LAXCrossword.com

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Constructed by: Katie Hale

Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Blah Blah Blah

Themed answers all start with a synonym of “BLAH”:

• 56A “… and other meaningless drivel,” or what can be found at the start of 20-, 34-, and 44-Across : … BLAH-BLAH-BLAH

• 20A Warning on delicate garments : DRY CLEAN ONLY
• 34A Feature of nonglossy countertops : DULL FINISH
• 44A Espressos with steamed milk : FLAT WHITES

Read on, or jump to …
… a complete list of answers

Bill’s time: 5m 41s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

13A Polo ground chunk : DIVOT

A divot is a chunk of grass and earth that is removed by a golf club immediately after striking the ball. “Divot” is derived from a Scottish word for a piece of turf or sod used as a roofing material.

15A __ stick : POGO

What we know today as a pogo stick was invented in Germany by Max Pohlig and Ernst Gottschall. The name “pogo” comes from the first two letters in each of the inventors’ family names: Po-hlig and Go-ttschall. The highest jump on a pogo stick was achieved by Biff Hutchison in 2016. He jumped over three cars and reached a height of 11 feet, 6 inches.

20A Warning on delicate garments : DRY CLEAN ONLY

Dry cleaning isn’t really a dry process. It is known as “dry” because it uses non-aqueous solvents. Those solvents dissolve oils without affecting delicate fabrics. The earliest dry-cleaning processes used chemicals like gasoline and turpentine, so that patrons essentially wore garments soaked in highly volatile and flammable fuels.

27A Lipton drink : TEA

Sir Thomas Lipton was a grocer in Glasgow, Scotland. He founded a tea packing company in North America in 1893, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was very successful, primarily due to his blends of tea becoming popular in the US.

28A The Jazz of the NBA, on scoreboards : UTA

The Utah Jazz professional basketball team moved to Salt Lake City in 1979. As one might guess from the name, the team originated in New Orleans, but only played there for five seasons. New Orleans was a tough place to be based because venues were hard to come by, and Mardi Gras forced the team to play on the road for a whole month.

32A Vlogger devices, informally : CAMS

A video blog is perhaps what one might expect, i.e. a blog that is essentially a series of video posts. The phrase “video logging” is often shortened to “vlogging”.

40A Parquet floor feature : INLAY

Parquetry is a geometric pattern using pieces of wood. It is often seen in flooring, but also in some items of furniture.

41A Airport entry org. : TSA

Transportation Security Administration (TSA)

42A Mentor’s pupil : TUTEE

A mentor is a trusted teacher or counselor, and the person receiving the advice is the mentee. The term “mentor” comes from Homer’s “Odyssey” in which there is a character named Mentor. He is a friend of Odysseus, although he is a relatively ineffective old man. The goddess Athena takes on Mentor’s appearance in order to guide Odysseus’s young son Telemachus through difficult times.

44A Espressos with steamed milk : FLAT WHITES

Espresso is made by forcing extremely hot water, under pressure, through finely ground coffee beans. The result is a thick and concentrated coffee drink that contains quite a lot of solids and a lot of foam. An espresso machine was first patented in 1884 in Italy, although it was a machine to make the beverage in bulk. The first patent for a machine that made individual measures was applied for in 1901, also in Italy.

48A Elderly Shakespearean king : LEAR

Shakespeare was inspired to write his famous drama “King Lear” by the legend of “Leir of Britain”, the story of a mythological Celtic king.

49A All Hallows’ __ : EVE

All Saints’ Day is November 1st each year. The day before All Saints’ Day is All Hallows’ Eve, better known by the Scottish term “Halloween”.

50A 1980s sitcom ET : ALF

“ALF” is a sitcom that first aired in the late eighties. The title character is a hand-puppet, and supposedly an alien named Gordon Shumway from the planet Melmac. The alien crash-landed into the house of amateur radio enthusiast Willie Tanner. Tanner renamed the intruder “ALF”, standing for “alien life form”.

60A Crimson Tide team, familiarly : BAMA

The nickname “Crimson Tide” for the University of Alabama’s athletic teams originated in 1907. A sportswriter, after a particularly muddy game, described Alabama as a “crimson tide” due to their jerseys being stained red from the red clay in the field. The name stuck.

61A October birthstone : OPAL

Here is the “official” list of birthstones, by month, that we tend to use today:

• January: Garnet
• February: Amethyst
• March: Bloodstone or Aquamarine
• April: Diamond
• May: Emerald
• June: Pearl or Moonstone
• July: Ruby
• August: Sardonyx or Peridot
• September: Sapphire or Lapis Lazuli
• October: Opal or Pink Tourmaline
• November: Topaz or Citrine
• December: Turquoise or Zircon (also now, Tanzanite)

62A Baby shower bear : TEDDY

The stuffed toy known as a teddy bear was introduced in the early 1900s and was named for President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. The toy was inspired by a political cartoon that was drawn in 1902 showing President Roosevelt on a bear hunt and refusing to kill a black bear cub. That event is celebrated annually on September 9th as National Teddy Bear Day.

69A Fixes, as potholes : TARS

Back in the early 1800s, the term “pothole” only applied to relatively small cylindrical cavities in rock and glaciers. We extended the usage to holes in roads at the start of the 19th century.

Down

1D Record store section : CDS

The compact disc (CD) was developed jointly by Philips and Sony as a medium for storing and playing sound recordings. When the first commercial CD was introduced back in 1982, a CD’s storage capacity was far greater than the amount of data that could be stored on the hard drive of personal computers available at that time.

2D Sound of a diaphragm spasm : HIC!

Hiccups is a series of forced intakes of breath, the result of spasms in the muscles of the chest and throat. The most common cause of hiccups is some sort of irritation to the stomach or esophagus, usually taking place while eating. Apparently, we don’t really understand the reason why we hiccup, but a favored suggestion is that it may be something that we inherited from our ancestors of long ago who didn’t stand up quite as straight as we do. Gravity helps us swallow our food, but animals who walk on all fours don’t have that advantage as the food moves horizontally down the throat and into the stomach. Such beasts are in greater need of an involuntary hiccup should some food get stuck. Just a theory …

4D Unit in a complex : CONDO

The terms “condominium” and “apartment” tend to describe the same type of residential property, namely a private living space with facilities shared with others residing in the same building or complex. The difference is that a condominium is usually owned, and an apartment is rented. At least that’s how it is in the US. The word “condominium” comes from the Latin “com-” (together) and “dominium” (right of ownership).

8D Charles III, e.g. : MONARCH

Charles, Prince of Wales, succeeded his mother Elizabeth II to the British throne in 2022 as King Charles III. He was 73 years old at the time of his mother’s passing, making him the oldest person in history to accede to the throne. Largely because Elizabeth II ruled for over 70 years, Charles had also been the longest-serving heir apparent in British history.

9D “Othello” villain : IAGO

Despite being portrayed as a villain in William Shakespeare’s “Othello”, Iago is one of the most complex characters in the play. He is known for his Machiavellian tactics, manipulating the other characters to achieve his selfish goals.

21D Hairy cryptid : YETI

The yeti, also known as the abominable snowman, is a beast of legend. “Yeti” is a Tibetan term, and the beast is fabled to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. Our equivalent legend in North America is that of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. The study of animals whose existence has not yet been substantiated is called cryptozoology, and a cryptid is a creature or plant that isn’t recognized by the scientific community, but the existence of which has been suggested.

22D Govt. intel org. : 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 (DoD) 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”.

25D Cooperstown honoree : HALL OF FAMER

Cooperstown is a village in New York that is famous as the home to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The village was named for Judge William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown and the father of the noted writer James Fenimore Cooper.

31D Doormat fiber : SISAL

The sisal plant is an agave, the flesh of which is not generally used in making tequila. Sisal is grown instead for the fibers that run the length of its leaves. The fiber is used extensively for twine, rope, carpeting, wall coverings etc. My favorite application though, is in the construction of dartboards. Sisal takes its name from the port of Sisal in Yucatan, Mexico that was a major shipping point for sisal plants.

33D “You’re Welcome” singer in “Moana” : MAUI

In the 2016 animated Disney film “Moana”, Maui is a trickster hero voiced by Dwayne Johnson. One of Johnson’s big moments in the movie is when he sings the song “You’re Welcome”, which was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The lyrics describe Maui’s accomplishments, including lassoing the sun and pulling up the sky, the creation of coconuts from eel guts, and the theft of fire for humanity.

38D Superman player Christopher : REEVE

Actor Christopher Reeve was most associated with his portrayal of Superman in the late seventies and early eighties. Reeve became paralyzed from the neck down when he fell from a horse in a jumping event in 1995. He published a best-selling autobiography in 1999 called “Still Me”, and sadly passed away in 2004.

The 1978 movie “Superman” was directed by Richard Donner and stars a relatively unknown Christopher Reeve in the title role. Many critics cite “Superman” as the film that launched the reemergence of interest in superhero films, a level of interest that has only grown since then.

47D Tavern tally : TAB

When we run a “tab” at a bar, we are running a “tabulation”, a listing of what we owe. Such a use of “tab” is American slang that originated in the 1880s.

51D Vicuña kin : LLAMA

The llama is a camelid mammal very much associated with the Andean cultures. Despite the association with South America, it is thought that the ancestors of the modern llama migrated south from the Great Plains of North America about 3 million years ago.

The vicuña is a South American camelid that lives in the Andes. It produces very little wool, and that wool can only be collected every three years. So, vicuña wool is very expensive due to the shortage of supply. And, the vicuña is the national animal of Peru.

57D “Dune” film score composer Zimmer : HANS

Hans Zimmer is a film composer from Frankfurt in Germany. The long list of films that Zimmer has scored includes “Rain Man” (1988), “The Lion King” (1994), “Gladiator” (2000), “The Dark Knight” (2008), “Inception” (2010) and “12 Years a Slave” (2013).

2021’s epic film “Dune” is the first of a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel of the same name. The version of “Dune” did a lot better than the 1984 big-screen adaptation of the same novel, which really flopped at the box office. “Dune: Part Two” followed in 2024.

58D Fabled race loser : HARE

“The Tortoise and the Hare” is perhaps the most famous fable attributed to Aesop. The cocky hare takes a nap during a race against the tortoise, and the tortoise sneaks past the finish line for the win while his speedier friend is sleeping.