LA Times Crossword Answers 12 Aug 13, Monday

CROSSWORD SETTER: Gareth Bain
THEME: Horrors … each of today’s themed answers starts with a word that is the one-word title of a famous HORROR FILM:

17A. *Auto wreck extraction tool JAWS OF LIFE (giving “Jaws”)
23A. *Princess Leia portrayer CARRIE FISHER (giving “Carrie”)
35A. *Was on the same page as SAW EYE TO EYE WITH (giving “Saw”)
47A. *Inappropriately used therapeutic jargon PSYCHOBABBLE (giving “Psycho”)
57A. Scary showing, and the first word of each answer to a starred clue HORROR FILM

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 4m 56s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. “Amazing” magician RANDI
James Randi is a retired Canadian-American magician who had a stage career using the name “The Amazing Randi”. Now he spends his time investigating the paranormal, or in fact mainly challenging claims of paranormal activity. If you’re interested, the James Randi Educational Foundation is offering one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal activity under controlled test conditions.

15. On the calm side, at sea ALEE
“Alee” is the direction away from the wind. If a sailor points into the wind, he or she is pointing “aweather”.

16. Hawaiian dance HULA
Hula is the name of the Polynesian dance. The chant or song that the dance illustrates, that’s known as the mele.

17. *Auto wreck extraction tool JAWS OF LIFE (giving “Jaws”)
Jaws of Life is a trademark, owned by Hurst Performance. Jaws of Life is a hydraulic tool used by rescue crews to extricate victims from automotive accidents. The tool is a relatively new invention, developed in 1963 for use after race car crashes.

“Jaws” is a thrilling 1975 movie directed by Steven Spielberg that is based on a novel of the same name by Peter Benchley. The film has a powerful cast, led by Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. “Jaws” was perhaps the first “summer blockbuster” with the highest box office take in history, a record that stood until “Star Wars” was released two years later.

19. Children’s book author Blyton ENID
Enid Blyton wrote stories for children that were very popular when I was growing up in the British Isles. Not so long ago I purchased and reread my favorite of her stories growing up, called “The Secret Island”.

20. NYC dance troupe ABT
The American Ballet Theatre (ABT) is a dance company that was once led by Mikhail Baryshnikov.

21. Palindromic fool BOOB
The three most famous palindromes in English have to be:

– Able was I ere I saw Elba
– A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
– Madam, I’m Adam

One of my favorite words is “Aibohphobia”, although it doesn’t appear in the dictionary and is a joke term. “Aibohphobia” is a great way to describe a fear of palindromes, by creating a palindrome out of the suffix “-phobia”.

22. Hajji’s destination MECCA
Mecca is in the Makkah province of Saudi Arabia and is the holiest city in Islam. Every year several million Muslims perform the Hajj, a holy pilgrimage to Mecca.

23. *Princess Leia portrayer CARRIE FISHER (giving “Carrie”)
Princess Leia is Luke Skywalker’s sister in the original “Star Wars” trilogy and was played by Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher has stated that she hated the famous “cinnamon bun hairstyle” that she had to wear in the films, as she felt it made her face look too round. She also had to to sit for two hours every day just to get her hair styled. Two hours to get your hair done? It takes me just two seconds …

“Carrie” is a 1976 horror film based on a Stephen King novel of the same name. Sissy Spacek plays the title role, giving her a big break in movies. I’m afraid I have never seen it (I don’t really do “horror”).

26. Dueler’s cry EN GARDE
“En garde” is a French term that has been absorbed into the sport of fencing. Originally a warning “on guard!”, it is spoken at the start of an encounter to warn the fencers to take a defensive position.

30. Author Uris LEON
Leon Uris is an American writer. Uris’s most famous books are “Exodus” and “Trinity”, two excellent stories, in my humble opinion …

31. Soldier of fortune, briefly MERC
Mercenary (merc.)

35. *Was on the same page as SAW EYE TO EYE WITH (giving “Saw”)
The “Saw” franchise of movies is gruesome in the extreme. I’ve only seen a few minutes of “Saw” footage (accidentally). The stories are about imprisoned victims who are faced with having to mutilate themselves to escape. Ugh …

42. Converse of “divided by” INTO
10 “divided by” 5 is 2, or 5 “into” 10 is 2.

43. Nativity scene trio MAGI
“Magi” is the plural of the Latin word “magus”, a term applied to someone who was able to read the stars. Hence, magi is commonly used with reference to the “wise men from the East” who followed the star and visited Jesus soon after he was born.

47. *Inappropriately used therapeutic jargon PSYCHOBABBLE (giving “Psycho”)
The classic Alfred Hitchcock suspense film “Psycho” released in 1960 is based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The Bloch novel in turn is loosely based on actual crimes committed by murderer and grave robber Ed Gein. When “Psycho” was making its initial run in theaters, latecomers were not granted admission, a policy instigated by Hitchcock himself. He felt that anyone missing the opening scenes would not enjoy the film.

51. German autos OPELS
Adam Opel founded his company in 1863, first making sewing machines in a cowshed. Commercial success brought new premises and a new product line in 1886, namely penny-farthing bicycles. Adam Opel died in 1895, leaving his two sons with a company that made more penny-farthings and sewing machines than any other company in the world. In 1899 the two sons partnered with a locksmith and started to make cars, but not very successfully. Two years later, the locksmith was dropped in favor of a licensing arrangement with a French car company. By 1914, Opel was the largest manufacturer of automobiles in Germany. My Dad had an Opel in the seventies, a station wagon (we’d say “estate car” in Ireland) called an Opel Kadett.

56. Trigonometry ratio SINE
The most familiar trigonometric functions are sine, cosine and tangent. Each of these is a ratio, a ratio of two sides of a right-angled triangle. The reciprocal of these three functions are secant, cosecant and cotangent. The reciprocal functions are simply the inverted ratios, the inverted sine, cosine and tangent.

62. Pacific kingdom called the Friendly Islands TONGA
The Kingdom of Tonga is made up of 176 islands in the South Pacific, 52 of which are inhabited and scattered over an area of 270,000 square miles.

63. Flair ELAN
Our word “élan” was imported from French, in which language the word has a similar meaning to ours i.e “style” or “flair”.

64. Texas’s El __ PASO
The Mexican city sitting across the border from El Paso is more correctly called Ciudad Juarez. Juarez used to be called El Paso del Norte (the North Pass). It was to be the younger settlement on the northern side of the Rio Grande which would retain the “El Paso” name.

65. Family car SEDAN
The American “sedan” car is the equivalent of the British “saloon” car. By definition, a sedan car has two rows of seating and a separate trunk (boot in the UK), although in some models the engine can be at the rear of the car.

Down
1. Indian monarch RAJA
“Raja” is an Indian word for “monarch”.

2. Spirited horse ARAB
The Arab (or Arabian) breed of horse takes its name from its original home, the Arabian Peninsula. Like any animal that humans have over-bred, the horse falls prey to genetic diseases, some of which are fatal and some of which require the horse to be euthanized.

3. “Eye of __ …”: “Macbeth” NEWT
The witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” have some lovely lines as they cast a spell:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,–
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

4. Court prosecutors, briefly DAS
District Attorneys (DAs)

5. Line on a weather map ISOBAR
An isobar is a line on a weather map connecting points of equal barometric pressure.

6. In large amounts GALORE
Our word “galore”, meaning “in great numbers”, comes from the Irish phrase “go leór” that translates as “sufficiently, enough”.

7. Suspect’s “I was home asleep,” e.g. ALIBI
“Alibi” is the Latin word for “elsewhere” as in, “I claim that I was ‘elsewhere’ when the crime was committed … I have an ‘alibi'”.

9. Spelling event BEE
Back in 18th-century America, when neighbors would gather to work for the benefit of one of their group, such a meeting was called a “bee”. The name “bee” was an allusion to the social nature of the insect. In modern parlance, a further element of entertainment and pleasure has been introduced, for example in a “quilting bee”, or even a “spelling bee”.

10. Like some pizza CHEESY
Pizza was invented in Naples where it has a long tradition that goes back to Ancient Rome. During an 1889 visit to Naples, Queen Margherita of Savoy was served a special pizza that was created with toppings designed to mimic the colors of the Italian flag. The ingredients of tomato (red), mozzarella (white) and basil (green) can still be found together on menus today on a pie usually named Pizza Margherita after the queen. I do love basil on my pizza …

12. Rocker Cooper ALICE
Outrageous rock singer Alice Cooper’s real name is Vincent Furnier. Alice Cooper was originally the name of the band that Furnier fronted, but he adopted the name as his own when he started his solo career in 1975. Outside the recording studio, Cooper is an exceptional golfer. He has stated that golf was a great help to him as he overcame addiction to drugs and alcohol.

13. “M*A*S*H” character who hears choppers before anyone else RADAR
Corporal Radar O’Reilly is a character in the “M*A*S*H” television series and film. The role was played by Gary Burghoff in both the film and on television.

“M*A*S*H” has only three stars in it (three asterisks, that is!). These asterisks first appeared on the poster for the 1970 movie, but they were omitted in the opening titles. The TV series went on to use the asterisks from the poster.

24. Blunt-tipped weapon EPEE
The French word for sword is “épée”. In competitive fencing the épée is connected to a system that records an electrical signal when legal contact is made on an opponent’s body.

26. If-then-__: programmer’s sequence ELSE
In the world of computer programming, an “if-then-else” construct is a type of conditional statement. The idea is that IF a particular condition is met THEN a particular action is executed. The additional ELSE statement can be used to define an alternative action.

32. Fred and Wilma’s pet DINO
In the Hanna-Barbera cartoon “The Flintstones”, Dino the pet dinosaur was voiced by the famous Mel Blanc, until Blanc passed away in 1989.

33. Germany’s __ von Bismarck OTTO
Germany first became a country of her own in 1871 when the Princes of the various independent German states met at Versailles outside Paris to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as the Emperor of the German Empire. The man behind this historic development was Wilhelm’s Ministerpräsident, Otto von Bismarck. Von Bismarck was a powerful figure in Prussia and indeed on the world stage, earning him the nickname of the “Iron Chancellor”.

34. Did a farrier’s job SHOD
Traditionally there has been a distinction between a farrier and a blacksmith. A blacksmith is someone who forges and shapes iron, perhaps to make horseshoes. A farrier is someone who fits horseshoes onto the hooves of horses. The term “blacksmith” is sometimes used for one who shoes horses, especially as many blacksmiths make horseshoes and fit them as well.

37. Therefore ERGO
“Ergo” is the Latin word for “hence, therefore”.

38. Chicago paper, briefly TRIB
“The Chicago Tribune” was first published in 1847. The most famous edition of “The Trib” was probably in 1948 when the headline was “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”, on the occasion of that year’s presidential election. When it turned out Truman had actually won, the victor picked up the paper with the erroneous headline and posed for photographs with it … a famous, famous photo, that must have stuck in the craw of the editor at the time.

39. Wilma, to Fred WIFE
The classic Hanna-Barbera animated series called “The Flintstones” was originally broadcast from 1960 to 1966. “The Flintstones” was the most financially successful cartoon franchise on television for about 30 years. Then along came “The Simpsons” …

43. “Vincent” singer/songwriter Don MCLEAN
The singer Don McLean owes a lot of his success to his 1971 album called “American Pie”, which includes the hit tracks “American Pie” and “Vincent”, both of which topped the charts. “American Pie” was listed as the fifth greatest song of the century by the Recording Industry Association of America, after “Over the Rainbow”, “White Christmas”, “This Land is Your Land” and “Respect”.

The Don McLean hit song “Vincent” was released in 1971, and was written by McLean himself as a tribute to the artist Vincent Van Gogh. The song opens with a reference to the painting “The Starry Night”, and continues with references to several more Van Gogh works.

44. Pizza chain SBARRO
The Sbarro chain of pizza restaurants was founded by Italian immigrants, Gennaro and Carmela Sbarro.

45. Spanish river EBRO
The Ebro is the longest river in Spain. The river was known by the Romans as the Iber, and it is the “Iber” river that gives the “Iberian” Peninsula its name.

47. Deputized group on horseback POSSE
Our word “posse” comes from an Anglo-Latin term from the early 15th century “posse comitatus” meaning “the force of the county”.

48. Sales pitch SPIEL
A spiel is a lengthy speech or argument designed to persuade, like a sales pitch. “Spiel” comes to us from German, either directly (“spiel” is the German for “play”) or via the Yiddish “shpil”.

49. Gossip spreader YENTA
Yenta (also “Yente”) is actually a female Yiddish name. In Yiddish theater “yenta” came to mean a busybody.

50. __-ski APRES
Après-ski is a French term, meaning “after skiing”, and refers to the good times to be had after coming off the slopes.

54. Gymnast Korbut OLGA
Olga Korbut is from modern-day Belarus, but was born during the days of the Soviet Union. Korbut competed for the USSR team in the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games. She was 17 when she appeared in the 1972 Munich Games, and had been training in a sports school since she was 8-years-old. The world fell in love with her as she was a very emotional young lady, readily expressing joy and disappointment, something that we weren’t used to seeing in athletes from behind the Iron Curtain. Korbut immigrated to the US in 1991 and now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.

55. Fed G-MAN
The nickname “G-men” is short for “Government Men” and refers to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

58. Fertility clinic cells OVA
“Ova” is Latin for “eggs”.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. “Amazing” magician RANDI
6. Attire GARB
10. Blacken on the grill CHAR
14. Locales AREAS
15. On the calm side, at sea ALEE
16. Hawaiian dance HULA
17. *Auto wreck extraction tool JAWS OF LIFE (giving “Jaws”)
19. Children’s book author Blyton ENID
20. NYC dance troupe ABT
21. Palindromic fool BOOB
22. Hajji’s destination MECCA
23. *Princess Leia portrayer CARRIE FISHER (giving “Carrie”)
26. Dueler’s cry EN GARDE
29. Totally unlike a muscleman PUNY
30. Author Uris LEON
31. Soldier of fortune, briefly MERC
32. Swanky parties DOS
35. *Was on the same page as SAW EYE TO EYE WITH (giving “Saw”)
40. Directional ending -ERN
41. Makes a boo-boo ERRS
42. Converse of “divided by” INTO
43. Nativity scene trio MAGI
44. Shore restaurant specialty SEAFOOD
47. *Inappropriately used therapeutic jargon PSYCHOBABBLE (giving “Psycho”)
51. German autos OPELS
52. Trim, as expenses PARE
53. Monopolize HOG
56. Trigonometry ratio SINE
57. Scary showing, and the first word of each answer to a starred clue HORROR FILM
60. Words with date or precedent SET A
61. __ and done with OVER
62. Pacific kingdom called the Friendly Islands TONGA
63. Flair ELAN
64. Texas’s El __ PASO
65. Family car SEDAN

Down
1. Indian monarch RAJA
2. Spirited horse ARAB
3. “Eye of __ …”: “Macbeth” NEWT
4. Court prosecutors, briefly DAS
5. Line on a weather map ISOBAR
6. In large amounts GALORE
7. Suspect’s “I was home asleep,” e.g. ALIBI
8. Whistle-blower in a striped shirt REF
9. Spelling event BEE
10. Like some pizza CHEESY
11. Cop’s conjecture HUNCH
12. Rocker Cooper ALICE
13. “M*A*S*H” character who hears choppers before anyone else RADAR
18. Shallow crossing FORD
22. Cut into tiny pieces MINCE
23. Walking stick CANE
24. Blunt-tipped weapon EPEE
25. Violent rage FURY
26. If-then-__: programmer’s sequence ELSE
27. At hand NEAR
28. Dress at a ball GOWN
31. Jan. and Feb. MOS
32. Fred and Wilma’s pet DINO
33. Germany’s __ von Bismarck OTTO
34. Did a farrier’s job SHOD
36. Casual assents YEAHS
37. Therefore ERGO
38. Chicago paper, briefly TRIB
39. Wilma, to Fred WIFE
43. “Vincent” singer/songwriter Don MCLEAN
44. Pizza chain SBARRO
45. Spanish river EBRO
46. Gives a heads-up ALERTS
47. Deputized group on horseback POSSE
48. Sales pitch SPIEL
49. Gossip spreader YENTA
50. __-ski APRES
53. __ legs: rear pair HIND
54. Gymnast Korbut OLGA
55. Fed G-MAN
57. ’50s high school dance HOP
58. Fertility clinic cells OVA
59. Enemy FOE

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4 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword Answers 12 Aug 13, Monday”

  1. Bill, a wonderful, wonderful blog. Learnt a lot of things.

    Comments
    Re; MacBeth – what is a howlet's wing ? (A owlet's wing, perhaps ? )

    I am not enamored of Basil. My taste would prefer Mint or Coriander leaves.

    Rajas were the Hindu (and sikh, buddhist – ) kings, in India, big, or small, for centuries, before the British appeared in India. In their wisdom, the British discovered 'Maharaja '. — "Great King" — and every minor, petty Raja became a "… maharaja." Or a maharaja wannabe. In the 1800's onwards, the raja word was so debased or rather depreciated, that a Raja was de facto, a mere petty landlord with about a couple of hundred acres of land. Every other Hindu nobleman of the tin pot variety insisted on being called a maharaja. There were over 600 of them by 1947. Mercifully, all good things did come to an end.

    Otto van Bismarck liked to drink French wine in preference to the wines of Germany. When asked and teased about it, he is reputed to have said, ……… ' Patriotism stops short of the stomach".

    Sincere regards,

  2. Bill, a minor clarification,

    The Haj / Hadj / Hajj etc., – the pilgrimage, to Mecca, must be made only during the Eid Al Adha or Bakrid ( literally Goat Eid ). – the period in remembrance of the sacrifice of the goat / Ram by Abraham. / Ibrahim.

    This gives a ~ 4 day window, each year.

    Hence the over crowding, galore. Something like a. SuperBowl phenomenon.

    Presumably, the rest of the year, is off season rates.

  3. Hi there, Admirer.

    A quick check online seems to indicate that a "howlet" is a small owl, an "owlet".

    Thanks for the extra info, as always. Particularly like the von Bismarck quotation 🙂

Comments are closed.