LA Times Crossword 4 Apr 26, Saturday

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Constructed by: Matthew Luter

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Theme: None

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

Bill’s time: 12m 30s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1A National Air and Space Museum relic : MOON ROCK

The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C. is that part of the Smithsonian Institution that holds the largest collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft in the world. The institution was established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, and renamed to the National Air and Space Museum during the space race of the fifties and sixties.

16A 1990s deodorant brand whose name inspired a Nirvana song : TEEN SPIRIT

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released in 1991 by Nirvana, and was to become the band’s biggest hit. The lyrics were written by lead singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain, with the title being a phrase written on his bedroom wall by his friend Kathleen Hanna, singer from the band Bikini Kill. Unknown to Cobain, “Teen Spirit” was a brand of deodorant. He thought it was some sort of revolutionary slogan!

19A Cardinal pts.? : TDS

The Arizona Cardinals were founded in 1898, as the Morgan Athletic Club. That makes the Cardinals the oldest, continuously-run, professional football team in the whole country.

20A Helper in a Cinderella story : FOOTMAN

The folktale usually known as “Cinderella” was first published by French author Charles Perrault in 1697, although it was later included by the Brothers Grimm in their famous 1812 collection. The storyline of the tale may date back as far as the days of ancient Greece. A common alternative title to the story is “The Little Glass Slipper”.

23A Detective Monaghan in Laura Lippman novels : TESS

Journalist and author Laura Lippman is perhaps best known for her series of detective novels featuring reporter turned private investigator Tess Monaghan. In 2006, Lippman married David Simon, the creator of the hit show “The Wire”, in a ceremony officiated by filmmaker John Waters.

29A Tam pattern : TARTAN

A tam o’shanter is a man’s cap worn traditionally by Scotsmen. “Tams” were originally all blue (and called “blue bonnets”) but as more dyes became readily available they became more colorful. The name of the cap comes from the title character of the Robert Burns poem “Tam o’ Shanter”. A pom-pom adorning a tam is known as a toorie.

30A Short strings? : STRAD

Generations of the Stradivari family produced violins and other stringed instruments, the most famous of which were constructed by Antonio Stradivari.

31A Part of a security check : VIRUS SCAN

A computer virus has characteristics very similar to a virus found in nature. It is a small computer program that can copy itself and can infect another host (computer).

34A Tabloid duo : ITEM

An unmarried couple known to be involved with each other might appear in the gossip columns. This appearance as “an item” in the papers, led to the use of “item” to refer to such a couple, but only since the very early seventies.

“Tabloid” is the trademarked name (owned by Burroughs Wellcome) for a “small tablet of medicine”, a name that goes back to 1884. The word “tabloid” had entered into general use to mean a compressed form of anything, and by the early 1900s was used in “tabloid journalism”, which described newspapers that had short, condensed articles and stories printed on smaller sheets of paper.

35A Sunders : RENDS

To sunder is to break apart. We rarely use the verb “sunder” these days, but the root of the word persists in the adjective “asunder” meaning “into parts”.

37A Crunchy legumes : SNAP BEANS

Snap beans are also known as green beans or string beans.

39A “The Sound of Music” heroine : MARIA

“The Sound of Music” is a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that was made into a celebrated movie in 1965 starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The musical is based on “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers”, a memoir by Maria von Trapp. The von Trapp family ended up in Stowe, Vermont after World War II. One family descended from the Vermont von Trapps lives in the same town in which I used to live in California.

41A Seiko brand : PULSAR

The watch brand Pulsar gained prominence in 1972 with the launch of the world’s first electronic digital watch. The innovative timepiece, initially priced at a hefty $2,100 (equivalent to over $14,000 today!), used a red LED display that required the wearer to push a button to see the time, due to the high power consumption. I remember my first digital watch. When I pressed that button beside a radio, the watch emitted some annoying interference signal.

42A Future maple syrup : TREE SAP

About 75% of the world’s maple syrup comes from the province of Quebec. The US’s biggest producer is the state of Vermont, which produces 5-6% of the world’s supply.

44A Symbol on a staff : NOTE

The sets of five horizontal lines and four spaces that are used in musical notation are known as staves. The singular of “staves” is “staff” in American English, but “stave” in British English.

46A Maker of Scribble Scrubbie Pets products : CRAYOLA

The company that we know today as Crayola was founded as Binney & Smith in 1885 by Edwin Binney and Harold Smith, two cousins. The company originally manufactured industrial pigments, including the carbon black used in car tires and the red iron oxide that gave American barns their signature color. Binney & Smith introduced crayons in 1903, the first product being an eight-color box that sold for five cents.

51A O’Keeffe flower : IRIS

Georgia O’Keeffe was an influential American artist, one who led the introduction of American art into Europe. Famously, she was married to photographer Alfred Stieglitz who helped develop her career in the early days. Georgia O’Keeffe’s last home was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she had done a lot of her work during her lifetime. She died there in 1986, at the ripe old age of 98. One of her most famous paintings is from 1926, called “Black Iris III”.

56A Final novel of Willa Cather’s “Prairie” trilogy : MY ANTONIA

American author Willa Cather wrote what’s referred to as the “Prairie Trilogy”, novels that tell the story of Swedish immigrants living in Nebraska. The titles in the trilogy are “O Pioneers!”, “The Song of the Lark” and “My Ántonia”. Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for another novel “One of Ours”, which is set in Nebraska and the French battlefields of WWI.

57A Joint with crossed cruciate ligaments : KNEE

The knee is the largest joint in the human body, and is stabilized by the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments. The name “cruciate” comes from the Latin “crux” meaning “cross”, because they intersect by crossing one over the other.

58A “The Great Gatsby” term of endearment : OLD SPORT

“The Great Gatsby” is a 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that tells of the prosperous life of Jay Gatsby during the Roaring 20s. Gatsby develops an obsessive love for Daisy Fay Buchanan, a girl he met while serving during WWI, and meets again some years later after he has improved his social standing.

Down

1D Actor Bomer : MATT

Actor Matt Bomer’s first TV acting roles were on the soaps “All My Children” and “Guiding Light”. His breakthrough role was playing con artist Neal Caffrey in the cop show “White Collar”.

2D Page full of takes : OP-ED

“Op-ed” is an abbreviation for “opposite the editorial page”. Op-eds started in “The New York Evening World” in 1921 when the page opposite the editorials was used for articles written by a named guest writer, someone independent of the editorial board.

3D La Liga cheers : OLES!

The premier division of Spanish club soccer is the “Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División”, or more usually “La Liga” (The League).

5D Source of some updates : RSS FEED

Many websites and blogs publish content in a format known as Rich Site Summary (RSS). The “feed” can be read using an RSS reader. The advantage of using an RSS reader is that the user doesn’t have to check the website for new content. That new material is fed to the RSS reader as soon as it is published.

7D Perks of big promotions, maybe? : CLIOS

The Clio Awards are the Oscars of the advertising world and are named after Clio, the Greek Muse of History. Clio was also the recorder of great deeds, the proclaimer and celebrator of great accomplishments and a source of inspiration and genius. The Clio Awards were first presented in 1959.

8D Cobain of Nirvana : KURT

Kurt Cobain was famous as the lead singer of the band Nirvana. Cobain was constantly in the spotlight for the last few years of his short life. The media was fascinated with his marriage to fellow rock star Courtney Love, and continually reported on Cobain’s heroin addiction. He finally succumbed to the pressure and committed suicide by inflicting a gunshot wound to his head in 1994, at only 27 years of age.

10D Winter Olympics pairs : ICE DANCERS

Ice dancing was introduced as an event at the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and in the Winter Olympics in 1976.

11D “Inbox zero” obstacle : EMAIL

“Inbox zero” is a rigorous approach to handling emails that was developed by productivity expert Merlin Mann. Mann touts his approach to inbox management as “how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life”. I’m a fan, and a practitioner …

14D Some chip holders : SIM CARDS

Most cell phones used to have SIM cards. SIM cards hold the personal information of the subscriber, with the acronym being short for “Subscriber Identity Module”. Phone companies have migrated towards the use of eSIMs (embedded SIMs), digital versions of SIM cards that don’t require a physical chip.

17D Sign of spring : TAURUS

Taurus is the birth sign for those born between April 20 to May 20. “Taurus” is Latin for “bull”.

25D Beer whose logo was the U.K.’s first registered trademark : BASS ALE

The red triangle on the label of a bottle of Bass Ale was registered in 1875 and is UK Registered Trade Mark (TM) No: 00001, the first trademark issued in the UK.

26D Goddess of the Great Ennead : ISIS

The Ennead is a group of nine gods in Egyptian mythology. The nine were all in the same family, all descendents of the god Atum. The word “ennead” is also used more generically for any group of nine things. The term comes from “ennea”, the Greek word for “nine”.

31D Italian entree, familiarly : VEAL PARM

Parmigiana (familiarly “parm”) is a dish from southern Italy. The original parmigiana was made with an eggplant filling, with cheese and tomato layers and then baked. Versions originating outside of Italy have replaced the eggplant with breaded cutlets of chicken or veal.

32D Covent Garden solo : ARIA

Covent Garden in London’s West End is associated with the Royal Opera House that is located in the area, and with the former fruit and vegetable market that used to sit right at the center of the district. The name “Covent Garden” comes from the fact that there once was a walled garden in the area owned by the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey of St. Peter in Westminster. The abbey rented out the walled garden calling it “Convent Garden”, and this morphed into the area’s current name.

38D Pear variety : BOSC

Bosc is a cultivar of the European pear that is grown mainly in the northwest of the United States. It is named for French horticulturist Louis Bosc. The cultivar originated in Belgium or France in the early 19th century. The Bosc is that pear with a skin the color of a potato, with a long neck.

39D Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters attendees : MUTANTS

The X-Men are a team of superheroes created by Stan Lee for Marvel Comics. Nowadays, the X-Men are perhaps best known as the subject of a series of movies, with Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine and Patrick Stewart playing Professor Xavier (or simply “Professor X”). Some very respected actors have also played the villains whom the X-Men have to battle. For example, the enemy called Magneto is portrayed by veteran Shakespearean actor Sir Ian McKellen.

41D Marie Curie’s homeland : POLAND

Marie Curie lived a life of firsts. She was the first female professor at the University of Paris, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and indeed was the first person to win two Nobel prizes (in Physics in 1903, and in Chemistry in 1911). Most of Curie’s work was in the field of radioactivity, and was carried out in the days when the impact of excessive radiation on the human body was not understood. She died from aplastic anemia, caused by high exposure to radiation. To this day, Curie’s personal papers are kept preserved in lead-lined boxes as they are highly radioactive, even her personal cookbook.

43D Many an episode on MeTV : RERUN

MeTV is a broadcast channel that airs classic shows from the 1920s through the 1990s. The channel name is an acronym standing for Memorable Entertainment Television.

44D Pad in Mexican cuisine : NOPAL

Nopales are the edible pads of the prickly pear cactus. They are a common ingredient in Mexican cuisine and are used in a variety of dishes, including salads, tacos, and soups. They have a slightly tart flavor, and a crunchy texture.

47D Ma who founded the arts organization Silkroad : YO-YO

Yo-Yo Ma is a “ma-velous” American cellist who was born in Paris to Chinese parents. Ma started studying the violin when he was very young, working his way up (in size) to the viola and finally to the cello. He has said that he wanted to play the double bass, but it was just too big for his relatively small frame.

49D Cain genre : NOIR

Novelist James M. Cain had a string of hit novels in the 1930s and 1940s, several of which were adapted into successful films. That list includes “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1934), “Double Indemnity” (1936) and “Mildred Pierce” (1941). Even though Cain also worked as a screenwriter, he never had a successful film script, despite the success of his novels that others adapted.

50D Basic Latin verb : ERAT

“Esse” is the Latin for “to be”. “Sum” means “I am”, “est” means “he, she is”, and “erat” means “he, she was”.

52D Last word of the first verse of “Amazing Grace” : SEE

“Amazing Grace” is a very, very famous hymn, with words written by John Newton in 1779. The words have been set to a number of different melodies, and what we are used to hearing today is music from a tune called “New Britain”.

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T’was blind but now I see

54D Procedural figure : COP

“To cop” was northern-English dialect for “to seize, catch”, and is still a slang term meaning “to get hold of, steal”. This verb evolved in the noun “copper”, describing a policeman, someone who catches criminals. “Copper” is often shortened to “cop”.