LA Times Crossword 15 Jul 26, Wednesday

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Constructed by: Norman M. Aaronson

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Double Agents

Themed answers are all two-word (DOUBLE) phrases, and each word often precedes “AGENT”:

• 64A Spies with divided loyalties, and what the answers to the starred clues are : DOUBLE AGENTS

• 17A *Yet-to-be-revealed ability : SECRET TALENT (secret agent & talent agent)
• 25A *Fundraising events for some libraries : BOOK SALES (book agent & sales agent)
• 38A *Airport announcement : GATE CHANGE (gate agent & change agent)
• 53A *First Amendment guarantee : FREE PRESS (free agent & press agent)

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

Bill’s time: 7m 09s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Gerrit who won the 2023 AL Cy Young Award : COLE

Gerrit Cole is an MLB pitcher who joined the New York Yankees in 2019. In doing so, he signed a 9-year contract worth $324 million, which was a record for a Major League pitcher.

11A Capitol Hill fig. : SEN

The designer of Washington D.C., Pierre L’Enfant, chose the crest of a hill as the site for the future Congress House. He called the location “Jenkins Hill” and “Jenkins Heights”. Earlier records show the name as “New Troy”. Today, we call it “Capitol Hill”.

15A Natural light shows : AURORAS

The spectacular aurora polaris phenomenon is seen lighting up the night sky at both poles of the Earth (the Aurora Borealis in the north, and the Aurora Australis in the south). The eerie effect is caused by charged particles colliding with atoms at high latitudes.

19A Sleep acronym : REM

“REM” is an acronym standing for “rapid eye movement”. REM sleep takes up 20-25% of the sleeping hours and is the period associated with one’s most vivid dreams.

20A Menopause treatment, briefly : HRT

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT)

28A Flat tire problem : AIR LEAK

Here’s another example of terms that change as we cross the Atlantic Ocean. When talking about tires (“tyres” in Britain and Ireland), a defect can cause a “flat” (“puncture” in Britain and Ireland).

31A Playwright O’Neill : EUGENE

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 Shelton 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”.

32A Nevada city near Lake Tahoe : RENO

The city of Reno’s economy took off when open gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931. Within a short time, a syndicate had built the Bank Club in Reno, which was the largest casino in the world at the time.

33A Horned equine : UNICORN

A unicorn is a mythical creature that resembles a horse with a horn projecting from its forehead. The term “unicorn” comes from the Latin “uni-” (one) and “cornu” (horn).

37A Capital of Switzerland? : ESS

The word “Switzerland” starts with a capital letter S (ess).

49A Martin of TV’s “Mission: Impossible” : LANDAU

Martin Landau was a film and television actor from Brooklyn, New York. He is probably most famous for playing Rollin Hand, the master of disguise in TV’s “Mission: Impossible”. On the big screen, Landau won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for portraying Bela Lugosi in “Ed Wood”. He was married for many years to actress Barbara Bain, with whom he worked on “Mission: Impossible” (she played Cinnamon Carter).

51A Person from Ljubljana, e.g. : SLOVENE

Ljubljana is the Slovenian capital, a status the city was awarded on the creation of the Republic in 1991 following the breakup of Yugoslavia.

53A *First Amendment guarantee : FREE PRESS

The Constitution of the United States was adopted on September 17, 1787. There have been 27 amendments to the constitution, the first ten of which are collectively called the Bill of Rights. In essence the Bill of Rights limits the power of the Federal Government and protects the rights of individuals. For example, the First Amendment states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

59A “Rebecca” novelist du Maurier : DAPHNE

Dame Daphne du Maurier was an author and playwright from England. My guess is that du Maurier’s most famous works are the novel “Rebecca” and the short story “The Birds”. Both “Rebecca” and “The Birds” were adapted into movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Daphne du Maurier’s wonderful novel “Rebecca” was published in 1938. The title refers to the first wife of the main male character Maxim de Winter, a widower. The main female character in the novel is a woman whom Maxim meets in Monte Carlo, briefly courts, marries and brings back to his estate in Cornwall, England named Manderley.

62A __ al-Fitr : EID

Eid al-Fitr is a religious holiday in the Muslim tradition that is known in English as the “Festival of Breaking the Fast”. It marks the end of Ramadan, a period of dawn-to-sunset fasting.

63A De Armas of “Knives Out” : ANA

Ana de Armas is an actress from Cuba. Having attended the National Theater School of Cuba, she moved to Spain at the age of 18. There, she made a name for herself in a Spanish TV series called “El Internado”. De Armas moved to Los Angeles in 2014, after which her performance opposite Ryan Gosling in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049” earned her critical acclaim.

“Knives Out” is an intriguing murder mystery film released in 2019. There’s a great cast including Daniel Craig, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette and Christopher Plummer. I really enjoyed this one, partly because it’s a clever, contemporary take on a classic whodunit movie …

72A Bygone Palm smartphone : TREO

The Treo is a smartphone that was originally developed by a company called Handspring. Handspring was bought by Palm Inc. Subsequently, the Treo was phased out and replaced by the Palm Pre.

Down

6D Toothbrush brand : ORAL-B

The Oral-B toothbrush was introduced to the world in 1950, designed by a California periodontist. The first “model” was the Oral-B 60, a name given to reflect the 60 tufts in the brush. In 1969, the Oral-B was the first toothbrush to get to the moon as it was the toothbrush of choice for the crew of the Apollo 11 spacecraft.

7D Arroz con __: chicken dish : POLLO

In Spanish, “pollo” (chicken) might be served with “con arroz” (with rice).

9D PBS chef Martin : YAN

“Yan Can Cook” is a PBS show about Chinese cooking presented by Martin Yan. Yan is a Chinese-born American who arrived in the US via Hong Kong and Canada. Although his own show doesn’t run anymore, he still makes TV appearances and has been a judge several times on “Iron Chef America”.

10D Retired boomer, for short : SST

The first supersonic transport (SST) to fly was the Tupolev Tu-144, which was constructed in the Soviet Union. The Tu-144 first flew in 1968, but did not carry passengers until 1977. The aircraft was permanently grounded as a passenger craft in 1978 due to concerns about safety (there had been two Tu-144 crashes). The second SST to fly was the Anglo-French Concorde, which operated at a profit for over 27 years until it was withdrawn from service in 2003. There was one Concorde crash, in Paris in July 2000. Since then, there have been no commercial SST services.

11D Frozen brand that “nobody doesn’t like” : SARA LEE

In 1935, businessman Charles Lubin bought a chain of three bakeries in Chicago called Community Bake Shops, and soon expanded the operation into seven stores. Lubin introduced a cream cheesecake that he named after his daughter who was only 8 years old at the time, Sara Lee Lubin. The cheesecake was a hit and he renamed the bakeries to Kitchen of Sara Lee. The business was bought out by Consolidated Foods in 1956, but the brand name Sara Lee persists to this day, as does Ms. Sara Lee herself who now goes by the name Sara Lee Schupf.

“Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee” is an advertising slogan used by Sara Lee.

13D Formidable rivals : NEMESES

Nemesis was a Greek goddess, the goddess of retribution. Her role was to make those individuals who were either haughty or arrogant pay a price for their attitudes. In modern parlance, one’s nemesis (plural “nemeses”) is one’s sworn enemy, often someone who is the exact opposite in character but someone who still shares some important characteristics. A nemesis is often someone one cannot seem to beat in competition.

15D Bread box? : ATM

ATMs are Automated Teller Machines, and are called “cashpoints” back in Britain and Ireland. Well, as students we also called them “drink links”, for obvious reasons …

26D Part of an ear : KERNEL

Our contemporary word “kernel” comes from the Old English word “cyrnel,” which meant “seed”, and more literally “little corn”. Today, we still refer to the kernel of a nut or corn. We also refer to the kernel of an idea, the most important part of the idea.

34D German pronoun : ICH

Ich is the German for “I”, as in “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), the famous words of support uttered by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in a speech in West Berlin.

35D “Evita” narrator : CHE

“Evita” was the followup musical to “Jesus Christ Superstar” for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Both of these works were originally released as album musicals, and very successful ones at that (I remember buying them when they first came out). For the original album’s cast of “Evita” they chose Irish singer Colm Wilkinson (or C. T. Wilkinson, as we know him back in Ireland) to play “Che”, the narrator of the piece. In the movie adaptation, Che was portrayed by Antonio Banderas.

42D Military branch at Camp Pendleton : MARINES

Camp Pendleton is a large Marine Corps base located on the Southern California coast in San Diego County. The base was opened during WWII, in 1942, and was named for Marine Corps Major General Joseph Henry Pendleton, who passed away that same year after 40 years of service.

50D Wilmington’s st. : DEL

The Delaware city of Wilmington is the most populous in the state. It was originally founded in 1638 as Fort Christina, the very first Swedish settlement in North America. The city was eventually renamed to honor Spencer Compton, the Earl of Wilmington, Britain’s second de facto prime minister.

52D Universal donor’s type, briefly : O-NEG

In general, a person with type O-negative blood is a universal donor, meaning that their blood can be used for transfusion into persons with any other blood type: A, B, AB or O, negative or positive (although there are other considerations). Also in general, a person with type AB-positive blood is a universal recipient, meaning that they can receive a transfusion of blood of any type: A, B, AB or O, negative or positive.

55D __-toothed cat : SABER

The extinct creature that we often refer to as a saber-toothed tiger wasn’t a tiger at all, and is more properly known as a saber-toothed cat.

56D Challenge for a bowler : SPLIT

In ten-pin bowling, a split takes place when the number-one pin (headpin) is knocked down with the first ball and two or more non-adjacent pins are left standing. The most difficult split to deal with is the infamous 7-10 split, where just the rear pins at the extreme right and left remain standing.

60D Gas brand with toy trucks : HESS

Hess Corporation is an oil company based in New York City. In 1964, the company started selling toy trucks with the Hess logo on them, in Hess gas stations. The company has been selling them ever since, bringing out new models just before Christmas. Hess toy trucks have become quite collectible and the old ones can fetch a pretty penny.

65D Canola __ : OIL

Canola is a type of rapeseed, and Canola oil is made from the seeds. The particular cultivar used in oil production was developed in Canada, and the name Canola in fact comes from “CANadian Oil, Low Acid”.