LA Times Crossword 8 Aug 24, Thursday

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Constructed by: Rebecca Goldstein
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: I Love That for You

Themed answers each contain FOUR letters U:

• 61A “So great, bestie!,” and a phonetic hint to 17-, 27-, and 48-Across : I LOVE THAT FOR YOU!

• 17A Patrons of the arts : CULTURE VULTURES
• 27A Fluffy blockers of the sun : CUMULUS CLOUDS
• 48A Coined phrase? : E PLURIBUS UNUM

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

Bill’s time: 7m 04s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

7 Pretax funds for medical expenses: Abbr. : HSA

Health savings account (HSA)

14 Tennis great Andre : AGASSI

Retired tennis professional Andre Agassi has been married to fellow player Steffi Graf since 2001. Agassi wrote an autobiography called “Open”, published in 2009. An amazing revelation in the book is that Agassi’s famous head of hair was actually a wig for much of his playing career. Can you imagine how hard it must have been to play tennis at his level with a rug stuck on?

16 Traditional Maori dance : HAKA

The haka is a war dance used by the Maori people of New Zealand. Famously, the New Zealand rugby team performs a haka before each of their matches.

27 Fluffy blockers of the sun : CUMULUS CLOUDS

Cumulus (plural “cumuli”) clouds are low-level clouds that look very “puffy”, with clearly defined edges and flat bases. “Cumulus” is Latin for “heap, pile”.

37 Volleyball court divider : NET

Indoor volleyball was invented in 1895 and was originally called “mintonette”, a reference to the related game of “badminton”. The variant called beach volleyball originated in 1915 on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, but was popularized on the beaches of Santa Monica starting in 1920.

48 Coined phrase? : E PLURIBUS UNUM

From 1776, “E pluribus unum” was the unofficial motto of the United States. The phrase translates from Latin as “Out of many, one”. It was pushed aside in 1956 when an Act of Congress designated “In God We Trust” as the country’s official motto. “In God We Trust” had appeared on US coins since 1864, but was only introduced on paper currency in 1957.

51 Thumbs-down in Dijon : NON

Dijon is a city in eastern France in the Burgundy region. Dijon is famous for its mustard, a particularly strong variation of the condiment. The European Union doesn’t protect the name “Dijon” so anyone can use it on a label. That seems fair enough to me, given that 90% of the mustard made in and around Dijon is produced using mustard seed imported from Canada!

53 Pod used as a chocolate substitute : CAROB

The carob is a tree or shrub in the pea family that is mainly grown for its seed pods. The carob seeds are dried or roasted, and when powdered or chipped make a good substitute for chocolate.

65 Heavy 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”.

69 Reddit Q&A : AMA

Reddit.com is a networking and news website that started up in 2005. It is essentially a bulletin board system with posts that are voted up and down by users, which determines the ranking of posts. The name “Reddit” is a play on “read it”, as in “I read it on Reddit”. One popular feature of the Reddit site is an online forum that is similar to a press conference. Known as an AMA (for “ask me anything”), participants have included the likes of President Barack Obama, Madonna, Bill Gates, Stephen Colbert and Gordon Ramsay. President Obama’s AMA was so popular that the high level of traffic brought down many parts of the Reddit site.

70 Spotify button : REPEAT

Spotify is a popular music-streaming service that was launched in Sweden in 2008.

Down

2 Amazon contents : AGUA

The Amazon River of South America is the world’s largest in terms of volume, and accounts for an amazing one-fifth of the world’s total river flow. Perhaps even more amazing is that there are no bridges across the Amazon! There isn’t even one, mainly because the river flows through tropical rainforest where there are few roads and cities.

3 Mineral no longer used in baby powder : TALC

Talc is a mineral, hydrated magnesium silicate. Talcum powder is composed of loose talc, although these days “baby powder” is mainly made from cornstarch.

4 Land bridge : ISTHMUS

The word “isthmus” (plural “isthmi”) comes from the Greek word for “neck”. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land that usually connects two large land masses. The most notable examples of the formation are the Isthmus of Corinth in the Greek peninsula, and the Isthmus of Panama, connecting North and South America.

5 Columbus campus initials : OSU

Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus was founded back in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The athletic teams of OSU are called the Buckeyes, named after the state tree of Ohio. In turn the buckeye tree gets its name from the appearance of its fruit, a dark nut with a light patch thought to resemble a “buck’s eye”. The school’s athletic mascot was introduced in 1965, and is an anthropomorphic buckeye nut named Brutus Buckeye.

9 53-Down with more than 70 sts. that have a form of “Peachtree” in their names : ATL
[53D Dot on a map : CITY]

The city of Atlanta, Georgia (A-Town) had its beginnings in the late 1830s when the location was chosen as the terminus for a new railroad to be built connecting Georgia with the Midwestern United States. The city’s name was chosen by the Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, apparently after the middle name of the daughter of Governor Wilson Lumpkin: “Atalanta”.

10 Pastries often dipped in chocolate : CHURROS

A churro is pastry made from fried dough, and is sometimes called a Spanish doughnut. Churros are often served for breakfast, when they are dipped in hot chocolate or milky coffee.

11 Jackrabbit, e.g. : HARE

A jackrabbit is a large hare that is native to North America. The animal was given its name because of its relatively long ears, with the term being a melding of “jackass” and “rabbit”.

12 Billy bookcase retailer : IKEA

BILLY is a line of bookcases supplied by IKEA since 1979. As of 2017, over 60 million BILLY bookcase units had been sold. The line was named for an IKEA advertising manager, Billy Liljedhal. Liljedhal had made the request for the design of “a proper bookcase just for books”.

26 Pulled shenanigans : ACTED UP

I suppose one might be forgiven for thinking that “shenanigan” is an Irish term, as it certainly sounds Irish. Usually written in the plural, shenanigans are acts of mischief, pranks. Apparently the word is of uncertain derivation, but was coined in San Francisco or Sacramento, California in the mid-1800s.

30 Singer Celine : DION

French-Canadian singer Céline Dion first came to international attention when she won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, in which she represented Switzerland in the competition that was hosted in Dublin, Ireland. She is now the best-selling Canadian artist of all time.

38 Word often seen under a tilde? : TAB

Like most features on our computer keyboards, the tab key is a hangover from the days of typewriters. When using a typewriter, making entries into a table was very tedious, involving lots of tapping on the spacebar and backspace key. So, a lever was added to typewriters that allowed the operator to “jump” across the page to positions that could be set by hand. Later this was simplified to a tab key which could be depressed, causing the carriage to jump to the next tab stop in much the same way that the modern tab key works on a computer.

45 Creamy cheese : BURRATA

Burrata is an Italian cheese made from mozzarella and cream. The Italian term “burrata” translates as “buttered”.

55 Tomato type : ROMA

The Roma tomato isn’t considered an heirloom variety but it is very popular with home gardeners, especially those gardeners that don’t have a lot of space. It is a bush type (as opposed to vine type) and needs very little room to provide a lot of tomatoes.

62 Placeholder abbr. : TBA

To be advised/announced (TBA)