “head” (CA-put).

47 Linguistic practices : USAGE

Linguistics is the study of human language.

48 Violinist/singer Haden : PETRA

Petra Haden is a singer and violinist who comes from a family of musicians. Her father is jazz bassist Charlie Haden, and she has performed with her triplet sisters Rachel and Tanya as the Haden Triplets. Her brother Josh Haden is bass player and front man of the group Spain.

49 Light rail stop : DEPOT

Our term “depot”, meaning “station, warehouse”, comes from the French word “dépôt”. The French term translates into English as “deposit” or “place of deposit”.

55 Cell service letters : LTE

In the world of telecommunications, the initialism LTE stands for Long-Term Evolution, and is wireless broadband communication standard. In general terms, LTE improves broadband speeds. As I understand it, LTE technology allows a 3G network to perform almost as well as a true 4G network, and so LTE is sometimes marketed as 4G LTE, even though it’s really “3G plus”.

58 Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, e.g. : CEO

Jane Fraser is a British-American business executive who was appointed CEO of Citigroup in 2021, making her the first woman to head a major US bank. She was actually born in St. Andrews in Scotland, home of the historic golf course.

59 Super vision? : ESP

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

63 __ bunt : SAC

That would be baseball.