LA Times Crossword 18 Aug 26, Tuesday

Advertisement

Constructed by: Seth Bisen-Hersh

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Panda

Themed answers each comprise two words, beginning with P AND A:

• 66A Bamboo-loving bear, or, when parsed in three parts, a feature of the answers to the starred clues : PANDA, or, P AND A

• 17A *Be a little nosy : POKE AROUND
• 32A *Music, dance, drama, and the like : PERFORMING ARTS
• 39A *Squeeze-box instrument with a keyboard : PIANO ACCORDION
• 58A *Public relations manager : PRESS AGENT

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

Bill’s time: 5m 41s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A Ed of “Lou Grant” : ASNER

“Lou Grant” is a spin-off from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. The title character, played so ably by Ed Asner, had headed up a television newsroom in Minneapolis in the original series. In the spin-off, Grant was the city editor of the fictional “Los Angeles Tribune”. The original show was a sitcom; the spin-off was a drama series.

15A Bar mitzvah dance : HORA

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.

16A Bean fermented to make miso : SOYA

What are known as soybeans here in the US are called “soya beans” in most other English-speaking countries. So, I sometimes drink soy milk here in America, but when I am over in Ireland I drink “soya milk”.

Miso is the name of the seasoning that makes miso soup. Basic miso seasoning is made by fermenting rice, barley and soybeans with salt and a fungus to produce a paste. The paste can be added to stock to make miso soup, or perhaps to flavor tofu.

20A Yale student : ELI

Elihu Yale was a wealthy merchant born in Boston in 1649. Yale worked for the British East India Company, and for many years served as governor of a settlement at Madras (now Chennai) in India. After India, Yale took over his father’s estate near Wrexham in Wales. It was while resident in Wrexham that Yale responded to a request for financial support for the Collegiate School of Connecticut in 1701. He sent the school a donation, which was used to erect a new building in New Haven that was named “Yale” in his honor. In 1718, the whole school was renamed to “Yale College”. To this day, students of Yale are nicknamed “Elis”, again honoring Elihu.

22A Apple Music predecessor : ITUNES

The key difference between iTunes and Apple Music is ownership: iTunes is for buying and owning digital music, while Apple Music is a subscription service for streaming music you don’t own.

26A Invitation letters : RSVP

“RSVP” stands for “répondez s’il vous plaît”, which is French for “answer, please”.

29A Acai bowl grain : OAT

Açaí na tigela is a dish made from the frozen, mashed fruit of the açaí palm and served as a smoothie. Often topped with granola, banana, other berries and syrup, the dish is a specialty in much of Brazil. There’s even a savory version of açaí na tigela (“açaí in the bowl”) that includes shrimp or dried fish and tapioca. Açaí bowls are becoming very popular in North America, especially as a health food.

36A Penne __ vodka : ALLA

Penne alla vodka is a pasta dish with a sauce made of vodka, cream, tomatoes, onions and sausage or bacon.

38A Self-referential : META

In recent decades the prefix “meta-” has been used as a standalone adjective. In this sense “meta” means “self-referential”, describing something that refers to itself. For example, “This sentence starts with the word ‘this’ and ends with the word ‘this’” might be called a meta sentence. A movie that is about the making of the very same movie could also be described as meta.

39A *Squeeze-box instrument with a keyboard : PIANO ACCORDION

The accordion (“squeeze-box”, colloquially) is a musical instrument related to the concertina. It is box-shaped and driven by a bellows that is compressed and expanded manually. The bellows force air across metal strips (called “reeds”) that vibrate to produce sounds. Notes are selected by using a piano-style keyboard (in a piano accordion) or by pressing down buttons (in a button accordion).

44A “__-Hur” : BEN

The 2016 epic “Ben-Hur” is an adaptation of the Lew Wallace novel of the same name, rather than a remake of the celebrated 1959 Charlton Heston vehicle. English actor Jack Huston has the title role in the 2016 film, which really bombed at the box office.

46A McKellen of “X-Men” : IAN

Sir Ian McKellen is a marvelous English actor, one who is comfortable playing anything from Macbeth on stage to Magneto in an “X-Men” movie. On the big screen, McKellen is very famous for playing Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings”. In the UK, Sir Ian is noted for being at the forefront of the campaign for equal rights for gay people, a role he has enthusiastically embraced since the eighties.

In the Marvel Comics universe, Magneto is a powerful mutant, and an enemy of the X-Men. As his name implies, Magneto’s superhuman ability is that he can generate and control magnetic fields. Magneto has been portrayed on the big screen in the “X-Men” series of films by Sir Ian McKellen, and by Michael Fassbender.

47A Alien-hunting subj. : SETI

“SETI” is the name given to a number of projects 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.

52A Deli order : NO MAYO

Mayonnaise originated in the town of Mahon in Menorca, a Mediterranean island belonging to Spain. The Spanish called the sauce “salsa mahonesa” after the town, and this morphed into the French word “mayonnaise” that we use in English today.

55A Ultrasoft mineral : TALC

Talc is a mineral: hydrated magnesium silicate. Talcum powder is composed of loose talc, although these days “baby powder” is mainly made from cornstarch.

56A More, on a music score : PIU

“Più” is the Italian word for “more” and is often seen on musical scores, as in “più allegro” (more quickly) and “più mosso” (with more movement).

57A “Growing Pains” actor Thicke : ALAN

Canadian actor Alan Thicke is best known for portraying the patriarch of the Seaver family on the sitcom “Growing Pains”. He was also quite successful as a composer of TV theme songs. Along with his first wife, Thicke co-wrote the theme songs to the sitcoms “Diff’rent Strokes” and “The Facts of Life”.

The sitcom “Growing Pains” originally aired from 1985 to 1992, and starred Alan Thicke as Jason Seaver, a psychiatrist who moved his practice home so his wife could resume her reporting career. The series also added a 15-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio to the cast in its final season as a homeless teen taken in by the Seavers.

64A On a trawler, say : ASEA

The method of fishing known as trawling involves the pulling of a net through the water behind a boat (or boats). The trawling net is known as a trawl.

66A Bamboo-loving bear, or, when parsed in three parts, a feature of the answers to the starred clues : PANDA, or, P AND A

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.

Down

3D Big name in brick phones : NOKIA

Many of us probably think of the Finnish company Nokia as a mobile phone manufacturer, one that was the largest vendor for a decade starting in the late 1990s. Bad decisions by management led to Microsoft buying Nokia’s declining phone business in 2014. It is a very old company, established way back in 1865 as a wood pulp mill, believe it or not.

4D __ out a living : EKE

To eke out a living is to barely get by. The verb “eke” comes from the Old English word “ēcan”, meaning “to increase, add to”. In days of yore, an additional name for someone was an “eke-name”. Over time, “an eke-name” was misheard and evolved into “nickname”. Quite interesting …

9D Wisconsin’s capital : MADISON

Madison is the second-largest city in Wisconsin (after Milwaukee), and is the state capital. The city was named for President James Madison, who was one of the signers of the US Constitution. Many of Madison’s first streets were named for the 38 other signatories.

11D Kvetch : MOAN

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

13D Comic __: informal typeface : SANS

Comic Sans MS is a font that looks a bit like that used in old comic books. It was released by Microsoft in 1994. If you live in the Netherlands, you are lucky enough to enjoy Comic Sans Day on the first Friday of July each year.

25D Plastic wrap brand : SARAN

What’s known as plastic wrap in America, we call cling-film in Ireland. The brand name “Saran” is often used generically in the US, while “Glad” wrap is common down under. Plastic wrap was one of those unintended inventions, a byproduct of a development program to create a hard plastic cover for cars.

26D Big horned animal : RHINO

There are five types of rhinoceros that survive today, with the smaller Sumatran Rhino being the most rare. The rhinoceros is probably the rarest large mammal on the planet, thanks to poaching. Hunters mainly prize the horn of the rhino as it is used in powdered form in traditional Chinese medicine.

29D Double Stuf cookie : OREO

Double Stuf Oreos were introduced in 1974, and have twice the normal amount of white cream filling as the original cookie. Nabisco really went big in 2013, introducing the Mega Stuf Oreo that has even more white cream filling.

31D Bag-screening org. : TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

32D Part of a glissade, in ballet : PLIE

In ballet, a glissade is a gliding step. “Glissade” comes from the French “glisser” meaning “to slip, slide”.

34D Christina who played Wednesday Addams and appeared on “Wednesday” : RICCI

Christina Ricci is an American actress who found fame on the big screen at an early age. She played the very young Wednesday Addams in the 1991 movie version of “The Addams Family”.

35D __ acid : AMINO

There are 20 different types of amino acids that make up proteins. However, only 11 of them can be synthesized by the human body, while the remaining nine essential amino acids must be obtained from food sources.

36D PD alert : APB

An All Points Bulletin (APB) is a broadcast from one US law enforcement agency to another.

41D Signature replicator : AUTOPEN

An autopen is a device used to provide an automatic signature, usually for a batch of documents. With today’s technology, we can provide photographic copies of signatures quite readily. An autopen has the advantage of automatic writing of the signature, while creating the illusion that the document was signed in person using a pen.

49D Philly Ivy League sch. : UPENN

The University of Pennsylvania (also “Penn” and “UPenn”) was founded in 1740 by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. Penn was the first school in the country to offer both graduate and undergraduate courses. Penn’s sports teams are known as the Quakers, and sometimes the Red & Blue.

51D “Kama __” : SUTRA

The “Kama Sutra” is renowned for its descriptions of positions that can be used for sexual intercourse, but the sutra includes many other texts that deal with various matters of a sexual nature, including how to woo a woman, the conduct of a “chief wife”, the conduct of “other wives”, how to make money as a courtesan, and much more.

52D West Coast wine region : NAPA

The history of winemaking in Napa Valley dates back to the mid-19th century, when European settlers first began planting vineyards in the region. However, the industry did not become widely popular until the 1960s and 1970s, when a group of winemakers began producing high-quality wines that gained international recognition.

53D Fútbol cheers : OLES

In Spanish, a “fútbol” (football, soccer) supporter might shout “olé!” (bravo!).

54D Locks on a mustang : MANE

A mustang is a free-roaming horse, and a descendent of a once-domesticated animal. The English term comes from the Spanish “mesteño“ meaning “stray livestock animal”.

59D “Insecure” star Issa : RAE

“Insecure” is a comedy-drama TV show that premiered in 2016. It is co-written by and stars Issa Rae, who also created the comedy web series “Awkward Black Girl” on which “Insecure” is based.

60D Supermodel Carangi : GIA

Gia Carangi was a fashion model, one often described as the world’s first supermodel. Carangi was from Philadelphia, and had her first modelling jobs appearing in newspaper ads. She started to abuse heroin in 1980, at 20 years of age. She contracted AIDS, and died at 26 years old. Carangi was one of the first famous women to succumb to the disease, in 1986. HBO made a biopic about Carangi’s life called “Gia” in 1998. Angelina Jolie played the title role.