LA Times Crossword 12 Jun 24, Wednesday

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Constructed by: Rebecca Goldstein
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Flavortown

Themed answers each comprise a food item (FLAVOR) followed by a location in TOWN:

• 63A Tasty location associated with Guy Fieri, and where to find 18-, 26-, 38-, and 53-Across? : FLAVORTOWN

• 18A Workplace for some Geniuses : APPLE STORE
• 26A Breakfast chain with a museum in Decatur, Georgia : WAFFLE HOUSE
• 38A Home to Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus : SESAME STREET
• 53A Restaurant with a Never-Ending Pasta Pass : OLIVE GARDEN

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

Bill’s time: 6m 36s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Warmup in gym class, maybe : LAPS

Our word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek “gymnasion” meaning “public place where exercise is taken”. The Greek term comes from “gymnos” meaning “naked”, as that physical training was usually done unclothed in ancient Greece.

16 Country on the Arabian Sea : OMAN

The Arabian Sea is an arm of the Indian Ocean that lies off the coasts of Oman, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. It is bounded in the west by Somalia, and in the east by India.

17 Clay colour : OCHRE

Ocher is a light, yellowish-brown color, although variations of the pigment are possible such as red ocher and purple ocher. “Ocher” is usually spelled “ochre” on the other side of the pond.

Not only is Noah Webster’s name inextricably linked with his series of dictionaries, but he is also renowned as an advocate for English spelling reform. He argued that “traditional” English is hard to learn, and that it should be simplified and standardized (instead of “standardised”). He published spelling books that were used in schools, and from edition to edition he changed the spelling of words in order to simplify the language. Examples are the use of “s” over “c” in words like “defense” (in Ireland we have “defence” and “defense” depending on usage), “-re” became “-er” as in “center” instead of “centre” (reversing the influence of French), and he dropped one of the Ls in words like “traveler” (I learned “traveller”). Mind you, he also spelled “tongue” as “tung”, but he didn’t get very far with that one.

18 Workplace for some Geniuses : APPLE STORE

The technical support desk found in Apple Retail Stores is rather inventively called the Genius Bar. The certified support technicians are known as “Geniuses”. The trainees are called GYOs: Grow-Your-Own-Geniuses.

20 Second stringers : B-TEAM

We’ve been using the phrases “first string” and “second string” in athletics since the mid-19th century. The expressions come from archery, in which a competitor would carry a second bowstring in case the first broke.

21 Tax Day arrival, astrologically : ARIES

Aries the Ram is the first astrological sign in the Zodiac, and is named after the constellation. Your birth sign is Aries if you were born between March 21 and April 20, but if you are an Aries you would know that! “Aries” is the Latin word for “ram”.

April 15th wasn’t always Tax Day in the US. The deadline for returns was March 1st from 1913-18, when it was moved to March 15th. Tax Day has been April 15th since 1955.

26 Breakfast chain with a museum in Decatur, Georgia : WAFFLE HOUSE

Waffle House is a chain of restaurants, located mainly in the Midwest and South, that specializes in Southern breakfast food. Most Waffle House outlets have jukeboxes, and the chain even has its own record label: Waffle Records.

The Georgia city of Decatur is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. It was incorporated in 1823, and named for Stephen Decatur, a naval officer who became the youngest captain in the history of the US Navy, at 25 years old.

37 Gymnast Lee : SUNI

Suni Lee is an American gymnast who won the women’s artistic individual all-around event at the 2020 Olympics. A few weeks after her victory in Tokyo, Lee competed in the 30th season of “Dancing with the Stars”, finishing in 5th place.

38 Home to Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus : SESAME STREET

The man “inside” Big Bird on “Sesame Street” is Caroll Spinney, who has been playing the character since 1969. That’s a long time, so Spinney has had an understudy named Matt Vogel since 1998.

On “Sesame Street”, Mr. Snuffleupagus (sometimes “Snuffy”) is a character whose full name is “Aloysius Snuffleupagus”. He is quite the unusual looking creature. His head is said to resemble that of a mammoth or perhaps an anteater. He has no visible ears, and no tusks. His tail looks like that of a brontosaurus. He has a trunk, referred to as a “snuffle”, that drags along the ground.

42 Three-time WNBA MVP Leslie : LISA

Lisa Leslie is a former professional basketball player who played in the WNBA with the Los Angeles Sparks. Leslie is rather tall, and was the first player to dunk the ball in a WNBA game.

44 Resistance unit : OHM

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied, (V=IR) a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

47 “Cupcake Wars” competitors : BAKERS

“Cupcake Wars” is a reality show on the Food Network. Each episode features four teams competing to make the best cupcakes.

51 Spanish small bites : TAPAS

“Tapa” is the Spanish word for “lid”. There is no clear rationale for why this word came to be used for an appetizer. There are lots of explanations cited, all of which seem to involve the temporary covering of one’s glass of wine with a plate or item of food to either preserve the wine or give one extra space at the table.

53 Restaurant with a Never-Ending Pasta Pass : OLIVE GARDEN

If you’re fond of eating at Olive Garden, you might want to watch for the Never Ending Pasta Pass promotion that is offered once a year. For the price of $99, diners can eat all the pasta they want during a designated seven-week period.

56 Nu metal band since 1993 : KORN

Korn is an alternative-metal band from Bakersfield, California. The band’s name is derived from a fan suggestion of “Corn”. The suggested name was considered too bland and so was prettied up to Korn, with the letter “r” capitalized and written backwards.

61 African snake : MAMBA

Mambas, most famously black mambas, are highly venomous snakes that used to be responsible for a great number of fatalities before anti-venoms became available. Mamba venom is a deadly mix of neurotoxins that attack the nervous system and cardiotoxins that attack the heart. A bite, if left untreated, causes the lungs and the heart to shut down.

63 Tasty location associated with Guy Fieri, and where to find 18-, 26-, 38-, and 53-Across? : FLAVORTOWN

“Flavortown” is a catchphrase associated with restaurateur and TV personality Guy Fieri. Fieri opened Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Kitchen in 2021, a delivery-only restaurant that serves over 170 locations in 34 US states.

70 Ding-dong __ : DITCH

Ding dong ditch is a game played by kids that involves the ringing of doorbells and then running away to hide nearby. The game originated in the UK, where it is usually called Knock, Knock, Ginger.

71 Shoulder muscle, briefly : DELT

The deltoid “muscle” is actually a group of “muscles”, the ones that cover the shoulder and create the roundness under the skin. The deltoids (delts) are triangular in shape resembling the Greek letter delta, hence the name.

Down

1 JFK alternative : LGA

The three big airports serving New York City (NYC) are John F. Kennedy (JFK), LaGuardia (LGA) and Newark (EWR).

2 Andean grazers : ALPACAS

Alpacas are like small llamas, but unlike llamas were never beasts of burden. They were bred specifically for the fleece. As such, there are no known wild alpacas these days, even in their native Peru.

3 Candy mixed with Coke in a chemistry experiment : POP ROCKS

The fizzy candy marketed as Pop Rocks was introduced in 1975. The candy is made by exposing a melted sugar syrup to carbon dioxide at high pressure. As the syrup cools, it traps high-pressure bubbles of the gas inside the candy. When the candy dissolves in the mouth, the carbon dioxide is released with a popping sound.

4 Contact lens solution : SALINE

The concepts that underpin the technology of contact lenses date back to Leonardo Da Vinci. Although Da Vinci didn’t propose the development of the contact lens, he did write about correcting vision by submerging the eye in a bowl of water. Over a hundred years later, René Descartes made a somewhat impractical suggestion, but along the right lines, of using a glass tube filled with liquid that could be placed in contact with the eye to correct vision. The first real contact lenses were developed by German ophthalmologist Adolf Gaston Eugen Fick in 1887.

5 Tater bite : TOT

Ore-Ida’s founders came up with the idea for Tater Tots when they were deciding what to do with residual cuts of potato. They chopped up the leftovers, added flour and seasoning, and extruded the mix through a large hole making a sausage that they cut into small cylinders. We eat 70 million pounds of this extruded potato every year!

7 Large mimosa order : CARAFE

A carafe is a container made from glass that has no handles, and no stopper.

Where I come from, the cocktail known in North America as a mimosa is called a buck’s fizz, with the latter named for Buck’s Club in London where it was introduced in 1921. The mimosa came along a few years later, apparently first being served in the Paris Ritz. If you want to make a mimosa, it’s a 50-50 mix of champagne and orange juice, and it is very tasty …

8 Racer Kitty known as “the fastest woman in the world” : O’NEIL

Kitty O’Neil was a stuntwoman and auto-racer. In 1976, she set the women’s absolute land speed record in a jet-powered vehicle that reached almost 513 miles per hour. That record stood until 2019.

11 Angelic being : CHERUB

A cherub (plural “cherubim”) is an angel. The term “cherub” ultimately comes from the Hebrew “kerubh” (plural “kerubhim”) meaning “winged angel”. In the Jewish tradition, cherubim play a key role in protecting the Garden of Eden, and in particular the Tree of Life.

15 Golfing prop : TEE

A tee is a small device on which, say, a golf ball is placed before striking it. The term “tee” comes from the Scottish “teaz”, which described little heaps of sand used to elevate a golf ball for the purpose of getting a clean hit with a club.

23 Objects gently : DEMURS

To demur is to voice opposition, to object. It can also mean to delay and has its roots in the Latin word “demorare”, meaning “to delay”.

25 Hoppy pub initials : IPA

India pale ale (IPA) is a style of beer that originated in England. The beer was originally intended for transportation from England to India, hence the name.

27 Jungian inner self : ANIMA

The concepts of anima and animus are found in the Carl Jung school of analytical psychology. The idea is that within each male there resides a feminine inner personality called the anima, and within each female there is a male inner personality known as the animus.

31 Shortcut created by foot traffic : DESIRE PATH

A desire path is an unplanned trail that is created by animal or human traffic trampling the ground. Some say that the oldest desire path in the US originated as the Wickquasgeck Path made by Native Americans, which connected settlements on Manhattan Island, avoiding swamps and hills. That path developed into the thoroughfare that we now call Broadway.

36 Turn a certain corner in Monopoly : PASS GO

In the game of Monopoly, sometimes you “Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”

39 -1,412 ft., for the Dead Sea : ELEV

The Middle East’s Dead Sea lies more than 1,400 feet below sea level, making it the lowest point on the Earth’s landmass. It is also one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, with a salt content that is almost ten times that of most oceans.

41 The lay of the land? : TOPOLOGY

Topology is a field of mathematics concerned with the study of surfaces, and properties that are preserved when surfaces are deformed. While topology is beyond me, topography is easier for me to wrap my head around. Topography is the study of landforms and features.

46 Bing portal : MSN

Bing is the search engine from Microsoft. “Bing” is the latest name for an engine that Microsoft used to call Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN Search.

48 Basic stuff? : ALKALI

The “opposite” of an acid is a base. Acids turn litmus paper red, and bases turn it blue. Acids and bases react with each other to form salts. An important subset of the chemicals called bases are alkalis, hydroxides of the alkali metals and of ammonium. The term “alkali” is sometimes used interchangeably with “base”, especially if that base is readily soluble in water.

49 Destiny : KISMET

“Kismet” is a Turkish word meaning “fate, fortune, lot”.

52 Japanese dogs : AKITAS

The Akita breed of dog is named for its point of origin, Akita Prefecture in Japan. When Helen Keller visited Japan in 1937, she asked for and was given an Akita breed of dog, with the name of Kamikaze-go. Sadly, the dog died within a year from distemper. The following year the Japanese government officially presented Keller with a replacement dog. Supposedly Keller’s dogs were the first members of the breed to be introduced into the US.

55 Habitat for Humanity, e.g., for short : NGO

Non-governmental organization (NGO)

Habitat for Humanity is a US-based nonprofit that was founded in 1976 with the aim of building affordable housing.

62 Loop in on the DL : BCC

Something described as on the down low is secret. The phrase “on the down low” is often shortened to “on the DL”, The same abbreviated expression can also mean “on the disabled list” in sports.

64 Emory U.’s home : ATL

Emory University is a private school in Atlanta, Georgia with a focus on graduate research. The school was named after a Methodist Episcopal bishop called John Emory, who was very popular at the time of the school’s founding in 1836.

65 Dog doc : VET

Habitat for Humanity is a US-based nonprofit that was founded in 1976 with the aim of building affordable housing.

66 Foreign policy gp. : NSC

The National Security Council (NSC) was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. It is chaired by the sitting president and meets in the White House Situation Room.