LA Times Crossword 21 Aug 26, Friday

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Constructed by: Megan Heneke

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Law and Order

Themed answers are all “punny” phrases comprising the namesake of a famous LAW AND a drinks ORDER. Fun …

• 50A Strict enforcement of the rules for a civil society, or how to process the requests in 21-, 26-, and 43-Across? : LAW AND ORDER

• 21A “A bottle where the rapid decrease in pressure upon opening creates foam, please” request? : BOYLE’S LAGER
• 26A “A light coffee, and do not drop it, please” request? : NEWTON’S LATTE
• 43A “I’ll take my potato as a pancake (but you’ll probably bring fries)” request? : MURPHY’S LATKE

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

Bill’s time: 10m 01s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Graduate from a balance bike : PEDAL

The earliest bicycles were invented by Karl Drais in 1817. They were known as “running machines”, and lacked pedals entirely. Riders propelled themselves forward by pushing their feet directly against the ground. Today, toddlers do the same thing on a similar device called a “balance bike”. It wasn’t until the 1860s that French inventors attached rotary cranks and footrests to a wooden front wheel, creating the bumpy “boneshaker”.

14A Sauce for chipotles : ADOBO

In Spanish and Mexican cuisine, a dish prepared adobo-style has been marinated in a mixture containing paprika, oregano, salt, garlic and vinegar. “Adobo” is Spanish for “marinade, seasoning”.

The jalapeño is a chili pepper, and a favorite of mine. The pepper’s name translates from Spanish as “from Xalapa”. Xalapa (also “Jalapa”) is the capital of the Mexican state of Veracruz, and the traditional origin of the jalapeño pepper. A smoke-dried jalapeño, called a chipotle, is used for seasoning.

15A German automaker : AUDI

The Audi name has an interesting history. The original Horch company was founded by August Horch in 1899. Early in the life of his second company, founded in 1909, Horch was forced to stop using his own name as a brand after his old company sued him. A meeting was held at the apartment of a business associate, Franz Fikentscher, to choose something new. Fikentscher’s young son was studying Latin in the room where the meeting was taking place. He pointed out that “horch” was German for “hear” and he suggested “audi” as a replacement, the Latin for “listen”.

19A Big name in morning TV : RIPA

When Kelly Ripa secured the co-host spot on morning television with Regis Philbin, she was still acting in “All My Children” in a role she had been playing for over ten years. After a year of holding down two jobs, she eventually gave up the acting gig. Ripa has acted as spokeswoman for several brands over the years, including Electrolux and Rykä.

21A “A bottle where the rapid decrease in pressure upon opening creates foam, please? : BOYLE’S LAGER

Irishman Robert Boyle is regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry, although his early work would better be described as “alchemy”. His name is best known from Boyle’s Law, his experimental observation that the pressure of a gas decreases proportionally as its volume increases.

Lager is so called because of the tradition of cold-storing the beer during fermentation. “Lager” is the German word for “storage”.

24A Caitlin Clark’s home state : IOWA

Basketball great Caitlin Clark was the first selection in the 2024 WNBA draft, and signed up with the Indiana Fever. Her quality of play and success on the court has helped popularize women’s basketball. That boost in popularity has been dubbed “the Caitlin Clark effect”.

25A Topical antiseptic : IODINE

Tincture of iodine is a disinfectant. A “tincture” is a substance used in dyeing. Since the 1600s, “tincture” has also been used for a solution of medicine in an alcohol mixture.

26A “A light coffee, and do not drop it, please” request? : NEWTON’S LATTE

Sir Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion are the basis of classical mechanics. The three laws define the relationship between a body and the forces acting on that body, and its resulting motion.

33A “Nature” airer : PBS

“Nature” is a wildlife documentary series produced in New York for PBS. It is one of the network’s flagship shows, and has been airing weekly since 1982.

36A Biblical name of ancient Syria : ARAM

The ancient Biblical land of Aram was named after Aram, a grandson of Noah. Aram was located in the center of modern-day Syria. Aramaic became the everyday language of Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine.

37A Wolverines and Badgers : TEAMS

The Wolverines are the sports teams of the University of Michigan.

The Wisconsin Badgers are the sports teams of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The state of Wisconsin is nicknamed “the Badger State”, a name that came about in the early days of lead mining in the 1800s. The miners would often set up home in the holes they were digging, earning them the nickname “badgers”.

39A Canada Goose garment : COAT

Canada Goose is a Toronto-based company that specializes in manufacturing winter clothing. It was founded in 1957 as Metro Sportswear, and introduced a “Snow Goose” label in the 1970s after inventing a volume-based down-filling machine. As the line expanded into European markets in the 1990s, the company discovered the “Snow Goose” name was already trademarked overseas, prompting the pivot to “Canada Goose”.

41A Head of a museum? : BUST

A bust is a sculpture of the upper torso and head. We imported the word “bust” from Italy, where “busto” means “upper body”.

43A “I’ll take my potato as a pancake (but you’ll probably bring fries)” request? : MURPHY’S LATKE

Murphy’s Law can be stated as, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. The concept behind the “law” has been around for eons, but the first association with the name “Murphy” appeared in print in 1952.

A latke is a delicious potato pancake (I’m Irish, so anything made with potatoes is delicious, to be honest).

49A Cringeworthy, in Gen Alpha slang : OHIO

In Gen Alpha and Gen Z slang, “Ohio” can be used to describe anything extremely weird or cringeworthy. The usage stems from absurdist Internet memes claiming bizarre or inexplicable events could happen “only in Ohio”.

53A Greek T : TAU

Tau is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, and the letter that gave rise to our Roman “T”. Both the letters tau (T) and chi (X) have long been symbolically associated with the cross.

57A Drama honor : OBIE

The Obies are the Off-Broadway (“OB”) Theater Awards. They have been presented annually since 1956. The recipients used to be chosen by “The Village Voice” newspaper, but now are jointly administered with the American Theatre Wing.

61A Merino, e.g. : WOOL

The Merino is a breed of sheep, prized for its exceptionally soft wool, that originated in Spain around the 12th century. Flocks were so highly valued by the Spanish crown that exporting a single animal was strictly prohibited and punishable by death until the 1700s!

62A “Pale Blue Dot” subject : EARTH

The famous “Pale Blue Dot” photograph was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from almost 4 billion miles from the Earth. In the photo, our planet appears as a tiny “pale blue dot”. NASA had Voyager 1 take the photograph, at the request of Carl Sagan.

Down

4D Old hoops gp. : ABA

The American Basketball Association (ABA) merged with the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1976. The ABA used a ball with the colors red, white and blue. The NBA uses a more traditional orange ball.

7D Beach party? : GULL

Gulls (also “seagulls”) are a family of seabirds that is most closely related to terns. Some species of gull can be quite clever. For example, they can reportedly use pieces of bread as bait to catch goldfish in ponds. Others can be quite fearless, and have been known to land on the backs of whales and peck out pieces of flesh.

8D For two voices, in music : A DUE

“A due” is a musical term meaning “together” that translates literally from Italian as “by two”.

9D Archaeologists’ workplaces : DIG SITES

“Archaeology” is a word that looks like it’s British English, and one might be forgiven for using the spelling “archeology” in American English. Even though the latter spelling has been around for a couple of hundred years, the former is the standard spelling on both sides of the Atlantic.

10D Mardi Gras event : PARADE

“Mardi Gras” translates from French as “Fat Tuesday”, and the holiday gets its name from the practice of eating rich foods on the eve of the fasting season known as Lent. Lent starts on the next day, called Ash Wednesday.

11D Video game brother : LUIGI

Luigi is the younger and taller fraternal twin brother of Nintendo’s Mario. He first appeared in the 1983 arcade game “Mario Bros.”, and is often portrayed as a more timid character than his famous sibling.

13D Try to decipher a stereogram, perhaps : STARE

A stereogram is any image, or pair of images, designed to create a three-dimensional illusion from a two-dimensional surface. English physicist Charles Wheatstone invented the traditional stereogram, consisting of two slightly offset photographs placed side-by-side. To perceive depth, the viewer needs a specialized device that physically forces each eye to look at a separate image. An autostereogram is a stereogram that eliminates the need for external viewing equipment, hence the prefix “auto-” meaning “self”. Autostereograms, popularized in the 1990s by the “Magic Eye” books, hide a 3D shape within a single, repeating 2D pattern on a single page or screen. Viewers decode an autostereogram by physically manipulating their own vision, usually by staring “through” the image to trick the brain into overlapping the repeating visual noise into a recognizable 3D object.

26D Bracket org. : NCAA

“Bracketology” is a term used to describe the process of predicting which college basketball teams will advance in a bracket in the annual NCAA Basketball Tournament. President Barack Obama famously participates in an ESPN segment called “Baracketology” in which he predicts the outcome of the tournament, game by game.

33D Ballad writer : POET

Our “ballad”, meaning “narrative song”, came into English from the French “ballade”, meaning “dancing song”. The French term derives from the Latin verb “ballare” meaning “to dance”.

38D Medium ability : ESP

Extrasensory perception (ESP)

44D Singing in some Ricola ads : YODELS

Ricola is a Swiss brand of cough drops and breath mints.

45D Shakira’s “__ Wolf” : SHE

“She Wolf” is a 2009 song co-written and recorded by Shakira. It served as the title track of a studio album released later that same year. Shakira released a Spanish version of the song simultaneously, using the title “Loba”.

46D “Odyssey” prelude : ILIAD

“Iliad” is an epic poem by the Greek poet Homer that tells the story of the ten-year siege of “Ilium” (i.e. “Troy”) during the Trojan war. “The Odyssey”, also attributed to Homer, is sometimes described as a sequel to “Iliad”.

47D Many a “Breaking Bad” figure : NARCO

The AMC drama “Breaking Bad” is a well-written show about a high school teacher stricken by lung cancer who turns to a life of crime to make money. It turns out that the teacher has a talent for making high-quality crystal meth. The show was created by Vince Gilligan who had spent many years as a producer and writer of “The X-Files”. There is a “Breaking Bad” spin-off show that ran on AMC called “Better Call Saul”, which focuses on the life of lawyer Saul Goodman. If I’m honest, I enjoyed “Better Call Saul” even more than the original show …

48D Clock-changing hr. : TWO AM

The US government officially mandated 2:00 a.m. as the designated hour for Daylight Saving Time transitions to prevent a logistical calendar nightmare. Lawmakers deliberately avoided a midnight switch so that “falling back” wouldn’t cause a Sunday to temporarily rewind into a Saturday and create chaos for the nation’s railroad schedules. Back then, in 1918, the two-hour post-midnight window was the one brief period when most late-night saloons had already closed, but early-shift transit workers had not yet begun their morning routes.

51D Cor anglais kin : OBOE

The English horn is also known by its French name “cor anglais” (and sometimes “alto oboe”). It is a double-reed, woodwind instrument.

53D Scale button : TARE

Tare is the weight of a container that is deducted from the gross weight to determine the net weight, the weight of the container’s contents.

59D Tug-of-__ : WAR

Tug-of-war is a strength competition between two teams who pull on opposite ends of a rope, vying to pull the opponents over a marked line. The sport was an event in the Summer Olympic Games from 1900 until 1920. The USA teams won all three medals for the tug-of-war at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis.