LA Times Crossword 25 Apr 26, Saturday

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Constructed by: Greg Snitkin & Amie Walker

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 14m 02s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Award for Attica Locke’s “Bluebird, Bluebird” : EDGAR

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards (“Edgars”) are presented annually by the Mystery Writers of America. There are several categories of awards. For example, the Ellery Queen Award honors “writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry”. The Raven Award is presented to non-writers, who contribute to the mystery genre.

Attica Locke is an author of mystery novels, as well as a writer and producer for TV shows. In 2021, she became showrunner for the show “From Scratch”, which is based on a memoir penned by her sister Tembi Locke. Attica’s unique given name was a deliberate tribute by her father, a prominent civil rights attorney, to the 1971 Attica Prison riot.

6A Gala portion : APPLE CHIP

Gala has been the most popular apple cultivar in the US, surpassing the red delicious 2018. The gala apple tree originated in New Zealand in 1930, and is a cross between a golden delicious and a Kidd’s orange red.

15A Duane __: NYC chain owned by Walgreens : READE

The chain of drug and convenience stores in New York City known as Duane Reade was founded in 1960 by three brothers. The first three stores were serviced by a warehouse in lower Manhattan located on Broadway between Duane and Reade streets, streets that gave the chain its name.

17A “Precision Crafted Performance” sloganeer : ACURA

Acura is a luxury vehicle brand produced by the Japanese automaker Honda. It was the first Japanese luxury car brand to be introduced to the US, in 1986. The Acura Legend and Acura Integra were the first two models released.

25A Soccer great called “O Rei” : PELE

“Pelé” was the nickname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento, a soccer player who used the name “Pelé” for most of his life. For my money, Pelé was the world’s greatest ever player of the game. He was the only person to have been a member of three World Cup winning squads (1958, 1962 and 1970), and was a national treasure in his native Brazil. One of Pelé’s nicknames was “O Rei do Futebol” (the King of Football).

26A Had the conn : STEERED

To have the conn is to be directing the steering of a vessel. “Conn” comes from the Middle English “conne” meaning “to know, direct”. The derivative “conning tower”, a location on submarines and ships, describes where an officer would “conn” the vessel.

28A Gospel-singing sister of Aretha : ERMA

Erma Franklin was an R&B and gospel singer. She was the elder sister of Aretha Franklin. Erma toured with Aretha for a while, and even recorded backup vocals on her sister’s big hit “Respect”.

29A Degree of difficulty? : PHD

“Ph.D.” is an abbreviation for “philosophiae doctor”, Latin for “teacher of philosophy”. Often, candidates for a PhD already hold a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, so a PhD might be considered a “third degree”.

32A Couture letters : YSL

Yves Saint Laurent (YSL)

40A Part of a Cuban combo : BONGO

Bongo drums are Cuban percussion instruments consisting of a pair of drums, one larger than the other. The larger drum is called the “hembra” (female) and the smaller the “macho” (male).

43A The hills of Rome, e.g. : SEPTET

Supposedly, there were seven separate settlements on the top of seven hills east of the River Tiber, prior to the founding of the city of Rome. Tradition dictates that Romulus founded Rome on one of these hills, namely Palatine Hill, and the city came to encompass all seven existing settlements. The most famous hill in modern-day Rome is probably Vatican Hill, but it lies outside of the ancient, walled city.

52A Hostess treats : TWINKIES

The snack cakes called Twinkies have been around since 1930. They were created by a baker called James Dewar, who chose the name from a billboard advertising “Twinkle Toe Shoes”. The original filling in the cake was a banana cream, but this was swapped out as a result of rationing during WWII. The vanilla cream became so popular that the banana recipe was dropped completely.

54A First name in country pop : SHANIA

Shania Twain is a country and pop singer from Windsor, Ontario. Shania’s birth name is “Eilleen Edwards”, and this changed to “Eilleen Twain” when her mother remarried. Twain changed her name to Shania in the early 1990s, around the same time that her musical career started to take off.

57A Bucks : BREAD

“Buck” is a slang word meaning “dollar”. The term has been around at least since 1856, and is thought to derive from the tradition of using buckskin as a unit of trade with Native Americans during the frontier days.

58A Chiwere speaker : OTOE

Chiwere is a Siouan language spoken by the Otoe people, as well as by the Missouria and Iowa.

61A __ Reader : UTNE

The “Utne Reader” is known for aggregation and republishing of articles on politics, culture and the environment from other sources in the media. It was founded in 1984 by Eric Utne, with management taken over by Eric’s wife Nina Rothschild Utne in 1990.

Down

2D Get on with one’s half-life? : DECAY

The half-life of a radioactive substance is the time it takes for half of the substance to “disappear” due to radioactive decay. So, if a radioactive element has a half-life of say 100 years, then in 100 years 50% of the element will have disappeared, but 50% still remains. In 500 years there will still be over 3% of the material left lying around. That’s one of the terrifying things about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The fallout and waste just don’t seem to go away …

7D Billy who wore a velvet tuxedo jacket and ball gown to the Oscars in 2019 : PORTER

Actor Billy Porter really garnered public attention when he originated the role of “Lola” in the musical “Kinky Boots” on Broadway in 2013. He also won an Emmy in 2019 for his work on the TV show “Pose”. His first TV appearance was on the talent show “Star Search”. Porter appeared in the same episode as aspiring singer Britney Spears.

9D Kent co-worker : LANE

Lois Lane has been the love interest of Superman/Clark Kent since the comic series was first published in 1938. Lois and Clark both work for the big newspaper in the city of Metropolis called “The Daily Planet”. The couple finally got hitched in the comics (and on television’s “Lois and Clark”) in 1996. One has to wonder how challenging the crossword is in “The Daily Planet” …

Superman’s comic book creators gave their title character’s alter-ego the name “Clark Kent” by melding the names of Clark Gable and Kent Taylor, two leading men of the cinema at the time Superman was created. However, they modeled Clark’s character more on the silent film actor Harold Lloyd.

10D __ Club : ELKS

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) was founded in 1868, and is a social club that has about a million members today. It started out as a group of men getting together in a “club” in order to get around the legal opening hours of taverns in New York City. The club took on a new role as it started to look out for poor families of members who passed away. The club now accepts African Americans as members (since the seventies) and women (since the nineties), but atheists still aren’t welcome. The list of US presidents that have been members of the BPOE includes Presidents Eisenhower, Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Ford.

24D People person? : CELEB

There used to be a “People” page in each issue of “Time” magazine. This page was spun-off in 1974 as a publication of its own, which we now call “People” magazine. “People” is noted for its annual special editions with features such as “Best & Worst Dressed” and “Sexiest Man Alive”. The “Sexiest Man Alive” edition now appears at the end of November each year. The first choice for “Sexiest Man” was Mel Gibson, in 1985.

27D Useful connections for networking? : DONGLES

A dongle is a small hardware adapter that plugs into a port on a computer to link incompatible devices or unlock restricted software. The name likely stems from the word “dangle”, a nod to how early security keys hung off the back of a workstation.

30D Lucy of “Pretty Little Liars” : HALE

Lucy Hale is an actress who first appeared on TV as a singer in the “American Idols” spinoff “American Juniors”, and who made her film debut in 2008’s comedy-drama “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2”. Her break-through role was Aria Montgomery on the TV show “Pretty Little Liars”. Hale also co-hosted “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” from 2016 to 2021.

“Pretty Little Liars” is a mystery drama TV series aimed at teens. It is based on a series of novels penned by Sara Shepard. The original show spawned a whole franchise of TV series, including “Pretty Dirty Secrets”, “Ravenswood”, “Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists” and “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin”.

34D Place to blow off smoke? : HOOKAH BAR

A hookah is a water pipe, a device for smoking tobacco in which the smoke is passed through a water basin before it is inhaled.

44D Layered dessert often topped with syllabub : TRIFLE

Trifle is a splendid dessert from England comprising layers of sponge soaked in sherry, fruit, custard and whipped cream. The sponge and fruit is usually suspended in jello. The Italian version of the same dessert is known as “zuppa inglese”, which translates from Italian as “English soup”.

Syllabub is a frothy dessert from English cuisine traditionally made by curdling heavy cream with the acid of wine or cider. It’s a recipe that has been around for centuries, and is even mentioned in Samuel Pepys’s diary, in an entry for 1663.

46D City-state documented by Herodotus : SPARTA

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece that was famous for her military might. Spartan children had a tough upbringing, and newborn babies were bathed in wine to see if the child was strong enough to survive. Every child was presented to a council of elders that decided if the baby was suitable for rearing. Those children deemed too puny were executed by tossing them into a chasm. We’ve been using the term “spartan” to describe something self-disciplined or austere since the 1600s.

Herodotus was a historian from ancient Greece. Roman orator Cicero referred to him as “the Father of History” as Herodotus was regarded as the first historian to work methodically and publish a well-constructed narrative. The only known work completed by Herodotus is “The Histories”.

48D Inducing the heebie-jeebies : EERIE

The plural noun “heebie-jeebies” describes a condition of extreme nervousness, one caused by worry or fear. The suggestion is that the term was coined in 1923 by cartoonist Billy De Beck in the “New York American”, although this might just have been the first time that the “heebie-jeebies” appeared in print.

49D “Inside the NBA” analyst since 2011 : O’NEAL

“Inside the NBA” is a postgame show that airs on TNT. The list of regulars on the show includes ex-players Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal.

50D Horan of One Direction : NIALL

Niall Horan is an Irish singer and former member of the British boy band One Direction. Horan is from Mullingar, a town in the middle of the country from where my own ancestors hail. That’s really all that I know about him …

53D Inventor who coined the term “horsepower” : WATT

James Watt was a Scottish inventor. He figured prominently in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, largely due to the improvements he made to the fledgling steam engine. The SI unit of power is called the watt, and was named in his honor.

The unit of horsepower was introduced along with the steam engine, where the output of the engine was compared with the power of draft horses. Largely, this comparison with the horse was a marketing ploy, as the intent was to demonstrate that one steam engine could negate the need for a number of draft horses used for work.

56D “Arrival” arrivals, briefly : ETS

2016’s “Arrival” is a very entertaining sci-fi film that is based on a short story by Ted Chiang called “Story of Your Life”. Amy Adams plays a linguist who is called upon to communicate with aliens that have arrived on Earth.