LA Times Crossword 27 Oct 25, Monday

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Constructed by: Guilherme Gilioli

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Skipping Rope

Themed answers each include ROPE as a hidden word, although every second letter is SKIPPED:

• 52A Cord in some cardio workouts, or an apt description of each set of circled letters in this puzzle : SKIPPING ROPE

• 20A Cornucopia : HORN OF PLENTY
• 28A “Can’t Fight This Feeling” band : REO SPEEDWAGON
• 45A Device for inflating tires : AIR COMPRESSOR

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

Bill’s time: 5m 45s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5A Veer off course, as a ship : YAW

The word “yaw” means to deviate from the line of a course and is used mainly at sea and in the air. “Yaw” is derived from the Old Norse word “jaege” which means “to drive, chase”. As such, “yaw” is etymologically related to our word “yacht”.

8A Morales who becomes Spider-Man in the “Spider-Verse” films : MILES

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” is an animated superhero film released in 2018 that won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The animation style of the movie is called “comic book come to life.” The filmmakers wanted to create a movie that felt like a living, breathing comic book, and they achieved that by incorporating comic book elements like thought bubbles and sound effects into the animation.

13A Love, in León : AMOR

León is a province in the autonomous community of Castile and León in the northwest of Spain. The province’s capital is the city of León, which was founded as a Roman military encampment around 29 BC.

16A Joker, to Batman : ENEMY

The Joker is one of the most colorful of Batman’s nemeses, one introduced in comic books in 1940 and appearing in the first ever edition of “Batman”. The Joker has also been played on screen by some colorful characters. In the original television series, he was portrayed by Cesar Romero, and on the big screen by Jack Nicholson. What great casting!

17A Feng __ : SHUI

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese tradition of arranging objects, buildings and other structures in a manner that is said to improve the lives of the individuals living in or using the space. “Feng shui” translates as “wind-water”, a reference to the belief that positive and negative life forces ride the wind and scatter, but are retained when they encounter water.

20A Cornucopia : HORN OF PLENTY

The horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance that has been used in Western art since the days of antiquity. It is usually depicted as a horn-shaped vessel containing flowers and edible delights. The horn of plenty may also be referred to as the cornucopia.

23A Beatles opener? : THE

The Beatles were described on the sleeve notes of their 1963 album “With the Beatles” as the “fabulous foursome”. The press picked up on the phrase and morphed it into “the Fab Four”.

25A Animation frame : CEL

Animation cels are transparent sheets made of celluloid acetate that were used in traditional hand-drawn animation to create animated films. They were first introduced in the 1930s and were widely used in animation production until the late 1990s, when digital animation techniques began to dominate the industry.

28A “Can’t Fight This Feeling” band : REO SPEEDWAGON

REO Speedwagon is an American rock band that formed in 1967, and is still going strong. The band’s biggest hits are “Keep On Loving You” (1980) and “Can’t Fight This Feeling” (1985). The founding members chose the name for the REO Speed Wagon flatbed truck. Note that the band’s name is one word “Speedwagon”, whereas the vehicle’s name uses two words “Speed Wagon”.

32A Chatted on WhatsApp, briefly : IM’ED

WhatsApp is a popular messaging service used on smartphones that sends messages and other files from one mobile phone number to another. Launched in 2011, WhatsApp is incredibly popular, and indeed the most popular messaging service used today. Facebook (now Meta) acquired WhatsApp in 2014, paying over $19 billion.

40A Hoppy pub pick, for short : IPA

The foodstuff that we call “hops” are actually the female flowers of the hop plant. The main use of hops is to add flavor to beer. The town in which I used to live here in California was once home to the largest hop farm in the world. Most of the harvested hops were exported all the way to the breweries of London, where they could fetch the best price.

41A Zagreb native : CROAT

Zagreb is the capital city of the Republic of Croatia. Zagreb has been around a long, long time, and dates back to the diocese of Zagreb that was founded at the end of the 11th century.

43A Media with reflective sides : CDS

The compact disc (CD) was developed jointly by Philips and Sony as a medium for storing and playing sound recordings. When the first commercial CD was introduced back in 1982, a CD’s storage capacity was far greater than the amount of data that could be stored on the hard drive of personal computers available at that time.

44A Podiatry focus : FEET

Podiatry is a branch of medicine dealing with the foot, ankle and lower extremities.

45A Device for inflating tires : AIR COMPRESSOR

Here’s another example of terms that change as we cross the Atlantic Ocean. When talking about tires (“tyres” in Britain and Ireland), a defect can cause a “flat” (“puncture” in Britain and Ireland).

50A Cristo Redentor’s city : RIO

The iconic statue of Jesus overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is known as “Cristo Redentor” (Christ the Redeemer). The statue was constructed between 1922 and 1931. It is the largest Art Deco statue in the world, as it stands over 30 meters tall.

52A Cord in some cardio workouts, or an apt description of each set of circled letters in this puzzle : SKIPPING ROPE

Aerobic exercise is moderate activity designed to be at a low enough intensity that very little anaerobic activity takes place. In other words, the exercise is at a level where oxygen is taken in to burn fat and carbohydrate and to create energy. Anaerobic exercise is more intense and uses carbohydrate (glycogen) in the muscle to provide energy, without the need for oxygen. Aerobics are also called “cardio” as the exercises strengthen the cardiovascular system.

61A Volcano near Sicily’s east coast : ETNA

Mount Etna, located on the island of Sicily, is one of the world’s most active stratovolcanoes and one of the most frequently erupting volcanoes on Earth. It has been active for at least 500,000 years, with historical eruptions documented for over 3,500 years.

63A Lard Lad treat on “The Simpsons” : DONUT

Lard Lad Donuts is the premier donut shop in the city of Springfield, on “The Simpsons”. The giant Lard Lad mascot is a parody of two real-world American landmarks. The figure itself is based on the “Big Boy” mascot of the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant chain, while the giant donut he holds is a nod to the iconic rooftop donut of Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood, California.

67A Short story writer Edgar Allan __ : POE

Edgar Allan Poe (EAP) lived a life of many firsts. Poe is considered to be the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He was also the first notable American author to make his living through his writing, something that didn’t really go too well for him as he was always financially strapped. In 1849 he was found on the streets of Baltimore, delirious and in dire need of medical help. Poe died a few days later in hospital at 40 years of age.

68A Deuce topper : TREY

A trey is a three in a deck of cards. The term “trey” can also be used for a domino with three pips, and even for a three-point play in basketball.

A two in a deck of playing cards might be called a “deuce”, from the Middle French “deus” (or Modern French “deux”) meaning “two”.

Down

2D Texter’s “As I see it” : IMHO

In my humble opinion (IMHO)

8D Shepherd’s pie filling : MEAT

Shepherd’s pie, also known as “cottage pie”, is one of my favorite dishes. It is a meat pie (although my wife makes a vegetarian version), with a crust made from mashed potato. Yum …

9D Racing body with an annual “500” event : INDYCAR

IndyCar sanctions Indy car racing (i.e. American open-wheel car racing). The organization governs five racing series, most notably the IndyCar series that includes the Indianapolis 500.

12D Antonym’s opposite: Abbr. : SYN

An antonym is an “anti-synonym”. A synonym is a word having the same sense as another, and an antonym the opposite. For example, “love” is an antonym of “hate”, and “stop” is an antonym of “go”.

15D Witherspoon of “Big Little Lies” : REESE

Actress Reese Witherspoon started her own production company, Hello Sunshine, in 2016 to produce films and TV shows that focus on stories by and about women. The company has since produced several successful projects, including the HBO series “Big Little Lies,” which Witherspoon also starred in and co-produced.

“Big Little Lies” is a 2017 TV miniseries that is based on a 2014 novel of the same name. It stars Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley as three women who, while dealing with their own emotional problems, find themselves involved in a murder investigation. I haven’t seen this one, but hear very good things …

22D Actor Beatty : NED

Actor Ned Beatty is possibly best remembered for the rather disturbing “squeal like a pig” scene in the movie “Deliverance”. Beatty also earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1976 movie “Network”.

26D Like shortcake, compared to shortbread, usually : EGGIER

Shortening is a fat used in baking. It is the term “shortening” that gives us the words “shortbread” and “shortcake”.

27D Gem examiner’s tool : LOUPE

A loupe is a small magnifying lens that is held in the hand. “Loupe” is the French name for such a device.

29D Domino dot : PIP

White masks with black spots were commonly seen in the old Venetian Carnival. The masks were known as “domini”. The domini loaned their name to the game of dominoes, due to the similarity in appearance between the mask and a domino tile.

30D Tug-of-__ : WAR

Tug-of-war is a strength competition between two teams who pull on opposite ends of a rope, vying to pull the opponents over a marked line. The sport was an event in the Summer Olympic Games from 1900 until 1920. The USA teams won all three medals for the tug-of-war at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis.

32D Andean empire : INCA

The Inca Empire was known as the Tawantinsuyu, which translates as “land of the four quarters”. It was a federal organization with a central government that sat above four “suyu” or “quarters”, four administrative regions.

33D Ave __: Catholic prayer : MARIA

“Ave Maria” (“Hail Mary” in English) is the prayer at the core of the Roman Catholic Rosary, which itself is a set of prayers asking for the assistance of the Virgin Mary. Much of the text of the “”Hail Mary”” comes from the Gospel of Luke. The words in Latin are:

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

The prayer has been adapted as a hymn. The two most famous musical versions of “Ave Maria” are by Charles Gounod (based on a piece by Bach) and by Franz Schubert.”

39D Upper chamber in Amer. politics : U.S. SENATE

Our word “senate” comes from the Latin name for such a body, namely “senatus”. In turn, “senatus” is derived from “senex” meaning “old man”, reflecting the original Roman Senate’s makeup as a council of “elders”. Ain’t that true …?

46D Hosp. scan : MRI

MRI scans can be daunting for many people as they usually involve the patient lying inside a tube with the imaging magnet surrounding the body. Additionally, the scan can take up to 40 minutes in some cases. There are some open MRI scanners available that help prevent a feeling of claustrophobia. However, the images produced by open scanners are of lower quality as they operate at lower magnetic fields.

47D Plumbing components : PIPES

“Plumbum” is Latin for “lead”, explaining why the symbol of the element in the Periodic Table is “Pb”. It also explains why the original lead weight on the end of a line used to check vertical was called a “plumb line”. And, as pipes were originally made of lead, it also explains why we would call in a “plumber” if one of those pipes were leaking.

56D Folk icon Seeger : PETE

American folk singer Pete Seeger wrote and co-wrote a lot of classic songs. The list includes “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I had a Hammer”, and “Turn, Turn, Turn!”

57D Green with __ : ENVY

William Shakespeare was one of the first to associate the color green with envy. He called jealousy the “green-eyed monster” in his play “Othello”.

59D Note after fa : SOL

Solfège (also “sol-fa”) is a teaching method used in the world of music. The technique involves the use of the sol-fa syllables for each note, and associating each syllable with a specific pitch.