LA Times Crossword 5 Sep 22, Monday

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Constructed by: Catherine Cetta
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: So-and-So

Themed answers each comprise two words beginning with the letters SO:

  • 39A Name better left unsaid, or a description of the answers to the starred clues : SO-AND-SO
  • 17A *Many an aria : SOPRANO SOLO
  • 24A *Not quite apologetic : SORTA SORRY
  • 48A *Persuaded with flattery : SOFT-SOAPED
  • 61A *In the near future : SOMEDAY SOON

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

Bill’s time: ???

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

11 Dell products, for short : PCS

Computer manufacturer Dell is named for the company’s founder Michael Dell. Michael Dell started his company in his dorm room at college, shipping personal computers that were customized to the specific needs of his customers. He dropped out of school in order to focus on his growing business, a decision that I doubt he regrets. Michael Dell is now one of the richest people in the world.

14 Approximately : ABOUT

Something approximate is nearly correct, but not precisely. “Approximate” comes into English from Latin “ad” meaning “to” and “proximare” meaning “to come near”.

16 Flamenco cheer : OLE!

Flamenco is a style of Spanish music and dance. The origin of the word “flamenco” isn’t clearly understood, but the explanation that seems most credible to me is that it comes from Flanders in Northern Europe. Given that “flamenco” is the Spanish word for “Flemish” and Flanders is home to the Flemish people it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

17 *Many an aria : SOPRANO SOLO

The soprano (plural “sopranos” or “soprani”) is the highest singing voice. The term “soprano “ comes from the Italian “sopra” meaning “above”. A male countertenor who is able to sing in the soprano voice range is known as a sopranist. A castrated male who can sing in the same range is known as a “castrato”, and a boy soprano is referred to as a treble.

22 Noggin : HEAD

Slang terms for “head” include “bean”, “coconut”, “gourd”, “noodle” and “noggin”.

23 1950s sitcom name : DESI

Desi Arnaz was famous for his turbulent marriage to Lucille Ball. Arnaz was a native of Cuba, and was from a privileged family. His father was Mayor of Santiago and served in the Cuban House of Representatives. However, the family had to flee to Miami after the 1933 revolt led by Batista.

27 Historic Nevada city with a railway museum : ELY

Ely is a city in eastern Nevada. The city was founded as a Pony Express stagecoach station, and then experienced a mining boom after copper was discovered locally in 1906. One of Ely’s former residents was First Lady Pat Nixon, who was born there in 1912.

29 __ suey : CHOP

Although the exact origins of the Chinese-American dish called “chop suey” are disputed, it seems clear that it started appearing on the menus of Chinese restaurants in the US in the 1880s. The dish became so popular that restaurants serving Chinese cuisine were often referred to as “chop suey houses”. “Chop suey” translates as “assorted pieces”, which is perhaps an appropriate name. The dish generally consists of an assorted mix of local ingredients stir-fried in a wok with a sauce.

33 Ore-Ida nuggets : TATER TOTS

Ore-Ida’s founders came up with the idea for Tater Tots when they were deciding what to do with residual cuts of potato. They chopped up the leftovers, added flour and seasoning, and extruded the mix through a large hole making a sausage that they cut into small cylinders. We eat 70 million pounds of this extruded potato every year!

41 Syrup source : SAP

The sap of a plant can be broadly divided into phloem sap and xylem sap. The phloem is the tissue that transports sugars made by photosynthesis from the leaves to the parts of the plant needing those sugars. The sugary solution flowing through the phloem is the phloem sap. The xylem is the tissue that transports water and other nutrients from the roots to the rest of the plant. The watery solution flowing through the xylem is the xylem sap.

47 Campus URL ender : EDU

The .edu domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

  • .com (commercial enterprise)
  • .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
  • .mil (US military)
  • .org (not-for-profit organization)
  • .gov (US federal government entity)
  • .edu (college-level educational institution)

59 “Big Night” actor Shalhoub : TONY

Actor Tony Shalhoub is probably best known to TV audiences for playing the title role in the comedy-drama detective mystery show “Monk”. More recently, he played Abe Weissman, the lead character’s father on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.

“Big Night” is a 1996 film starring and co-directed by Stanley Tucci. Tucci and Tony Shalhoub play two brothers who immigrated to the US from Italy. They own a restaurant together in New Jersey, but are struggling. They throw everything into a “big night”, in which celebrated Italian-American singer and bandleader Louis Prima is due to dine at their establishment.

69 Big buttes : MESAS

“Mesa” is the Spanish for “table” and is how we get the term “mesa” that describes the geographic feature. A mesa is similar to a butte. Both are hills with flat tops, but a mesa has a top that is wider than it is tall. A butte is a much narrower formation, taller than it is wide.
=

Down

5 Greek letter between zeta and theta : ETA

There are four rhyming Greek letters: beta, zeta, eta and theta.

7 Pointer or printer lead-in : LASER …

eBay was founded in 1995 as AuctionWeb. One of the first items purchased was a broken laser pointer, for $14.83. The buyer was a collector of broken laser pointers …

The key features of a laser printer (or copier) are that it uses plain paper and produces quality text at high speed. Laser printers work by projecting a laser image of the printed page onto a rotating drum that is coated with photoconductors (material that becomes conductive when exposed to light). The areas of the drum exposed to the laser carry a different charge than the unexposed areas. Dry ink (toner) sticks to the exposed areas due to electrostatic charge. The toner is then transferred to paper by contact and is fused into the paper by the application of heat. So, that explains why paper coming out of a laser printer is warm, and sometimes powdery.

8 “__ have a clue” : I DON’T

Yes you do. You have loads of them …

9 Cartoon frame : CEL

In the world of animation, a cel is a transparent sheet on which objects and characters are drawn. In the first half of the 20th century the sheet was actually made of celluloid, giving the “cel” its name.

10 Music producer Brian : ENO

Brian Eno was one of the pioneers of the genre of ambient music. Eno composed an album in 1978 called “Ambient 1: Music for Airports”, which was the first in a series of four albums with an ambient theme. Eno named the tracks, somewhat inventively, 1/1, 1/2, 2/1 and 2/2.

13 Far from swanky : SEEDY

We use the word “seedy” to mean “shabby”. The usage probably arose from the appearance of a flowering plant that has gone to seed.

22 YA novel by Carl Hiaasen about a threatened owl habitat : HOOT

Young adult (YA)

“Hoot” is a 2002 mystery novel for older children by Carl Hiaasen. The title refers to a colony of burrowing owls that are at risk due to the construction of a pancake house. The novel was adapted into a 2006 movie of the same name starring Luke Wilson. Jimmy Buffett provides the film’s music and also has a small part, playing a science teacher.

28 Red-ink amounts : LOSSES

To be in the red is to be in debt, to owe money. The expression “in the red” is a reference to the accounting practice of recording debts and losses in red ink in ledgers. The related phrase “in the black” means “solvent, making a profit”.

30 Zip : NIL

The use of the words “zip” and “zippo” to mean “nothing” dates back to the early 1900s, when it was student slang for being graded zero on a test.

32 Unexpected moments of good fortune : WINDFALLS

A windfall is a piece of good fortune, like a piece of fruit that has fallen from the tree when the wind blows.

33 “__ Te Ching”: philosophical text : TAO

Lao Tse (also “Lao-Tzu”, “Laozi”) was a central figure in the development of the religion/philosophy of Taoism. Tradition holds that Lao-Tzu wrote the “Tao Te Ching”, a classical Chinese text that is fundamental to the philosophy of Taoism.

34 Unwelcome picnic guest : ANT

Our term “picnic” comes from the French word that now has the same meaning, namely “pique-nique”. The original “pique-nique” was a fashionable potluck affair, and not necessarily held outdoors.

35 NFL six-pointers : TDS

A National Football League (NFL) player might score a touchdown (TD).

36 Bar bill : TAB

When we run a “tab” at a bar, we are running a “tabulation”, a listing of what we owe. Such a use of “tab” is American slang that originated in the 1880s.

37 James Bond, for one : SPY

The character James Bond was the creation of writer Ian Fleming. Fleming “stole” the James Bond name from an American ornithologist. The number “007” was “stolen” from the real-life, 16th-century English spy named John Dee. Dee would sign his reports to Queen Elizabeth I with a stylized “007” to indicate that the reports were for “her eyes only”. There’s an entertaining miniseries that aired on BBC America called “Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond” that details Ian Fleming’s military career, and draws some nice parallels between Fleming’s experiences and aspirations and those of his hero James Bond. Recommended …

40 “__ Be in Love”: Kate Bush song : OH TO

English singer-songwriter Kate Bush has a unique, experimental singing style, with her most famous recording being “Wuthering Heights” from 1978. I also love the subsequent releases “Babooshka” and “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” …

43 “No __, no glory” : GUTS

The idiom “no guts, no glory” means “without taking a risk, success is impossible”. Apparently, the phrase was coined in 1955 as the title of a manual on air-to-air combat penned by US Air Force Major General Frederick C. Blesse.

47 Poet St. Vincent Millay : EDNA

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright, and the third woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (in 1923 for “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver”). Millay was noted not only for her work, but also for the open arrangement that she and her husband had in their marriage. Millay took many lovers, including the poet George Dillon for whom she wrote a number of sonnets.

48 Old photo tone : SEPIA

Sepia is that rich, brown-gray color so common in old photographs. “Sepia” is the Latinized version of the Greek word for cuttlefish, as sepia pigment is derived from the ink sac of the cuttlefish. Sepia ink was commonly used for writing and drawing as far back as ancient Rome and ancient Greece. The “sepia tone” of old photographs is not the result of deterioration over time. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate preservation process which converts the metallic silver in the photographic image to a more stable silver sulfide. Prints that have been sepia-toned can last in excess of 150 years.

50 __ Forces Day : ARMED

Armed Forces Day is celebrated in the US on the third Saturday of May, and has been done so since 1950. Canadian Armed Forces Day is the first Sunday in June.

51 “Pet” annoyance : PEEVE

The phrase “pet peeve”, meaning “thing that provokes one most”, seems to be somewhat ironic. A “peeve” is a source of irritation, and the adjective “pet” means “especially cherished”.

52 Pillow feathers : EIDER

Eiders are large sea ducks. Their down feathers are used to fill pillows and quilts, giving the name to the quilt called an “eiderdown”.

55 “__ Holmes”: Netflix film starring Millie Bobby Brown : ENOLA

“The Enola Holmes Mysteries” is a series of detective novels for young adults by American author Nancy Springer. The title character is the 14-year-old sister of 34-year-old Sherlock Holmes, the detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Springer’s novels were adapted into a 2020 film “Enola Holmes” that Netflix picked up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw this one, and enjoyed it …

56 Units of force that make up newtons : DYNES

A dyne is a unit of force. The name “dyne” comes from the Greek “dynamis” meaning “power, force”. Ergs and dynes are related to each other in that one erg is the amount of energy needed to move a force of one dyne over a distance of one centimeter.

Newtons are units of force. The newton is named for Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist and mathematician.

62 Olive __ : OIL

Virgin olive oil is oil produced from olives with no chemical treatment involved in the production process at all. To be labeled “virgin”, the oil must have an acidity level of less than 2% and must be judged to have “a good taste”. Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) comes from virgin oil production, and is the portion with acidity levels of less than 0.8% acidity that is judged to have “superior taste”.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Private stash : CACHE
6 Pizza serving : SLICE
11 Dell products, for short : PCS
14 Approximately : ABOUT
15 Weighed down : LADEN
16 Flamenco cheer : OLE!
17 *Many an aria : SOPRANO SOLO
19 Tiny : WEE
20 “Will I __ learn?” : EVER
21 Dark cloud, maybe : OMEN
22 Noggin : HEAD
23 1950s sitcom name : DESI
24 *Not quite apologetic : SORTA SORRY
27 Historic Nevada city with a railway museum : ELY
29 __ suey : CHOP
30 Salon offering : NEW DO
33 Ore-Ida nuggets : TATER TOTS
38 Here, in France : ICI
39 Name better left unsaid, or a description of the answers to the starred clues : SO-AND-SO
41 Syrup source : SAP
42 Unlikely winners : LONG SHOTS
44 “Best before” kin : USE BY
46 Tune for two : DUET
47 Campus URL ender : EDU
48 *Persuaded with flattery : SOFT-SOAPED
53 Frosted, as a cupcake : ICED
57 Periods of history : ERAS
58 Horse rider’s strap : REIN
59 “Big Night” actor Shalhoub : TONY
60 Buddy : PAL
61 *In the near future : SOMEDAY SOON
64 __-at-ease : ILL
65 Strainer : SIEVE
66 Plentiful : AMPLE
67 Stubborn beast : ASS
68 Great-grandparent, say : ELDER
69 Big buttes : MESAS

Down

1 Scoped out with bad intentions : CASED
2 “Heavens __!” : ABOVE
3 Successfully handles a rough patch : COPES
4 Rushed : HURRIED
5 Greek letter between zeta and theta : ETA
6 Sports replay type, briefly : SLO-MO
7 Pointer or printer lead-in : LASER …
8 “__ have a clue” : I DON’T
9 Cartoon frame : CEL
10 Music producer Brian : ENO
11 Confident stance : POWER POSE
12 Blue-skies forecast word : CLEAR
13 Far from swanky : SEEDY
18 Like a busybody : NOSY
22 YA novel by Carl Hiaasen about a threatened owl habitat : HOOT
25 Unreturnable serves : ACES
26 Hide from view : SHROUD
28 Red-ink amounts : LOSSES
30 Zip : NIL
31 __-friendly : ECO
32 Unexpected moments of good fortune : WINDFALLS
33 “__ Te Ching”: philosophical text : TAO
34 Unwelcome picnic guest : ANT
35 NFL six-pointers : TDS
36 Bar bill : TAB
37 James Bond, for one : SPY
40 “__ Be in Love”: Kate Bush song : OH TO
43 “No __, no glory” : GUTS
45 “I’m good with it” : SUITS ME
47 Poet St. Vincent Millay : EDNA
48 Old photo tone : SEPIA
49 Face-to-face exams : ORALS
50 __ Forces Day : ARMED
51 “Pet” annoyance : PEEVE
52 Pillow feathers : EIDER
54 Henhouses : COOPS
55 “__ Holmes”: Netflix film starring Millie Bobby Brown : ENOLA
56 Units of force that make up newtons : DYNES
61 NNW opposite : SSE
62 Olive __ : OIL
63 Orange tuber : YAM