LA Times Crossword Answers 13 Feb 14, Thursday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Susan Gelfand
THEME: Mixed Greens … today’s themed answers are all made from two words, the second of which is an anagram of a shade of GREEN:

17A. “Sommersby” actress JODIE FOSTER (“forest” green)
28A. Shortcut, perhaps DIAGONAL LINE (“Nile” green)
39A. Freaked out GONE APE (“pea” green)
49A. Measure used by navigators NAUTICAL MILE (“lime” green)

65A. Packaged produce buy, and a literal description of the ends of 17-, 28-, 39- and 49-Across MIXED GREENS

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 8m 5s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Asian noodles RAMEN
Ramen is a noodle dish composed of Chinese-style wheat noodles in a meat or fish broth flavored with soy or miso sauce. Ramen is usually topped with sliced pork and dried seaweed.

11. “The __” WIZ
“The Wiz”, the 1975 musical, was written by Charlie Smalls and is an African-American adaptation of Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The film version of the stage show was released in 1978, starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow. I haven’t seen it, though. “The Wizard of Oz” scares me, as the flying monkeys creep me out. There, I’ve admitted it in public …

16. __ polloi HOI
“Hoi polloi” is a Greek term, literally meaning “the majority, the many”. In English, “hoi polloi” has come to mean “the masses” and is often used in a derogatory sense.

17. “Sommersby” actress JODIE FOSTER (“forest” green)
The wonderful Jodie Foster got her big break in movies early in her life, playing a very young prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film “Taxi Driver”. Sadly, her appearance in “Taxi Driver” led to her being stalked by an obsessed John Hinckley, Jr. Hinckley called Foster on the phone, sent her love letters, and followed her on campus while she was attending Yale. In 1981, Hinckley famously shot and wounded President Reagan, claiming that he believed an assassination of the President would impress Foster.

The 1993 romantic drama “Sommersby” stars Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. The film is about an imposter who returns after the Civil War and moves in with a woman while claiming to be her husband. The real husband returns, and things get very rancorous. I know it sounds implausible, but the storyline is based on true events that took place in France in the 1500s.

19. 1992 figure skating silver medalist ITO
Midori Ito is a Japanese figure skater. Ito was the first woman to land a triple/triple jump and a triple axel in competition. In fact she landed her first triple jump in training, when she was only 8 years old …

20. What “will be” will be? ARE
Clever clue! The verb phrase “will be” (as in “they will be at home”) is in the future tense. At some time in the future, this will become the present tense (i.e. “they are now at home”). So “will be” will be “are”.

21. Actress Dolores __ Rio DEL
Dolores del Rio was a Mexican film actress of the silent era. During that time she was regarded as the female counterpart of Rudolph Valentino. She was a remarkably beautiful woman.

24. “The Federalist Papers” co-writer HAMILTON
Alexander Hamilton was one of America’s Founding Fathers, chief of staff to General George Washington and the first Secretary of the Treasury. It was Hamilton who founded the nation’s first political party, the Federalist Party. He is also famous for fighting a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, which resulted in Hamilton’s death a few days later.

“The Federalist Papers” are a series of published articles promoting the ratification of the US Constitution that were written anonymously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay. In fact, all three authors used “Publius” as a pen name, in honor of the Roman consul Publius Valerius Publicola. Publius was one of four Roman aristocrats who led the overthrow of the Roman monarchy in the revolution of 509 BC, effectively founding the Roman Republic.

27. Part of UNLV LAS
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) was established in 1957 as the Southern Division of the University of Nevada, Reno. One of UNLV’s flagship departments is the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration, which is consistently ranked as one of the best hotel and hospitality colleges in the nation. I suppose that’s not surprising given the proximity to the Las Vegas Strip.

28. Shortcut, perhaps DIAGONAL LINE (“Nile” green)
Nile green is a pale bluish green, named for the river.

33. Kobe’s home JAPAN
Kobe is a city on the island of Honshu in Japan, and yes, basketball star Kobe Bryant is named after the Japanese city. The city of Kobe is perhaps most famous for its beef.

38. Hosp. areas ORS
Operating rooms (ORs)

43. Org. for analysts APA
American Psychiatric Organization (APA)

44. Dickens clerk HEEP
Uriah Heep is a sniveling insincere character in the novel “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. The character is such a “yes man” that today, if we know someone who behaves the same way, then we might call that person a “Uriah Heep”.

46. __ Aviv TEL
The full name of Israel’s second largest city is Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tel Aviv translates into “Spring Mound”, a name chosen in 1910.

47. Plant circulatory tissue XYLEM
Xylem is a vascular tissue in many plants, the function of which is to transport water and some nutrients. It is xylem tissue that makes up what we know as wood.

49. Measure used by navigators NAUTICAL MILE (“lime” green)
A nautical mile is a distance measurement that is about a one-minute arc of longitude at the equator. A nautical mile is also equal to about a one-minute arc of latitude along any meridian. The accepted length today is 1,852 meters. The unit of speed known as a “knot” is equal to one nautical mile per hour.

53. Some govt. lawyers DAS
District Attorneys (DAs)

63. Never, in Nuremberg NIE
Nürnberg (anglicized as Nuremberg) is a Bavarian city located north of Munich. Historically it is remembered for the huge Nazi Nuremberg rallies, and the Nuremberg trials that took place at the end of WWII. Nürnberg is sometimes confused with the city of Nürburg in the western part of Germany, famous for the Nürburgring race track.

69. Paris pupil ELEVE
French for school is “école”, and French for pupil is “élève”.

71. “Mr. __ Passes By”: Milne play PIM
A. A. Milne (of “Winnie-the-Pooh” fame) wrote a play called “Mr. Pim Passes By” in 1919. The play was a big hit and starred Leslie Howard in the original London production.

72. A.J. Foyt, e.g. RACER
A. J. Foyt is a retired racing driver. He is the only driver to have won the Indianapolis 500 (four times, in fact), the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona as well as the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Down
2. Now, in Nicaragua AHORA
Nicaragua is the largest country in Central America, lying between Honduras to the north, and Costa Rica to the south. The etymology of the name “Nicaragua” is not very certain. One suggestion is that it is a melding of the name “Nicarao” and “agua”, the Spanish for “water”. Nicarao was the name of the largest city in the area when the Spanish arrived, and it is thought that “agua” refers to the two large lakes: Lake Managua and Lake Nicaragua.

3. Surfing equipment MODEM
A modem is a device that is used to facilitate the transmission of a digital signal over an analog line. At one end of the line a modem is used to “modulate” an analog carrier signal to encode the the digital information, and at the other end a modem is used to “demodulate” the analog carrier signal and so reproduce the original digital information. This modulation-demodulation gives the device its name: a MOdulator-DEModulator, or “modem”.

4. Ransom __ Olds ELI
The REO Motor Company was founded by Ransom Eli Olds (hence the name REO). The company made cars, trucks and buses, and was in business from 1905 to 1975 in Lansing, Michigan.

7. Some RPI grads EES
Electrical engineers (EEs)

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) is a private school in Troy, New York. The university is named after its founder Stephen Van Rensselaer who set up the school in 1824. The goal of RPI has always been the “application of science to the common purposes of life”, an objective set by the founder. Given that, the name for the school’s sports teams is quite apt: the Engineers.

8. Body shop figs. ESTS
Estimate (est.)

12. Minute amount IOTA
Iota is the ninth letter in the Greek alphabet. We use the word “iota” to portray something very small as it is the smallest of all Greek letters.

13. Utah national park ZION
To me, the most spectacular feature of Zion National Park, in southwestern Utah, is the magnificent Zion Canyon. The canyon cuts through red Navajo sandstone and is a truly beautiful sight.

18. Crumbly cheese FETA
Feta is a Greek cheese made from sheep’s milk, or a mixture of sheep’s and goat’s milk. The cheese is salted and cured in a brine solution for several months before it is eaten.

23. Corduroy ridge WALE
Wales are parallel ribs in a fabric, such as corduroy.

25. Biographer Tarbell IDA
Ida Tarbell was a teacher and what we would call today an “investigative journalist”, although back in her day she was known as a “muckraker”. Her most famous work is her 1904 book “The History of the Standard Oil Company”. This exposé is credited with hastening the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in 1911.

29. Singer/actress Peeples NIA
Actress Nia Peeples played the character Nicole Chapman in the TV series “Fame”.

32. Character actor Jack ELAM
Jack Elam was a movie actor noted for playing the bad guy in Westerns. When Elam was a boy scout, he was accidentally stabbed in the eye with a pencil. The incident left him blind in that eye, and the iris remained skewed to the outside of his face. This gave him a crazed, wide-eyed look that helped add a sense of menace to the characters Elam played.

33. Doe in many films JOHN
Although the English court system does not use the term today, John Doe first appeared as the “name of a person unknown” in England in 1659, along with another unknown, Richard Roe. The female equivalent of John Doe is Jane Doe, with the equivalent to Richard Roe being Jane Roe (as in Roe v. Wade).

35. Lewis Carroll, for one PSEUDONYM
Lewis Carroll was actually a pseudonym, for English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. His most famous novels are of course “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, and his most famous poems are the two nonsense pieces “Jabberwocky” and “The Hunting of the Snark”.

40. Non-Rx OTC
Over-the-counter (OTC)

There seems to some uncertainty about the origin of the symbol “Rx” that’s used for a medical prescription. One explanation is that it comes from the astrological sign for Jupiter, a symbol put on prescriptions in days of old to invoke Jupiter’s blessing to help a patient recover.

41. Museum funding org. NEA
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an agency funded by the federal government that offers support and financing for artistic projects. The NEA was created by an Act of Congress in 1965. Between 1965 and 2008, the NEA awarded over $4 billion to the arts, with Congress authorizing around $170 million annually through the eighties and much of the nineties. That funding was cut to less than $100 million in the late nineties due to pressure from conservatives concerned about the use of funds, but it is now back over the $150 million mark. I wonder how long that will last though …

42. Bookplate words EX LIBRIS
The Latin phrase “ex libris” translates as “from the books”. Ex libris might be written on a book to indicate ownership, as in “from the library of …”

A “bookplate” is a label that is usually pasted on the inside cover of a book, a label that bears the owner’s name and perhaps other pertinent information.

45. Educ. collaborators PTAS
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)

50. Glucose, to fructose ISOMER
In the world of chemistry, isomers are two compounds with same chemical properties and the same atomic constituents, but with a slightly different arrangement of the atoms relative to each other.

Sugars are usually named using the “-ose” suffix e.g. glucose, fructose, sucrose.

51. Geese : gaggle :: crows : __ MURDER
There doesn’t seem to be a definitive etymology for “murder” as the collective noun for crows. One suggestion is that it comes from the scavenging behavior of crows, sometime feeding on rotting bodies of dead animals.

52. Beatnik’s “Gotcha” I DIG
The term “beatnik” was coined by journalist Herb Caen in 1958 when he used it to describe the stereotypical young person of the “beat generation” that was oft associated with the writer Jack Kerouac. That stereotypical beatnik would be playing the bongos and rolling his or her own cigarettes. Male beatniks tended to sport goatees and wear berets.

55. “Barry Lyndon” actor O’NEAL
Actor Ryan O’Neal got his big break in the sixties on television. He appeared in the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place”, opposite fellow newcomer Mia Farrow. Then in 1970 he landed a starring role in the hit movie “Love Story”, which established him in Hollywood.

“Barry Lyndon” is a period drama released in 1975 that was directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Ryan O’Neal in the title role. The film is an adaptation of an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray called “The Luck of the Barry Lyndon”. The hero of the piece is a member of the Irish gentry struggling to become a member of the English aristocracy.

56. Musical nickname related to jewelry RINGO
Ringo Starr’s real name is Richard Starkey. Before he joined the Beatles (replacing drummer Pete Best), Starkey played with the Raving Texans. It was with the Raving Texans that he adopted the name “Ringo Starr”, because he wore a lot of rings and he thought it sounded “cowboyish”. Back then his drum solos were billed as “Starr Time”.

58. Cook’s meas. TBSP
Tablespoon (tbsp.)

59. Collaborative Web project WIKI
A wiki is a website in which users are allowed to create and edit content themselves. The term “wiki” comes from the name of the first such site, introduced in 1994 and called WikiWikiWeb. “Wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “quick”, and is used because comprehensive content is created very quickly a there are so many collaborators contributing to the site.

60. Kunis of “Black Swan” MILA
Mila Kunis is a Ukrainian-born, American actress, who plays Jackie Burkhart on “That ’70s Show”. Fans of the cartoon series “Family Guy” might recognize her voicing the Meg Griffin character. In ”Black Swan”, Kunis plays a rival ballet dancer to the character played by Natalie Portman. In her personal life, Kunis dated Macaulay Culkin for 8 years.

67. Rock genre EMO
The musical genre of “emo” originated in Washington D.C. in the 80s, and takes its name from “emotional hardcore”. Not my cup of tea …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Asian noodles RAMEN
6. Quick looks PEEKS
11. “The __” WIZ
14. Poke __ in A HOLE
15. Game console button RESET
16. __ polloi HOI
17. “Sommersby” actress JODIE FOSTER (“forest” green)
19. 1992 figure skating silver medalist ITO
20. What “will be” will be? ARE
21. Actress Dolores __ Rio DEL
22. Post-blizzard creation SNOWMAN
24. “The Federalist Papers” co-writer HAMILTON
27. Part of UNLV LAS
28. Shortcut, perhaps DIAGONAL LINE (“Nile” green)
33. Kobe’s home JAPAN
36. Energy VIM
37. Environmental sci. ECOL
38. Hosp. areas ORS
39. Freaked out GONE APE (“pea” green)
43. Org. for analysts APA
44. Dickens clerk HEEP
46. __ Aviv TEL
47. Plant circulatory tissue XYLEM
49. Measure used by navigators NAUTICAL MILE (“lime” green)
53. Some govt. lawyers DAS
54. Kind of memory AUDITORY
58. Golfer and his buddy, say TWOSOME
62. Barbecue item RIB
63. Never, in Nuremberg NIE
64. Trash holder BIN
65. Packaged produce buy, and a literal description of the ends of 17-, 28-, 39- and 49-Across MIXED GREENS
68. Word before or after blue SKY
69. Paris pupil ELEVE
70. Picture IMAGE
71. “Mr. __ Passes By”: Milne play PIM
72. A.J. Foyt, e.g. RACER
73. Flies alone SOLOS

Down
1. Hindi for “king” RAJAH
2. Now, in Nicaragua AHORA
3. Surfing equipment MODEM
4. Ransom __ Olds ELI
5. Locker room exchange NEEDLING
6. Opening words PROLOG
7. Some RPI grads EES
8. Body shop figs. ESTS
9. Sharp KEEN
10. Easy pace STROLL
11. Playfully kooky WHIMSICAL
12. Minute amount IOTA
13. Utah national park ZION
18. Crumbly cheese FETA
23. Corduroy ridge WALE
25. Biographer Tarbell IDA
26. Extended short story NOVELLA
29. Singer/actress Peeples NIA
30. Energize, with “up” AMP
31. “Not a chance” NOPE
32. Character actor Jack ELAM
33. Doe in many films JOHN
34. Specialty AREA
35. Lewis Carroll, for one PSEUDONYM
40. Non-Rx OTC
41. Museum funding org. NEA
42. Bookplate words EX LIBRIS
45. Educ. collaborators PTAS
48. As of now YET
50. Glucose, to fructose ISOMER
51. Geese : gaggle :: crows : __ MURDER
52. Beatnik’s “Gotcha” I DIG
55. “Barry Lyndon” actor O’NEAL
56. Musical nickname related to jewelry RINGO
57. Survey answers YESES
58. Cook’s meas. TBSP
59. Collaborative Web project WIKI
60. Kunis of “Black Swan” MILA
61. Corporate VIP EXEC
66. Holiday starter EVE
67. Rock genre EMO

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6 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword Answers 13 Feb 14, Thursday”

  1. This was a good Thur. level puzzle today. For 6D had prelog at first which left me wondering who Jodie Fester was ( I've said before I'm bad with names ) 35D was a tricky spell, its a D not an N. My downfall was 47A, spelled it zylem. Still, normal Thurs. time.

    Now to brace myself for a foot of snow and ice headed this way. Its just getting started.

  2. Thank you for having this website! Just found it today, have been solving for years. Never heard of "nile green"??

  3. Hi Bill, Vidwan, Addict, Sfingi, Jeff, Piano Man…and a big "hello and welcome" to Mar. Please feel free to visit and comment.
    I've never come across NILE green either.
    I seem to remember a similar puzzle not that long ago, with anagrams of green.
    Finished, but it was a real dust-up.
    Alas, spelled RAMiN, and I really do know how to spell RAMEN. Careless again.
    The one that got me was Ransom ELI Olds.
    Total guess on a lot of the answers.
    Surfing equipment fooled me.
    Did better than yesyerday, though.
    Have a safe day all of you East Coasters!
    Same old here in SoCal.

  4. For people worried over America's increasing opportunity gap, perhaps they are comparing current day to Alexander Hamilton. He was born in the West Indies, a son of an impoverished single mom, emigrated to America and eventually became Secretary of the Treasury and created the nation's banking system. Now that's upward mobility.

    Thanks for the explanation of nautical mile. Now I know when I cross the Golden Gate Bridge that it is 1.4 nautical miles across. This is more impressive than the .8 land miles showing on my odometer.

  5. Definitely Thurs. level. Did not get it 'til I came here, though I had the clues.

    I don't think people agree on Nile green – at least not the paint companies!

  6. @Addict
    This was definitely one where you needed to solve the reveal clue to understand the theme, even if you didn't need that same reveal to fill out the grid. Stay warm and safe, Addict.

    @Mar
    Nice to meet you, Mar. I hope you drop by again soon, wearing Nile green next time maybe? 🙂

    @Pookie
    Never heard of Nile green either, even though I consider myself somewhat of an expert when it comes to green (it's in the blood you know!). I hate to say it, but it was a gorgeous day here in Northern California. Nicest day in months. No more rain though, which is much-needed.

    @Piano Man
    Great little bio there on Alexander Hamilton, wth a lot of new info for me. I recently read a great bio of Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton didn't come off too favorably in Jeffereson's missives!

    @Sfingi
    Some of the color names used by paint companies seem to be offputting. I put something described as a mossy, seaweedy shade on the walls in one room here, and it turned out to be my favorite.

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