LA Times Crossword Answers 18 Jan 2018, Thursday

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Constructed by: C.C. Burnikel
Edited by: Rich Norris

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Today’s Theme: Bugs

Themed clues include hidden BUGS, in the broadest sense of the term:

  • 54A. Software glitches … and, in a broad sense, small things hidden in the answers to starred clues : BUGS
  • 18A. *Acting like the locals : GOING NATIVE (hiding GNAT)
  • 61A. *Try not to look bored : STIFLE A YAWN (hiding FLEA)
  • 3D. *Google Code of Conduct motto : DON’T BE EVIL (hiding BEE)
  • 30D. *”The Imitation Game” subject : ALAN TURING (hiding ANT)

Bill’s time: 7m 10s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

4. Dugong or manatee : SEA COW

The dugong is an ugly-looking brute. It is a large marine mammal related to the manatee. The dugong feeds upon seagrass, and is the only marine mammal that is a strict herbivore.

Manatees, also known as sea cows, are very large marine mammals that can grow to 12 feet in length. The manatee is believed to have evolved from four-legged land mammals and probably shares a common ancestor with the elephant.

10. Friskies sister brand : ALPO

Alpo is a brand of dog food introduced by Allen Products in 1936, with “Alpo” being an abbreviation for “Allen Products”. Lorne Greene used to push Alpo in television spots, as did Ed McMahon and Garfield the Cat, would you believe?

The Friskies brand is known today as a cat food, although it was first introduced as a dry dog food in 1930.

15. Turkey’s second-largest city : ANKARA

Ankara is the second largest city in Turkey, after Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). After WWI, the Ottoman Empire had been defeated and the Allies occupied the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. The victors planned to break up most of Turkey, leaving native Turks just part of their country for their own. In the inevitable War of Independence that followed, the Turkish Nationalists used Ankara as their base. When the Nationalists emerged victorious, they declared Ankara the new capital of Turkey.

16. Enjoyed People : READ

There used to be a “People” page in each issue of “Time” magazine. This page was spun-off in 1974 as a publication of its own, which we now call “People” magazine. “People” is noted for its annual special editions with features such as “Best & Worst Dressed” and “Sexiest Man Alive”. The “Sexiest Man Alive” edition now appears at the end of November each year. The first choice for “Sexiest Man” was Mel Gibson, in 1985.

17. Singer Fogelberg : DAN

Singer Dan Fogelberg is probably best known for his soft rock hits “Longer” (1980), “Leader of the Band” (1981) and “Same Old Lang Syne” (1981).

18. *Acting like the locals : GOING NATIVE (hiding GNAT)

Gnats are attracted to the smell of rotting food, and to vinegar. Simple homemade traps that use vinegar are often constructed to attract and kill gnats.

22. Stage great Hagen : UTA

Uta Hagen was a German-born American actress. Hagen married Jose Ferrer in 1938, but they were divorced ten years later after it was revealed that she was having a long-running affair with Paul Robeson. Her association with Robeson, a prominent civil rights activist, earned her a spot on the Hollywood Blacklist during the McCarthy Era. This forced her away from film, but towards a successful stage career in New York City.

24. Site of Napoleon’s exile : ELBA

Napoléon Bonaparte was a military professional from Corsica who rose to prominence after the French Revolution during the French First Republic. He took over the country in 1799 in a coup d’état and installed himself as First Consul. Soon after, he led France in the Napoleonic Wars, conflicts between the growing French Empire and a series of opposing coalitions. He was eventually defeated at the Battle of Leipzig and was forced into exile on the Italian island of Elba off the Tuscan coast. Napoleon escaped in 1815 and regained power, only to be finally defeated a few months later at the Battle of Waterloo. The British dispatched him to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic where he lived out the last six years of his life as a prisoner.

29. Dalai Lama, for one : TIBETAN

The Dalai Lama is a religious leader in the Gelug branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama is the 14th to hold the office. He has indicated that the next Dalai Lama might be found outside of Tibet for the first time, and may even be female.

32. Sport with clay pigeons : SKEET

There are three types of competitive shotgun target shooting sports:

  • Skeet shooting
  • Trap shooting
  • Sporting clays

34. Canapé spread : PATE

Pâté is a rich spreadable paste made up of a mixture of ground meat and fat, to which various vegetables, herbs and spices may be added. The most famous version of the paste is pâté de foie gras, which is made from the fattened livers of geese (“foie gras” means “fat liver” in French).

35. Husky follower : SLED

The Siberian Husky is one of the oldest breeds of dog, and originated in northern Asia. Siberian Huskies were imported into Alaska in great numbers in the early 1900s for use as sled dogs during the gold rush.

37. Part of SASE: Abbr. : ENV

An SAE is a “stamped, addressed envelope”. An SASE is a “self-addressed, stamped envelope”.

38. Wartime prez : ABE

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the US, elected in 1860 as the first president from the Republican Party. Lincoln’s electoral support came almost exclusively from the north and west of the country, winning only 2 out of 996 counties in the Southern slave states. Lincoln led the country through Civil War, and then was assassinated in 1865 just a few days after Robert E. Lee surrendered his army of Northern Virginia. President Lincoln was succeeded in office by Vice President Andrew Johnson.

40. Sci-fi aviators : ETS

One might speculate that an unidentified flying object (UFO) is flown by an extraterrestrial (ET).

42. Shapiro of NPR : ARI

Ari Shapiro was the very able White House correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) for several years. He became a co-host of network’s drive-time program “All Things Considered” in 2015.

49. Hole’s starting point for skilled golfers : BLUE TEE

Golf courses have sets of tee markers of differing colors that denote different yardages for the holes.

54. Software glitches … and, in a broad sense, small things hidden in the answers to starred clues : BUGS

Back in 1947, famed computer programmer Grace Hopper noticed some colleagues fixing a piece of equipment by removing a dead moth from a relay. She remarked that they were “debugging” the system, and so Hopper has been given credit for popularizing that term.

59. LG competitor : RCA

During WWI, the US government actively discouraged the loss of certain technologies to other countries, including allies. The developing wireless technologies were considered to be particularly important by the army and navy. The government prevented the General Electric Company from selling equipment to the British Marconi Company, and instead facilitated the purchase by GE of the American Marconi subsidiary. This purchase led to GE forming the Radio Corporation of America that we know today as RCA.

LG is a very large South Korean manufacturer of electronics, chemicals and telecom products. The company used to be known as Lucky-Goldstar, whence the initialism “LG”.

60. First name at Woodstock : ARLO

Singer Arlo Guthrie is known for his protest songs, just like his father Woody Guthrie. The younger Guthrie only ever had one song in the top 40: a cover version of “City of New Orleans”. He has lived for years in the town of Washington, just outside Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His 1976 song “Massachusetts” has been the official folk song of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 1981.

61. *Try not to look bored : STIFLE A YAWN (hiding FLEA)

Fleas are flightless insects, but they sure can jump. Their very specialized hind legs allow them to jump up to 50 times the length of their bodies.

64. Lithium-__ battery : ION

Lithium-ion and nickel-cadmium are types of rechargeable batteries.

65. Pakistani tongue : URDU

Urdu is one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and is one of 22 scheduled languages in India. Urdu partly developed from Persian and is written from right to left.

66. Scoresheet slashes : SPARES

In bowling, a spare is recorded on a score sheet with a forward slash mark. A strike is recorded with a large letter X.

69. Siberian expanse : TUNDRA

Tundra is an ecosystem that is treeless, or very nearly so. There are three types of tundra. Arctic and Antarctic tundra can’t support the growth of trees as the ground is pretty much frozen. Alpine tundra cannot support tree-growth due to high altitude.

Siberia is a vast area in Northern Asia. The region’s industrial development started with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway from 1891 to 1916, which linked Siberia to Russia in the west.

70. Some hot rods : GTS

GT stands for “Grand Touring” or “Gran Turismo”.

A hot rod is an American car that has been modified for speed by installing a larger than normal engine. A street rod is generally a more comfortable type of hot rod, with the emphasis less on the engine and more on custom paint jobs and interiors. By definition, a street rod must be based on an automobile design that originated prior to 1949

Down

2. Penske rival : U-HAUL

The U-Haul company was started by married couple Leonard Shoen and Anna Mary Carty in Ridgefield, Washington in 1945. The Shoens used $5,000 of seed money to build trailers in their garage, and then cleverly recruited gas station owners as franchisees with whom they would split the rental revenue. There are now about 15,000 U-Haul dealers across the country.

Penske is a transportation business that takes its name from auto racing legend Roger S. Penske who founded the company in 1969. It is perhaps best known for its truck rental division, which it purchased from Hertz in 1985.

3. *Google Code of Conduct motto : DON’T BE EVIL (hiding BEE)

“Don’t be evil” is Google’s corporate motto. The concept is incorporated into one of the company’s formally defined Core Values: “Do the right thing: don’t be evil. Honesty and Integrity in all we do. Our business practices are beyond reproach. We make money by doing good things.”

6. Curly-tailed dog : AKITA

The Akita breed of dog is named for its point of origin, the Akita Prefecture in Japan. When Helen Keller visited Japan in 1937, she asked for and was given an Akita breed of dog, with the name of Kamikaze-go. Sadly, the dog died within a year from distemper. The following year the Japanese government officially presented Keller with a replacement dog. Supposedly Keller’s dogs were the first members of the breed to be introduced into the US.

7. Rummy game played with two decks : CANASTA

The card game called canasta originated in Uruguay apparently, with “canasta” being the Spanish word for “basket”. In the rummy-like game, a meld of seven cards or more is called a canasta.

8. Suffix for NPR’s website : ORG

National Public Radio (now just called “NPR”) was established in 1970 after President Johnson signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The station’s first broadcast took place in April of 1971, and was coverage of the US Senate hearings on the Vietnam War. The intent of the act was to provide funding for radio and television broadcasting that wasn’t simply driven by profit. As a longtime fan of the state-funded BBC in the UK, I’d have to agree with that intent …

11. Hawaiian wedding rings : LEIS

“Lei” is the Hawaiian word for “garland, wreath”, although in more general terms a lei is any series of objects strung together as an adornment for the body.

12. Tar : PAVE

Back in Ireland, the “pavement” is what we call the “footpath” (because the footpath is “paved”, often with “paving” stones!). It’s very confusing when you arrive in this country from Ireland, and a little dangerous when one has been taught from a young age to “walk on the pavement” …

13. Neruda’s “__ to My Socks” : ODE

Pablo Neruda was the pen name, and eventually the legal name, used by Chilean writer Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Basoalto chose the name as a homage to Czech poet Jan Neruda.

28. Commuter org. in the Loop : CTA

Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)

The historic commercial center of Chicago is known as the Loop. One theory is that the “loop” got its name from the cable loops in the city’s old cable car system. An alternative theory is that term only arose with the construction of the elevated railway “loop” that forms the hub of the city’s “L” system.

30. *”The Imitation Game” subject : ALAN TURING (hiding ANT)

Alan Turing was an English mathematician. He was deservedly well-respected for his code-breaking work during WWII at Bletchley Park in England. However, despite his contributions to cracking the German Enigma code and other crucial work, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He agreed to chemical castration, treatment with female hormones, and then two years later he committed suicide by taking cyanide. Turing’s life story is told in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead. I thoroughly enjoyed that film …

31. Comic-Con attendee : NERD

San Diego’s famous Comic-Con was founded in 1970 as the Golden State Comic Book Convention. It is held over four days each summer.

34. Pequod co-owner : PELEG

The Pequod is the ship that figures in Herman Melville’s classic novel “Moby Dick”. The ship is owned by a consortium of the citizens of Nantucket Island, including Captains Ahab, Bildad and Peleg.

36. Belittle : DIS

“Dis” is a slang term meaning “insult” that originated in the eighties. It is a shortened form of “disrespect” or “dismiss”.

39. Trial run designed to catch 54-Across : BETA TEST
54A. Software glitches … : BUGS

In the world of software development, the first tested issue of a new program is usually called the alpha version. Expected to have a lot of bugs that need to be fixed, the alpha release is usually distributed to a small number of testers. After reported bugs have been eliminated, the refined version is called a beta and is released to a wider audience, but with the program clearly labeled as “beta”. The users generally check functionality and report further bugs that are encountered. The beta version feeds into a release candidate, the version that is tested just prior to the software being sold into the market, hopefully bug-free.

41. “__ Walks in Beauty”: Byron poem : SHE

“She Walks in Beauty” is one of the most famous poems written by Lord Byron. The poem is very descriptive of an elegant and beautiful woman. He wrote it the day after seeing his cousin, who was in mourning, walking by in a black dress set with spangles. The opening lines are:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies

44. Satyrlike : LUSTFUL

The satyrs of Greek mythology came with a very high sex drive. They are the “rude” male subjects drawn on the side of old Greek vases. The nubile maidens known as nymphs were often an object of attention for the satyrs.

46. “You’ve Got Mail” co-star : MEG RYAN

Meg Ryan is the stage name of the actress Margaret Mary Hyra. Ryan’s big break came with the excellent 1989 movie “When Harry Met Sally”, from which she went on to star in some of the greatest romantic comedies ever made.

“You’ve Got Mail” is a 1998 romantic comedy film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, directed by Nora Ephron. The film is an adaptation of the Miklos Laszlo play “Parfumerie”. The storyline of “Parfumerie” was also used for the movies “The Shop Around the Corner” (from 1940 starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan) and “In the Good Old Summertime” (from 1949 starring Van Johnson and Judy Garland).

48. “Fernando” pop group : ABBA

“Fernando” was a 1976 hit for ABBA, a followup to their smash hit “Dancing Queen”. “Fernando” was originally released as a solo single by one the ABBA band members: Anni-Frid Lyngstad.

56. iTunes downloads : SONGS

iTunes is a very, very successful software application from Apple. It’s basically a media player that works on platforms like the iPad, iPhone and iPod. It connects seamlessly to the iTunes store, where you can spend all kinds of money.

57. Raison d’__ : ETRE

“Raison d’être” is a French phrase meaning “reason for existence”.

58. West Wing staffer : AIDE

The West Wing of the White House Complex is also known as the Executive Office Building, and houses the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and the Situation Room. The West Wing was constructed at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt to house his staff, leaving the residence to his family alone. President William Howard Taft had the West Wing expanded, and it was he who created the first Oval Office built. President Herbert Hoover had the West Wing rebuilt after it was significantly damaged in a fire. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had the West Wing redesigned to its current layout, including the Oval Office that is used today.

62. “The Simpsons” clerk : APU

The fictional Kwik-E-Mart store is operated by Apu Nahasapeemapetilon on “The Simpsons” TV show. Apu is married to Manjula, and the couple have eight children. The convenience store owner doesn’t seem to be making much use of his Ph.D in computer science that he earned in the US. Apu’s undergraduate degree is from Caltech (the Calcutta Technical Institute), where he graduated top of his class of seven million students …

63. Fort Meade org. : NSA

Fort George G. Meade (often just “Fort Meade”) is a US Army post located near Odenton, Maryland. It is most famous these days as the location of the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA).

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. It doesn’t go off : DUD
4. Dugong or manatee : SEA COW
10. Friskies sister brand : ALPO
14. “Lookee here!” : OHO!
15. Turkey’s second-largest city : ANKARA
16. Enjoyed People : READ
17. Singer Fogelberg : DAN
18. *Acting like the locals : GOING NATIVE (hiding GNAT)
20. Toughness : GUTS
22. Stage great Hagen : UTA
23. White __ : NOISE
24. Site of Napoleon’s exile : ELBA
25. Accessories for many lawn mowers : GAS CANS
27. Engrave with acid : ETCH
29. Dalai Lama, for one : TIBETAN
32. Sport with clay pigeons : SKEET
34. Canapé spread : PATE
35. Husky follower : SLED
37. Part of SASE: Abbr. : ENV
38. Wartime prez : ABE
40. Sci-fi aviators : ETS
42. Shapiro of NPR : ARI
43. Exertion : TOIL
45. Suburban trees : ELMS
47. Picker-uppers? : HANDS
49. Hole’s starting point for skilled golfers : BLUE TEE
51. Many a college graduate’s burden : DEBT
52. Reel : STAGGER
54. Software glitches … and, in a broad sense, small things hidden in the answers to starred clues : BUGS
57. Trouble greatly : EAT AT
59. LG competitor : RCA
60. First name at Woodstock : ARLO
61. *Try not to look bored : STIFLE A YAWN (hiding FLEA)
64. Lithium-__ battery : ION
65. Pakistani tongue : URDU
66. Scoresheet slashes : SPARES
67. Find fault to a fault : NAG
68. Mandarin discard : PEEL
69. Siberian expanse : TUNDRA
70. Some hot rods : GTS

Down

1. Sidestep : DODGE
2. Penske rival : U-HAUL
3. *Google Code of Conduct motto : DON’T BE EVIL (hiding BEE)
4. Succumb to gravity : SAG
5. “Cut it out already!” : ENOUGH!
6. Curly-tailed dog : AKITA
7. Rummy game played with two decks : CANASTA
8. Suffix for NPR’s website : ORG
9. “You sure of that?” : WANNA BET?
10. Gallery VIPs : ARTISTS
11. Hawaiian wedding rings : LEIS
12. Tar : PAVE
13. Neruda’s “__ to My Socks” : ODE
19. Top-ranked : A-ONE
21. Make full : SATE
26. Credits as a source : CITES
28. Commuter org. in the Loop : CTA
30. *”The Imitation Game” subject : ALAN TURING (hiding ANT)
31. Comic-Con attendee : NERD
32. Ready : SET
33. Door opener : KNOB
34. Pequod co-owner : PELEG
36. Belittle : DIS
39. Trial run designed to catch 54-Across : BETA TEST
41. “__ Walks in Beauty”: Byron poem : SHE
44. Satyrlike : LUSTFUL
46. “You’ve Got Mail” co-star : MEG RYAN
48. “Fernando” pop group : ABBA
50. Letters replacing unlisted items : ET AL
51. Bureau unit : DRAWER
53. Internet greeting : E-CARD
55. Be a bad sport : GLOAT
56. iTunes downloads : SONGS
57. Raison d’__ : ETRE
58. West Wing staffer : AIDE
61. “How’re things?” : SUP?
62. “The Simpsons” clerk : APU
63. Fort Meade org. : NSA

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