LA Times Crossword Answers 4 Aug 14, Monday

CROSSWORD SETTER: Jeffrey Wechsler
THEME: Y-Y-Your Crossword … today’s themed answer are each comprised of three words, all beginning with the letter Y:

17A. Whom “I’m in love with,” in a 1953 hit YOU, YOU, YOU
32A. “… and so on and so forth” YADDA YADDA YADDA
40A. 1968 song title words before “I got love in my tummy” YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY
63A. “Won’t they ever stop talking?!” YAK YAK YAK!

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 7m 11s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

5. Peaks across eight European countries ALPS
There are eight Alpine countries:

– Austria
– Slovenia
– France
– Switzerland
– Liechtenstein
– Germany
– Monaco
– Italy

9. Japanese sliding screen SHOJI
A shoji is a door, window or room divider in Japanese architecture. A shoji consists of translucent paper stretched over a wooden frame.

14. Guthrie of song ARLO
Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie. Both father and son are renowned for their singing of protest songs about social injustice. Arlo is most famous for his epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a song that lasts a full 18m 34s. In the song Guthrie tells how, after being drafted, he was rejected for service in the Vietnam War based on his criminal record. He had only one incident on his public record, a Thanksgiving Day arrest for littering and being a public nuisance when he was 18-years-old.

16. Jell-O flavor LEMON
If you like Jell-O, then you want to stop by LeRoy, New York where you can visit the only Jell-O museum in the world. While at the museum, you can walk along the Jell-O Brick Road …

17. Whom “I’m in love with,” in a 1953 hit YOU, YOU, YOU
“You, You, You” is a 1953 song that was a hit for the Ames Brothers.

The Ames Brothers were a singing quartet who were active in the 1950s. The “brothers” (actually three brothers and a cousin) started out as an act called the Amory Brothers. After the quartet disbanded in 1961, Ed Ames went on to have a successful solo singing career, and became a familiar television actor. Ed played “Mingo”, the sidekick to the title character on “Daniel Boone” that ran in the sixties.

23. Like the wood in an archer’s bow BENT
An archer is someone who shoots with a bow and arrow. The term ultimately derives from the Latin “arcus”meaning “bow”.

24. Church caretaker SEXTON
A sexton is an officer in a church who looks after the building and perhaps an attached graveyard. The term “sexton” comes from the Medieval Latin word “sacristanus” which means “custodian of sacred objects”.

27. Slurpee cousin ICEE
Icee and Slurpee are brand names of those slushy drinks. Ugh …

40. 1968 song title words before “I got love in my tummy” YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY
Ohio Express was marketed as a band, but was actually a changing lineup of session musicians. The most successful single released under the name Ohio Express was “Yummy Yummy Yummy”, a fun pop song from 1968.

47. Road service org. AAA
The American Automobile Association (AAA) is a not-for-profit organization focused on lobbying, provision of automobile servicing, and selling of automobile insurance. The AAA was founded in 1902 in Chicago and published the first of its celebrated hotel guides back in 1917.

48. Oklahoma tribe OTO
The Otoe (also Oto) Native American tribe originated in the Great Lakes region as part of the Winnebago or Siouan tribes. The group that would become the Otoe broke away from the Winnebago and migrated southwestwards ending up in the Great Plains. In the plains the Otoe adopted a semi-nomadic lifestyle dependent on the horse, with the American bison becoming central to their diet.

49. The Stooges, e.g. TRIO
If you’ve seen a few of the films starring “The Three Stooges” you’ll have noticed that the line up changed over the years. The original trio was made up of Moe and Shemp Howard (two brothers) and Larry Fine (a good friend of the Howards). This line up was usually known as “Moe, Larry and Shemp”. Then Curly Howard replaced his brother when Shemp quit the act, creating the most famous trio, “Moe, Larry And Curly”. Shemp returned when Curly had a debilitating stroke in 1946, and Shemp stayed with the troupe until he died in 1955. Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser, and then “Curly-Joe” DeRita. When Larry Fine had a stroke in 1970, it effectively marked the end of the act.

50. Light-refracting devices PRISMS
When light passes through a prism, it is split up (“disperses”) into differing wavelengths. It then becomes clear that white light is actually a mixture of different colors, which show up as beautiful spectra.

57. ISP choice MSN
MSN was originally called The Microsoft Network, and was introduced in 1995 as an integral part of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system. MSN is a whole bundle of services including email, instant messaging, and the MSN.com portal (which is the 9th most visited site on the Internet).

58. Born, in bridal bios NEE
“Née” is the French word for “born” when referring to a female. The male equivalent is “né”.

61. With 39-Across, phones the taxi dispatch CALLS
(39. See 61-Across A CAB)
A hansom cab is a very specific design of horse and buggy that was patented by Joseph Hansom in 1834 in England. The “cab” in the name is short for “cabriolet”, a prior design of carriage on which the hansom was based. It’s from “hansom cab” that we get our modern term “cab”.

65. Some woodwinds OBOES
The oboe is perhaps my favorite of the reed instruments. The name “oboe” comes from the French “hautbois” which means “high wood”. When you hear an orchestra tuning before a performance you’ll note (pun intended!) that the oboe starts off the process by playing an “A”. The rest of the musicians in turn tune to that oboe’s “A”.

66. Pulitzer winner James AGEE
James Agee was a noted American film critic and screenwriter. Agee wrote an autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family” that won him his Pulitzer in 1958, albeit posthumously. He was also one of the screenwriters for the 1951 classic movie “The African Queen”.

67. Pigeon shelter COTE
The Old English word “cote” was used for a small house. Our modern word “cottage” comes from “cote”. We now use “cote” to mean a small shelter on a farm for sheep or birds.

69. Loch of legend NESS
The Loch Ness monster has been talked about for centuries, but modern interest started in 1933 when a spate of sightings was reported. Those sightings don’t seem to have stopped, with photographs of what is purported to be the monster really sparking the imagination.

Down
4. Booty in the Grinch’s sack TOYS
The Grinch is the title character in Dr. Seuss’s 1957 children’s book “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” Based on Seuss’s hero, we now use the term “grinch” for someone opposed to Christmas festivities or coarse and greedy in general.

8. Turn on an axis SLUE
“To slue” (also “slew) is to turn sharply, or to rotate on an axis.

9. Quench SLAKE
“To slake” is to satisfy a craving, as in slaking one’s thirst.

10. DNA shape HELIX
Francis Crick and James Watson discovered that DNA had a double-helix, chain-like structure, and published their results in Cambridge in 1953. To this day the discovery is mired in controversy, as some crucial results collected by fellow researcher Rosalind Franklin were used without her permission or even knowledge.

18. Venue for horse players: Abbr. OTB
Off-Track Betting (OTB) is the legal gambling that takes place on horse races outside of a race track. A betting parlor can be referred to as an OTB.

22. Initials for an amateur handyman DIY
Back in Ireland we don’t have “hardware stores” as such, but rather DIY Centres (and that’s the spelling of “center”). DIY is an acronym standing for “Do It Yourself”.

24. LPGA star Lewis STACY
Stacy Lewis is a professional golfer from Toledo, Ohio who plays on the LPGA tour. Lewis has won two majors to date: the 2011 Kraft Nabisco Championship, and the 2013 Women’s British Open.

26. CIA cousin NSA
The National Security Agency (NSA) was set up in 1952 by President Truman, a replacement for the Armed Forces Security Agency that had existed in the Department of Defense since 1949. The NSA has always been clouded in secrecy and even the 1952 letter from President Truman that established the agency was kept under wraps from the public for over a generation. I really like the organization’s nickname … “No Such Agency”.

28. Cheese in red wrapping EDAM
Edam cheese takes its name from the Dutch town of Edam in North Holland. The cheese is famous for its coating of red paraffin wax, a layer of protection that helps Edam travel well and prevents spoiling. You might occasionally come across an Edam cheese that is coated in black wax. The black color indicates that the underlying cheese has been aged for a minimum of 17 weeks.

30. Eden dweller ADAM
According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in a garden “in” Eden, with Eden being geographically located by reference to four rivers including the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some scholars hypothesize that Eden was located in Mesopotamia, which encompasses much of modern-day Iraq.

34. Toys bouncing on strings YO-YOS
Would you believe that the first yo-yos date back to 500 BC? There is even an ancient Greek vase painting that shows a young man playing with a yo-yo. Centuries later Filipinos were using yo-yos as hunting tools in the 1500s. “Yo-yo” is a Tagalog (Filipino) word meaning “come-come” or simply “return”.

35. “Sometimes you feel like __ …” A NUT
Hershey’s used a famous jingle in a seventies ad campaign for the Mounds candy bar:

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t,
Almond Joy’s got nuts,
Mounds don’t.

I think my favorite candy growing up was an Almond Joy, although in my part of the world it was a little different formulation and was called a Bounty Bar (and was more like a Mounds bar). The Almond Joy bar has been around since 1946.

41. Former Egypt-Syr. alliance UAR
The United Arab Republic (UAR) was a union between Egypt and Syria made in 1958 and dissolved in 1961 when Syria pulled out of the arrangement.

46. Hither’s partner YON
Hither and yon … here and there.

51. Monica of tennis SELES
Monica Seles has a Hungarian name as she was born to Hungarian parents in former Yugoslavia. Seles was the World No. 1 professional tennis player in 1991 and 1992 before being forced from the sport when she was stabbed by a spectator at a match in 1993. She did return to the game two years later, but never achieved the same level of success.

56. __ Na Na SHA
Do you remember the band “Johnny Casino & The Gamblers” in the movie “Grease”? That was actually the real-world group Sha Na Na. Johnny Casino & the Gamblers sang “Those Magic Changes” at the high school dance, in between “Rock’N Roll Is Here to Stay” and “Hound Dog”. Sha Na Na got together in the sixties and are still performing today.

59. Cannon of film DYAN
The actress Dyan Cannon is perhaps best known for playing Alice in the 1969 film “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”, for which she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Cannon is also famous for having been on Cary Grant’s long list of wives, from 1965 to 1968 (and he was 33 years her senior).

60. Kitchenware brand EKCO
The EKCO name dates back to 1888 when Edward Katzinger founded his company in Chicago, to make baking pans. The acronym EKCO stands for “Edward Katzinger Co”.

62. President Lincoln 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 two out 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.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Money owed DEBT
5. Peaks across eight European countries ALPS
9. Japanese sliding screen SHOJI
14. Guthrie of song ARLO
15. Hard or soft sphere BALL
16. Jell-O flavor LEMON
17. Whom “I’m in love with,” in a 1953 hit YOU, YOU, YOU
19. Organize in a row ALIGN
20. Area for experiments TEST SITE
21. Modeler’s purchase KIT
22. ESE or WNW DIR
23. Like the wood in an archer’s bow BENT
24. Church caretaker SEXTON
27. Slurpee cousin ICEE
29. Have some pie EAT
31. Newspaper VIPs EDS
32. “… and so on and so forth” YADDA YADDA YADDA
38. Source unknown, as a quote: Abbr. ANON
39. See 61-Across A CAB
40. 1968 song title words before “I got love in my tummy” YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY
47. Road service org. AAA
48. Oklahoma tribe OTO
49. The Stooges, e.g. TRIO
50. Light-refracting devices PRISMS
53. Cross to bear ONUS
57. ISP choice MSN
58. Born, in bridal bios NEE
59. Percussion instrument membrane DRUMHEAD
61. With 39-Across, phones the taxi dispatch CALLS
63. “Won’t they ever stop talking?!” YAK YAK YAK!
65. Some woodwinds OBOES
66. Pulitzer winner James AGEE
67. Pigeon shelter COTE
68. “Heavens to __!” BETSY
69. Loch of legend NESS
70. State between Wash. and Calif. OREG

Down
1. Calendar square DAY
2. Racy writing EROTICA
3. Purplish color BLUE-RED
4. Booty in the Grinch’s sack TOYS
5. Maltreat ABUSE
6. Store, as supplies LAY IN
7. Schemed PLOTTED
8. Turn on an axis SLUE
9. Quench SLAKE
10. DNA shape HELIX
11. Left out OMITTED
12. Easy exercise run JOG
13. Lodging house INN
18. Venue for horse players: Abbr. OTB
22. Initials for an amateur handyman DIY
24. LPGA star Lewis STACY
25. Not even ODD
26. CIA cousin NSA
28. Cheese in red wrapping EDAM
30. Eden dweller ADAM
33. “__ news?” ANY
34. Toys bouncing on strings YO-YOS
35. “Sometimes you feel like __ …” A NUT
36. “Huzzah!” YAY!
37. Lie next to ABUT
40. Big mouth, informally YAP
41. Former Egypt-Syr. alliance UAR
42. Primary parking facility MAIN LOT
43. Docking payment MOORAGE
44. City leader, formally: Abbr. MR MAYOR
45. Write the wrong year on, as a check MISDATE
46. Hither’s partner YON
51. Monica of tennis SELES
52. Disorderly MESSY
54. Zaps in a microwave NUKES
55. Hesitant agreement UM, YES
56. __ Na Na SHA
59. Cannon of film DYAN
60. Kitchenware brand EKCO
61. Kernel holder COB
62. President Lincoln ABE
64. Bar barrel KEG

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