LA Times Crossword 15 Dec 25, Monday

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Constructed by: Doug Peterson

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: My Two Dads

Themed answers each comprise TWO words, both starting with “PA”:

• 65A Paul Reiser sitcom, and what can be found in the answers to the starred clues : MY TWO DADS

• 17A *”Tennessee Waltz” singer : PATTI PAGE
• 24A *Bottoms worn as loungewear : PAJAMA PANTS
• 40A *Maneuvering into a tight curbside spot : PARALLEL PARKING
• 51A *Wide receiver’s route : PASS PATTERN

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

Bill’s time: 6m 04s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A First name of singers Levine and Lambert : ADAM

Adam Levine is the lead vocalist of the pop rock band Maroon 5. Levine also served as one of the coaches on the reality show “The Voice” from 2011 through 2019.

Singer Adam Lambert is one of the successes to come out of the “American Idol” machine. After hitting the big times, Lambert started a collaboration with Brian May and Roger Taylor, performing as Queen + Adam Lambert.

16A Brooklyn’s __ Island : CONEY

Cony (or “coney”) is an old English word for rabbit or rabbit fur, and Coney Island in New York takes its name from the same root. The Dutch used the name “Conyne Eylandt” (Rabbit Island) after the large population of rabbits that was hunted there.

17A *”Tennessee Waltz” singer : PATTI PAGE

“Patti Page” is the stage name of Clara Ann Fowler, the best-selling female artist in the 1950s. Patti Page’s signature song is “Tennessee Waltz”, a big hit for her that spent 13 weeks at number one in the charts in 1950. She also had a number one with “(How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window” in 1953.

The wonderful “Tennessee Waltz” was written by Redd Stewart and Pee Wee King in 1948. The song became a huge hit for Patti Page in 1950.

19A Open, as a vitamin bottle : UNCAP

“Vitamins” are substances that are “vital” to life in small quantities. The term “vitamine” was coined in 1912 by Casimir Funk, a Polish biochemist who isolated several essential chemicals, all of which he assumed were amines. When it was later determined that these vital micronutrients were not all amines, then the letter E was dropped from “vitamine” to give us “vitamin”.

21A Shopping complex : MALL

Surprisingly (to me!), our word “mall”, meaning “shady walk” or “enclosed shopping space”, comes from the Italian for “mallet”. All of our shopping-style malls are named for “The Mall” in St. James’s Park in London. This tree-lined promenade was so called as it used to be a famous spot to play the croquet-like game called “pall-mall”. The game derived its name from the Italian for ball (palla) and mallet “maglio”. The London thoroughfare called the Mall still exists, at one end of which is Buckingham Palace. Indeed, parallel to the Mall is a street called Pall Mall.

23A Stack starter in solitaire : ACE

I think that a single-player card game is usually called “Solitaire” in the US, whereas we use the name “Patience” back in Ireland.

24A *Bottoms worn as loungewear : PAJAMA PANTS

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”.

32A “Meant to tell you” shorthand : BTW

By the way (BTW)

33A Honey liquor : MEAD

Mead is a lovely drink that’s made from fermented honey and water.

37A Island where “NCIS: Hawai’i” is set : OAHU

“NCIS: Hawaiʻi” is a CBS police TV show, the fourth in the NCIS franchise, that follows agents at the Pearl Harbor Field Office. It was the first in the franchise to feature a female lead, with Vanessa Lachey starring as Special Agent in Charge Jane Tennant. The show ran for three seasons from 2021 and was canceled in April 2024.

40A *Maneuvering into a tight curbside spot : PARALLEL PARKING

“Curb” is another of those words that I had to learn when I came to the US. We park by the “kerb” on the other side of the Atlantic. Oh, and the “pavement”, that’s what we call the “footpath” (because the footpath is “paved”!). It’s very confusing when you arrive in this country from Ireland, and a little dangerous, when one has been taught to “walk on the pavement” …

44A Brand that sells Braille Bricks : LEGO

Lego’s Braille Bricks are an educational tool designed to help children with vision impairment learn braille through play. Each brick’s studs are arranged to represent a specific braille character, and it also features the corresponding printed letter or symbol. This design allows visually impaired children, parents, and teachers to use them together.

45A Paper quantity : REAM

A ream is 500 sheets of paper. As there were 24 sheets in a quire, and 20 quires made up a ream, there used to be 480 sheets in a ream. Ever since the standard was changed to 500, a 480-sheet packet of paper has been called a “short ream”. We also use the term “reams” to mean a great amount, evolving from the idea of a lot of printed material.

56A Spigoted vessel : URN

Back in the 15th century, a spigot was specifically a plug to stop a hole in a cask. Somewhere along the way, a spigot had a valve added for variable control of flow.

58A Marisa of “The Big Short” : TOMEI

Marisa Tomei’s first screen role was in the daytime soap “As the World Turns”, but her break came with a recurring role in “The Cosby Show” spin-off “A Different World”. Tomei won an Oscar for her delightful performance in “My Cousin Vinny” in 1992.

“The Big Short” is a 2015 film based on a 2010 book of the same name by Michael Lewis, both of which reveal the main players behind the creation of the credit default swap market that profited so heavily from the financial crisis of 207-2008.

63A Heat’s home city : MIAMI

The Miami Heat basketball team debuted in the NBA in the 1988-89 season. The franchise name was chosen in a competitive survey, with “Miami Heat” beating out “Miami Vice”.

65A Paul Reiser sitcom, and what can be found in the answers to the starred clues : MY TWO DADS

“My Two Dads” is a sitcom that aired at the end of the 1980s. It’s about two men who are awarded joint custody of a teenage girl. The dads are played by Paul Reiser and Greg Evigan, and the daughter by Staci Keanan. Never saw it …

The comedian and actor Paul Reiser is best known for co-starring alongside Helen Hunt in the nineties sitcom “Mad About You”. Reiser also co-wrote the show’s theme song, “The Final Frontier”.

68A “Evita” surname : PERON

“Evita” was the follow-up musical to “Jesus Christ Superstar” for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Both of these works were originally released as album musicals, and very successful ones at that (I remember buying them when they first came out). “Evita” was made into a film in 1996, with Madonna playing the title role and Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce playing her husband Juan Perón.

69A Bosc, for one : PEAR

Bosc is a cultivar of the European pear that is grown mainly in the northwest of the United States. It is named for French horticulturist Louis Bosc. The cultivar originated in Belgium or France in the early 19th century. The Bosc is that pear with a skin the color of a potato, with a long neck.

72A Avant-garde : EDGY

Someone or something described as avant-garde is especially innovative. “Avant-garde” is French for “advance guard”.

73A Monopoly payment : RENT

The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman named Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

Down

1D Concert boosters : AMPS

An electric guitar, for example, needs an amplifier (amp) to take the weak signal created by the vibration of the strings and turn it into a signal powerful enough for a loudspeaker.

6D Pie __ mode : A LA

In French, “à la mode” simply means “fashionable”. In America, the term has also come to describe a way of serving pie. Pie served à la mode includes a dollop of cream or ice cream, or as I recall from my time living in Upstate New York, with a wedge of cheddar cheese.

7D Religious doctrine : DOGMA

A dogma is a set of beliefs. The plural of “dogma” is “dogmata” (or “dogmas”, if you’re not a pedant like me!)

11D Like Machu Picchu : INCAN

Machu Picchu is known as “The Lost City of the Incas”, and it can be visited on a mountain ridge in Peru, 50 miles northwest of the city of Cuzco in the southeast of the country. The name Machu Picchu means “old peak”. The Inca Trail to Machu Picchu originates about 50 miles from Cusco on the Urubamba River in Peru. It can take travelers about 5 days to trek the full length of the trail, passing through many Incan ruins before reaching the Sun Gate on Machu Picchu mountain. The trail was becoming greatly overused, forcing the Peruvian government to limit the number of people on the trail each day to 500. Book early …

22D Chemist’s workplace : LAB

Our term “laboratory”, often shortened to “lab”, comes from the Medieval Latin word “laboratorium” meaning “place for labor, work”. This in turn comes from the Latin verb “laborare” meaning “to work”.

25D Eve’s second son : ABEL

According to the Bible, Adam and Eve had several children, although only the first three are mentioned by name: Cain, Abel and Seth.

26D 2020 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Derek : JETER

Derek Jeter played his entire professional baseball career with the New York Yankees, and was the team’s captain. Jeter is the all-time career leader for the Yankees in hits, games played, stolen bases and at bats. He is also the all-time leader in hits by a shortstop in the whole of professional baseball. Jeter’s performances in the postseason earned him the nicknames “Captain Clutch” and “Mr. November”. Jeter retired from the game in 2014.

36D The “S” of NASA : SPACE

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite towards the end of 1957 in a development that shocked the establishment in the US. Within months, President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Space Race had begun …

42D “__ Prohibido”: 1994 Selena hit : AMOR

“Amor Prohibido” (“Forbidden Love”) is a 1994 hit for Tejano singer Selena. The song was directly inspired by the real-life love story of her grandparents. Her grandmother had been a maid for a wealthy family and fell in love with their son. Their relationship was considered “forbidden” because they came from different social classes.

43D Channel with “Press Your Luck” reruns : GSN

Game Show Network (GSN)

“Press Your Luck” is a game show that originally aired from 1983 to 1986. This was the show on which contestants had to press a large button in order to stop a light that was flashing around 18 squares in front of them. If the light stopped on a “Whammy”, then they lost their turn and any accumulated money. Famously, a contestant named Michael Larson used the stop-motion feature on a VCR player to memorize the pattern flashed out by the supposedly random light. On air, Larson pressed the button and avoided the Whammy 45 times in a row and amassed winnings of over $110,000, a record for a daily game show. After Larson’s big win, the show’s producers made the light sequence more complicated so they didn’t run into the same problem again.

50D “Do __ others … ” : UNTO

The Golden Rule is also known as the ethic of reciprocity, and is a basis for the concept of human rights. A version of the rule used in the Christian tradition is attributed to Jesus:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

A derivative phrase often heard today is “Love thy neighbor (as thyself)”.

51D Machines at gas stations : PUMPS

The gas pump was actually around before there were cars on the road. The first gas pump was the invention of one Sylvanus Bowser from Fort Wayne, Indiana. His first pump was designed to pump kerosene for lamps and stoves, and was introduced in 1885. As automobiles became popular, he modified the design to pump gasoline. He introduced the Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump in 1905. He marketed his devices all around the world, and in some parts the name “bowser” is still used sometimes to refer to fuel pumps, and indeed some fuel tankers.

52D Disney princess with red hair : ARIEL

In the 1989 Disney animated film “The Little Mermaid”, the title character is given the name “Ariel”. In the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen that dates back to 1836, the Little Mermaid is given no name at all. There is a famous statue of the unnamed Little Mermaid sitting in Copenhagen Harbor, in Andersen’s homeland of Denmark.

54D City near Phoenix : TEMPE

Tempe is a city in the metropolitan area of Phoenix. It is named for the Vale of Tempe in Greece.

60D Broadway “Auntie” : MAME

The musical “Mame” opened on Broadway in 1966, with Angela Lansbury in the title role. The show is based on the 1955 novel “Auntie Mame” written by Patrick Dennis.

62D “My heart just __ in it” : ISN’T

Neither is mine …

66D Graffiti signature : TAG

A tag is a particular type of graffiti. A tag usually isn’t a picture, but rather words that include the author’s name.