Category: Melanie Miller

Frequently Asked Question: Why isn’t the puzzle in my paper the same as the one shown on your blog?
If the puzzle in your paper doesn’t match the one that I solved, it is probably a Sunday crossword. On Sundays, the “LA Times” chooses to publish Merl Reagle’s excellent crossword, and not their own “LA Times” Crossword. The “LA Times” puzzle is still sent out in syndication, and is also published in the “LA Times” online. I’ve been asked to blog about Merl Reagle’s crossword, but frankly I don’t have the time. Sunday puzzles have lots of clues!

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. “__ the fruited plain!” ABOVE

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

When she was 33 years old, Katharine Lee Bates took a train ride from Massachusetts to Colorado Springs. She was so inspired by many of the beautiful sights she saw on her journey that she wrote a poem she called “Pikes Peak”. Upon publication the poem became quite a hit, and several musical works were adapted to the words of the poem, the most popular being a hymn tune composed by Samuel Ward. Bates’s poem and Ward’s tune were published together for the first time in 1910, and given the title “America the Beautiful”.

6. “The Lion King” hero SIMBA
Among the group of lions at the center of “The Lion King” story, young Simba is the heir apparent, the lion cub destined to take over as leader of the pride. His uncle is jealous of Simba, and plots with a trio of hyenas to kill Simba, so that he can take his position. The uncle was originally named Taka (according to books) but he was given the name Scar after being injured by a buffalo. The trio of hyenas are called Shenzi, Banzai and Ed.

15. Senior exec CEO
Chief executive officer (CEO)

18. Kvetch CAVIL
“To cavil” is to make petty objections that really aren’t necessary.

The word “kvetch” comes to us from Yiddish, with “kvetshn” meaning “to complain” or “squeeze”.

27. Italian wine region ASTI
Asti is in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. The region is perhaps most famous for its Asti Spumante sparkling white wine.

28. Breakfast brand EGGO
Eggo is the brand name of a line of frozen waffles made by Kellogg’s. When they were introduced in the 1930s, the name “Eggo” was chosen to promote the “egginess” of the batter. “Eggo” replaced the original name chosen, which was “Froffles”, created by melding “frozen” and “waffles”.

31. King with fiddlers COLE

Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he;
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.
Every fiddler he had a fiddle,
And a very fine fiddle had he;
Oh there’s none so rare, as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

41. Four Seasons alternative OMNI
Omni Hotels & Resorts is headquartered in Irvine, California and has properties in the US, Canada and Mexico.

The Four Seasons hotel chain is based in Toronto, and was founded in 1960 by Isadore Sharp. Today, Sharp only owns 5% of the company, having sold the balance in equal shares to Bill Gates and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia in 2007.

42. Brand used in cones EDY’S
Dreyers’ ice cream sells its products under the name Dreyers in the Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states. The company’s founders were William Dryer and Joseph Edy.

44. Pipe smoker’s gadget TAMP
“Tamp” means to pack down tightly by tapping. “Tamp” was originally used to specifically describe the action of packing down sand or dirt around an explosive prior to detonation. Pipe smokers may use a device called a pipe tamper (or “tamp”) to tamp down there tobacco in the bowl of the pipe.

46. Emperor after Claudius NERO
The Roman emperor Nero had quite the family life. When Nero was just 16-years-old he married his stepsister, Claudia Octavia. He also had his mother and step-brother executed.

I find Claudius to be the most fascinating of all the Roman Emperors. Claudius had a lot going against him as he walked with a limp and was slightly deaf. He was put in office by the Praetorian Guard (the emperor’s bodyguards) after Caligula was assassinated. Claudius had very little political experience and yet proved to be very forward-thinking and capable.

48. Tout de suite ASAP
“Tout de suite” is French for “immediately”.

55. Immoral profit LUCRE
Our word “lucre” meaning “money, profits” comes from the Latin “lucrum” that means the same thing.

56. Sonnet preposition ERE
A sonnet is a short poem with varying rhyming schemes but always with 14 lines. The sonnet form has been around at least since the 13th century. The Shakespearean sonnet is composed of three quatrains (4 lines) and a final couplet (2 lines).

57. White-tailed eagle ERNE
The ern (also erne) is also called the white-tailed eagle or sea-eagle.

58. First European to sail to India DA GAMA
Vasco da Gama left on his first voyage of discovery in 1497. da Gama journeyed around the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa, and across the Indian Ocean making landfall in India. Landing in India, his fleet became the first expedition to sail directly from Europe to the sub-continent. Vasco da Gama was well known for acts of cruelty, especially on local inhabitants. One of his milder atrocities was inflicted on a priest whom he labelled as a spy. He had the priest’s lips and ears cut off, and sent him on his way after having a pair of dog’s ears sewn onto his head.

61. Beer seller’s concern AGE
That would be the age of the drinker, not necessarily the beer itself …

65. Mollusks with beaks OCTOPI
An octopus has a hard beak, also called a “rostrum”. The beak is in two parts, and functions with a scissor-like motion, and is situated inside the animal’s mouth.

The name “octopus” comes from the Greek for “eight-footed”. The most common plural used is “octopuses”, although the Greek plural form “octopodes” is also quite correct. The plural “octopi” isn’t really correct as the inference is that “octopus” is like a second-declension Latin noun, which it isn’t. That said, dictionaries are now citing “octopi” as an acceptable plural.

77. Road race city LE MANS
Le Mans is a city in northwestern France. The city is famous for the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race that has been held annually since 1923. The 24-hour race uses the city’s race track, but closed city streets are also used for part of the circuit.

78. Pre-Columbian people INCAS
The Inca people emerged as a tribe around the 12th century, in what today is southern Peru. The Incas developed a vast empire over the next 300 years, extending along most of the western side of South America. The Empire of course fell to the Spanish, finally dissolving in 1572 with the execution of Tupac Amaru, the last Incan Emperor.

The pre-Columbian era is that period in the history of the Americas before the Europeans really made their presence known. “Pre-Columbian” implies “before 1492, before the voyages of Christopher Columbus”.

86. Discontinued depilatory NEET
The hair removal product “Neet” was launched in Canada in 1901, and was also sold as “Immac”. Today it is sold under the name “Veet”.

88. Trading card stat RBI
Run batted in (RBI)

89. Party founded by Arafat FATAH
“Fatah” is actually an acronym, formed from the initials (in reverse) of “Palestinian National Liberation Movement”. Al Fatah is the largest political party in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Yasser (also Yasir) Arafat was born in Cairo in 1929, the son of two Palestinians and the second-youngest of seven children. Arafat was beaten by his father as a child and so did not have a good relationship with him. Arafat did not attend his father’s funeral, nor did he visit his grave. The beatings were apparently administered because the young Arafat was repeatedly attending religious services in the Jewish quarter of Cairo. Arafat’s explanation was that he wanted to “study the mentality” of the Jewish people.

103. O’Neill’s “__ Christie” ANNA
The playwright Eugene O’Neill was born in a New York City hotel room in what is now called Times Square, in 1888. That building no longer exists and there is a Starbucks on the site today, but you can go take a look at the commemorative plaque at the Northeast corner of 43rd and Broadway. O’Neill died in 1953, in room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston. His last words were, “I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room.” Eugene O’Neill won a Pulitzer for his play “Anna Christie”.

107. Drag one’s feet on the gangplank? SHUFFLE ABOARD (“shuffleboard” + “A”)
In the nautical world, a “gang” is a path for walking, as in “gangway”. A “gangplank” is a plank that provides one a path from a vessel to the shore or to a smaller boat. An earlier term for the same thing was “gang-board”.

The game “shuffleboard”, which is popular on cruise ships in particular, used to be called “shovel board”, which itself is an alteration of “shove-board”. In the game, weighted discs are “shoved” along a “board” drawn on the deck.

115. Luxury Swiss watch RADO
Rado is a famous manufacturer of watches, noted for pioneering the use of scratch-proof materials. Rado make a watch that the Guinness Book of Records calls “the hardest watch on Earth”.

123. Doctors’ agreement? MEDICINE AMEN (“medicine men” + “A”)
The word “amen” is translated as “so be it”. “Amen” is said to be of Hebrew origin, but it is likely to be also influenced by Aramaic and Arabic.

128. Fully assuage SATE
“Sate” is a variant of the older word “satiate”. Both terms can mean either to satisfy an appetite fully, or to eat to excess.

129. Electrical measure AMPERE
The unit of electric current is the ampere, abbreviated correctly to “A” rather than “amp”. The unit is named after French physicist André-Marie Ampère, one of the main scientists responsible for the discovery of electromagnetism.

131. December purchase FIR
The custom of decorating trees at Christmas seems to have originated in Renaissance Germany. Those first trees were placed in guildhalls and were decorated with sweets and candy for the apprentices and children. After the Protestant Reformation, the Christmas tree became an alternative in Protestant homes for the Roman Catholic Christmas cribs. The Christmas tree tradition was imported into Britain by the royal family because of its German heritage. That tradition spread from Britain into North America.

132. Biggest of three ’50s-’60s TV brothers HOSS
Dan Blocker was the actor who played Hoss Cartwright in the famous TV show “Bonanza”. Hoss was the “slow” character on the show. Paradoxically, Dan Blocker was the most educated member of the cast, having earned a master’s degree in the dramatic arts. Blocker passed away while “Bonanza” was still running. He was undergoing relatively routine gallbladder surgery and developed a pulmonary embolism which killed him. Bonanza ran for just one more season after Blocker passed away.

133. River through Orléans LOIRE
The Loire is the longest river in France. It is so long that it drains one-fifth of the nation’s land mass. The Loire rises in the southeast, in the Cevennes mountain range, then heads north and then due west, emptying into the Bay of Biscay at the city of Nantes. The Loire Valley is home to some of France’s most famous wine production, and includes the wine regions of Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé and Muscadet.

Orléans is a city in France, located less than 100 miles southwest of Paris. The French city gives its name to the American city of New Orleans.

134. Clothing giant Bauer EDDIE
The clothing chain Eddie Bauer was established in Seattle in 1920 by an outdoorsman called Eddie Bauer. Bauer was the man who patented the first quilted down jacket, in 1940.

Down
2. Island band The __ Men BAHA
The Baha Men are so called because they hail from … the Bahamas. Their big hit was “Who Let the Dogs Out?” which has been ranked as third in “Rolling Stone’s” list of the world’s most annoying songs (after “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas and “Macarena” by Los Del Rio).

3. Female gamete OVUM
A gamete is a reproductive cell that has half the full complement of genes needed to make a normal cell. In sexual reproduction, it takes two gametes, one from each parent, to fuse into one cell which then develops into a new organism. The female gamete is the ovum, and the male the sperm.

5. Caribou kin ELK
The elk (also known as the wapiti) is the one of the largest species of deer in the world, with only the moose being bigger. Early European settlers were familiar with the smaller red deer back in their homelands, so when they saw the “huge” wapiti they assumed it was a moose, and incorrectly gave it the European name for a moose, namely “elk”. The more correct name for the beast is “wapiti”, which means “white rump” in Shawnee. It’s all very confusing …

Caribou is the North American name for reindeer.

7. Paintball cry I’M HIT!
The “paint” in paintball isn’t actually paint, but rather a mix of gelatin and food coloring.

8. Sitcom beer server MOE
Moe Szyslak is the surly bartender and owner of Moe’s Tavern in “The Simpsons” animated TV show. I don’t really care for “The Simpsons”, but Hank Azaria who supplies the voice for the Moe character … him I like …

10. From Quito, say ANDEAN
The full name of the capital city of Ecuador is San Francisco de Quito. Quito is the second highest administrative capital city in the world, after La Paz, Bolivia.

11. Arch-like letter OMEGA
Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and is the one that looks like a horseshoe. The word “omega” literally means “great O” (O-mega). Compare this with the Greek letter Omicron meaning “little O” (O-micron).

14. Van Gogh’s “The __ Night” STARRY
“The Starry Night” is a Van Gogh masterpiece depicting what the artist could see from the window of his room in a sanitarium near the village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. I am somewhat ashamed to note that one reason I know this painting so well is that I put together a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle over a recent Christmas holiday depicting “The Starry Night”.

16. Three-note quintet E-I-E-I-O
There was an American version of the English children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” (E-I-E-I-O), that was around in the days of WWI. The first line of the US version goes “Old MacDougal had a farm, in Ohio-i-o”.

17. Bean in Hollywood ORSON
Orson Bean is an actor, perhaps best known for his appearances on television game shows in the sixties, seventies and eighties. His most famous game show role was that of a panelist on “To Tell the Truth”. Interestingly, Bean (real name Dallas Burrows) is a first cousin, twice removed, of President Calvin Coolidge.

23. Fitness promoter born of French immigrants LALANNE
Jack LaLanne was a pioneer in the field of fitness and nutrition and was sometimes called “the godfather of fitness”. LaLanne was also a bodybuilder and actually beat 21-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger in competition, when LaLanne was 54-years-old …

25. New Providence port NASSAU
Nassau on the island of New Providence is the capital of the Bahamas, and used to be called Charles Town. After having been burnt to the ground by the Spanish in 1684, it was rebuilt and named Nassau in honor of King William III of England, a Dutchman from the House of Orange-Nassau (aka William of Orange). Nassau is a favored location for the James Bond series of movies. The city and surroundings feature in “Thunderball”, “Never Say Never Again”, “Casino Royale” and “For Your Eyes Only”.

29. She put the ruby slippers on Dorothy GLINDA
In the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, Glinda is the Good Witch of the North, played by actress Billie Burke. As an aside, Burke was the wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. who produced the “Ziegfeld Follies” on Broadway. As another aside, Glinda wasn’t the Good Witch of the North in the original L. Frank Baum book, but was the Good Witch of the South.

32. Slim woodwind OBOE
The oboe is perhaps my favorite of the reed instruments. The name “oboe” comes from the French “hautbois” which means “high wood”. When you hear an orchestra tuning before a performance you’ll note (pun intended!) that the oboe starts off the process by playing an “A”. The rest of the musicians in turn tune to that oboe’s “A”.

34. Tomato option ROMA
The Roma tomato isn’t considered an heirloom variety, but it is very popular with home gardeners, especially those gardeners that don’t have a lot of space. It is a bush type (as opposed to vine type) and needs very little room to provide a lot of tomatoes.

36. Pre-1868 Tokyo EDO
Edo is the former name of the Japanese city of Tokyo. Edo was the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate, a feudal regime that ruled from 1603 until 1868. The shogun lived in the magnificent Edo castle. Some parts of the original castle remain and today’s Tokyo Imperial Palace, the residence of the Emperor of Japan, was built on its grounds.

37. Sun Valley alternative ASPEN
Aspen, Colorado used to be known as Ute City, with the name change taking place in 1880. Like many communities in the area, Aspen was a mining town, and in 1891 and 1892 it was at the center of the highest production of silver in the US. Nowadays of course, it’s all about skiing and movie stars.

The resort city of Sun Valley, Idaho was developed by W. Averell Harriman in the 1930s as he was convinced that there was a call for a winter resort destination after the success of the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. A 220-room hotel called the Sun Valley Lodge was opened in 1936, quickly followed by the Swiss-style Sun Valley Inn in 1937. Sun Valley became home to the world’s first chairlifts, installed in 1936, a replacement for rope tows.

38. Nurse Barton CLARA
Clara Barton was deeply disturbed by her experiences caring for the wounded during the Civil War. She dedicated herself after the war towards American recognition of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The American Red Cross was inevitably formed, in 1881, and Barton was installed as its first president.

45. Knife-like ridge ARETE
An arete is ridge of rock defining the border between two parallel valleys that have been formed by glaciation. If this ridge is rounded, it is called a “col”. However if it is “sharpened”, with rock falling way due to successive freezing and thawing, then it is called an “arete”. “Arête“ is the French word for “fish bone”.

47. Neurofeedback readout EEG
An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a record of electrical activity caused by the firing of neurons within the brain. The EEG might be used to diagnose epilepsy, or perhaps to determine if a patient is “brain dead”.

49. Stray dismissal SCAT!
Our word “scat”, meaning “get lost!” comes from a 19th-century expression “quicker than s’cat”, which meant “in a great hurry”. The original phrase probably came from the words “hiss” and “cat”.

50. 2012 Affleck thriller ARGO
“Argo” is a 2012 movie that is based on the true story of the rescue of six diplomats hiding out during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The film was directed by and stars Ben Affleck and is produced by Grant Heslov and George Clooney, the same pair who produced the excellent “Good Night, and Good Luck”. I saw “Argo” recently and recommend it highly, although I found the scenes of religious fervor pretty frightening …

Actor, screenwriter and director Ben Affleck really hit the big time when he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1997 for “Good Will Hunting”, along with his childhood friend Matt Damon. Affleck has directed a few movies, most notably 2012’s “Argo”, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Offscreen, Affleck is one of the best celebrity poker players, and his prowess at blackjack got him banned from playing at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. He has had a few celebrity relationships that have delighted the paparazzi. Famously, he was involved with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, and is now married to Jennifer Garner.

53. Cave GROTTO
A “grotto” is a cave or cavern. It is a word that we have imported from Italian, in which language it has the same meaning, or can describe a vault.

55. Tropical veranda LANAI
A lanai is a type of veranda, a design that originated in Hawaii. A kind blog reader tells me that the etymology of “lanai” seems unclear, but that the island name of “Lana’i” is not related.

63. Early solution for bad weather ARK
The term “ark”, when used with reference to Noah, is a translation of the Hebrew word “tebah”. The word “tebah” is also used in the Bible for the basket in which Moses was placed by his mother when she floated him down the Nile. It seems that the word “tebah” doesn’t mean “boat” and nor does it mean “basket”. Rather, a more appropriate translation is “life-preserver” or “life-saver”. So, Noah’s ark was Noah’s life-preserver during the flood.

69. “Who is John Galt?” writer Rand AYN
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist born Alisa Rosenbaum. Her two best known works are her novels “The Fountainhead” published in 1943 and “Atlas Shrugged” from 1957. Back in 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City. Soon after, she gathered a group of admirers around her with whom she discussed philosophy and shared drafts of her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”. This group called itself “The Collective”, and one of the founding members was none other than future Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan.

John Galt is a character in the Ayn Rand novel “Atlas Shrugged”.

72. McPhee’s job, in a 2005 film NANNY
“Nanny McPhee” is a 2005 fantasy movie starring Emma Thompson and Colin Firth that is based on the “Nurse Matilda” books by Christianna Brand. The movie was successful enough to merit a 2010 sequel called “Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang”. I haven’t seen either film, but the cast alone is great enough to convince me that I need to do so …

73. Layered rock GNEISS
Gneiss is a metamorphic rock containing bands of different colors and compositions.

76. Refuge for a frequent flier? COTE
The Old English word “cote” was used for a small house. Our modern word “cottage” comes from “cote”. We now use “cote” to mean a small shelter on a farm for sheep or birds.

80. Delano : FDR :: __ : Garfield ABRAM
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the only child of Sara Delano and James Roosevelt Sr. The Delano family history in America goes back to the pilgrim Philippe de Lannoy, an immigrant of Flemish descent who arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. The family name “de Lannoy” was anglicized here in the US, to “Delano”. Franklin was to marry Eleanor Roosevelt, and apparently the relationship between Sara and her daughter-in-law was very “strained”.

President James Abram Garfield was born in Orange Township in Ohio, the youngest son of Abram Garfield. Abram had moved from New York to Ohio specifically to court his childhood sweetheart Mehitabel Ballou. When Abram arrived in Ohio, however, he found that Mehitabel had already married. Abram did manage to join the Ballou family though, as he eventually married Mehitabel’s sister Eliza.

84. Online exchange IMS
Even though instant messaging (sending IMs) has been around since the 1960s, it was AOL who popularized the term “instant message” in the eighties and nineties.

85. Winter melon CASABA
A casaba is type of honeydew melon. The casaba takes its name from the Turkish city of Kasaba, from where the fruit was imported into America in the late 1800s.

87. Pacific weather event TYPHOON
A severe tropical storms is called a “hurricane” when it occurs in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, a “typhoon” in the Northwest Pacific, and a “cyclone” in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. Tropical storms form over warm water, picking up energy from the evaporation from the ocean surface.

92. Sicilian smoker ETNA
Mt. Etna is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy. Mt Etna is about 2 1/2 times the height of its equally famous sister, Mt. Vesuvius.

93. Drag strip sound ROAR
Back in the 18th century “drag” was slang for a wagon or buggy, as it was “dragged” along by a horse or horses. In the 1930s, the underworld adopted drag as slang for an automobile. This sense of the word was imported into automobile racing in the forties, giving the name to “drag racing”. A drag race is basically a competition between two cars to determine which can accelerate faster from a standstill.

107. Oxford mark SCUFF
An oxford is a type of lace-up shoe that originated not in Oxford, but actually in Scotland and/or Ireland.

108. Red River capital HANOI
Hanoi was the capital of North Vietnam, and Saigon the capital of South Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, Hanoi was made capital of the reunified state. Saigon, the larger metropolis, was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi is located in the delta of the Red River, and is just over 50 miles from the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea.

116. Piece of farmland ACRE
At one time, an acre was defined as the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day. This was more precisely defined as a strip of land “one furrow long” (i.e. one furlong) and one chain wide. The length of one furlong was equal to 10 chains, or 40 rods. A area of one furlong times 10 rods was one rood.

119. Space exploration acronym SETI
SETI is the name given to a number of projects that are searching for extraterrestrial life. The acronym stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence”. One of the main SETI activities is the monitoring of electromagnetic radiation (such as radio waves) reaching the Earth in the hope of finding a transmission from a civilization in another world.

122. Mekong River language LAO
The Mekong is the twelfth longest river in the world, at over 2,700 miles in length. It rises in the Tibetan Plateau and empties into the South China Sea at the famed Mekong delta system in Vietnam, having passed through China’s Yunnan Province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

124. Rock genre EMO
The musical genre “emo” originated in Washington D.C. in the 80s, and takes its name from “emotional hardcore”. “Emo” is also the name given to the associated subculture. Not my cup of tea …

125. Printer spec. DPI
Dots per inch (DPI) is a term usually reserved for printing resolution, a measure of the density of individual ink dots that can be positioned on the printed surface. Screen resolution is measured in pixels per inch (PPI), a measure of how closely individual pixels can be placed in a digital display.

Return to top of page

For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. “__ the fruited plain!” ABOVE
6. “The Lion King” hero SIMBA
11. Holds OWNS
15. Senior exec CEO
18. Kvetch CAVIL
19. Lament BEMOAN
20. Kitchen protection MITT
21. Type of current AIR
22. Comedy club road sign? CHUCKLE AHEAD (“chucklehead” + “A”)
24. Magnifies ENHANCES
26. Get control of TAME
27. Italian wine region ASTI
28. Breakfast brand EGGO
30. Two to one, for one RATIO
31. King with fiddlers COLE
33. Distaste for jury duty? TRIAL AVERSION (“trial version” + “A”)
37. Circus performers ACROBATS
41. Four Seasons alternative OMNI
42. Brand used in cones EDY’S
43. Like moccasins SLIP-ON
44. Pipe smoker’s gadget TAMP
46. Emperor after Claudius NERO
48. Tout de suite ASAP
52. Digression to a cabbie? PASSENGER ASIDE (“passenger-side” + “A”)
55. Immoral profit LUCRE
56. Sonnet preposition ERE
57. White-tailed eagle ERNE
58. First European to sail to India DA GAMA
61. Beer seller’s concern AGE
62. Said with a pinched nose NASAL
65. Mollusks with beaks OCTOPI
68. Hill worker SENATOR
70. Erase? RUB THE WRONG AWAY (“rub the wrong way” + “A”)
74. Keeper, in a big way PACK RAT
77. Road race city LE MANS
78. Pre-Columbian people INCAS
82. Conspiracy theory subj. UFO
83. Top-drawer CHOICE
86. Discontinued depilatory NEET
88. Trading card stat RBI
89. Party founded by Arafat FATAH
91. Prize for the fastest delivery? MATERNITY AWARD (“maternity ward” + “A”)
96. Worry FRET
97. Tax __ LOSS
99. Kid stuff TOYS
100. Original PRIMAL
101. Seriously injure MAIM
103. O’Neill’s “__ Christie” ANNA
105. “Honest!” SO HELP ME!
107. Drag one’s feet on the gangplank? SHUFFLE ABOARD (“shuffleboard” + “A”)
112. Assigned amount of work LOAD
113. Zany adventure CAPER
114. Teller of stories LIAR
115. Luxury Swiss watch RADO
117. Wine cellar item CASK
121. Like potatoes pre-prep UNPEELED
123. Doctors’ agreement? MEDICINE AMEN (“medicine men” + “A”)
127. Opponent FOE
128. Fully assuage SATE
129. Electrical measure AMPERE
130. Tell stories, in a way WRITE
131. December purchase FIR
132. Biggest of three ’50s-’60s TV brothers HOSS
133. River through Orléans LOIRE
134. Clothing giant Bauer EDDIE

Down
1. No. on a bill ACCT
2. Island band The __ Men BAHA
3. Female gamete OVUM
4. Squad raiders VICE COPS
5. Caribou kin ELK
6. Super Bowl prize? SEAT
7. Paintball cry I’M HIT!
8. Sitcom beer server MOE
9. Petting zoo call BAA!
10. From Quito, say ANDEAN
11. Arch-like letter OMEGA
12. Bring around WIN OVER
13. Unspecified power NTH
14. Van Gogh’s “The __ Night” STARRY
15. Low-maintenance plants CACTI
16. Three-note quintet E-I-E-I-O
17. Bean in Hollywood ORSON
19. Harassed BESET
23. Fitness promoter born of French immigrants LALANNE
25. New Providence port NASSAU
29. She put the ruby slippers on Dorothy GLINDA
32. Slim woodwind OBOE
34. Tomato option ROMA
35. Little patience testers IMPS
36. Pre-1868 Tokyo EDO
37. Sun Valley alternative ASPEN
38. Nurse Barton CLARA
39. Heads up RISES
40. Offensive smell STENCH
45. Knife-like ridge ARETE
47. Neurofeedback readout EEG
49. Stray dismissal SCAT!
50. 2012 Affleck thriller ARGO
51. Equal PEER
53. Cave GROTTO
54. Barking up the wrong tree, e.g. IDIOM
55. Tropical veranda LANAI
59. How DVDs may be sold AS A SET
60. Kitten’s “Got milk?” MEW
63. Early solution for bad weather ARK
64. Reel LURCH
66. Baby barn critter OWLET
67. Paid leader? PRE-
69. “Who is John Galt?” writer Rand AYN
71. Word of disapproval BAH!
72. McPhee’s job, in a 2005 film NANNY
73. Layered rock GNEISS
74. Locomotive output PUFF
75. Hardly within shouting distance AFAR
76. Refuge for a frequent flier? COTE
79. Runner’s bane CRAMP
80. Delano : FDR :: __ : Garfield ABRAM
81. Move furtively SIDLE
84. Online exchange IMS
85. Winter melon CASABA
87. Pacific weather event TYPHOON
90. Cost of bread? ATM FEE
92. Sicilian smoker ETNA
93. Drag strip sound ROAR
94. It may be residential AREA
95. Joker WILD CARD
97. Tiny, in a tiny way LIL’
98. They’re folded in kitchens OMELETS
102. In a new way AFRESH
104. Unexceptional NORMAL
106. Nostalgia source OLDIE
107. Oxford mark SCUFF
108. Red River capital HANOI
109. Has the __ hand UPPER
110. Political employees AIDES
111. Less soggy DRIER
116. Piece of farmland ACRE
118. In an atmosphere of AMID
119. Space exploration acronym SETI
120. Spot for a bouncing baby boy KNEE
122. Mekong River language LAO
124. Rock genre EMO
125. Printer spec. DPI
126. Livestock lady EWE

Return to top of page