LA Times Crossword 16 May 26, Saturday

Advertisement

Constructed by: Karen Steinberg

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 15m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

8A Google Play download : APP GAME

Google Play is Google’s distribution service for digital media content. The service was launched in 2008 as Android Market. Android Market was combined with Google Music, Google Movies and Google eBookstore in 2012 to form Google Play.

15A Woodcutter in a tale told by Scheherazade : ALI BABA

In the folk tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, the title character is a poor woodcutter who discovers the magic phrase “Open sesame!” that opens the thieves’ den.

Scheherazade was a Persian queen of legend, and the storyteller in the wonderful “One Thousand and One Nights”.

19A Patisserie treat : ECLAIR

The name for the pastry known as an “éclair” is clearly French in origin. The French word for lightning is “éclair”, but no one seems to be too sure how it came to be used for the rather delicious bakery item.

A patisserie is a French bakery that sells pastries, or “tartes”.

20A Cocktail whose color comes from grenadine : PINK LADY

A pink lady is a cocktail consisting of gin, grenadine and egg white. The most basic recipe is:

• a glass of gin
• a tablespoon of grenadine
• an egg white

Modern versions of the sweet cocktail syrup called grenadine are often heavy on corn syrup and red dye. Traditional 19th-century recipes were limited to reduced pomegranate juice and sugar. The name “grenadine” comes from the French “grenade”, meaning “pomegranate”. By the way, the explosive hand grenade was named for its physical resemblance to the fruit’s internal structure.

23A “Milk” director Gus Van __ : SANT

Gus Van Sant is a movie director (among other things) who has been nominated twice for an Oscar, for “Good Will Hunting” in 1997 and for “Milk” in 2008.

“Milk” is a 2008 biopic based on the life of activist and politician Harvey Milk, with Sean Penn playing the title role. In 1977, Milk became the first openly gay person to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Tragically, Milk was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone in 1978 by former city supervisor Dan White.

30A The CW predecessor : UPN

The United Paramount Network (UPN) was a TV channel that launched in 1995, and shut down in 2006. Some of UPN’s programming was moved to the CW channel at the time of UPN’s demise.

32A “The Tale of __ Puddle-Duck” : JEMIMA

“The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck” is a 1908 children’s book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. The title character appears in another Potter book, “The Tale of Tom Kitten” published the year before.

35A Apple cultivar that dates to American colonial times : WINESAP

A winesap is a small and tart apple, one often used for making cider.

36A Euchre kin : ECARTE

Écarté is a card game that comes to us from France, with a name that translates into “discarded”. Écarté is similar to whist but is played with a stripped-down deck and involves only two players.

Euchre is a card game that probably came to the US from Germany, introduced by German farmers who settled in Wisconsin. Euchre is a trick-taking game usually played by four people in two partnerships. Unlike bridge, Euchre is played with a stripped-down deck of 24 or 32 cards. The verb “to euchre” is slang for “to cheat, swindle”, a term that presumably comes from the card game.

37A Oscilloscope display : WAVE

An oscilloscope is an electronic instrument that visually shows the variation in voltage of an electrical signal.

38A Sch. in Athens : UGA

The University of Georgia (UGA) is primarily located in Athens, Georgia. UGA was founded in 1785 and was the nation’s first state-chartered university. UGA’s sports teams are called the Georgia Bulldogs (sometimes just “Dawgs”).

The Georgia city of Athens lies about 70 miles northeast of Atlanta. Athens might be described as a college town, and is home to the main campus of the University of Georgia. The settlement of Cedar Shoals was chosen as a site for the new university in 1801. That same year, Cedar Shoals was renamed to Athens, after the Greek city that was home to the Platonic Academy of Plato and Aristotle.

41A Barbaro’s role in “A Complete Unknown” : BAEZ

“A Complete Unknown” is a 2024 biopic covering the early years of Bob Dylan’s career. The storyline draws from Elijah Wald’s 2015 book “Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties”. The film culminates in scenes at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when Dylan abandoned his acoustic roots for an electric guitar and a high-decibel backing band. Folk purists, including Pete Seeger, were outraged. Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan, and Edward Norton portrays Seeger.

42A Pyle player : NABORS

Jim Nabors was discovered by Andy Griffith and brought onto “The Andy Griffith Show” as Gomer Pyle, the gas station attendant. Famously, Nabors then got his own show called “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

44A Berkeley, familiarly : CAL

The University of California, Berkeley (Cal) is the most difficult public university to get into in the world. It opened in 1869, and is named for Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley.

45A Kodai Senga’s signature pitch : FORKBALL

Kodai Senga is an MLB pitcher from Japan who debuted for the New York Mets in 2023, after playing a decade in the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) in his homeland. He is known for throwing a very deceptive “forkball”, a pitch that was nicknamed the “ghost fork” in Japan.

48A Yoga pose that alternates between arching and rounding the spine : CAT-COW

“Cat-Cow” is the colloquial name for the pairing of yoga’s cat pose (Marjaryasana) and cow pose (Bitilasana). Both are performed while kneeling on all fours. One is the counter pose of the other, with the back arched in cat pose, and lowered in cow pose.

51A Beyoncé challenge in the song “Energy” : EVERYBODY ON MUTE

“Energy” is a 2022 song by Beyoncé, and featuring Jamaican rapper Beam. The song includes an “Everybody on Mute” lyric, at which point the music pauses for a second or two. This pause sparked a viral fan ritual known as the “Mute Challenge” that played out in live performances of the song during Beyoncé’s 2023 Renaissance World Tour. When the song hit the specific line, the entire stadium was expected to fall into a dead, motionless silence for several seconds. This collective pause became a nightly competition between host cities, with fans using social media to rank which tour stop held the quietest or longest “mute”.

54A Mythical hunter transformed into a stag : ACTAEON

Actaeon was a celebrated hunter of Greek mythology. Some accounts tell us that he accidentally stumbled upon the goddess Artemis bathing in a secluded grotto. She was infuriated by his mortal gaze, and so transformed him into a stag. Actaeon’s own pack of fifty hounds closed in on him, perceiving him as their prey. The dogs were unable to recognize their master and tore him apart in a frenzy.

Down

1D Kapler who was NL Manager of the Year in 2021 : GABE

Gabe Kapler was an MLB outfielder who played professional ball for 13 seasons. He also spent one season playing in Japan, and in 2013 coached the Israeli national baseball team. He was named manager of the San Francisco Giants in 2020.

2D Obi-Wan player : ALEC

Sir Alec Guinness played many great roles over a long and distinguished career, but nowadays is best remembered (sadly, I think) for playing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”. He won his only Best Actor Oscar for playing Colonel Nicholson in the marvelous 1957 WWII movie “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. Guinness himself served during the Second World War, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. He commanded a landing craft during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.

3D Microgeneration of the 1990s : ZILLENNIAL

Zillennials (sometimes “Zennials”) are a so-called micro-generation born on the cusp between Millennials and Gen Z, with births typically spanning the years 1992 to 1998. This group is identified as being too young to have a clear memory of the pre-9/11 world, yet too old to be considered “digital natives” who never knew life before the smartphone.

4D Marketing method : E-BLAST

An e-blast is a mass emailing.

7D __ cross : TAU

The Cross of Tau is a variant of the cross symbol used in the Christian tradition. Also known as St. Anthony’s Cross, the Cross of Tau resembles the Greek letter tau, and our letter T. St. Anthony of Egypt bore such a symbol on his cloak, hence the alternate name.

10D Anticonformist subculture : PUNK SCENE

By all accounts, the punk subculture emerged in the mid-1970s, initially in the US and the UK. Ideologically, punk rejects authoritarianism, the overpowering influence of large corporations and corporate greed, consumerism and embraces direct action.

12D China setting : ASIA

Until overtaken recently by India, the world’s most populous country was the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Republic of China (ROC) is the official name of the sovereign state that we usually call Taiwan.

18D Halloween prank : TP-ING

TP-ing (toilet papering) is a prank involving the covering of some object or location with rolls and rolls of toilet paper.

23D Ancient region between the Tigris and Euphrates : SUMER

Iraq is often called the “Cradle of Civilization” as it was home to Sumer, which was the earliest known civilization on the planet. By 5000 BC the Sumerian people were practicing year-round agriculture and had a specialized labor force. For the first time, a whole race was able to settle in one place by storing food, instead of having to migrate in a pattern dictated by crops and grazing land.

28D PR concern : IMAGE

Public relations (PR)

29D Bolivian cultural center : LA PAZ

Though Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia, La Paz serves as the administrative capital and the seat of the Bolivian government. At an average elevation of over 11,975 feet above sea level, La Paz is the highest capital city in the world.

31D One sextillion memory units : ZETTABYTE

A zettabyte represents a sextillion bytes. That’s a volume of data so immense it would take roughly 250 billion standard DVDs to contain it. In 2016, we entered what’s called the “Zettabyte Era”, when annual global internet traffic first passed one sextillion bytes. The prefix “zetta-” is a modified form of the Latin “septem”, chosen because it represents the seventh power of 1,000 (or 10²¹).

41D Superhero star of a Lego movie : BATMAN

Lego Batman is a line of Lego construction toys under license from DC Comics. The series was so popular that it spawned Lego Batman TV shows, video games and movies.

44D Epic poem division : CANTO

A canto is a section of a long poem. “Canto” is the Italian for “song”, and is a term first used by the Italian poet Dante.

46D Like a kumquat : OVAL

The kumquat tree bears fruit that looks like a small orange, about the size of an olive. The rind of a kumquat is sweet, and the center sour, so often it is only the rind that is eaten.

48D 2025 French Open winner Gauff : COCO

Coco Gauff is a professional tennis player from Atlanta whose career really got a boost when she beat Venus Williams in the opening round of Wimbledon in 2019. Ironically, Venus, and her sister Serena, were the players who inspired Gauff to take up tennis as a girl.

49D __-Missouria Tribe : OTOE

The Otoe and Missouria Native American tribes, once part of a larger group in the Great Lakes region, migrated west and became distinct peoples with related languages and customs. They inhabited areas of present-day Nebraska and Missouri, giving those states and the Missouri River their names. European contact brought trade but also devastating diseases, leading the diminished Missouria to merge with the Otoe. Today, the Otoe-Missouria tribe is headquartered in Red Rock, Oklahoma.

52D Vegetable related to lilies : YAM

The yam is a botanical cousin of the lily and the iris. Its name comes from “nyami”, a word in West African languages that literally translates to “to eat,” reflecting its status as an important local food source. In American supermarkets, the “yam” label is almost always a misnomer for the orange-fleshed sweet potato, which is actually a member of the morning glory family.