LA Times Crossword 30 Aug 26, Sunday

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Constructed by: Zhouqin Burnikel

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: As Per Usual

Themed answers are all common phrases, but with PER inserted:

• 23A Bonus for never giving up? : PERSEVERANCE PAY (“severance pay” + per)
• 39A Big spender? : PRODIGAL PERSON (“prodigal son” + per)
• 58A Device that might buzz during a night out? : SOCIAL BEEPER (“social bee” + per)
• 83A Elaborately embroidered falsehoods? : GRAND PERJURY (“grand jury” + per)
• 101A Green light for a lunar expedition? : MOON PERMISSION (“moon mission” + per)
• 119A People who pack picnic lunches? : HAMPER OPERATORS (“ham operators” + per)
• 32D Special offers at a body shop? : BUMPER DEALS (“bum deals” + per)
• 46D Gathering for chile lovers? : PEPPER RALLY (“pep rally” + per)

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

Bill’s time: 12m 58s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Draw of a dim sum cart : AROMA

Dim sum is a Chinese cuisine made up of small portions of various dishes. The tradition of serving dim sum is associated with the serving of tea, when small delicacies were offered to travelers and guests along with tea as a refreshment. The name “dim sum” translates as “touch the heart” implying that dim sum is not a main meal, just a snack “that touches the heart”.

10A “Sesame Street” basics : ABCS

Back in 1966, the Carnegie Corporation allocated money to study the use of television to help young children prepare for school. The corporation gave a multimillion-dollar grant to set up the Children’s Television Workshop with the task of creating an educational TV program for young people. The program began to come together, especially after Jim Henson (of Muppet fame) got involved. The name “Sesame Street” was chosen simply because it was the “least disliked” of all names proposed just before the program went on the air.

14A Zipper alternative : SNAPS

What we know today as a “zipper” was invented by mechanical engineer Whitcomb Judson in 1890, when it was called a “clasp locker”. The device was introduced at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, but was not successful. Several people made improvements to the basic design over the coming decades. By the 1920s, the B. F. Goodrich Company was using the device on a line of rubber boots. It was Goodrich who introduced us to the name “zipper”.

19A Mushroom with a pitted cap : MOREL

A morel is a mushroom with a honeycomb-like structure on the cap. They are highly prized, especially in French cuisine. Morels should never be eaten raw as they are toxic, with the toxins being removed by thorough cooking.

20A Home of the Nazca Lines : PERU

The Nazca civilization thrived in southern Peru between 100 BCE and 800 CE. Their most famous legacy is the Nazca Lines, a vast collection of geoglyphs etched into the desert floor. The Nazca people also developed sophisticated irrigation systems and underground aqueducts to sustain life in the arid environment.

21A Coachella aesthetic : BOHO

“Boho” is short for “Bohemian”.

The first Coachella Valley Music Festival was held in 1999, and then annually from 2001 until the present day. Coachella Valley is located in the Colorado Desert that, despite the name, is found in Southern California.

22A Fit to eat, to Muslims : HALAL

“Halal” is a term describing an action or object that is permissible under Islamic Law. In particular “halal” is used to describe food that can be consumed. Anything that is not allowed is described as “haram”.

26A __ acid : AMINO

Amino acids are essential to life in many ways, not least of which is their use as the building blocks of proteins. Nine amino acids are considered “essential” for humans. These nine must be included in the diet as they cannot be synthesized in the body.

38A Actor Simu : LIU

Simu Liu is a Chinese-born Canadian actor. One of his more famous roles was the title character in the Marvel Comics 2021 superhero movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”. He also played one of the Ken dolls in 2023’s “Barbie”.

39A Big spender? : PRODIGAL PERSON (“prodigal son” + per)

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is related in the Gospel of Luke. Someone who is prodigal is wasteful or extravagant. The parable tells of a man with two sons. The youngest asks for and receives his share of the family estate, and then spends it all unwisely. When the prodigal son returns, he faces an unwelcoming older brother. The father, however, declares happily that his son “was lost and now is found”.

44A Ibiza, por ejemplo : ISLA

In Spanish, Ibiza “por ejemplo” (for example), is an “isla” (island).

53A Symbol of resistance : OMEGA

The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm (with the symbol omega) named after German physicist Georg Simon Ohm. Ohm was the guy who established experimentally that the amount of current flowing through a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage applied (V=IR), a relationship that every school kid knows as Ohm’s Law.

58A Device that might buzz during a night out? : SOCIAL BEEPER (“social bee” + per)

Fewer than 10% of all known bee species are described as social bees. Examples are honeybees and bumblebees, which live in highly cooperative colonies governed by a strict caste system of queens, workers, and drones. Over 90% of bee species (like mason, carpenter and leafcutter bees) are solitary bees. Female solitary bees act as individual mothers that independently construct tiny, isolated nests in hollow twigs, dead wood, or underground burrows to feed and raise their own young.

61A Kitchen cover-ups : APRONS

In Old French, a “naperon” was a “small table-cloth”. The term was absorbed into English as “napron”, describing a cloth used to cover the front of a person at work. Over time, “a napron” was heard as “an apron”, giving us our contemporary noun “apron”.

65A Disc golf obstacle : TREE

Disc golf is also known as Frisbee golf, and sometimes even Frolf. Believe it or not, disc golf predates the introduction of the Frisbee. The first game was played at a school in Bladworth, Saskatchewan in 1926. The participating schoolkids threw tin lids into circles drawn on a course they created in the school grounds. They named the game “Tin Lid Golf”. By the way, I try to play disc golf at least three times a week. Lots of fun …

66A Blueprint deet : SPEC

Blueprints are reproductions of technical or architectural drawings that are contact prints made on light-sensitive sheets. They were introduced in the 1800s and the technology available dictated that the drawings were reproduced with white lines on a blue background, hence the name “blue-print”.

68A Actor Sheridan : TYE

Actor Tye Sheridan had one of the lead roles in the 2012 coming-of-age film “Mud”, which starred Matthew McConaughey. More recently, he played the lead in the sci-fi action film “Ready Player One”, which came out in 2018.

72A Key below ~ : TAB

The tab key is positioned directly beneath the tilde on standard QWERTY keyboards.

74A Legal addendum? : ESE

Lingo is specialized vocabulary. Journalese and legalese would be good examples.

77A “This Is Us” director Ken : OLIN

Ken Olin was one of the stars on the hit television series “thirtysomething”, playing Michael Steadman. After “thirtysomething”, Olin moved behind the camera and is now a producer and director.

“This Is Us” is a television drama that debuted in 2016. The storyline centers on three siblings Kevin, Kate and Randall Pearson and their parents Jack and Rebecca Pearson. Kevin and Kate are the surviving members of a triplet pregnancy. Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt Randall, a child born on the same day as the surviving siblings. The adopting family is white, and the adopted child is black.

79A Trade show : EXPO

The first World’s Fair was held in 1851, known back then as the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. The fair was the idea of Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. It was held in a magnificent glass and cast-iron structure called the Crystal Palace that was purpose-built for the occasion. The Great Exhibition spawned a tradition of what became known as World’s Fairs, expositions that feature national pavilions created by participating countries. The term “Expo” was coined for Expo 67, a 1967 World’s Fair held in Montreal. Since then, we’ve been using “expo” to describe any large exposition or trade show.

83A Elaborately embroidered falsehoods? : GRAND PERJURY (“grand jury” + per)

An act of perjury is the willful giving of false testimony under oath. The term “perjury” ultimately comes from the Latin “per” meaning “away” and “iurare” meaning “to swear”.

A grand jury is a group of 16-23 citizens who are empowered to investigate potential criminal conduct. Only the US and Liberia use grand juries today, with the rest of the world employing other forms of preliminary hearing. The phrase “grand jury” has its roots in French, with “grand” implying “large”. The 12-person jury used in a criminal trial can be referred to as a “petit” (small) jury.

86A “Buck-a-shuck” delicacy : OYSTER

To shuck is to remove the husk from (say, an ear of corn) or to remove the shell from (say, an oyster).

88A “Tropic Thunder” actor Nick : NOLTE

Actor Nick Nolte got his big break in movies playing opposite Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Shaw in “The Deep”, a film released in 1977. Around the same time, he landed a leading role in the hit TV miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man”. Off the screen, Nolte has always had a “bad-boy” reputation. He is indeed a convicted felon, for selling counterfeit draft cards in the early 1960s. He had to pay a $75,000 fine, and was given a suspended prison sentence.

“Tropic Thunder” is a satirical action movie written, produced and directed by Ben Stiller. On top of all that, he stars in the film, alongside Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr.

96A Washington Spirit player Morgan : ESME

Esme Morgan is an English professional soccer player who made her debut at just 16 years old with Manchester City, a team in England’s Women’s Super League. After several seasons with “the Blues”, and helping the English national team reach the 2023 World Cup Final, she transferred to the National Women’s Soccer League in the US in 2024, joining the Washington Spirit.

99A Mollusk often pan-seared : SCALLOP

Scallops are marine mollusks that are served as seafood. They are often served baked in milk, and as a result this method of preparation has become known as “scalloping”. So, scalloped potatoes are potatoes baked in milk.

105A Baton Rouge sch. : LSU

LSU’s full name is Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, and is located in Baton Rouge. It was founded in 1860 as a military academy, with then-Colonel William Tecumseh Sherman as superintendent.

106A Hip-hop’s Salt-N-__ : PEPA

Salt-N-Pepa are an all-female hip-hop trio from New York made up of “Salt” (Cheryl James), “Pepa” (Sandra Denton) and “DJ Spinderella” (Deidra Roper). The group’s 1991 song “Let’s Talk About Sex” created quite a fuss as the lyrics explored the subject of sex, and safe sex in particular. A later version addressed the dangers of AIDS.

112A Virtual persona : AVATAR

The Sanskrit word “avatar” describes the concept of a deity descending into earthly life and taking on a persona. It’s easy to see how in the world of online presences one might use the word avatar to describe one’s online identity.

118A Starbucks size : VENTI

“Venti” is the Italian word for “twenty.” It’s most commonly known in English-speaking countries today as a size option for beverages at Starbucks. A venti-sized drink at Starbucks typically holds 20 fluid ounces.

119A People who pack picnic lunches? : HAMPER OPERATORS (“ham operators” + per)

Amateur radio enthusiasts were first called “ham operators” by professional telegraph operators, and the term was intended to be insulting. It came from the similar term “ham actor”, describing a person who is less than effective on the stage. But amateur operators eventually embraced the moniker, and so it stuck.

126A Singer India.__ : ARIE

India Arie (sometimes “india.arie”) is an American soul and R&B singer who was born India Arie Simpson in Denver, Colorado.

127A Vibe : TENOR

The purport or tenor of something is its general sense.

131A Canary feed : SEEDS

What we now know as the domestic canary was first brought to Europe from Macaronesia, off the coast of Africa, by Spanish sailors in the 1600s. Macaronesia is a collection of four archipelagos that includes the Canary Islands. The name of the islands comes from the Latin “Insula Canaria” meaning “island of dogs”, a reference to the many large dogs found locally. So, the canary bird is named for the Canary Islands, which in turn are named for dogs.

Down

3D Hockey great Bobby : ORR

Bobby Orr is regarded as one of the greatest hockey players of all time. By the time he retired in 1978 he had undergone over a dozen knee surgeries. At 31 years of age, he concluded that he just couldn’t skate anymore. Reportedly, he was even having trouble walking. While still 31 years old, in 1979, Orr became the youngest person inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Prior to that, in 1967, Orr became the youngest person named the NHL’s Rookie of the Year.

5D Sir __ Guinness : 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.

8D Garment once called a corselet-gorge : BRA

French inventor Herminie Cadolle revolutionized women’s fashion in 1889 by cutting a traditional corset in half to relieve physical pressure on the torso. She debuted the suspended upper half of the new two-piece undergarment at the Paris World’s Fair under the name “corselet-gorge”, utilizing the French word “gorge” meaning “throat, bust”. By the early 1900s, the garment was widely marketed in English as a “brassière”, a French term that originally referred to a child’s undershirt or a military arm guard.

9D Optical effects caused by ice crystals : SUN DOGS

A sun dog (also “mock sun”) is a bright spot seen at one or both sides of the Sun when certain atmospheric conditions prevail. Sun dogs are usually caused by the scattering of light by ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

11D Girl who lost her sheep : BO PEEP

The lines that are most commonly quoted from the rhyme about “Little Bo Peep” are:

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And can’t tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, And they’ll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them.

But, there are actually four more verses, including this one:

It happened one day, as Bo-peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side,
All hung on a tree to dry.

14D Deep carpet : SHAG

Shag carpet is one with a deep pile, one with a “shaggy” appearance.

16D Dress shape : A-LINE

An A-line skirt is one that fits snugly at the hips and flares towards the hem. The term “A-line” was first used in fashion by French designer Christian Dior in his 1955 spring collection.

17D Trousers : PANTS

The term “pants”, meaning “trousers”, is an abbreviated form of “pantaloons” and first appeared in the 1840s. Pantaloons were a kind of tights named for a silly old male character in Italian comedy named “Pantaloun” who always wore tight trousers over skinny legs.

34D Nintendo virtual personae : MIIS

Nintendo introduced customizable avatars for the company’s video game consoles starting in 1997. The first customizable avatars for the Wii system were introduced in 2006, and were given the inventive name “Miis”.

39D Intellectual stickler : PEDANT

A pedant is a person “who trumpets minor points of learning”, a person who tends to nit-pick. “Pedant” comes via Middle French from the Italian word “pedante” meaning “teacher”.

49D Nokcha or sencha : TEA

Nokcha is the traditional and most widely consumed green tea of South Korea.

Sencha is the most popular and widely cultivated green tea in Japan, accounting for approximately 80% of the country’s total tea production.

52D Sculling tool : OAR

A scull is a boat used for competitive rowing. The main hull of the boat is often referred to as a shell. Crew members who row the boat can be referred to as “oars”. And, a scull is also an oar mounted on the stern of a small boat. It’s all very confusing …

57D Mil. mind game : PSYOP

Psychological Operations (“PSYOP” or “psy-ops”) is a contemporary name for propaganda, the “winning of hearts and minds” in a combat zone.

58D [Not my error] : SIC

[Sic] indicates that a quotation is written as originally found, perhaps including a typo. “Sic” is Latin for “thus, like this”. The term is more completely written as “sic erat scriptum”, which translates as “thus was it written”.

62D Pascal of “The Last of Us” : PEDRO

Chilean American actor Pedro Pascal’s break came with a role on “Game of Thrones”, playing Oberyn Martell (aka “The Red Viper”). He then portrayed DEA agent Javier Peña on the biographic crime show “Narcos”. A third prominent role came with an offer to play the title character in the “Star Wars” spinoff “The Mandalorian”.

“The Last of Us” is a post-apocalyptic drama TV show that is based on a video game of the same name. The apocalypse in the storyline is caused by mass fungal infection that developed into a pandemic. Those infected turn into zombie-like creatures. Ugh …

64D Folk instrument : BANJO

The instrument that we know today as the banjo is a derivative of instruments that were used in Africa.

71D Clearasil rival : OXY

OXY 10 is a brand medication with the active ingredient benzoyl peroxide. Benzoyl peroxide is used as an acne treatment, and also for bleaching flour.

73D Gotham City hero : BATMAN

“Gotham” had been a nickname for New York City long before it was picked up by comic books as a setting for Batman tales. The term was coined by Washington Irving in a periodical that he published in 1807. Irving was lampooning New York politics and culture, and lifted the name from the village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire, England. The original Gotham was, according to folklore, inhabited by fools.

76D Power source for a warp drive in “Star Trek” : ANTIMATTER

In the world of particle physics, antimatter is made up of particles that have the same mass as particles of ordinary matter, but with the opposite charge and quantum spin. Mixing matter and antimatter causes the annihilation of both, with a release of energy equal to the mass of the particles according to Einstein’s equation E=mc².

In the “Star Trek” universe, starships were powered by matter-antimatter reactions. The warp speed achieved by the engines is very much like our real-world Mach number. Just as a plane traveling at Mach 1 is moving at the speed of sound, a starship traveling at warp factor 1 is moving at the speed of light. Mach 2 is twice the speed of sound, and warp factor 2 is twice the speed of light. Cool, huh …?

78D Offline, online : IRL

In real life (IRL)

80D “Away from work” letters : OOO

Out of office (OOO)

95D Hog with tusks : BOAR

The wild boar might be described as a matriarchal beast. Fully-grown males live a solitary life, except during mating season. Fully-grown females live together in groups called sounders, along with their offspring.

98D Corundum, for one : MINERAL

Corundum is a form of aluminum oxide, the color of which can vary depending on the presence of impurities. The presence of chromium gives us red rubies, and a range of transition metals result in varying shades of sapphire. Corundum is also very hard, and so it is used as an abrasive, particularly in sandpaper.

100D Hackathon participant : CODER

A hackathon is an event in which software developers collaborate intensively on a project, usually for a day or a week. It is a hack marathon, with “hack” in this case being legal, explorative programming. Apparently, the first event described as a hackathon was held by ten American developers who met in Calgary to work on cryptographic software. Calgary was chosen so as to avoid US export regulations relating to software.

102D Pulpy refuse : POMACE

Pomace (also called “marc”) is the solid material left after a fruit has been pressed to remove the juice. The pomace from grapes can be used to make grappa and grape seed oil.

103D Molar cover : ENAMEL

Tooth enamel covers the crowns of our teeth, and is the hardest substance in the human body. It is composed of 96% crystalline calcium phosphate.

108D Bear in a bamboo forest : PANDA

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.

The grass known as bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world. Sadly, there are stories of growing bamboo being used as a device of torture. Supposedly, a victim can be staked out over bamboo shoots so that the shoots grow into the human flesh. Theoretically, bamboo can grow several inches in just three days.

111D Lauder of cosmetics : ESTEE

Estée Lauder was a very successful businesswoman, and someone with a great reputation as a salesperson. Lauder introduced her own line of fragrances in 1953, a bath oil called “Youth Dew”. “Youth Dew” was marketed as a perfume, but it was added to bathwater. All of a sudden women were pouring whole bottles of Ms. Lauder’s “perfume” into their baths while using only a drop or two of French perfumes behind their ears. That’s quite a difference in sales “volume” …

115D Pranked with Charmin : TP’ED

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

117D D.C. ballplayers : NATS

The Washington Nationals (“Nats”) started out life as the Montreal Expos in 1969, and were the first Major League Baseball team in Canada. The Expos moved to Washington in 2005, becoming the Nats.

120D Minecraft block : ORE

Minecraft is a video game that was released in 2011. Apparently, it is the most popular video game of all time, with well over 200 million units sold.

121D Lowest sudoku number : ONE

Number puzzles similar to our modern-day Sudoku first appeared in French newspapers in the late 1800s. The format that we use today was created by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana and first published in 1979. The format was introduced in Japan in 1984 and given the title of “Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru”, which translates to “the digits are limited to one occurrence”. The rather elaborate Japanese title was eventually shortened to Sudoku. No doubt many of you are fans of Sudoku puzzles. I know I am …

123D Soon-to-be alums : SRS

An alumnus (plural “alumni”) is a graduate or former student of a school or college. The female form is “alumna” (plural “alumnae”). The term comes into English from Latin, in which an alumnus is a foster-son or pupil. “Alum” is an informal term used for either an alumna or alumnus.