LA Times Crossword 3 Jul 26, Friday

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Constructed by: Jay Silverman

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Continental Shifts

Themed answers are all common, two-word English phrases with the first word reinterpreted as a non-English word. Clever …

• 17A Comfort that can only come from French bread? : “PAIN” RELIEF (“pain” is French for “bread”)
• 26A Creating perfect sunbathing conditions on an Italian beach? : “SOLE” PURPOSE (“sole” is Italian for “sun”)
• 43A Positive review in a German newspaper? : “GUT” REACTION (“gut” is German for “good”)
• 58A Home for the king of Spain? : “REAL” ESTATE (“real” is Spanish for “royal”)

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

Bill’s time: 6m 10s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6A Cheese in a Greek omelet : FETA

Feta is a Greek cheese made from sheep’s milk, or a mixture of sheep and goat’s milk. The cheese is salted and cured in a brine solution for several months before it is eaten.

14A Goosebump-causing : EERIE

The terms “goose bumps” and “goose flesh” come from the fact that skin which is cold can look like the flesh of a plucked goose. On the other side of the Atlantic, the term “goose pimples” was used to describe the same phenomenon. The influence of North American TV and movies is showing though, as “goose bumps” is the more common term these days.

20A Isfahan’s country : IRAN

Isfahan is the name of both a province and a city in Iran, and is located in the center of the country.

22A Posh and __: nickname of a British celebrity couple : BECKS

“Posh and Becks” is a portmanteau used for the super-couple pairing of Spice Girl Victoria Beckham (née Adams) and soccer star David Beckham. Other supercouples are/were:

• Tomkat – Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
• Grant ‘n’ Hurley – Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley
• Brangelina – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
• Bennifer – Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez

23A Mesopotamian empire that included parts of 20-Across : ASSYRIA

Assyria was an ancient kingdom located on the Upper Tigris river in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), named for its capital city of Assur. According to the Bible, of the original Twelve Tribes of Israel, Ten Tribes “disappeared” when the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BCE.

35A Capital of British Columbia : VICTORIA

Victoria, named for Queen Victoria and located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, became the capital of British Columbia in 1868. It originated as a fur-trading post established by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1843.

46A Clairvoyant : SEER

We’ve been using the term “clairvoyant” to describe a psychic since the nineteenth century. Prior to that, a clairvoyant was a clear-sighted person. The term comes from French, with “clair” meaning “clear” and “voyant” meaning “seeing”.

56A Conditional programming word : ELSE

In the world of computer programming, an “if-then-else” construct is a type of conditional statement. The idea is that IF a particular condition is met THEN a particular action is executed. The additional ELSE statement can be used to define an alternative action.

57A “Only Murders in the Building” home : HULU

“Only Murders in the Building” is a hit comedy-mystery series, co-created by Steve Martin. It stars Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez as three residents of an affluent Upper West Side apartment building in New York City. The trio bonds over their obsession with true-crime podcasts and decide to start their own to investigate murders in their building. The guest cast is essentially a Rolodex of Steve Martin and Martin Short’s real-life best friends and colleagues. The show feels like it is a group of famous actors playing in their New York backyard. I love this show …

60A Salchow kin : AXEL

An axel is a forward take-off jump in figure skating. The maneuver was first performed by Norwegian Axel Paulsen at the 1882 Vienna International Skating Tournament.

The salchow jump in figure skating is named for Swedish skater Ulrich Salchow, who invented the move.

Down

1D Instagram filter shade : SEPIA

Sepia is that rich, brown-gray color so common in old photographs. “Sepia” is the Latinized version of the Greek word for cuttlefish, as sepia pigment is derived from the ink sac of the cuttlefish. Sepia ink was commonly used for writing and drawing as far back as ancient Rome and ancient Greece. The “sepia tone” of old photographs is not the result of deterioration over time. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate preservation process which converts the metallic silver in the photographic image to a more stable silver sulfide. Prints that have been sepia-toned can last in excess of 150 years.

7D Actress Falco : EDIE

Edie Falco is the first actress to have won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (which she won three times for playing Carmela Soprano in “The Sopranos”) as well as the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series (which she won in 2010 for her title role in “Nurse Jackie”). As of 2025, she was the only actress to have achieved this feat.

9D ET from Melmac : ALF

“ALF” is a sitcom that first aired in the late eighties. The title character is a hand-puppet, and supposedly an alien named Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac. The alien crash-landed into the house of amateur radio enthusiast Willie Tanner. Tanner renamed the intruder “ALF”, standing for “alien life form”.

11D __ college : ELECTORAL

The US Constitution requires that the Electoral College appoint the president and vice president every four years. The states, and the District of Columbia, are responsible for appointing electors to the college. The number of electors assigned to each state (and DC) is equal to the combined number of representatives and senators each state sends to the US Congress. If no candidate gets an absolute majority of votes for president or vice president, then a contingent election is held in the US House and/or the US Senate. The House would then elect a president, and the Senate would elect a vice president.

18D 2025 Pixar title character : ELIO

“Elio” is a 2025 animated film about an 11-year-old boy named Elio who is mistakenly beamed up to an intergalactic “Communiverse” and forced to fake his way through being Earth’s official ambassador.

22D Muppet who lives in the basement of 123 Sesame Street : BERT

The central location in “Sesame Street” is a three-story row house with the address 123 Sesame Street. The first floor of the house is home to the Robinson family, and the second story is occupied by the Rodriguez family. Bert and Ernie live in the basement, and Oscar lives in a trash can outside the house’s fence.

24D Blog feed letters : RSS

Many websites and blogs publish content in a format known as Rich Site Summary (RSS). The “feed” can be read using an RSS reader. The advantage of using an RSS reader is that the user doesn’t have to check the website for new content. That new material is fed to the RSS reader as soon as it is published.

25D Senators target : PUCK

Before wooden and rubber pucks were introduced in the late 1800s, ice hockey was played with balls. The first rubber pucks were made by cutting down rubber balls into the shape of discs.

The Senators are the NHL hockey team based in Ottawa, Canada. The current team, founded in the 1992-93 season, is the second NHL team in the city to use the name “Senators”. The original team was founded in 1883 and became a founding member of the NHL in 1917, and had a very successful run until the league expanded into the US in the late twenties. The cost of operating in what became the smallest NHL city eventually drove the Senators to St. Louis where they played for a year as the Eagles before finally folding.

27D Navratilova rival : EVERT

Chris Evert is a former professional tennis player from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She has the best winning percentage in professional tennis, man or woman worldwide, losing fewer than 10% of all her matches. Evert was also the first female athlete to host “Saturday Night Live”, doing so in 1989 just after she had retired from professional tennis.

Martina Navratilova is a retired tennis player who is thought by many to have been the greatest player of all time. Navratilova won the Wimbledon singles title a record nine times, which is one of many records that she holds. She was born in Czechoslovakia but asked for political asylum in the US in 1975 at 18 years of age. Navratilova was granted temporary residency in the US and as a result was stripped of her Czech citizenship. That Czech citizenship was restored in 2008, making her a dual citizen.

29D Sandy sediment : SILT

Today, we mostly think of silt as a deposit of sediment in a river. Back in the mid-1400s, silt was sediment deposited by seawater. It is thought that the word “silt” is related to “salt”, as found in seawater.

31D Nondescript town : BURG

“Burg” is an informal term used in the US for a smaller town that comes from the German word “burg” meaning “fortified city”.

44D Tristan’s beloved : ISOLDE

According to Arthurian legend, Iseult (also “Isolde”) was the adulterous lover of Sir Tristan, one of the Knights of the Round Table. Iseult was an Irish Princess who fell in love with Tristan who had been sent to win Iseult’s hand in marriage for King Mark of Cornwall. The tale was used as the basis for Richard Wagner’s celebrated opera “Tristan und Isolde”.

45D Fairy tale start : ONCE

The stock phrase “Once upon a time …” has been used in various forms as the start of a narrative at least since 1380. The stock phrase at the end of stories such as folktales is often “and they all lived happily ever after”. The earlier version of this ending was “happily until their deaths”.

48D __ dish : PETRI

Julius Richard Petri was a German bacteriologist and was the man after whom the Petri dish is named. The petri dish can have an agar gel on the bottom which acts as a nutrient source for the specimen being grown and studied, in which case the dish plus agar is referred to as an “agar plate”.

51D Monopoly stack : DEEDS

In the game of Monopoly there are 28 title deeds:

• 22 streets
• 4 railroads
• 2 utilities

52D Bloke : CHAP

“Chap” is an informal term meaning “lad, fellow” that is used especially in England. The term derives from “chapman”, an obsolete word meaning “purchaser” or “trader”.

54D Quail group : BEVY

“Bevy” is a collective noun used for a number of types of bird, including quail and swans. “Bevy” is also sometimes used as a collective noun for women.

“Quail” is a name used for several chicken-like wild birds. They are common prey for hunters.

58D Ice Spice genre : RAP

“Ice Spice” is the stage name of Isis Naija Gaston, a rapper born and raised in the Bronx, New York City.

59D Ballston __, New York : SPA

The village of Ballston Spa is the Saratoga County seat, in New York State. It was settled in 1771, and named for Puritan clergyman Eliphalet Ball. Ballston Spa was the birthplace of Civil War hero Abner Doubleday who, according to a widespread myth, was the inventor of baseball.