LA Times Crossword 20 Jul 26, Monday

Advertisement

Constructed by: Rena Cohen

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Tea Set

Themed answers are a SET of two-word phrases, with both words starting with a letter T:

• 37A Collections with cups and saucers, or a phonetic description of 16-, 22-, 49-, and 60-Across : TEA SETS

• 16A Nickname for Hollywood : TINSELTOWN
• 22A Sanction for running a red light : TRAFFIC TICKET
• 49A “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” e.g. : TONGUE TWISTER
• 60A “Magic Tree House” subject : TIME TRAVEL

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

Bill’s time: 4m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

15A Organ with bronchioles : LUNG

The human lung is essentially a sprawling respiratory tree that receives inhaled air and expels exhaled air, swapping oxygen for carbon dioxide in the process. The tree consists of bronchi that branch directly from the trachea, microscopic bronchioles at the ends of the bronchi, and millions of air sacs, alveoli, at the end of the bronchioles. It is in the alveoli that the gas exchange takes place.

16A Nickname for Hollywood : TINSELTOWN

Back in the mid-1400s, the word “tinsel” applied to cloth into which was woven gold or silver thread. The term came from the Middle French word “estincelle” meaning “spark, spangle”, which ultimately derived from the Latin “scintilla” meaning “spark”. By the end of the 1500s, “tinsel” described thin strips of shiny metal. The word “Tinseltown” has been applied to Hollywood since the 1930s.

22A Sanction for running a red light : TRAFFIC TICKET

The first traffic lights date back to 1868 when they were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London. They resembled the signals already in use for trains, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for nighttime use. That first system was operated manually, by a policeman at the base. Sadly, one police officer was killed just one year after the light’s installation, when the gas system exploded.

28A Peruvian capital : LIMA

Lima is the capital city of Peru. It was founded in 1535 by the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who named it “la Ciudad de los Reyes” (the City of Kings). He chose this name because the decision to found the city was made on January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany that commemorates the visit of the three kings to Jesus in Bethlehem. Lima is home to the oldest university in all of the Americas, as San Marcos University was founded in 1551 during the days of Spanish colonial rule.

29A One-named “Dancing on My Own” singer : ROBYN

“Robyn” is the stage name of Swedish singer Robin Miriam Carlsson. She started her career in pop music at an early age. She was only 15 years old when she signed with RCA Records in 1994.

36A Comm. used by many CODAs : ASL

Child of deaf adult (CODA)

46A King of the Norse pantheon : ODIN

The gods and goddesses of Norse mythology generally belong to either the Aesir tribe or the Vanir tribe. Most of the Norse gods with which we are familiar belong to Aesir, including Odin, Thor, Frigg and Tyr. Examples of the Vanir gods are Freya and Njord. The Aesir live in Asgard, and the Vanir in Vanaheim. The Aesir and Vanir eventually united into one pantheon after the Aesir-Vanir War.

49A “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” e.g. : TONGUE TWISTER

The earliest written version of the “Peter Piper” nursery rhyme and tongue twister dates back to 1813 London:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

A peck is a unit of dry volume, equivalent to two gallons. Four pecks then make up a bushel.

56A Like a plump red strawberry : RIPE

Like so many fruits and nuts, it seems, strawberries are really misnamed, as they aren’t a berry at all. Botanically speaking, they are aggregate accessory fruits, meaning their fleshy red bodies develop from the flower’s receptacle rather than its ovaries. And, what most of us think of as seeds, the yellow specks scattered across their surface are not actually seeds, but individual microscopic fruits called achenes, each housing a single seed inside.

59A Org. with a phonetic alphabet : NATO

The NATO phonetic alphabet was actually developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization in the 1950s. It was introduced to prevent catastrophic misunderstandings in post-WWII global air traffic. Its final twenty-six words feature deliberate spelling quirks designed specifically to accommodate international accents. For example, “Alfa” uses an “f” instead of a “ph” to prevent non-English speakers from pronouncing it with a hard “p”, and “Juliett” gains an extra “t” so French operators won’t treat the final consonant as silent.

60A “Magic Tree House” subject : TIME TRAVEL

The “Magic Tree House” series of children’s books were written by Mary Pope Osborne. The first book in the series was published in 1992, and over 130 million books in the series have been sold since then, and the series has had a spot on “The New York Times” Best Seller List for over 130 weeks.

65A Gaming giant : ATARI

Atari was founded in 1972, and was one of the pioneers in the video game industry. One of the company’s early employees was Steve Jobs, who was hired to work on the game design for the arcade game “Breakout”. Jobs was tasked with reducing the number of chips needed for the game and he recruited his friend, Steve Wozniak, to help with the project. Wozniak designed a circuit board that used only 44 chips, a significant improvement over the original design that had over 100 chips.

Down

2D Pixar film about a boy who meets aliens : ELIO

“Elio” is a 2025 animated film about an 11-year-old boy named Elio who is mistakenly beamed up to an intergalactic “Communiverse” and forced to fake his way through being Earth’s official ambassador.

3D British police officer : CONSTABLE

Especially in Britain, a constable is a police officer. The term “constable” comes from the Late Latin “comes stabuli”, which translates as “count of the stable”. The original constables were high-ranking attendants who cared for the horses of a nobleman.

6D Tennis star Osaka : NAOMI

Naomi Osaka is a Japanese-born tennis professional who became the first Asian player to be ranked number-one in singles. She was also the first ever tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron during an opening ceremony, doing so for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

7D Texter’s “Coming!” : OMW!

On my way (OMW)

9D Pack animals known for spitting : ALPACAS

Alpacas are known for their spitting, a message that establishes dominance and enforces personal boundaries. They have two “levels” of spitting, with mild annoyance resulting in a projectile of pure saliva. If they want to escalate the confrontation, alpacas can resort to “sour spit”, launching a foul-smelling, green mixture of regurgitated stomach contents. Delightful …

10D Elementary subatomic particle : QUARK

Quarks are elementary subatomic particles that combine to make composite particles called “hadrons”. I’m really only familiar with the really stable hadrons i.e. protons and neutrons. There are six types of quarks (referred to as “flavors”). These flavors are up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. The term “quark” was borrowed from James Joyce’s book “Finnegans Wake”, by physicist Murray Gell-Mann. However, the word coined by Joyce is pronounced “kwark”, and the particle’s name is pronounced “kwork”.

14D Double __ Oreo : STUF

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.

24D “Blue’s __”: Nick Jr. show : CLUES

“Blue’s Clues” is a Nickelodeon children’s show that ran for ten years from 1996. The title character is a blue-spotted dog who leaves clues in a treasure hunt for the host and the viewers.

26D Tehran’s country : IRAN

Tehran is the capital of Iran and one of the largest cities in the Middle East, with a population of about 8.5 million. Iran has been around a really long time and Tehran is actually the country’s 32nd national capital.

27D Rudolph’s red body part : NOSE

We get the names for Santa’s reindeer from the famous 1823 poem called “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, although we’ve modified a couple of the names over the years. The full list is:

• Dasher
• Dancer
• Prancer
• Vixen
• Comet
• Cupid
• Donder (originally “Dunder”, and now often “Donner”)
• Blitzen (originally “Blixem”)

Rudolph was added to the list by retailer Montgomery Ward, would you believe? The store commissioned Robert L. May to create a booklet that could be handed out to children around Christmas in 1939, and May introduced us to a new friend for Santa, namely Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

34D Trickster of the Norse pantheon : LOKI

Loki is a trickster god in Norse mythology known for continually creating chaos. He is the father of sons with his wife Sigyn. Because Loki is also a shape-shifter, he gave birth to children “himself” by assuming the shape of the opposite sex.

38D Shallowest Great Lake : ERIE

Lake Erie is the fourth-largest of the five Great Lakes by area (Lake Ontario is the smallest). The lake takes its name from the Erie tribe of Native Americans that used to live along its southern shore. Erie is the smallest of the Great Lakes by volume and the shallowest, something for which nearby residents must be quite grateful. Being relatively shallow, much of Erie freezes over part way through most winters putting an end to most of the lake-effect snow that falls in the snow belt extending from the lake’s edge.

39D Opening in a spatula : SLOT

A spatula is a tool or implement used for mixing, lifting or spreading. “Spatula” is the Latin name for the tool, and is a diminutive of the word “spatha” meaning “broad, flat blade”. “Spatha” also gives rise to our related term “spade”.

42D Nylabones, squeak balls, and the like : DOG TOYS

A Nylabone is a tough, artificial chew toy introduced to the pet market in 1955. The product’s name is a portmanteau reflecting its original design: a bone-shaped piece of molded nylon created to satisfy a dog’s instinctual urge to gnaw.

50D Biggest city in the Cornhusker State : OMAHA

The state of Nebraska got its “Cornhusker State” nickname from the University of Nebraska athletic teams (and not the other way round). In turn, the university teams’ name comes from the prevalence of corn as a crop, and the harvesting process known as “cornhusking”, removal of the outer husk from the ear of corn.

52D People celebrated internationally every March 8 : WOMEN

International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated globally on March 8th. It was actually Vladimir Lenin who set the date for IWD, in 1922 declaring March 8th (February 23 in Russia’s Julian calendar) a day to honor the role of women in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

62D Aries animal : RAM

According to the ancient Greeks, the constellation Aries the Ram represents the mythological winged ram with the Golden Fleece. The Greeks “hijacked” the constellation though, because it also represented a ram in late Babylonian times, long before the Golden Fleece came along.

Leave a comment (below), or …
… return to top of page