LA Times Crossword 5 Sep 24, Thursday

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Constructed by: Rebecca Goldstein
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: A Feature, Not a Bug

Themed answers are common phrases FEATURING a word that sometimes describes a BUG:

• 58A Seeming flaw that’s intentional : A FEATURE, NOT A BUG

• 49A 58-Across of a social crafting event : QUILTING BEE
• 3D 58-Across of some jeans : BUTTON FLY
• 7D 58-Across of the German auto industry : VW BEETLE
• 11D 58-Across of 1990s rock : PAPA ROACH

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

Bill’s time: 9m 10s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

9 Mammal with a prehensile snout : TAPIR

All four species of tapir are endangered. Even though the tapir looks much like a pig, it is more closely related to the horse and the rhinoceros.

14 Sporty car : COUPE

The type of car known as a “coupe” or “coupé” is a closed automobile with two doors. The name comes from the French word “couper” meaning “to cut”. In most parts of the English-speaking world the pronunciation adheres to the original French, but here in most of North America we go with “coop”. The original coupé was a horse-drawn carriage that was cut (coupé) to eliminate the rear-facing passenger seats. That left just a driver and two front-facing passengers. If the driver was left without a roof and out in the open, then the carriage was known as a “coupé de-ville”.

15 Avian Tootsie Pop mascot : OWL

Tootsie Pops were developed as a derivative product from the popular Tootsie Roll candy. How popular, I hear you say? About 60 million Tootsie Rolls and 20 million Tootsie Pops are produced every day!

16 Counters of yore : ABACI

The abacus (plural “abaci”) was used as a counting frame long before man had invented a numbering system. It is a remarkable invention, particularly when one notes that abaci are still widely used today across Africa and Asia.

18 Jazz org. : NBA

The Utah Jazz professional basketball team moved to Salt Lake City in 1979. As one might guess from the name, the team originated in New Orleans, but only played there for five seasons. New Orleans was a tough place to be based because venues were hard to come by, and Mardi Gras forced the team to play on the road for a whole month.

19 Like some comic-con attendees : CAPED

San Diego’s Comic-Con was founded in 1970 as the Golden State Comic Book Convention. Held over four days each summer, I hear it is the largest show in North America.

20 QB’s throw : ATT

In football, a quarterback’s (QB’s) performance can be measured by attempts (ATT), a statistic (stat).

21 Action by the Fed : RATE CUT

The Federal Reserve System is more usually known simply as “the Fed”, and is the central banking system of the US. It was introduced in 1913 in response to a number of financial panics at the beginning of the 20th century. The original role for the Fed was to act as a lender of last resort, in case there was a run on a bank. This can happen as most of the money that is deposited by customers in a bank is reinvested by that bank, so it has very little liquid cash available. If too many customers look for their money at one time, then the bank can be short of cash and this can start a “run”. The Fed’s responsibilities have broadened since those early days …

25 Angus animal : COW

The full name of the Angus cattle breed is Aberdeen Angus, which is also the name used around the world outside of North America. The breed was developed by crossbreeding cattle from the counties of Aberdeenshire and Angus in Scotland. The breed stands out in the US as Angus cattle don’t have horns.

30 Insurance company with a purple heart logo : AETNA

When the healthcare management and insurance company known as Aetna was founded, the name was chosen to evoke images of Mount Etna, the Italian volcano.

31 Hobart hoppers : ROOS

Hobart is the capital of Australia’s island state of Tasmania. Hobart was founded by the British in 1804 as a penal colony. The colony was named for the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies at the time, Lord Hobart.

33 Getting hangry, maybe : UNFED

“Hangry” is an informal term meaning “irritable because of hunger”. It is a portmanteau of “hungry” and “angry”.

35 Ctrl-__-Del : ALT

Ctrl-Alt-Delete is a keyboard command on IBM PC compatible systems used for a soft reboot, or more recently to bring up the task manager in the Windows operating system. Bill Gates tells us that the command was originally just a device to be used during development and was never meant to “go live”. He once said that “Ctrl+Alt+Delete” was a mistake, and that he would have preferred a dedicated key on the keyboard that carried out the same function.

41 Greek X : CHI

The letter chi is the 22nd letter in the Greek alphabet, and the one that looks like our Roman letter X.

42 Parisian palace : ELYSEE

The Élysée Palace is the official residence of the French President, and is near the Champs-Élysées in Paris. In the 1800s, there used to be a tunnel between the Élysée Palace and the nearby Tuileries Palace, a tunnel used quite often by Napoleon Bonaparte. While Napoleon lived in the Tuileries Palace, he would meet his mistresses in the Élysée Palace. He was ever the soul of discretion …

44 Big name in competitive eating? : NATHAN

Nathan’s Famous is a chain of fast food restaurants that specialize in hot dogs. The chain’s first outlet was a hot dog stand in Coney Island set up by husband and wife Nathan and Ida Handwerker. Nathan’s Famous has held a Hot Dog Eating Contest every July 4th since 1916, and always at the same place on Coney Island, where that first hot dog stand was located..

46 “Welp, what can you do?” : ALAS

“Welp” is a slang term used at the beginning of a sentence to indicate disappointment. “Welp” is used in the same way that we use the interjection “well”.

Well, that worked out.

Welp, that didn’t work out.

49 58-Across of a social crafting event : QUILTING BEE

Back in 18th-century America, when neighbors would gather to work for the benefit of one of their group, such a meeting was called a bee. The name “bee” was an allusion to the social nature of the insect. In modern parlance, a further element of entertainment and pleasure has been introduced, for example in a quilting bee, or even a spelling bee.

52 Unit of magnetic induction : GAUSS

Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician and scientist, by all accounts a child prodigy and one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. He did a lot of work in the field of magnetism in his latter years, and for this the metric system’s unit of magnetic induction was given the name “gauss”.

Magnetic induction is the process of generating a voltage in a conductor by varying the magnetic field around it. It is the foundation principle behind many electrical devices, including generators and transformers. When a conductor, such as a wire coil, is placed in a changing magnetic field, the electrons within the conductor experience a force, causing them to move and create an electric current.

55 Color-blending technique : OMBRE

The adjective “ombré” describes a color or tone that is a blend of one into another. “Ombré” is French for “shaded”. A softer and more gradual shading of one color into the other is referred to as “sombré”.

61 “Succession” cousin : GREG

In the comedy-drama show “Succession”, actor Nicholas Braun plays Greg Hirsch. Hirsch is a naive and bumbling grandson of Logan Roy’s brother.

63 Rowlands of “The Notebook” : GENA

Gena Rowlands was an actress best known for the films made with her husband, actor and director John Cassavetes. Notably, Rowlands played a lead role opposite James Garner in the weepy, weepy 2004 film “The Notebook”. “The Notebook” was directed by her son Nick Cassavetes. Rowlands was nominated for Oscars for her performances in two films: “Gloria” (1980) and “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974).

“The Notebook” is one of the weepiest of the weepies, a 2004 film based on a 1996 novel by Nicholas Sparks. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fall for each other in the forties. At the risk of giving away the ending, James Garner and Gena Rowlands play the same couple in their older years. Rowlands’ son Nick Cassavetes directed the film.

65 Briquettes : COALS

The term “briquette”, French for “small brick”, describes a compacted mass of fine material usually used as fuel for a fire. In North America, the most common briquettes are compressed coal dust, often used in charcoal grills. Back in Ireland, we see a lot of peat briquettes, which we use in fireplaces to heat our homes.

Down

1 Campus near Sunset Blvd. : UCLA

The Los Angeles thoroughfare Sunset Boulevard is 22 miles long, stretching from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean. The most famous part of Sunset Boulevard is the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, a 1½-mile stretch that is home to high-end boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs.

2 Endodontic therapy : ROOT CANAL

The specialty field of dentistry known as endodontics is concerned with the treatment of the dental pulp, the living tissue found within a tooth.

6 City named for the hill it surrounds : MONTREAL

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”.

7 58-Across of the German auto industry : VW BEETLE

“VW” stands for “Volkswagen”, which translates from German into “people’s car”. The original Volkswagen design was the Beetle and was built under a directive from Adolf Hitler, who wanted a cheap car built that ordinary people could afford to purchase. Hitler awarded the contract to engineer Ferdinand Porsche, whose name (paradoxically) would forever be associated with high performance, expensive cars. The Beetle was the official name of the VW model released in North America, but it was usually referred to as a “Bug” here in the US, and a “Beetle” elsewhere in the world.

8 Organ that nourishes a fetus : PLACENTA

The human placenta is a temporary organ that connects the fetus to the mother’s uterus. The placenta facilitates the exchange of nutrients and waste, the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and also produces hormones essential during the pregnancy.

10 Therapy for some individuals with autism, for short : ABA

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a scientific approach to understanding and improving behavior. It involves systematically applying interventions based on the principles of learning theory to increase helpful behaviors and reduce harmful or unwanted ones.

11 58-Across of 1990s rock : PAPA ROACH

Papa Roach is a rock band that formed in 1993 in Vacaville, California. The band’s name was inspired by the two grandfathers of one of the band members, Jacoby Shaddix. Those grandpas were Herbert “Papa” Fischer and John “Grandpa” Roatch.

12 Cold, chocolaty cafe order : ICED MOCHA

Mocha is a port city in Yemen on the Red Sea and was once the principal port for the capital city of Sana’a. Mocha was the major marketplace in the world for coffee until the 1600s, and gave its name to the Mocha coffee bean, which in turn gave its name to the mocha brown color, and the flavor of coffee infused with chocolate.

29 Supine winter sport : LUGE

A luge is a small sled used by one or two people, on which one lies face up and feet first. The luge can be compared to the skeleton, a sled for only one person and on which the rider lies face down and goes down the hill head-first. Yikes!

36 Customer service agent unlikely to pass a captcha test : CHATBOT

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-and-response test that is used to determine if a user is a human or some automated program. The acronym “CAPTCHA” stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”.

39 National Book Award winner Shusterman : NEAL

Neal Shusterman is an author known for his works of fiction for young adults. Although he was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, Shusterman finished high school in Mexico City, before returning to the US to attend the University of California at Irvine. Two of his more famous works are the novels “Challenger Deep” (2015) and “Scythe” (2016).

43 McMuffin option : SAUSAGE

The McMuffin breakfast sandwich was introduced, without the knowledge of the corporate office, by the operator of a Santa Barbara, California franchise in 1972. Back then, McDonald’s only offered food for lunch and dinner. The initial reaction of the corporate office on hearing about the McMuffin was to reprimand the Santa Barbara franchise operator, before embracing the concept.

45 Crèche trio : THE MAGI

“Magi” is the plural of the Latin word “magus”, a term applied to someone who was able to read the stars. Hence, “magi” is commonly used with reference to the “wise men from the East” who followed the star and visited Jesus soon after he was born. In Western Christianity, the three Biblical Magi are:

• Melchior: a scholar from Persia
• Caspar (also “Gaspar”): a scholar from India
• Balthazar: a scholar from Arabia

In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene (also “crèche”) is a display representing the scene of the birth of Jesus. Nativity scenes might be subjects for paintings, for example, although the term is usually used for seasonal displays associated with the Christmas season.

49 Part of LGBTQ : QUEER

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ)

50 Humanitarian Sendler recognized by Yad Vashem : IRENA

Irena Sendler was a Polish nurse who worked with the Polish Underground during WWII. She played a leading role in smuggling about 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, saving them from the Holocaust. Sendler was discovered by the Nazis, tortured and sentenced to death. However, Sendler managed to escape, and survived the war.

Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem, a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, opened to the public in 1957. The name “Yad Vashem” can be translated from Hebrew as “a place and a name”, and comes from a verse in the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible:

Even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off

56 Ancient character : RUNE

A rune is a character in an alphabet that is believed to have mysterious powers. In Norse mythology, the runic alphabet was said to have a divine origin.

59 Checkout lines? : UPC

The initialism “UPC” stands for Universal Price Code or Universal Product Code. The first ever UPC-marked item to get scanned in a store was on June 26, 1974 at 08:01 a.m. at Marsh’s supermarket in Troy, Ohio. It was a 10-pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum.