LA Times Crossword Answers 14 Mar 16, Monday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Ed Sessa
THEME: Give Them a Hand … each of today’s themed answers ends with a word that can be GIVEN A HAND, a word that often follows HAND:

56A. “Applause, applause!” … or what one might do in front of the last words of 20-, 29- and 46-Across GIVE THEM A HAND!

20A. Kid’s sidewalk business LEMONADE STAND (giving “handstand”)
29A. Nestlé bottled water brand POLAND SPRING (giving “handspring”)
46A. Soda fountain order VANILLA SHAKE (giving “handshake”)

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 4m 34s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

6. PCs made by Big Blue IBMS
The origin of the IBM nickname “Big Blue” seems to have been lost in the mists of time. That said, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the IBM logo is blue, and almost every mainframe they produced was painted blue. I remember visiting IBM on business a few times in my career, and back then we were encouraged to wear white shirts and blue suits to “fit in” with our client’s culture.

10. Casual tête-à-tête CHAT
A “tête-à-tête” is a one-on-one meeting, literally “head-to-head” in French.

14. Part of “Hamlet” in which Ophelia drowns ACT IV
In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Ophelia is courted by Hamlet, the man himself. Ophelia is the daughter of nobleman Polonius. She dies …

15. Game with cues POOL
The more correct name for the game of pool is pocket billiards. The name “pool” arose after pocket billiards became a common feature in “pool halls”, places where gamblers “pooled” their money to bet on horse races.

16. Wife of Zeus HERA
In Greek mythology, Hera was the wife of Zeus and was noted for her jealous and vengeful nature, particularly against those who vied for the affections of her husband. The equivalent character to Hera in Roman mythology was Juno. Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea.

17. Last word of “The Star-Spangled Banner” BRAVE

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

The lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were written first as a poem by Francis Scott Key, inspired by the bombarding by the British of the American forces at Fort McHenry that he witnessed during the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814. The words were then set to the tune of a popular British drinking song penned by John Stafford Smith called “The Anacreontic Song”, with the Anacreontic Society being a men’s club in London.

19. Metrical foot, in poetry IAMB
An iamb is a metrical foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” consists of lines made up of four sequential iambs e.g. “Whose woods / these are / I think / I know”. With a sequence of four iambs, the poem’s structure is described as iambic tetrameter.

23. Sixth sense, briefly ESP
Extrasensory perception (ESP)

24. RR stop STN
A station (stn.) is a railroad (R.R.) stop.

26. Air traffic org. FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was set up in 1958 (as the Federal Aviation Agency). The agency was established at that particular time largely in response to an increasing number of midair collisions. The worst of these disasters had taken place two years earlier over the Grand Canyon, a crash between two commercial passenger airplanes that resulted in 128 fatalities.

29. Nestlé bottled water brand POLAND SPRING (giving “handspring”)
Poland Spring is a Nestle brand of bottled water, that has been around since the late 1800s. The water comes from various sources around the state of Maine.

32. Director Wertmüller LINA
Lina Wertmüller was an Italian movie director of Swiss descent. Wertmüller was the first woman ever to receive an Academy Award nomination for directing, in 1976 for her film “Seven Beauties”.

35. Young Darth’s nickname ANI
Anakin “Ani” Skywalker is the principal character in all six of the “Star Wars” movies. His progress chronologically through the series of films is:

– Episode I: Anakin is a 9-year-old slave boy who earns the promise of Jedi training by young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
– Episode II: Anakin is 18-years-old and goes on a murdering rampage to avenge the killing of his mother.
– Episode III: Anakin is 21-years-old and a Jedi knight, but he turns to the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader. His wife Padme gives birth to twins, Luke and Leia Skywalker.
– Episode IV: Darth Vader, comes into conflict with his children, Luke Skywalker and the Princess Leia.
– Episode V: Darth Vader attempts to coax his son Luke over to the dark side, and reveals to Luke that he is his father.
– Episode VI: Luke learns that Leia is his sister, and takes on the task of bringing Darth Vader back from the Dark Side in order to save the Galaxy. Vader saves his son from the Emperor’s evil grip, dying in the process, but his spirit ends up alongside the spirits of Yoda and Obi-Wan. They all live happily ever after …

37. Amo, amas, __ AMAT
“Amo, amas, amat: … “I love, you love, he/she/it loves”, in Latin.

42. Monopoly payments RENTS
The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman called Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

44. Summer, in France ETE
In French, spring (printemps) is followed by summer (été).

45. Cancel an edit STET
“Stet” is a Latin word meaning “let it stand”. In editorial work, the typesetter is instructed to disregard any change previously marked by writing the word “stet” and then underscoring that change with a line of dots or dashes.

52. Civil Rights Memorial designer Maya __ LIN
The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama remembers forty people who died over the years in the struggle for equal rights between the years 1954 (the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision) and 1968 (the year Martin Luther King was assassinated). The memorial was designed by Maya Lin, whose most famous work is the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.

53. “Mamma __!” MIA
The hit musical “Mamma Mia!” was written to showcase the songs of ABBA. I’m a big fan of ABBA’s music, so I’ve seen this show a couple of times and just love it. “Mamma Mia!” is such a big hit on the stage that on any given day there are at least seven performances going on somewhere in the world. There is a really interesting film version of the show that was released in 2008. I think the female lead Meryl Streep is wonderful in the movie, but the male leads … not so much! By the way, one can tell the difference between “Mamma Mia” the ABBA song and “Mamma Mia!” the musical, by noting the difference in the punctuation in the titles.

63. “Wheel of Fortune” co-host VANNA
Vanna White is the lady who turns the letters on the “Wheel of Fortune” game show. White is big into knitting and crochet, and has her own line of yarns called “Vanna’s Choice”.

66. DeGeneres of TV talk ELLEN
Ellen DeGeneres is a very, very successful TV personality, having parlayed her career in stand-up comedy into lucrative gigs as an actress and talk show host. Back in 1997 DeGeneres chose the “Oprah Winfrey Show” to announce that she was a lesbian. Her character on “The Ellen Show” also came out as a lesbian in a scene with her therapist, who was played by Oprah Winfrey. Nice twist!

68. Skinny Olive and family OYLS
“Thimble Theater” was the precursor comic strip to the famous “Popeye” drawn by E. C. Segar. Before Popeye came into the story, the brother and sister characters Castor Oyl and Olive Oyl were the main protagonists. And then along comes a sailor …

69. Prefix with foam STYRO-
Styrofoam is an extruded polystyrene foam made by The Dow Chemical Company. Styrofoam has loads of applications, including home insulation and use as a buoyancy aid. It is also formed into “peanuts” used as a packaging filler.

Down
2. Plowing measures ACRES
At one time, an acre was defined as the amount of land a yoke of oxen could plow in a day. This was more precisely defined as a strip of land “one furrow long” (i.e. one furlong) and one furlong wide. The length of one furlong was equal to 10 chains, or 40 rods. A area of one furlong times 10 rods was one rood.

4. Binge-watcher’s device TIVO
TiVo was introduced in 1999 and was the world’s first commercially successful DVR (Digital Video Recorder).

6. Apple music player IPOD NANO
The iPod Nano is the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There have been seven versions of the Nano to date and the current Nano as well as playing tunes is an FM player, records voice memos, has a pedometer and can connect with external devices (like a heart monitor, maybe) using Bluetooth technology.

8. Israeli intelligence group MOSSAD
The national intelligence agency of Israel is known as Mossad, which is short for HaMossad leModiʿin uleTafkidim Meyuḥadim (Hebrew for “Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations”).

9. “Three-toed” leaf eaters SLOTHS
All four of the extant species of three-toed sloths are native to South and Central America. Cousins of the three-toed sloths are the two-toed sloths, of which there are two species still living.

11. Like swan dives HEAD FIRST
A swan dive is one in which the diver holds the arms outspread until just before hitting the water. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, the same dive is often called a swallow dive. Sometimes we use the verb “to swan-dive” to describe the action of plummeting, suddenly decreasing. The stock market swan-dives every so often …

13. Indent key TAB
Like most features on our computer keyboards, the tab key is a hangover from the days of typewriters. When using a typewriter, making entries into a table was very tedious, involving lots of tapping on the spacebar and backspace key. So, a lever was added to typewriters that allowed the operator to “jump” across the page to positions that could be set by hand. Later this was simplified to a tab key which could be depressed, causing the carriage to jump to the next tab stop in much the same way that the modern tab key works on a computer.

21. Book of maps ATLAS
The famous Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator published his first collection of maps in 1578. Mercator’s collection contained a frontispiece with an image of Atlas the Titan from Greek mythology holding up the world on his shoulders. That image gave us our term “atlas”.

22. Once-sacred Egyptian snakes ASPS
The venomous snake called an asp was a symbol of royalty in Ancient Egypt.

27. Woman with an online list ANGIE
Angie’s List is a website used by consumers to rate and research local businesses. The “list” was founded in 1995, originally as a call-in service and publication with reviews, by William S. Oesterle and the eponymous Angie Hicks. Angie’s List moved to the Internet in 1996, and by 2013 had 70,000 subscribers.

29. Singer LaBelle or LuPone PATTI
Patti LaBelle is the stage name of singer Patricia Holt-Edwards from Philadelphia. She started her career in the sixties as the lead singer of the vocal group Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, later changing its name to simply “LaBelle”. When the group disbanded in 1976, Patti launched a remarkably successful solo career.

The singer Patti LuPone won Tonys for playing Eva Peron in “Evita ” and Rose in “Gypsy”.

30. Frasier’s brother NILES
In the sitcom called “Frasier”, Niles Crane is the brother of the title character Frasier Crane. Fraiser is played by Kelsey Grammer and Niles is played by David Hyde Pierce. Frasier was originally intended to be an only child in the show’s storyline, but the producers decided to add a brother when they noted the remarkable similarity in appearance between David Hyde Pierce and Kelsey Grammer.

32. Immature insect LARVA
The larva is an intermediate stage in the development of an insect. All four stages are embryo, larva, pupa and imago.

34. Billy’s barnyard mate NANNY GOAT
Males goats are called “bucks” or “billies”, although castrated males are known as “wethers”. Female goats are called “does” or “nannies”, and young goats are referred to as “kids”.

43. Czech or Serb SLAV
The Slavic peoples are in the majority in communities covering over half of Europe. This large ethnic group is traditionally broken down into three smaller groups:

– the West Slavic (including Czechs and Poles)
– the East Slavic (including Russians and Ukrainians)
– the South Slavic (including Bulgarians and Serbs)

47. Fools with a fib LIES TO
To “fib” is to “to tell a lie”. The term likely comes from “fibble-fable” meaning “nonsense”, itself derived from “fable”.

49. Jacks in a deck KNAVES
We’ve been using “knave” to mean a cad since about 1200, and as an alternative name for the jack in a deck of cards since the mid-1500s. “Knave” comes from the Old English word “cnafa”, a “boy, male servant”.

55. Hersey’s “A Bell for __” ADANO
“A Bell for Adano” is a novel written by John Hersey. Hersey’s story is about an Italian-American US Army officer, Major Joppolo, who found a replacement for a town’s bell stolen by fascists. “A Bell for Adano” was made into a film in 1945, the same year the novel won a Pulitzer.

60. Furry TV E.T. ALF
“ALF” is a sitcom that aired in the late eighties. ALF is a hand-puppet, supposedly an alien from the planet Melmac that crash-landed in a suburban neighborhood. “ALF” stands for “alien life form”.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Decorator’s asset TASTE
6. PCs made by Big Blue IBMS
10. Casual tête-à-tête CHAT
14. Part of “Hamlet” in which Ophelia drowns ACT IV
15. Game with cues POOL
16. Wife of Zeus HERA
17. Last word of “The Star-Spangled Banner” BRAVE
18. Estimate words … OR SO
19. Metrical foot, in poetry IAMB
20. Kid’s sidewalk business LEMONADE STAND (giving “handstand”)
23. Sixth sense, briefly ESP
24. RR stop STN
25. Contented sounds AHS
26. Air traffic org. FAA
29. Nestlé bottled water brand POLAND SPRING (giving “handspring”)
32. Director Wertmüller LINA
35. Young Darth’s nickname ANI
36. Army base nickname SARGE
37. Amo, amas, __ AMAT
38. Green energy type SOLAR
41. “The doctor __” IS IN
42. Monopoly payments RENTS
44. Summer, in France ETE
45. Cancel an edit STET
46. Soda fountain order VANILLA SHAKE (giving “handshake”)
50. At least one ANY
51. Balloon filler AIR
52. Civil Rights Memorial designer Maya __ LIN
53. “Mamma __!” MIA
56. “Applause, applause!” … or what one might do in front of the last words of 20-, 29- and 46-Across GIVE THEM A HAND!
60. Loads (of) A TON
62. Saddle or sofa SEAT
63. “Wheel of Fortune” co-host VANNA
64. Bread unit LOAF
65. Like nonfiction TRUE
66. DeGeneres of TV talk ELLEN
67. Pic, in ads FOTO
68. Skinny Olive and family OYLS
69. Prefix with foam STYRO-

Down
1. Place setting setting TABLE
2. Plowing measures ACRES
3. Post office purchase STAMP
4. Binge-watcher’s device TIVO
5. “That being said … ” EVEN SO …
6. Apple music player IPOD NANO
7. Dull one BORE
8. Israeli intelligence group MOSSAD
9. “Three-toed” leaf eaters SLOTHS
10. Whiskers spot CHIN
11. Like swan dives HEAD FIRST
12. Upper limb ARM
13. Indent key TAB
21. Book of maps ATLAS
22. Once-sacred Egyptian snakes ASPS
27. Woman with an online list ANGIE
28. Secret __: spy AGENT
29. Singer LaBelle or LuPone PATTI
30. Frasier’s brother NILES
31. Pay hike RAISE
32. Immature insect LARVA
33. “Know what __?” I MEAN
34. Billy’s barnyard mate NANNY GOAT
39. Olympic competitors ATHLETES
40. Adjust one’s sights RE-AIM
43. Czech or Serb SLAV
47. Fools with a fib LIES TO
48. Blood carrier ARTERY
49. Jacks in a deck KNAVES
53. Masculine MANLY
54. Word before circle or city INNER
55. Hersey’s “A Bell for __” ADANO
57. “Inside” dope INFO
58. Yield from a heist HAUL
59. Stop HALT
60. Furry TV E.T. ALF
61. “__ many cooks … ” TOO

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