LA Times Crossword 20 Nov 18, Tuesday

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Constructed by: Craig Stowe
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Reveal Answer: Sideswipe

Themed answers include circled letters at either SIDE, and those letter spell out synonyms of the word “SWIPE”:

  • 59A. Glancing blow on the road, and a hint to the puzzle’s circles : SIDESWIPE
  • 17A. Traditional Easter dinner : ROAST LAMB (hiding “ROB”)
  • 25A. Steinway seat, perhaps : PIANO BENCH (hiding “PINCH”)
  • 33A. Ohio’s has wheat and arrows : STATE SEAL (hiding “STEAL”)
  • 51A. Boating safety feature : LIFE JACKET (hiding “LIFT”)

Bill’s time: 5m 16s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6. Grounded fast jet : SST

The most famous supersonic transport (SST) is the retired Concorde. The Concorde routinely broke the sound barrier, and cruised at about twice the speed of sound. Above Mach 2, frictional heat would cause the plane’s aluminum airframe to soften, so airspeed was limited.

14. Maine town on the Penobscot : ORONO

The town of Orono is home to the University of Maine, founded in 1862. The college is actually located on an island (Marsh island) lying between the Penobscot and Stillwater rivers. The town of Orono is named after Joseph Orono, a chief of the Penobscot Nation. The school’s athletic teams are named the Maine Black Bears.

The Penobscot River is the longest river entirely in the state of Maine. The river empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Penobscot Bay. Fans of author Tom Clancy might remember that the subject submarine in “The Hunt for Red October” was hidden from spy satellites in the Penobscot River.

15. Letter after sigma : TAU

Tau is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, and the letter which gave rise to our Roman “T”. Both the letters tau (T) and chi (X) have long been symbolically associated with the cross.

16. Food from heaven : MANNA

According to the Book of Exodus, manna was a food eaten by the Israelites as they traveled out of Egypt. The manna “fell” to Earth during the night, six days a week, and was gathered in the morning before it had time to melt.

20. Wedding rental : TUX

Apparently, the style of men’s evening dress called a “tuxedo” was first worn to a country club event in 1886 in New York. The use of a dark dinner jacket without tails became fashionable at the club with the members, and the tradition spread from there. The country club was located in Tuxedo Park, New York, giving the style of dress its name.

25. Steinway seat, perhaps : PIANO BENCH (hiding “PINCH”)

Steinway & Sons is supplier of handmade pianos based in New York City and in Hamburg, Germany. The company was founded in Manhattan in 1853 by German immigrant Henry E. Steinway. One element of Steinway’s business model is to offer a “piano bank” service. Performing artists can “borrow” a particular piano from the bank for a particular concert or tour. About 400 pianos are in the bank, and are located over the world. The value of the bank’s collection of pianos is estimated at over $25 million.

27. Biological mapping subjects : GENOMES

The genome is all the hereditary information needed to reproduce an organism, in other words, all of its chromosomes. When scientists unravel the human genome it takes up an awful lot of computer storage space, and yet all of this information is in almost every cell in our bodies. Each and every cell “knows” how to make a whole human being.

31. Scientist Wernher __ Braun : VON

Wernher von Braun was a renowned scientist who is credited with inventing the V-2 rocket for Nazi Germany during WWII and the Saturn V rocket for the US during the Space Race. While living in his native Germany, von Braun was a member of the Nazi Party, and later a member of the SS. AS Germany’s defeat became inevitable, von Braun and his team managed to arrange relocation to Austria where in order to surrender to the Americans and avoid capture by the Russians. The scientists were then relocated to the US as part of an OSS program called Operation Paperclip, which ultimately transferred over 1,500 scientists from Germany and the rest of occupied Europe just after WWII. The V-2 team were settled eventually in Huntsville, Alabama where von Braun was to live and work for the next twenty years.

33. Ohio’s has wheat and arrows : STATE SEAL (hiding “STEAL”)

The term “Great Seal” applies to a seal used by authorized parties to confirm a state’s laws, treaties, appointments, etc. Here in America, there is a Great Seal of the United States, as well as specific Great Seals used by the individual states.

38. Transmission type: Abbr. : STD

Here’s yet another term that confused me when I moved across the Atlantic. Back in in Britain and Ireland, a car’s transmission is the whole drivetrain. Here in America, the term “transmission” tends to be synonymous with “gearbox”.

54. Curly-horned goats : IBEXES

“Ibex” is a common name for various species of mountain goat. “Ibex” is a Latin name that was used for wild goats found in the Alps and Apennines in Europe.

57. Vietnam New Year : TET

The full name for the New Year holiday in Vietnam is “Tet Nguyen Dan” meaning “Feast of the First Morning”, with the reference being to the arrival of the season of spring. Tet usually falls on the same day as Chinese New Year.

61. Still soft, as concrete : UNSET

The terms “cement”, “mortar” and ”concrete” are related, and tend to get confused at times. Cement is a binder that hardens over time and binds other materials together. Cement mixed with a fine aggregate forms mortar, a workable paste used to bind building blocks together. Cement mixed with sand and gravel forms concrete, a pourable slurry that hardens into an extremely robust building material.

62. Sci-fi vehicle : UFO

Unidentified flying object (UFO)

63. Golf targets : HOLES

There’s an urban myth that the standard number of holes on a golf course is 18 because it takes 18 shots to polish off a fifth of scotch whisky. However, the truth is that the standard number of holes in the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland happened to settle down over time at 18, and that standard was adopted all around the world.

Down

1. Canoe carrying : PORTAGE

Portage is the carrying of a boat and/or its cargo over land, perhaps to circumvent an obstacle.

3. Cajolery : COAXING

To coax is to cajole, to influence using gentle persuasion. Back in the 16th century, “coax” was a noun meaning “fool”, and was used in the sense of “make a coax of, make a fool of”.

4. Running trio? : ENS

There are a trio of letters N (en) in the word “running”.

7. Polynesian island nation : SAMOA

The official name for the South Pacific nation formerly known as Western Samoa is the Independent State of Samoa. Samoa is the western part of the island group, with American Samoa lying to the southeast. The whole group of islands used to be known as Navigators Island, a name given by European explorers in recognition of the seafaring skills of the native Samoans.

8. “Rub-a-dub-dub” vessel : TUB

The nursery rhyme “Rub-a-Dub-Dub” dates back to at least 1798 when it was first published in London:

Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub,
And how do you think they got there?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker,
They all jumped out of a rotten potato,
‘Twas enough to make a man stare.

9. Microscopic organism : AMOEBA

An ameba (or “amoeba”, as we spell it back in Ireland) is a single-celled microorganism. The name comes from the Greek “amoibe”, meaning change. The name is quite apt, as the cell changes shape readily as the ameba moves, eats and reproduces.

10. Analyzes grammatically : PARSES

The verb “to parse” means “to state the parts of speech in a sentence”. “Parse” comes from the Latin word “pars” meaning “part”.

12. Mt. Hood hood? : SNOWCAP

Mount Hood is a volcanic peak in northern Oregon. It is the highest peak in the state, and is located about 50 miles southeast of Portland. There are six ski areas on the mountain, including a resort called Timberline that has North America’s only lift operating year-round for skiing.

22. ABC exec Arledge : ROONE

Roone Arledge was an executive at ABC. Arledge made a name for himself in sports broadcasting and then took over ABC News in 1977, a position he held until his death in 2002.

26. Cpls. and sgts. : NCOS

Non-commissioned officer (NCO)

28. Muscular 2017 “Dancing With the Stars” competitor : MR T

Mr. T’s real name is Laurence Tero Tureaud. Mr. T is famous for many things, including the wearing of excessive amounts of jewelry. He started this habit when he was working as a bouncer, wearing jewelry items that had been left behind by customers at a nightclub so that the items might be recognized and claimed. It was also as a bouncer that he adopted the name Mr. T. His catch phrase comes from the movie “Rocky III”. In the film, before he goes up against Rocky Balboa, Mr. T says, “No, I don’t hate Balboa, but I pity the fool”. He parlayed that line into quite a bit of success. He had a reality TV show called “I Pity the Fool”, and produced a motivational video called “Be Somebody … or Be Somebody’s Fool!”.

When I was growing up in the Ireland, there was a surprisingly popular BBC television show featuring professional ballroom dancing called “Come Dancing”. It ran almost every year from 1949 to 1998, and in 2004 the BBC resurrected it with a new twist, adding celebrities to dance with the professionals. The new show, called “Strictly Come Dancing”, is a huge success and has become a worldwide franchise. Over here we watch the American version called “Dancing with the Stars”. It really can be fun television …

34. Book of maps : ATLAS

The famous Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published his first collection of maps in 1578. Mercator’s collection contained a frontispiece with an image of Atlas the Titan from Greek mythology holding up the world on his shoulders. That image gave us our term “atlas” that is used for a book of maps.

35. Gymnast’s powder : TALC

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

36. Vatican vestment : ALB

An alb is a white, neck-to-toe vestment worn by priests, usually with a rope cord around the waist. The term alb comes from “albus”, the Latin word for “white”.

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state that is walled off within the city of Rome. Vatican City is about 110 acres in area, and so is the smallest independent state in the world. With about 800 residents, it is also the smallest state in terms of population. Although the Holy See dates back to early Christianity, Vatican City only came into being in 1929. At that time, Prime Minister Benito Mussolini signed a treaty with the Holy See on behalf of the Kingdom of Italy that established the city-state.

39. Chicago newspaper : TRIBUNE

“The Chicago Tribune” was first published in 1847. The most famous edition of “The Trib” was probably in 1948 when the headline was “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”, on the occasion of that year’s presidential election. When it turned out Truman had actually won, the victor picked up the paper with the erroneous headline and posed for photographs with it … a famous, famous photo, that must have stuck in the craw of the editor at the time.

40. The “D” of “NORAD” : DEFENSE

The North American Defense Command (NORAD) isn’t just a US operation but is a cooperative arrangement between Canada and the United States. The two countries entered into an agreement to establish NORAD in 1958, mainly due to the concern that there would be little or no warning of a missile attack from the Soviet Union that came over the North Pole. NORAD also tracks Santa Claus coming from the North Pole every Christmas, and these days publishes Santa’s location on Christmas Eve on its website. The tracking of Santa started into 1955 when a local Sears store placed an advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper with a phone number that could be used to call Santa Claus. The newspaper accidentally printed the number for the Continental Air Defense Command (a precursor to NORAD). The officer on duty instructed his staff to give all children who called a “current location” for Santa. Today, NORAD gets about 120,000 phone queries about Santa’s location every year, and website gets about 20 million visitors.

43. Silk or cashmere : TEXTILE

The textile known as silk is made from a natural protein fiber produced from the cocoons of the larvae of the the mulberry silkworm. Ethical vegans tend to avoid silk as many, many silkworms die in order to produce a relatively small amount of fabric. Raw silk is obtained by boiling alive the silkworms inside the cocoons that yield the fibers.

45. Snack cake maker with the Nasdaq symbol TWNK : HOSTESS

The snack cakes called Twinkies have been around since 1930. They were created by a baker called James Dewar, who chose the name from a billboard advertising “Twinkle Toe Shoes”. The original filling in the cake was a banana cream, but this was swapped out as a result of rationing during WWII. The vanilla cream became so popular that the banana recipe was dropped completely.

The Nasdaq has some descriptive symbols to represent companies. Here are some examples:

  • HOG – Harley Davidson
  • HEINY – Heineken
  • ROCK – Gibraltar Industries
  • GRR – The Asian Tigers Fund
  • BEN – Franklin Resources
  • TWNK – Hostess Brands

48. Spits out, as a DVD : EJECTS

The abbreviation “DVD” doesn’t actually stand for anything these days, although it originally was short for Digital Video Disk. The use of the word “video” was dropped as DVDs started to be used for storing a lot more than video. But, that seems like a long time ago …

49. Old salt : SEA DOG

“Sea dog” and “old salt” are familiar terms for a sailor, especially one that has lots of experience.

50. __ Reader: eclectic digest : UTNE

The “Utne Reader” is known for aggregation and republishing of articles on politics, culture and the environment from other sources in the media. The “Utne Reader” was founded in 1984 by Eric Utne, with management taken over by Eric’s wife Nina Rothschild Utne in 1990.

56. Tennis great Arthur : ASHE

The great American tennis player Arthur Ashe spent the last years of his life writing his memoir called “Days of Grace”. He finished the manuscript just a few days before he passed away, dying from AIDS caused by a tainted blood transfusion.

59. “How’s it hangin’?” : SUP?

I think that “sup?” is slang for “what’s up?”

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. Worked off nervous energy, say : PACED
6. Grounded fast jet : SST
9. Like imitators : APISH
14. Maine town on the Penobscot : ORONO
15. Letter after sigma : TAU
16. Food from heaven : MANNA
17. Traditional Easter dinner : ROAST LAMB (hiding “ROB”)
19. “… better __ worse”: wedding vow words : OR FOR
20. Wedding rental : TUX
21. “Not bad, not great” : SO-SO
22. Cuts anew : RESAWS
23. “In your dreams!” : AS IF!
25. Steinway seat, perhaps : PIANO BENCH (hiding “PINCH”)
27. Biological mapping subjects : GENOMES
29. By the seashore : COASTAL
30. Garden tool : EDGER
31. Scientist Wernher __ Braun : VON
32. Undercover agent : SPY
33. Ohio’s has wheat and arrows : STATE SEAL (hiding “STEAL”)
38. Transmission type: Abbr. : STD
41. Line on many a receipt : TAX
42. Hold (onto) : LATCH
46. Take advance orders for : PRESELL
49. Colder than cold : SUBZERO
51. Boating safety feature : LIFE JACKET (hiding “LIFT”)
53. Former couples : EXES
54. Curly-horned goats : IBEXES
55. Mama’s mama : NANA
57. Vietnam New Year : TET
58. Renaissance fair garment : TUNIC
59. Glancing blow on the road, and a hint to the puzzle’s circles : SIDESWIPE
61. Still soft, as concrete : UNSET
62. Sci-fi vehicle : UFO
63. Golf targets : HOLES
64. Jury members : PEERS
65. Wooden pin : PEG
66. Wide-mouthed pitchers : EWERS

Down

1. Canoe carrying : PORTAGE
2. Turned on : AROUSED
3. Cajolery : COAXING
4. Running trio? : ENS
5. Colon components : DOTS
6. Equilibrium : STASIS
7. Polynesian island nation : SAMOA
8. “Rub-a-dub-dub” vessel : TUB
9. Microscopic organism : AMOEBA
10. Analyzes grammatically : PARSES
11. Babies : INFANTS
12. Mt. Hood hood? : SNOWCAP
13. How scolding words may be spoken : HARSHLY
18. Leisurely gait : LOPE
22. ABC exec Arledge : ROONE
24. Enemies : FOES
26. Cpls. and sgts. : NCOS
28. Muscular 2017 “Dancing With the Stars” competitor : MR T
31. Distress : VEX
34. Book of maps : ATLAS
35. Gymnast’s powder : TALC
36. Vatican vestment : ALB
37. Lounge (around) : LAZE
38. Call it quits : SPLIT UP
39. Chicago newspaper : TRIBUNE
40. The “D” of “NORAD” : DEFENSE
43. Silk or cashmere : TEXTILE
44. Climbing vine : CREEPER
45. Snack cake maker with the Nasdaq symbol TWNK : HOSTESS
47. More appealing : SEXIER
48. Spits out, as a DVD : EJECTS
49. Old salt : SEA DOG
50. __ Reader: eclectic digest : UTNE
52. Chef’s cutter : KNIFE
56. Tennis great Arthur : ASHE
59. “How’s it hangin’?” : SUP?
60. __ factor: impressive quality : WOW

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