LA Times Crossword Answers 8 Apr 15, Wednesday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: D. Scott Nichols & C.C. Burnikel
THEME: The Masters … each of today’s themed answers ends with the family name of a former winner of the Masters golf tournament:

65A. April golf tournament, four of whose winners appear in 17-, 24-, 40- and 52-Across THE MASTERS

17A. Hold banned in amateur wrestling FULL NELSON (giving “Byron Nelson”)
24A. Premier League athlete SOCCER PLAYER (giving “Gary Player”)
40A. Innocents BABES IN THE WOODS (giving “Tiger Woods”)
52A. Influential teams POWER COUPLES (giving “Fred Couples”)

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 7m 25s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

10. Bay of Bengal setting ASIA
The Bay of Bengal is that part of the Indian Ocean what lies east of the Indian subcontinent. It has the honor of being the largest bay in the whole world. One of the rivers emptying into the Bay of Bengal is the Ganges. The bay is named as “Sinus Gangeticus” on ancient maps, meaning “Gulf of the Ganges”.

14. Extinct pigeon relative DODO
The dodo was a direct relative of the pigeon and dove, although the fully-grown dodo was usually three feet tall. One of the reasons the dodo comes to mind when we think of extinction of a species, is that it disappeared not too long ago and humans were the reason for its demise. The dodo lived exclusively on the island of Mauritius and when man arrived, we cut back the forests that were its home. We also introduced domestic animals, such as dogs and pigs, that ransacked the dodo’s nests.

15. First name in puppetry SHARI
Shari Lewis was the original puppeteer behind the PBS children’s show “Lamb Chop”. After Shari Lewis died in 1998, her daughter Mallory took over the role of puppeteer on the show.

16. __ jar: lab glass BELL
A “bell jar” is a bell-shaped glass jar used in a laboratory. The jar is placed over an object that needs to be surrounded by a vacuum. That vacuum is created by pumping air from inside the jar via a hose fitted to the top.

17. Hold banned in amateur wrestling FULL NELSON (giving “Byron Nelson”)
The full nelson and half nelson are wrestling holds in which one wrestler secures an opponent by encircling the opponent’s arms under the armpits and around the neck. Some say the hold is named after Admiral Nelson, who was renowned for using encircling tactics in battle.

Byron Nelson was a golfer on the PGA tour back in the thirties and forties. Nelson retired from the game at the early age of 34 years, He is perhaps best remembered for winning 11 consecutive PGA tournaments in 1945, his final year competing. He also won 18 of the 35 PGA tournaments in that final season.

23. Reggae cousin SKA
Ska originated in Jamaica in the late fifties and was the precursor to reggae music. No one has a really definitive etymology of the term “ska”, but it is likely to be imitative of some sound.

24. Premier League athlete SOCCER PLAYER (giving “Gary Player”)
I think that the reference is to the English Premier League, in which the best teams in the country play. The league was founded in 1992 as the FA Premier League to take advantage of a generous television deal. Today, the Premier League is the most-watched soccer league in the world.

Gary Player is a professional golfer from South Africa. To me, Player has always come across as a real gentleman with a great personality. Living in South Africa and playing mainly in the US, he has logged over 15 million air miles. That’s believed to be a record for any athlete.

31. CBS-owned cable sta. SHO
Showtime (SHO) is a competitor of the Movie Channel (TMC) in terms of program lineup, although both channels are in fact owned by CBS.

37. Winter pick-me-up? T-BAR
A T-bar is a type of ski lift in which the skiers are pulled up the hill in pairs, with each pair standing (not sitting!) either side of T-shaped metal bar. The bar is placed behind the thighs, pulling along the skiers as they remain standing on their skis (hopefully!). There’s also a J-bar, a similar device, but with each J-shaped bar used by one skier at a time.

40. Innocents BABES IN THE WOODS (giving “Tiger Woods”)
We use the phrase “babe in the woods” to describe a naif, an innocent. As best I can tell, the phrase originated with a 16th-century story called “Children of the Wood”, in which a nasty uncle lures his brother’s children to their doom in the woods so that he prevents them from receiving their father’s inheritance.

By now, everyone must know everything there is to know about Tiger Woods. But did you know that Tiger’s real name is Eldrick Tont Woods? “Tont” is a traditional Thai name.

44. Mite-sized TINY
A mite is a small amount, as in “the widow’s mite”, the story from the Bible.

46. Actress Tyler LIV
Actress and model Liv Tyler is the daughter of Steven Tyler, lead singer with Aerosmith, and Bebe Buell, a celebrated model and singer.

52. Influential teams POWER COUPLES (giving “Fred Couples”)
The golfer Fred Couples is a former World No. 1 whose biggest win was the 1992 Masters Tournament, his only Major championship victory. Couples in known for his long drives, for which he earned the nickname “Boom Boom”.

57. Louisville Slugger wood ASH
The Louisville Slugger is a brand of baseball bat manufactured by the Hillerich & Bradsby Company in Louisville, Kentucky. The famous bat is made of Northern White Ash grown on the New York/Pennsylvania border. These ash forests used by the company are threatened by the Emerald Ash Borer which is moving closer and closer every year. There are already plans in place to replace the traditional wood used in the bat as the assumption is that the source of ash will succumb to infestation.

58. Comfy footwear MOCS
The moccasin is a traditional form of footwear worn by members of many Native American tribes.

65. April golf tournament, four of whose winners appear in 17-, 24-, 40- and 52-Across THE MASTERS
Golf’s Masters Tournament is the first of the four major championships in the annual calendar, taking place in the first week of April each year. It is played at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, and has a number of traditions. One is that the winner is awarded the famous “green jacket”, but he only gets to keep it for a year and must return it to the club after twelve months.

68. Movie plantation TARA
Rhett Butler hung out with Scarlett O’Hara at the Tara plantation in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”. Tara was founded not far from the Georgia city of Jonesboro by Scarlett’s father, Irish immigrant Gerald O’Hara. Gerald named his new abode after the Hill of Tara back in his home country, the ancient seat of the High King of Ireland.

69. Sea-born jewelry material CORAL
Corals are invertebrates found in the sea that live in compact colonies. Some corals secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard exoskeleton, and these type of corals make up the basic infrastructure of coral reefs.

Down
1. Sharable digital docs PDFS
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents can be shared between users and read using many different applications, making them more universally accessible than documents saved by one particular program.

2. Libertine ROUE
“Roue” is a lovely word, I think, describing a less than lovely man. A roue could otherwise be described as a cad, someone of loose morals. “Roue” comes from the French word “rouer” meaning “to break on a wheel”. This describes the ancient form of capital punishment where a poor soul was lashed to a wheel and then beaten to death with cudgels and bars. I guess the suggestion is that a roue, with his loose morals, deserves such a punishment.

Someone who is described as “libertine” is free of restraint, sexually immoral. Back in the 14th century a libertine was an emancipated slave, someone given his or her freedom. The term derives from the Latin “libertinus” describing a freed person who was once a slave.

3. Onetime Palin collaborator IDLE
Eric Idle is one of the founding members of the Monty Python team. Idle was very much the musician of the bunch, and is an accomplished guitarist. If you’ve seen the Monty Python film “The Life of Brian”, you might remember the closing number, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”. It was sung by Idle, and was indeed written by him. That song made it to number 3 in the UK charts in 1991.

Michael Palin is a marvelously talented comedian and actor, most famous as one of the “Monty Python” team. Palin is well known as a travel writer and has made some outstanding travel documentaries for television. He did one show called “Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days” in which he followed the route called out in the Jules Verne classic, without using airplanes. Palin also made “Pole to Pole”, a journey from the North to South Poles, along the 30 degree line of longitude. Currently, Michael Palin is the President of the Royal Geographical Society.

5. Full of: Suff. -OSE
The suffix “-ose” comes into English from Latin. It can be added to a word to mean “full of”, or perhaps “like”. Examples are “grandiose” (full of grandeur) and “jocose” (full of jokes).

6. Gp. with Sharks and Penguins NHL
The San Jose Sharks hockey team play their home games at the HP Pavillion in San Jose, a venue that we locals call “the Shark Tank”.

The Penguins are the professional hockey team based in Pittsburgh. They have been around since 1967, one of the first expansion teams when the NHL grew from six to twelve teams.

10. Justice Fortas ABE
Abe Fortas was a US Supreme Court Justice from 1965 to 1969. Fortas has to resign his position on the bench due to a scandal about payments received, allegedly for favors granted.

22. Dr. Mom’s forte TLC
Tender loving care (TLC)

25. Spiced tea brewed in milk CHAI
Chai is a drink made from spiced black tea, honey and milk, with “chai” being the Hindi word for “tea”. We often called tea “a cup of char” growing up in Ireland, with “char” being our slang word for tea, derived from “chai”.

27. Mustang, for one AUTO
The Ford Mustang car was introduced in 1964. Back then the Mustang wasn’t a brand new design, but was based on the Ford Falcon. The Mustang was the first of the “pony cars”, American models that are compact and affordable, as well as sporty in image and performance.

28. Chapter 11 factor DEBT
In the US Bankruptcy Code, Chapter 11 allows for a company or individual to reorganize affairs in the event that debts become so cumbersome that they cannot be cleared. Should the reorganization be unsuccessful, then Chapter 7 of the code might apply, which covers the sale of assets and distribution of proceeds to creditors.

29. Berry in faddish supplements ACAI
Açaí is a palm tree native to Central and South America. The fruit has become very popular in recent years and its juice is a very fashionable addition to juice mixes and smoothies.

30. Star of a classic sitcom set at a Vermont inn BOB NEWHART
“Newhart” is a very entertaining sitcom starring Bob Newhart and Mary Frann as innkeepers in rural Vermont. The show is remembered by many for its last episode, which aired in 1990. In that final episode, Bob Newhart wakes up in bed and suggests that the whole of the show’s eight-year run was just a dream. He is lying beside actress Suzanne Pleshette who played his wife in the earlier sitcom “The Bob Newhart Show”. Very, very clever …

36. Like provolone piccante SHARP
Provolone cheese originated in Southern Italy, although today is mostly produced in the northern part of the country. The name “provolone” means “large provola”, with “provola” being another variety of cheese. Provolone comes in several varieties. Provolone piccante is very sharp and piquant, whereas provolone dolce is quite sweet with a mild taste.

38. 1998 Sarah McLachlan ballad ADIA
Sarah McLachlan is singer/songwriter from Halifax, Nova Scotia who lives in Vancouver. In 1997, McLachlan married Ashwin Sood, the drummer in her band. Apparently the 1998 hit song “Adia”, that she co-wrote and recorded, was intended as an apology to her best friend … for stealing her ex-boyfriend and then marrying him!

39. Initial request for an answer? RSVP
RSVP stands for “répondez, s’il vous plaît”, which is French for “please, answer”.

41. Brontë heroine EYRE
“Jane Eyre” is the celebrated novel written by Charlotte Brontë, under the pen name Currer Bell. Over the years, I’ve shared here on my blogs that the “Jane Eyre” story line is a little too dark and Gothic for my taste, but a very persuasive blog reader convinced me to look more at the romantic side of the story and give it a second chance. I watched a wonderful 4-hour television adaptation of the novel made by the BBC a while back and I have to say that because I was focused on the relationship between Jane and Rochester, I was able to push past the Gothic influences (that depress me) so I really enjoyed the story. I thoroughly recommend the 2006 BBC adaptation to fans of the novel.

42. German actor Jannings EMIL
Emil Jannings was an actor from Switzerland, who also held German and Austrian citizenship. Jannings was the first person to receive an Oscar, as the star of the 1928 silent movie called “The Last Command”. He also starred opposite Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 classic “The Blue Angel”.

43. Some outdoor grills WEBERS
In 1952 George Stephen was working for the Weber Brothers Metal works in Chicago. One of the company’s products was a line of half-spheres that were welded together to make buoys used in Lake Michigan. Stephens took two of these metal hemispheres and converted them into the original kettle grill. The Weber company set up a barbecue division that Stephens ran, and Stephen became so successful that he bought out the Weber Brothers factory and converted all production to the manufacture of grills.

48. Slot machine part ARM
Slot machines earned the nickname “one-armed bandits” simply because they have “one arm”, the handle pulled to operate the machine, and they rob you of all your money!

49. __ tape SCOTCH
Scotch Tape is a brand of adhesive tape made by 3M. “Scotch Tape” is one of those brand names that has become so used widely that it has become a generic term for the product. The equivalent brand name of product that we use over in Ireland is Sellotape. This British brand also has become a generic term, and is our equivalent to “Scotch tape”.

52. Macaroni Grill selection PASTA
Romano’s Macaroni Grill is a chain of casual-dining, Italian-American restaurants that is based in Houston, Texas. The first restaurant was opened in 1998 by Philip J. Romano.

53. Acting honor OSCAR
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is the organization that gives the annual Academy Awards also known as the “Oscars”. The root of the name “Oscar” is hotly debated, but what is agreed is that the award was officially named “Oscar” in 1939. The first Academy Awards were presented at a brunch in 1929 with an audience of just 29 people. The Awards ceremony is a slightly bigger event these days …

54. Golfer Lorena OCHOA
Lorena Ochoa is a retired professional golfer from Mexico who was ranked as the number one female golfer in the world from 2007 to 2010.

55. AOLers, e.g. USERS
Founded as Quantum Computer Services in 1983, the company changed its name in 1989 to America Online. As America Online went international, the acronym AOL was used in order to shake off the “America-centric” sound to the name. During the heady days of AOL’s success the company could not keep up with the growing number of subscribers, so people trying to connect often encountered busy signals. That’s when users referred to AOL as “Always Off-Line”.

56. “Paradise Lost” figure SATAN
“Paradise Lost” is an epic poem written by Englishman John Milton. It is indeed an epic work, published originally in ten volumes with over ten thousand lines of verse. The “paradise” that is “lost” is the Garden of Eden, from which Adam and Eve were expelled by God in the “Fall of Man”.

60. Spanish smooch BESO
In Spanish, signs of love (amor) might be kisses (besos).

61. Lingerie catalog buys BRAS
“Lingerie” is a French term, but as used in France it just means any underwear, worn by either males or females. In English we use “lingerie” to describe alluring underclothing worn by women. The term “lingerie” comes into English via the French word “linge” meaning “washables”, and ultimately from the Latin “linum”, meaning “linen”. We tend not to pronounce the word correctly in English, either here in the US or across the other side of the Atlantic. The French pronunciation is more like “lan-zher-ee”, as opposed to “lon-zher-ay” (American) and “lon-zher-ee” (British).

67. Part of IPA ALE
India Pale Ale (IPA) is a style of beer that comes from England. The beer was originally intended for transportation from England to India, hence the name.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Victorian PRIM
5. Like much 67-Down ON TAP
10. Bay of Bengal setting ASIA
14. Extinct pigeon relative DODO
15. First name in puppetry SHARI
16. __ jar: lab glass BELL
17. Hold banned in amateur wrestling FULL NELSON (giving “Byron Nelson”)
19. Take one’s leave EXIT
20. Make sure of SEE TO
21. Stretched to the max TAUT
23. Reggae cousin SKA
24. Premier League athlete SOCCER PLAYER (giving “Gary Player”)
28. Apply gently DAB
31. CBS-owned cable sta. SHO
32. Pond gunk SCUM
33. Prefix with footprint ECO-
34. Pulls down EARNS
37. Winter pick-me-up? T-BAR
40. Innocents BABES IN THE WOODS (giving “Tiger Woods”)
44. Mite-sized TINY
45. “Tut-tut!” SHAME!
46. Actress Tyler LIV
47. Important stretches ERAS
50. Beef cut RIB
51. Maple syrup source SAP
52. Influential teams POWER COUPLES (giving “Fred Couples”)
57. Louisville Slugger wood ASH
58. Comfy footwear MOCS
59. Jewish scholar RABBI
63. Swindle SCAM
65. April golf tournament, four of whose winners appear in 17-, 24-, 40- and 52-Across THE MASTERS
68. Movie plantation TARA
69. Sea-born jewelry material CORAL
70. “Right now!” ASAP
71. Song and dance ARTS
72. Urgency HASTE
73. Snoopy NOSY

Down
1. Sharable digital docs PDFS
2. Libertine ROUE
3. Onetime Palin collaborator IDLE
4. Feathers one’s nest, in a way MOLTS
5. Full of: Suff. -OSE
6. Gp. with Sharks and Penguins NHL
7. Decorator’s asset TASTE
8. Cheering like crazy AROAR
9. Hangers in lockers? PINUPS
10. Justice Fortas ABE
11. Figures in 9-Down SEX SYMBOLS
12. “Very nice!” I LIKE!
13. A proposal may ultimately lead to one ALTAR
18. Lasso loops NOOSES
22. Dr. Mom’s forte TLC
25. Spiced tea brewed in milk CHAI
26. Toe woes CORNS
27. Mustang, for one AUTO
28. Chapter 11 factor DEBT
29. Berry in faddish supplements ACAI
30. Star of a classic sitcom set at a Vermont inn BOB NEWHART
35. Imprecise degree NTH
36. Like provolone piccante SHARP
38. 1998 Sarah McLachlan ballad ADIA
39. Initial request for an answer? RSVP
41. Brontë heroine EYRE
42. German actor Jannings EMIL
43. Some outdoor grills WEBERS
48. Slot machine part ARM
49. __ tape SCOTCH
52. Macaroni Grill selection PASTA
53. Acting honor OSCAR
54. Golfer Lorena OCHOA
55. AOLers, e.g. USERS
56. “Paradise Lost” figure SATAN
60. Spanish smooch BESO
61. Lingerie catalog buys BRAS
62. Car trip game I SPY
64. Some advanced degs. MAS
66. Floor pad MAT
67. Part of IPA ALE

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