LA Times Crossword 27 Jul 26, Monday

Advertisement

Constructed by: Jay Silverman

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Six-Packs

The SIX themed answers all end with a kind of PACK:

• 53A Sets of sculpted abs, and what the ends of 19-, 23-, 24-, 36-, 46-, and 48-Across are altogether : SIX-PACKS

• 19A Oktoberfest sausage, informally : BEER BRAT (Brat Pack)
• 23A Returned home : GOT BACK (backpack)
• 24A Raise a false alarm : CRY WOLF (wolf pack)
• 36A Soft R&B ballad : SLOW JAM (jam-pack)
• 46A Skating hazard : THIN ICE (ice pack)
• 48A Market research company often cited in car ads : JD POWER (power pack)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 23s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Sarcastic ET of 1980s TV : 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”.

4A School vehicles : BUSES

We use the term “bus” for a mode of transportation as it is an abbreviated form of the original “omnibus”. We imported “omnibus” via French from Latin, in which language it means “for all”. The idea is that an omnibus is a carriage “for all”.

9A “That really sticks in my __!” : CRAW

“Craw” is another name for “crop”, a portion of the alimentary tract of some animals, including birds. The crop is used for the storage of food prior to digestion. It allows the animal to eat large amounts and then digest that food with efficiency over an extended period. The expression “to stick in one’s craw” is used when one cannot accept something, cannot “swallow” it.

16A Blackjack card : ACE

In the card game blackjack, an ace has the point value of one or eleven. When one of the two cards dealt to a player is an ace, the hand is called “soft”. This means that the player cannot go bust by taking another card, as the ace can be revalued at “one” if necessary in order to stay under 21.

18A Florida city near St. Petersburg : TAMPA

The Florida city of Tampa has been known as “the Big Guava” since the seventies. The term is imitative of New York’s “Big Apple”, and refers to the unsuccessful search for the reported wild guava trees that were once hoped to be the basis of a new industry for the area. Tampa has also been called “Cigar City”, a reference to the cigar industry that fueled the area’s growth starting in the 1880s.

St. Petersburg, Florida is often referred to as “St. Pete” by locals and visitors alike. Located on a peninsula lying between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, St. Pete was founded in 1888 and named for Saint Petersburg in Russia. The co-founders were Russian immigrant Peter Demens and Detroit native John C. Williams. The pair tossed a coin for the privilege of naming the new city, and Demens won. Williams lost, but did get to name the city’s first hostelry “The Detroit Hotel”.

19A Oktoberfest sausage, informally : BEER BRAT (Brat Pack)

A bratwurst (sometimes simply “brat” in the US) is a German sausage. The name comes from “brät-” meaning “finely chopped meat”, and “Wurst” meaning “sausage”.

The “Brat Pack” moniker is reminiscent of the Rat Pack of the fifties and sixties (Frank Sinatra & co.). To qualify as a “founding” member of the Brat Pack, the actor had to appear in either “The Breakfast Club” or “St. Elmo’s Fire”, or both. So we have Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy.

21A __ pentameter : IAMBIC

An iamb is a metrical foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The lines in William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” use five sequential iambs, e.g. “Shall I / compare / thee to / a sum- / -mer’s day?” With that sequence of five iambs, the poem’s structure is described as iambic pentameter.

24A Raise a false alarm : CRY WOLF (wolf pack)

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is one of Aesop’s fables, and the tale that gives rise to our phrase “to cry wolf” meaning “to give a false alarm”. In the fable, a shepherd boy is in the habit of tricking nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock by crying “Wolf!”. When an actual attack is made, the villagers assume it’s another false alarm, and the sheep are eaten by the wolf.

28A Tennis legend Arthur : ASHE

Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African-American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

29A Chest muscles, for short : PECS

“Pecs” is the familiar name for the chest muscle, which is more correctly known as the pectoralis major muscle. “Pectus” is the Latin word for “breast, chest”.

30A Secondary Insta accounts : ALTS

“Finsta” is a slang term describing a fake Instagram account. Apparently, some Instagram users create a second account, a finsta, to post more candid and personal content that they would not want to share on their main account.

36A Soft R&B ballad : SLOW JAM (jam-pack)

“Slow jam” is a term used to describe ballads in the rhythm & blues and soul genres. The term dates back to a song called “Slow Jam” that was released by the group Midnight Star in 1983.

43A Solange, to Blue Ivy Carter : AUNT

Solange Knowles is a singer/songwriter, and the younger sister of the incredibly successful singer Beyoncé. Solange was in the news a while back when security camera footage was released showing her punching and kicking Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z in an elevator.

Blue Ivy Carter is a singer, actress and dancer with a name that links her closely to her parents: Beyoncé and Jay-Z. The name “Blue” was chosen as a homage to her father’s “Blueprint” trilogy of albums. The name “Ivy” represents the Roman numeral “IV”, a number tying together her parents’ April 4th wedding anniversary and their birthdays (September 4th for Beyoncé and December 4th for Jay-Z). Blue Ivy is also the youngest credited artist to ever appear on a Billboard chart. She achieved this Guinness World Record at just two days old, when her newborn cries were featured on Jay-Z’s 2012 track “Glory”.

44A Surrealist Magritte : RENE

Belgian artist René Magritte was a surrealist. His most recognized work may be “The Son of Man”, a painting he created as a self-portrait. It is the work that shows a man in a bowler hat with his face covered by an apple. The image features prominently in a great movie, the 1999 remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair”.

48A Market research company often cited in car ads : JD POWER (power pack)

JD Power is a market research company founded in 1968 by James David Power III. The company’s commercial breakthrough came from blowing the whistle on Mazda in 1973. Power independently surveyed Mazda owners, discovered widespread failures with the O-rings in their new rotary engines, and leaked the damning data to the “Wall Street Journal”.

51A WSJ competitor : NYT

“The New York Times” (NYT) has been published since 1851, and is sometimes referred to as “the Gray Lady”. These days a viable alternative to buying the paper is to read the news online. NYTimes.com is the most popular online newspaper website in the country.

53A Sets of sculpted abs, and what the ends of 19-, 23-, 24-, 36-, 46-, and 48-Across are altogether : SIX-PACKS

The abdominal muscles (abs) are more correctly referred to as the rectus abdominis muscles. They might be referred to as a “six-pack”, or even a “ten-pack”, in a person who has developed the muscles and who has low body fat. In my case, more like a keg …

58A Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie __” : AMOUR

Stevie Wonder wrote “My Cherie Amour” way back in 1966, but it wasn’t released until 1969. The song tells of Stevie’s infatuation with a real woman whom he encountered in the Michigan School for the Blind.

59A Former “Top Chef” host Lakshmi : PADMA

Padma Lakshmi is a model from India. She is very much into cooking and has published an award-winning cookbook. Lakshmi hosted the American TV show “Top Chef” from 2006 until 2023.

60A Santa __, California : ANA

Santa Ana is the county seat of Orange County, California and takes its name from the Santa Ana River that runs through the city.

66A Bighorn’s mother : EWE

The male bighorn sheep of North America has horns that can weigh up to 30 pounds, which is about 10% of the animal’s body weight. A female bighorn is distinguished by her dagger-like horns that are significantly smaller than the massive horns of the rams.

1D “Moby-Dick” captain : AHAB

Captain Ahab is the obsessed and far from friendly captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”. The role of Captain Ahab was played by Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston film adaptation. Patrick Stewart played Ahab in a 1998 miniseries in which Peck made another appearance, as Father Mapple.

2D Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s collar fabric : LACE

Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) served on the US Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg was the second woman to join the Court, and was nominated by President Bill Clinton. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. During that time she did not miss one day on the bench. In 2009 Justice Ginsburg had surgery for pancreatic cancer, and was back to work 12 days later. She had a left-lung lobectomy to remove cancerous nodules in 2018, which forced Justice Ginsburg to miss oral argument in January 2019, for the first time since joining the court 25 years earlier. She finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 2020. Much of Ginsburg’s life is recounted in the excellent 2018 movie “On the Basis of Sex”.

3D Give away instead of throw away : FREECYCLE

Freecycling is the act of recycling by giving away an unwanted item, rather than selling it or discarding it.

4D Panda’s diet : BAMBOO

The giant panda is a bear, and so has the digestive system of a carnivore. However, the panda lives exclusively on bamboo, even though its gut is relatively poorly adapted to extract nutrients from plants per se. The panda relies on microbes in its gut to digest cellulose, and consumes 20-30 pounds of bamboo each day to gain enough nourishment.

10D Ballroom dance from Cuba : RUMBA

The rumba (sometimes “rhumba”) is a Cuban dance, with influences brought by African slaves and Spanish colonists. The name “rumba” comes from “rumbo”, the Spanish word for “party, spree”.

11D Gelatinous dish : ASPIC

Aspic is a dish in which the main ingredients are served in a gelatin made from meat stock.

15D Jason of “Hobbs & Shaw” : STATHAM

Jason Statham is an actor from England best known for playing tough characters on screen. Before becoming an action star, he was a competitive diver, representing England at the 1990 Commonwealth Games.

“Hobbs & Shaw” is a 2019 spinoff movie in the “Fast & Furious” franchise. It stars Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham as Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw, two tough guys who join forces to take down terrorist Brixton Lore, played by Idris Elba. Johnson’s pet bulldog, named “Hobbs”, makes a cameo in the film.

23D Bunsen burner nozzle : GAS JET

The Bunsen burner is a common piece of lab equipment that is used for heating and combustion. The device was invented in 1854 by Robert Bunsen at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. It is sometimes referred to as an “etna”, a nickname coming from the Sicilian volcano.

24D Pro who’s a master of deduction? : CPA

Certified public accountant (CPA)

26D Kareem’s former team, on scoreboards : LAL

The Los Angeles Lakers (LAL) basketball team started out in 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The team chose the Lakers name in honor of the nickname of Minnesota, “Land of 10,000 Lakes”. The Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s name at birth was Ferdinand Lewis “Lew” Alcindor. Alcindor changed his name when he converted to Islam.

31D Number of players in checkers : TWO

“Checkers” is yet another word that I had to learn moving across the Atlantic. In Ireland, the game is called “draughts”.

33D Rich dessert with a long shelf life : FRUITCAKE

A fruitcake recipe that includes a generous amount of alcohol can result in a cake with an incredibly long shelf life.

41D Pastry hybrids : CRONUTS

A cronut is a pastry that resembles a doughnut but is made using a croissant-like dough. It is filled with cream and deep-fried in grapeseed oil. It is a relatively new pastry, having been invented by New York bakery owner Dominique Ansel in 2013. The term “cronut” is a portmanteau of “croissant” and “doughnut”.

43D Actress Taylor-Joy : ANYA

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy had quite the international upbringing. She was born in Miami, and raised in Buenos Aires and then London. She is perhaps best known for playing the title character in the 2020 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma”, and the lead role in the Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”.

45D “Toy Story 3” voice 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”.

I haven’t seen Pixar’s “Toy Story 3”, but I hear it is excellent. “Toy Story 3” was so successful that it became the highest-grossing animated film of all time and has brought in over a billion dollars worldwide. In the movie, Ken is a smooth-talking doll that falls in love with Barbie. Ken is voiced by actor Michael Keaton.

48D Matchmaking platform available in Hebrew : JDATE

Spark Networks is a company that owns several special-interest dating sites online. The most famous is probably ChristianMingle.com, but there is also BlackSingles.com, LDSSingles.com, JDate.com and CatholicMingle.com.

49D Comedian Wayans : DAMON

Comedian and actor Damon Wayans is perhaps best known for co-starring in the sketch comedy show “In Living Color”, which was created by his brother Keenen Wayans.

55D Short holiday? : XMAS

The abbreviation “Xmas” that is used for “Christmas” comes from the Greek letter chi (X), which is the first letter of the Greek word for “Christ” (“Χριστός”).