LA Times Crossword Answers 25 Apr 13, Thursday

CROSSWORD SETTER: Jeffrey Wechsler
THEME: Pops … today’s themed answers all are defined by the word POP:

17A. Pop CARBONATED DRINK
26A. Pop PUNCTURING SOUND
43A. Pop WARHOL’S ART STYLE
56A. Pop TOOTSIE ROLL ITEM

COMPLETION TIME: 12m 00s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Dot-__ printer MATRIX
A dot matrix printer works somewhat like an old typewriter. The printer head runs back and forth across the stage striking the paper through an inked ribbon, creating the printed characters from small dots.

7. Hash house sign EATS
“Hash house” is a slang term for a cheap restaurant.

11. Org. that financed many public murals WPA
The Work Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest of the New Deal agencies. The WPA employed millions of people during the Depression, putting them to work on various public works projects. The total spending through the WPA from 1936 to 1939 was nearly $7 billion. We have to give the federal government credit for taking an enlightened view of what types of project qualified for financial support, so artists who could not get commissions privately were hired by the government itself. The result is a collection of “New Deal Art”, including a series of murals that can be found in post offices around the country to this day.

14. Brand with a Justice For Potatoes League ORE-IDA
The Justice for Potatoes League is a campaign by Ore-Ida that promotes the “goodness” of the potato. We Irishmen are all great supporters …

Ore-Ida frozen foods are all made with potatoes. The company is located in Oregon, just across the border from Idaho. “Ore-Ida” is a melding of the two state names.

15. Inside information? X-RAY
X-rays were first studied comprehensively by the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (also “Roentgen”), and it was he who gave the name “X-rays” to this particular type of radiation. Paradoxically, in Röntgen’s native language of German, X-rays are routinely referred to as “Röntgen rays”. In 1901 Röntgen won the first Nobel Prize in Physics that was ever awarded, recognition for his work on X-rays.

16. Ancient pillager HUN
The Huns were a nomadic people who originated in Eastern Europe in the 4th century. Under the command of Attila the Hun they developed a unified empire that stretched from modern-day Germany across to the steppes of Central Asia. The whole of the Hunnic Empire collapsed within a year of Attila’s death in 453 AD.

20. Air France-__: European flier KLM
Air France is my favorite airline (okay … after Aer Lingus, the Irish airline). I used to fly Air France a lot (I lived in France for a while), but haven’t done so since the company merged with KLM in 2004. Air France-KLM is the world’s largest airline in terms of revenue.

21. Cathedral areas NAVES
In large, Christian churches, the nave is the main approach to the altar, where most of the faithful are seated.

22. Place in a 1969 Western ETTA
Etta Place is the schoolteacher character played by the lovely Katharine Ross in the 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.

The actress Katharine Ross is best known for two major roles: playing Elaine Robinson in “The Graduate”, and Etta Place in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. Ross is married to the actor Sam Elliott. Although the couple appeared together in “Butch Cassidy …” it was in different scenes. They never actually met during the 1969 filming and first ran into each almost ten years later in 1978, and then started dating.

32. Bat mitzvah locale SHUL
Shul is another word for a synagogue. “Shul” is the term mostly used in Orthodox Judaism, “synagogue” in Conservative Judaism, and “temple” in Reform Judaism.

A Jewish girl becomes a Bat Mitzvah at 12 years of age, the age at which she becomes responsible for her actions. Boys become Bar Mitzvahs at 13. The terms translate into English as daughter and son of the commandments.

33. Bands from Japan OBIS
The sash worn as part of traditional Japanese dress is known as an obi. The obi can be tied in what is called a butterfly knot.

34. Gp. concerned with dropout prevention NEA
The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest labor union in the country, and mainly represents public school teachers.

36. Condor’s booster UPDRAFT
A condor is actually a vulture, and is the largest flying land bird in the Western Hemisphere. There are two species, the Andean Condor, found in the Andes in South America; and the California Condor, found in the west of the US and Mexico.

39. Ruckus DIN
The word “ruckus” is used to mean a commotion, and has been around since the late 1800s. “Ruckus” is possibly a melding of the words “ruction” and “rumpus”.

41. Charcutier offering PORC
“Porc” is the French for “pork”.

A charcutier (from the French for “cooked flesh”) is a tradesman who specialized in the sale of prepared meat products, mainly from pork.

42. 2010 Angelina Jolie spy film SALT
“Salt” is an entertaining action movie from 2010 starring Angelina Jolie in the title role. Evelyn Salt is a CIA operative accused of being a sleeper agent for Russia. Jolie wasn’t the first choice for the role, as the original intention was for Tom Cruise to play a male character.

43. Pop WARHOL’S ART STYLE
An artistic work in the Pop Art style includes images taken from popular culture, perhaps from the news or an advertisement. The pop art movement started in the mid-fifties in Britain and emerged in the late-fifties in the US.

Andy Warhol went through a period of painting iconic American products, including Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell’s tomato soup cans. In 1964 he participated in a gallery show called “The American Supermarket”. Along with other pop artists he contributed works including a painting of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. He priced the painting at $1,500, and sold autographed cans of soup for $6 a piece.

53. Toulouse : oeil :: Toledo : __ OJO
“Oeil” is the French word, and “ojo” the Spanish word, for “eye”.

Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France, and is locate in the southwest of the country. These days, Toulouse is noted as home to the Airbus headquarters and is known as the center of the European aerospace industry.

Toledo is a city in central Spain.

56. Pop TOOTSIE ROLL ITEM
Tootsie Pops were developed as a derivative product from the popular Tootsie Roll candy. How popular, I hear you say? About 60 million Tootsie Rolls and 20 million Tootsie Pops are produced every day!

60. An official lang. of Kenya ENG
Kenya lies on the east coast of Africa, right on the equator. The country takes her name from Mount Kenya, the second highest peak on the continent (after Kilimanjaro).

61. The “a” in “a = lw” AREA
The area of a rectangle (a) is the length (l) times the width (w).

62. First word of Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” LISTEN

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year

65. First step toward nirvana SATORI
Satori is a Japanese term, used in the Zen Buddhist tradition. Satori does not refer to full enlightenment (nirvana) but rather is a step along the way, a flash of awareness.

Down
2. Shrinking sea ARAL
The Aral Sea is a great example of how man can have a devastating effect on his environment. In the early sixties the Aral Sea covered 68,000 square miles of Central Asia. Soviet Union irrigation projects drained the lake to such an extent that today the total area is less than 7,000 square miles, with 90% of the lake now completely dry. Sad …

6. Second word of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” XANADU
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is my wife’s favorite poem. Coleridge wrote the masterpiece one night in 1797 after a vivid dream heavily influenced by opium.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

8. Battling god ARES
The Greek god Ares is often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, but originally he was regarded as the god of blood-lust and slaughter. Ares united with Aphrodite to create several gods, including Phobos, Deimos and Eros.

9. Itty bit TAD
Back in the 1800s “tad” was used to describe a young child, and this morphed into our usage of “small amount” in the early 1900s. The original use of “tad” for a child is very likely a shortened version of “tadpole”.

10. Pink Floyd’s Barrett SYD
Syd Barrett was the lead singer and a founding member of the English rock band Pink Floyd. Barrett was only active as a musician for just over ten years. He retired from the music scene in 1975 and spent the next 30 years living off Pink Floyd royalties until he passed away in 2006.

11. Pentecost WHITSUNDAY
The Christian festival of Pentecost is known as Whitsun in the UK. Pentecost if the seventh Sunday after Easter and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ.

13. “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” singer ANKA
“Put Your Head on My Shoulder” is a song written and recorded by Paul Anka in 1959. The song was famously covered by the Lettermen in 1968.

19. Truckee River city RENO
Reno, Nevada was named in honor of Major General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed in the Civil War. The city has a famous “Reno Arch”, a structure that stands over the main street. The arch was erected in 1926 to promote an exposition planned for the following year. After the expo, the city council decided to keep the arch and held a competition to decide what wording should be displayed, and the winner was “The Biggest Little City in the World”.

The Truckee River is the only outlet of the magnificent Lake Tahoe in the high Sierra of California/Nevada. The Truckee River flows northeast through Reno, Nevada and empties into Pyramid Lake.

24. “Yay, the weekend!” TGIF
“Thank God It’s Friday” (TGIF) is a relatively new expression that originated in Akron, Ohio. It was a catchphrase used by disk jockey Jerry Healy of WAKR in the early seventies.

26. “Balderdash!” PSHAW!
“Balderdash” means a senseless jumble of words, and was originally (back before the late 1600s) a jumbled mix of liquids, like maybe beer and wine, or even beer and milk!.

27. Chekov bridgemate UHURA
Lt. Nyota Uhura us the communications officer in the original “Star Trek” television series, played by Nichelle Nichols. The role is significant in that Uhura was one of the first African American characters to figure front and center in US television. In a 1968 episode, Kirk (played by William Shatner) and Uhura kiss, the first inter-racial kiss to be broadcast in the US. Apparently the scene was meant to be shot twice, with and without the kiss, so that network executives could later decide which version to air. William Shatner says that he deliberately ran long on the first shoot (with the kiss) and fluffed the hurried second shoot (without the kiss), so that the network would have no choice.

Walter Koenig played Pavel Chekov in the original “Star Trek” series. Mr Chekov was a Russian character, but Koenig himself was born in Chicago, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania.

28. Quantitative “science”? NUMEROLOGY
Numerology is the study of occult meanings of numbers and how certain numbers influence life.

29. Bulls’ org. NBA
The Chicago Bulls have won six NBA championships in the life of the franchise, all of them in the nineties. They won in the 1991, 1992 and 1993 seasons (a so-called “three-peat”), and then again in 1996, 1997 and 1998 (a second “three-peat”).

30. “Jurassic Park” co-star NEILL
Sam Neill is a very talented actor from New Zealand. I really enjoyed Neill in a 1983 television miniseries about a British spy operation during WWI. He is perhaps better-known for his roles in the movies “Omen III”, “Dead Calm”, “Jurassic Park” and “The Hunt for Red October”.

31. Father of modern Italian, per linguists DANTE
Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His “Divine Comedy” is widely considered to be the greatest literary work ever written in the Italian language.

37. President between Tyler and Taylor POLK
James Knox Polk was the 11th US President. He is known as a president who delivered on promises that he made during his election campaign. He left office after serving only one term, as he had promised the voters, and then contracted cholera on a goodwill tour of the South. He died at only 53 years of age, the youngest age for any president to die in retirement. He also enjoyed the shortest retirement of any president, at only 103 days. I guess that’s why no one keeps their campaign promises these days …

38. No and Who: Abbr. DRS
“Dr. No” may have been the first film in the wildly successful James Bond franchise, but it was the sixth novel in the series of books penned by Ian Fleming. Fleming was inspired to write the story after reading the Fu Manchu tales by Sax Rohmer. If you’ve read the Rohmer books or seen the films, you’ll recognize the similarities between the characters Dr. No and Fu Manchu.

The iconic science-fiction television show “Doctor Who” was first aired in 1963, and relaunched in 2005 by the BBC. The relaunched series is produced in-house by the BBC in Cardiff in Wales, the location that is the setting of the successful “Doctor Who” spin-off called “Torchwood”. The new show is about the Cardiff branch of the Torchwood Institute which investigates incidents involving extraterrestrials.

44. Excalibur part HILT
Excalibur is the legendary sword of the legendary King Arthur of Great Britain. The legend of the “Sword in the Stone” actually refers to a different sword.

46. Wavy lines, in music TRILLS
In music a “trill” is the rapid alternation of two tones that are very close to each other to make a vibrato sound.

47. Justice who’s the son of an Italian immigrant SCALIA
Antonin Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1986, and is now the longest serving member of the court.

51. New Rochelle college IONA
Iona College is a Roman Catholic school run by Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, New York.

53. “The Simpsons” bus driver OTTO
Otto Mann drives the school bus on the TV show “The Simpsons”. Otto is a Germanic character voiced by Harry Shearer, and his name is a play on “Ottoman Empire”. Whenever Bart sees him, he greets Otto with the words “Otto, man!”

55. Intro to science? OMNI-
Omniscience is the ability to know everything, have total knowledge.

58. It’s usually FDIC-insured IRA
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Banking Act of 1933. The legislation established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), intended to be a temporary government corporation that provided insurance on deposits made by customers of qualified financial institutions. The first accounts to be covered, in 1934, had an insurance limit of $2,500. Since the financial crisis of 2008, that limit is $250,000.

59. Bassoon end? -IST
Our modern bassoon first appeared in the 1800s and has had a place in the concert orchestra ever since.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Dot-__ printer MATRIX
7. Hash house sign EATS
11. Org. that financed many public murals WPA
14. Brand with a Justice For Potatoes League ORE-IDA
15. Inside information? X-RAY
16. Ancient pillager HUN
17. Pop CARBONATED DRINK
20. Air France-__: European flier KLM
21. Cathedral areas NAVES
22. Place in a 1969 Western ETTA
23. Tech staff member CODER
24. Camel hair colors TANS
26. Pop PUNCTURING SOUND
32. Bat mitzvah locale SHUL
33. Bands from Japan OBIS
34. Gp. concerned with dropout prevention NEA
35. Run smoothly HUM
36. Condor’s booster UPDRAFT
39. Ruckus DIN
40. “__ you sure?” ARE
41. Charcutier offering PORC
42. 2010 Angelina Jolie spy film SALT
43. Pop WARHOL’S ART STYLE
48. “Sooey!” reply OINK!
49. “Goodness gracious!” MERCY!
50. Kitty’s sunny sleeping spot SILL
52. TV and radio MEDIA
53. Toulouse : oeil :: Toledo : __ OJO
56. Pop TOOTSIE ROLL ITEM
60. An official lang. of Kenya ENG
61. The “a” in “a = lw” AREA
62. First word of Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” LISTEN
63. Technique WAY
64. Chews the fat YAKS
65. First step toward nirvana SATORI

Down
1. Poke fun at MOCK
2. Shrinking sea ARAL
3. Duration TERM
4. Poke fun at RIB
5. Defensive denial I DO NOT
6. Second word of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” XANADU
7. Outdoor security options EXTERIOR CAMERAS
8. Battling god ARES
9. Itty bit TAD
10. Pink Floyd’s Barrett SYD
11. Pentecost WHITSUNDAY
12. Flat-bottomed boat PUNT
13. “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” singer ANKA
18. Claim with conviction AVER
19. Truckee River city RENO
23. II into D CCL
24. “Yay, the weekend!” TGIF
25. Short right hand? ASST
26. “Balderdash!” PSHAW!
27. Chekov bridgemate UHURA
28. Quantitative “science”? NUMEROLOGY
29. Bulls’ org. NBA
30. “Jurassic Park” co-star NEILL
31. Father of modern Italian, per linguists DANTE
36. Very soon after UPON
37. President between Tyler and Taylor POLK
38. No and Who: Abbr. DRS
42. Messy room STY
44. Excalibur part HILT
45. Change the colors of, say REDO
46. Wavy lines, in music TRILLS
47. Justice who’s the son of an Italian immigrant SCALIA
50. Get into a lather STEW
51. New Rochelle college IONA
52. Overly submissive MEEK
53. “The Simpsons” bus driver OTTO
54. Poke fun (at) JEER
55. Intro to science? OMNI-
57. Put into words SAY
58. It’s usually FDIC-insured IRA
59. Bassoon end? -IST


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