LA Times Crossword Answers 5 Aug 13, Monday

CROSSWORD SETTER: C.C. Burnikel
THEME: VJs … all of today’s themed answers are made up of two words that begin with the letters V and J:

18A. Funny bits you need to see VISUAL JOKES
28A. Personal assessments of worth VALUE JUDGMENTS
47A. V8 Spicy Hot, e.g. VEGETABLE JUICE
60A. Music channel host whose abbreviation hints at this puzzle’s theme VIDEO JOCKEY

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 8m 17s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Abbr. on old Eurasian maps SSR
The former Soviet Union (USSR) was created in 1922, not long after the Russian Revolution of 1917 that overthrew the Tsar. Geographically, the new Soviet Union was roughly equivalent to the old Russian Empire, and was comprised of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs).

4. Video game area ARCADE
Our word “arcade” comes from the Latin “arcus” meaning “arc”. The first arcades were passages made from a series of arches. This could be an avenue of trees, and eventually any covered avenue. I remember arcades lined with shops and stores when I was growing up on the other side of the Atlantic. Arcades came to be lined with lots of amusements, resulting in amusement arcades and video game arcades.

10. Dashboard gauge, briefly TACH
The tachometer takes its name from the Greek word “tachos” meaning “speed”. A tachometer measures engine revolutions per minute (rpm).

14. Green org. with a floral logo EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was set up during the Nixon administration and began operation at the end of 1970.

16. Scandinavian capital that uses garbage to generate energy OSLO
The city of Oslo burns trash to fuel half of its buildings, including all of its schools. The problem faced by the city is that it doesn’t generate enough trash. So, Oslo imports trash from Sweden, England and Ireland, and is now looking to import some American trash.

17. Stephen Colbert asset WIT
Stephen Colbert is a political satirist who hosts his own show on Comedy Central called “The Colbert Report”. Colbert’s first love was theater, and so he studied to become an actor. He then moved into comedy, and ended up on the “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”. He left “The Daily Show” in 2005 to set up his own spin-off called “The Colbert Report”. In his own inimitable way, Colbert likes to use a “French” pronunciation for the name of his show, so “The Colbert Report” comes out as “The Col-bear Rep-oar”.

20. Bangkok native THAI
Bangkok is the capital city of Thailand. The exact etymology of the name “Bangkok” seems unclear, although “bang” is a Thai word meaning “a village situated on a stream”.

22. T-shirt size array, briefly SML
Small, medium and large …

23. Online finance company E-LOAN
E-Loan used to be based just down the road from me in the San Francisco Bay Area, but after takeover by a Rosemont, Illinois company it was moved to the parent’s headquarters. E-Loan was founded in 1997 to provide customers access to mortgages over the Internet.

25. Cheerios grain OAT
Cheerios breakfast cereal has the distinction of being the first oat-based cereal introduced into the market, hitting the grocery store shelves in 1941. Back then, “Cheerios” were known as CheeriOats.

33. Eisenhower and Turner IKES
When the future president was growing up, the Eisenhower family used the nickname “Ike” for all seven boys in the family, as “Ike” was seen as an abbreviation for the family name. “Big Ike” was Edgar, the second oldest boy. “Little/Young Ike” was Dwight, who was the third son born. Dwight had no sisters.

Ike and Tina Turner were together as a husband/wife duo recording music for 16 years in the sixties and seventies. Ike and Tina’s biggest hit has to be “Proud Mary”, released in 1971. The partnership ended, along with their marriage, in the late seventies with Tina making accusations of abuse by her drug-addicted husband.

34. Tolkien monster ORC
According to Tolkien, Orcs are small humanoids that live in his fantasy world of Middle-earth(also called “Mordor”). They are very ugly and dirty, and are fond of eating human flesh.

36. Arnaz of Hollywood DESI
Desi Arnaz was of course 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.

37. “I give up!” UNCLE!
To “say uncle” is an American expression meaning to submit or yield. Its usage dates back to the early 1900s, but nobody seems to know how “uncle!” came to mean “stop!”

39. H.S. exam PSAT
I think the acronym PSAT stands for Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test. The PSAT is divided into three sections: Math, Critical Reading, and Writing Skills.

43. Gov. Cuomo’s domain NYS
Andrew Cuomo won the gubernatorial election for the State of New York in 2010. Andrew is the son of former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. Andrew was also married for 13 years to Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of Robert F. Kennedy.

46. Nobelist Morrison TONI
Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Amongst other things, Morrison is noted for coining the phrase, “our first black President”, a reference to President Bill Clinton.

47. V8 Spicy Hot, e.g. VEGETABLE JUICE
The V8 beverage is a vegetable juice mixture. The original recipe was made from the juices of eight different vegetables, hence the name “V8”.

51. Animation 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.

52. Govt.-issued ID SSN
A Social Security number (SSN) is divided into three parts i.e AAA-GG-SSSS, Originally, the Area Number (AAA) was the code for the office that issued the card. Since 1973, the Area Number reflects the ZIP code from which the application was made. The GG in the SSN is the Group Number, and the SSSS in the number is the Serial Number. However, this is all moot, as since 2011 SSn’s are assigned randomly.

54. Negative particle ANION
As we all recall from science class, a positive ion is called a cation and a negative ion is an anion. The names “cation” and “anion” come from Greek, with “kation” meaning “going down” and “anion” meaning “going up”.

56. Former NBAer __ Ming YAO
Yao Ming is a retired professional basketball player from Shanghai who played for the Houston Rockets. At 7’6″, Yao was the tallest man playing in the NBA.

63. Cooperstown Hall of Famer Mel OTT
At 5′ 9″, Mel Ott weighed just 170 lb (I don’t think he took steroids!) and yet he was the first National League player to hit over 500 home runs. Sadly, Ott died in a car accident in New Orleans in 1958 when he was only 49 years old.

66. “Man of the House” author Tip O’NEILL
Tip O’Neill was Speaker of the House from 1977 until he retired in 1987, making him the second-longest serving speaker in history (after Sam Rayburn of Texas).

70. Roget entry: Abbr. SYN
Peter Mark Roget was an English lexicographer. Roget was an avid maker of lists, apparently using the routine of list-making to combat depression, a condition he endured for most of his life. He published his famous thesaurus in 1852, with revisions and expansions being made years later by his son, and then in turn by his grandson.

Down
6. Pop’s Mama CASS
Cass Elliot was one of the four singers in the Mamas and the Papas, a sensational group from the sixties. Elliot was performing sold-out concerts in London in 1974 when she was found dead one morning, having had a heart attack. She was only 32 years old. Eerily, she died in the same flat (on loan from Harry Nilsson) in which the Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, would die just four years later.

7. Calla lily family ARUM
Arum is a genus of flowering plant native to eastern North America. It’s a nasty plant though, and contains oxalic acid, a compound that can be very painful if ingested and even cause death if taken in sufficient quantities.

9. Cooked sushi fish EEL
Sushi is a Japanese dish that has as its primary ingredient cooked, vinegared rice. The rice is usually topped with something, most often fish, and can be served in seaweed rolls. If you want raw fish by itself, then you have to order “sashimi”.

13. Egypt’s Mubarak HOSNI
Hosni Mubarak was the fourth President of Egypt, taking over after Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981. Mubarak resigned in 2011 in the early months of the Arab Spring after 18 days of public demonstrations. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012 and is reported to be extremely sick in detention, and is perhaps even on life support.

19. Yankee shortstop Derek JETER
Derek Jeter has played his entire professional baseball career with the New York Yankees, and is the team’s captain. Jeter is the all-time career leader for the Yankees in hits, games played, stolen bases and at bats. He is also the all-time leader in hits by a shortstop in the whole of professional baseball.

26. Electric current unit AMPERE
The unit of electric current is the ampere, abbreviated correctly to “A” rather than “amp”. It is named after French physicist André-Marie Ampère, one of the main scientists responsible for the discovery of electromagnetism.

29. Knight games JOUSTS
Tilting is the most recognized form of jousting. Jousting can involve the use of a number of different weapons, but when lances are used the competition is called “tilting”. Jousting took place in a roped-off enclosure that was called the lists, or list field. In later medieval times, some castles and palaces had purpose-built “tiltyards” that were used for jousting.

31. 1983 Mr. T film DC CAB
“D.C. Cab” is a comedy movie released in 1983 starring Mr. T. I don’t hear many good things about the film, although there is a special appearance by Irene Cara of “Fame” fame …

32. Planet farthest from the Sun, now NEPTUNE
Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun in our Solar System. The existence of Neptune was predicted as early as the 1820s by mathematics based on observations of the orbit of Uranus. The planet was actually observed in 1846.

38. “__ Abner” LI’L
“Li’l Abner” was created and drawn by Al Capp for over 43 years starting in 1934. Al Capp stopped producing the strip in 1977, largely due to illness (he died from emphysema two years later). As the strip finished up, he went so far as to apologize to his long-standing fans, saying that he should have stopped 3-4 years earlier as he felt that the quality of his work had gone down in those latter years.

40. “C’est la vie” SO IT GOES
“C’est la vie” is French for “that’s life”.

42. Bleacher part TIER
At a sports event, one often sits in the “bleachers”. This is a particularly American term for the tiered stands that provide seating for spectators. These seats were originally wooden planks, and as they were uncovered they would be “bleached” by the sun, giving the name we use today. Sometimes the fans using the bleachers might be referred to as “bleacherites”.

47. Grand Canal city VENICE
The Grand Canal is a large, S-shaped canal that traverses the city of Venice in Italy. For centuries there was only one bridge across the canal, the famed Rialto Bridge. Now there are four bridges in all, including a controversial structure that was opened to the public in 2008, the Ponte della Costituzione.

50. Hyde was his alter ego JEKYLL
Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was first published in 1886. There are many tales surrounding the writing of the story including one that the author wrote the basic tale in just three to six days, and spent a few weeks simply refining it. Allegedly, Stevenson’s use of cocaine stimulated his creative juices during those few days of writing.

51. Raise petty objections CAVIL
A cavil is a trivial objection, a nit.

55. Weighty Brit. references OEDS
The “Oxford English Dictionary” (OED) contains over 300,000 “main” entries and 59 million words in total. It is said it would take a single person 120 years to type it out in full. The longest entry for one word in the second edition of the OED is the verb “set”. When the third edition was published in 2007, the longest entry for a single word became the verb “put”. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most-quoted author in the OED is William Shakespeare, with his most quoted work being “Hamlet”. The most-quoted female author is George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans).

58. Dust Bowl migrant OKIE
The Dust Bowl was the name given to a period in which severe dust storms ravaged the American and Canadian Prairies in the thirties. A major factor in the storms was the loss of the deep-rooted grasses native to the land that had been displaced by intensive farming. Without the grasses, the topsoil was blown away in a period of drought.

61. LinkedIn listing JOB
LinkIn is a website used by professionals wishing to network with other professionals. From what I’ve heard, LinkedIn is mainly used by folks looking for a job, and other folks looking for suitable candidates to hire.

62. She, in Lisbon ELA
Lisbon is the capital of Portugal. Lisbon is the westernmost capital city in Europe, and indeed is the westernmost large city on the continent. It is also the oldest city in Western Europe and is hundreds of years older than London, Paris and Rome.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Abbr. on old Eurasian maps SSR
4. Video game area ARCADE
10. Dashboard gauge, briefly TACH
14. Green org. with a floral logo EPA
15. Honeybunch DEARIE
16. Scandinavian capital that uses garbage to generate energy OSLO
17. Stephen Colbert asset WIT
18. Funny bits you need to see VISUAL JOKES
20. Bangkok native THAI
22. T-shirt size array, briefly SML
23. Online finance company E-LOAN
24. Building blocks of matter ATOMS
25. Cheerios grain OAT
27. Prefix with verse UNI-
28. Personal assessments of worth VALUE JUDGMENTS
33. Eisenhower and Turner IKES
34. Tolkien monster ORC
35. Post- opposite PRE-
36. Arnaz of Hollywood DESI
37. “I give up!” UNCLE!
39. H.S. exam PSAT
43. Gov. Cuomo’s domain NYS
45. Inner tube filler AIR
46. Nobelist Morrison TONI
47. V8 Spicy Hot, e.g. VEGETABLE JUICE
51. Animation frame CEL
52. Govt.-issued ID SSN
53. Often-pressed key ENTER
54. Negative particle ANION
56. Former NBAer __ Ming YAO
59. Tapped barrels KEGS
60. Music channel host whose abbreviation hints at this puzzle’s theme VIDEO JOCKEY
63. Cooperstown Hall of Famer Mel OTT
65. Sealed, as a win ICED
66. “Man of the House” author Tip O’NEILL
67. Division of history ERA
68. Subtraction word LESS
69. “Stop dreaming!” BE REAL!
70. Roget entry: Abbr. SYN

Down
1. Attach a button, say SEW
2. Bit of physical comedy with a sprayed beverage SPIT-TAKE
3. Entry points for some rodent nests RATHOLES
4. Provide counsel to ADVISE
5. Portuguese king REI
6. Pop’s Mama CASS
7. Calla lily family ARUM
8. Conversation in a screenplay DIALOG
9. Cooked sushi fish EEL
10. Hammer or saw TOOL
11. Invite to dinner, e.g. ASK OUT
12. Spruces up CLEANS
13. Egypt’s Mubarak HOSNI
19. Yankee shortstop Derek JETER
21. Funny AMUSING
24. Enthusiastic AVID
26. Electric current unit AMPERE
29. Knight games JOUSTS
30. Decorative vase URN
31. 1983 Mr. T film DC CAB
32. Planet farthest from the Sun, now NEPTUNE
38. “__ Abner” LI’L
40. “C’est la vie” SO IT GOES
41. Family tree subject ANCESTRY
42. Bleacher part TIER
44. Simple question type YES/NO
47. Grand Canal city VENICE
48. Slurs over ELIDES
49. “I wouldn’t do this for just __” ANYONE
50. Hyde was his alter ego JEKYLL
51. Raise petty objections CAVIL
55. Weighty Brit. references OEDS
57. Masterful server ACER
58. Dust Bowl migrant OKIE
61. LinkedIn listing JOB
62. She, in Lisbon ELA
64. Beachgoer’s goal TAN

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