LA Times Crossword Answers 28 Oct 13, Monday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Steve Blais
THEME: Crunch Time … each of today’s themed answers ends with a CRUNCHY snack:

17A. Computer storage medium MEMORY CHIP
24A. Quick-on-the-uptake type, in slang SMART COOKIE
37A. Carton-cushioning unit STYROFOAM PEANUT
46A. Showy authority figure WHIP-CRACKER

58A. Tense pre-deadline period … or when to eat the ends of 17-, 24-, 37- and 46-Across? CRUNCH TIME

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 06m 23s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

7. Pedro’s eye OJO
“Ojo” is Spanish for “eye”.

10. Golf great Ballesteros SEVE
Seve Ballesteros was a very entertaining golfer from Spain, once ranked as the world’s number one player. Sadly, Ballesteros died from brain cancer in 2011, at the age of 54.

14. Crumbly Italian cheese ASIAGO
Asiago is a crumbly cheese, named after the region in northeastern Italy from where it originates.

15. Lao Tzu’s “path” TAO
The Chinese character “tao” translates as “path”, but the concept of Tao signifies the true nature of the world.

Lao Tse (also Lao-Tzu) was a central figure in the development of the religion/philosophy of Taoism.

16. Slangy prefix meaning “ultra” UBER-
“Uber” is the German word for “over”.

19. When repeated, island near Tahiti BORA
Bora Bora is one of the Society Islands of French Polynesia. The name “Bora Bora” is imitative of the Tahitian name for the island and should really be pronounced “pora pora”. “Bora bora” translates as “first born”.

Captain Cook landed in Tahiti in 1769, although he wasn’t the first European to do so. But Cook’s visit to Tahiti was the most significant in that it heralded a whole spate of European visitors, who brought with them prostitution, venereal disease and alcohol. Paradoxically, they also brought Christianity. Included among the subsequent visitors was the famous HMS Bounty under the charge of Captain Bligh.

21. Kadett automaker OPEL
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.

22. Apple music players IPODS
When Apple settle on the name “iPod” for the company’s line of portable media players, they found that the trademark was already owned by one Joseph Grasso of New Jersey. Grasso had registered the name in 2000 to describe Internet kiosks that had a brief flurry of life in 2000-2001. Grasso assigned the iPod trademark to Apple in 2005. One has to wonder if Apple bought him a beer to do so …

23. Vintner’s prefix OEN-
In Greek mythology, Oeno was the goddess of wine, giving us “oen-” as a prefix meaning “wine”. For example, oenology is the study of wine and an oenophile is a wine-lover.

26. Athenian walkway STOA
A stoa was a covered walkway in Ancient Greece. A stoa usually consisted of columns lining the side of a building or buildings, with another row of columns defining the other side of the walkway. The columns supported a roof. Often stoae would surround marketplaces in large cities.

29. Persian rulers SHAHS
The last Shah of Iran was Mohammed-Reza Shah Pahlavi, as he was overthrown in the revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. The post-revolution government sought the extradition of the Shah back to Iran while he was in the United States seeking medical care (he had cancer). His prolonged stay in the United States, recovering from surgery, caused some unrest back in Iran and resentment towards the United States. Some say that this resentment precipitated the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the resulting hostage crisis.

31. Irene of “Fame” CARA
Irene Cara (as well as acting in “Fame”) sang the theme songs to the hit movies “Fame” and “Flashdance”.

37. Carton-cushioning unit STYROFOAM PEANUT
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.

40. Latin being ESSE
“Esse” is the Latin for “to be”. “Sum” means “I am” and “erat” means “he, she was”.

41. Latin love word AMAS
“Amo, amas, amat: … “I love, you love, he/she/it loves”, in Latin.

42. Muslim pilgrim’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.

43. Tombstone lawman Wyatt EARP
Wyatt Earp is famous as one of the participants in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Earp was a city policeman in Wichita, Kansas and also in Dodge City, Kansas. Earp was also deputy sheriff in Tombstone, Arizona where the O.K. Corral gunfight took place. Years later, Earp joined the Alaska Gold Rush and with a partner built and operated the Dexter Saloon in Nome.

45. Mischievous trick DIDO
A “dido” is a mischievous prank. The term’s etymology is unclear, though it might somehow come from the Carthaginian Queen Dido who appears in the “Aeneid”.

51. Facebook notes, briefly IMS
Even though instant messaging (sending IMs) has been around since the 1960s, it was AOL who popularized the term “instant message” in the eighties and nineties.

55. Orator’s place DAIS
Ultimately our word “dais” comes from the Latin “discus” meaning a “disk-shaped object”. I guess that many a dias was disc-shaped …

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

57. Fitzgerald of jazz ELLA
Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

61. Notes after dos RES
Do, re, mi …

62. Pop singer Spector who fronted a ’60s girl group named for her RONNIE
The Ronettes were a sixties “girl group” from New York City that worked with famed record producer Phil Spector. Their most famous hit was probably “Be My Baby” from 1963. The lead singer of the group was Veronica Bennett, who ended up marrying Spector in 1968, leaving him in 1974 to become “Ronnie” Spector, “the original bad girl of rock and roll”.

65. Chuck who broke the sound barrier YEAGER
Chuck Yeager enlisted as a private in the US Army Air Forces in 1941, starting out as an aircraft mechanic. With the onset of the war at the end of the year, Yeager was able to enroll in flight school. In 1943 he was posted overseas, and flew P-51 Mustangs out of the south of England. He was shot down over France in 1944 and escaped to Spain with the aid of the French Resistance. His 11.5 accredited victories includes five downed aircraft in one mission (making him an “ace in a day”), and one of the first air-to-air kills of a jet fighter.

Down
1. Up-tempo Caribbean dance MAMBO
The form of music and dance known as mambo developed in Cuba. “Mambo” means “conversation with the gods” in Kikongo, a language spoken by slaves taken to Cuba from Central Africa.

2. River of Grenoble ISERE
The Isère river gives its name to the French Department of Isère, located partly in the French Alps. In turn, Isère gave its name to a somewhat famous ship called the Isère, which in 1885 delivered the Statue of Liberty from France to America in 214 shipping crates.

Grenoble is a city at the edge of the French Alps. Grenoble hosted the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.

3. Kids’ imitation game SIMON SAYS
“Simon Says” is a kids’ game. The idea is for the players of the game to obey the “controller” who gives instructions. But the players should only obey when the controller uses the words, “Simon says …”. The game has very old roots, with a Latin version that uses the words “Cicero dicit fac hoc” (Cicero says do this).

4. Vietnam neighbor LAOS
The official name for the country of Laos is the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In the Lao language, the country’s name is “Meuang Lao”. The French ruled Laos as part of French Indochina, having united three separate Lao kingdoms. As there was a plural of “Lao” entities united into one, the French added the “S” and so today we tend to use “Laos” instead of “Lao”.

5. Part of USDA: Abbr. AGR
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) actually dates back to 1862 when it was established by then-president Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln referred to the USDA as the “people’s department” as our economy had such a vast agrarian base back then.

6. Multiple Grammy-winning cellist YO-YO MA
Yo-Yo Ma is a marvelous American cellist, born in Paris to Chinese parents. Ma started studying the violin when he was very young, working his way up (in size) to the viola and finally to the cello. He has said that he wanted to play the double bass, but it was just too big for his relatively small frame.

9. Caveman Alley OOP
“Alley Oop” is a comic strip that ran for four decades starting in 1932. “Alley Oop” was drawn by V. T. Hamlin. The title character lived in the prehistoric kingdom of Moo and had a pet dinosaur called Dinny. Alley Oop also had a girlfriend called Ooola. I had assume that Ooola’s name was a play on “hula hoop”, but that wasn’t invented until the 1950s (a kind blog reader informs me) …

10. Summoned as a witness SUBPOENAED
A “subpoena” is a writ issued by a court compelling a person to testify before the court, or compelling a person or organization to produce evidence before the court. The term comes from the Latin phrase “sub poena” meaning “under penalty”. The court has the authority to penalize a person or organization that does not comply with the subpoena.

12. “Falstaff” was his last opera VERDI
“Falstaff” is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi that draws on the character Falstaff from William Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor”. “Falstaff” was the maestro’s last opera, written while Verdi was in his 80s.

18. Tax pro: Abbr. CPA
Certified Public Accountant (CPA)

22. Cyclades island IOS
The Cyclades are a group of islands in the Aegean Sea lying southeast of the Greek mainland. There are about 200 islands in the group, almost all of which are the peaks of a submerged mountain range. Ios is one of the larger islands, 11 miles long and 6 miles wide.

27. Feats like the Yankees’ 1998, ’99 and 2000 World Series wins THREE-PEATS
A “three-peat” is the winning of a sports championship three seasons in a row.

30. 6’3″, 5’4″, etc.: Abbr. HTS
Heights (hts.)

31. Close associates COMPADRES
“Compadre” is Spanish for “godfather”.

32. Roadside assistance 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.

35. Tampa Bay NFLer BUC
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers joined the NFL in 1976 along with the Seattle Seahawks as expansion teams. The Bucs had a tough start in the NFL, losing their first 26 games. Things went better in the early eighties, but then the team went through 14 consecutive losing seasons. Their luck changed again though, and they won the Super Bowl at the end of the 2002 season.

36. RR stop STA
A station (sta.) is a railroad (RR) stop.

38. Jamie of “M*A*S*H” FARR
Actor Jamie Farr is best known for playing the cross-dressing Max Klinger in the sitcom ”M*A*S*H”. Although Farr landed a role in the 1955 movie “Blackboard Jungle”, his career didn’t really take off until he started appearing regularly on “The Red Skelton Show”. Years later he managed to get a one-episode appearance in ”M*A*S*H”, and his character and performance was received so well that he became a regular on the show. Farr actually did serve in the US Army in Korea, although it was after hostilities had ended. The dog tags that Farr wore when filming ”M*A*S*H” were the one’s he actually wore while serving.

45. Discern DESCRY
“To descry” is to catch sight of, to discern.

46. Take by force WREST
The verb “to wrest” can mean to obtain by violent twisting and pulling. The word “wrest” derives from the Middle English “wresten” meaning “to twist”. Our word “wrestling” has the same etymology.

48. Quran religion ISLAM
The Koran is also known as the Qur’an in English, a transliteration of the Arabic name for the holy text of the Muslim faith. The literal translation of “Koran” is “the recitation”.

52. Mrs. Eisenhower MAMIE
Mamie Eisenhower has to have been one of the most charming of all the First Ladies of the United States. Ms. Eisenhower suffered from an inner ear complaint called Ménière’s disease which caused her to lose her balance quite often. Because she was unsteady on her feet there were unfounded rumors floating around Washington that Ms. Eisenhower had a drinking problem. People can be very unkind …

56. Sicilian volcano ETNA
Mt. Etna is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy. Mt Etna is about 2 1/2 times the height of its equally famous sister, Mt. Vesuvius.

58. French vineyard CRU
“Cru” is a term used in the French wine industry that means “growth place”. So, “cru” is the name of the location where the grapes are grown, as opposed to the name of a specific vineyard. The terms “premier cru” and “grand cru” are also used, but the usage depends on the specific wine region. Generally it is a classification awarded to specific vineyards denoting their potential for producing great wines. “Grand cru” is reserved for the very best vineyards, with “premier cru” the level just below.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Forget where one put, as keys MISLAY
7. Pedro’s eye OJO
10. Golf great Ballesteros SEVE
14. Crumbly Italian cheese ASIAGO
15. Lao Tzu’s “path” TAO
16. Slangy prefix meaning “ultra” UBER-
17. Computer storage medium MEMORY CHIP
19. When repeated, island near Tahiti BORA
20. Male sibs BROS
21. Kadett automaker OPEL
22. Apple music players IPODS
23. Vintner’s prefix OEN-
24. Quick-on-the-uptake type, in slang SMART COOKIE
26. Athenian walkway STOA
28. Otherwise ELSE
29. Persian rulers SHAHS
31. Irene of “Fame” CARA
33. Used-up pencils NUBS
37. Carton-cushioning unit STYROFOAM PEANUT
40. Latin being ESSE
41. Latin love word AMAS
42. Muslim pilgrim’s destination MECCA
43. Tombstone lawman Wyatt EARP
45. Mischievous trick DIDO
46. Showy authority figure WHIP-CRACKER
51. Facebook notes, briefly IMS
54. Put back to zero RESET
55. Orator’s place DAIS
56. Vivacity ELAN
57. Fitzgerald of jazz ELLA
58. Tense pre-deadline period … or when to eat the ends of 17-, 24-, 37- and 46-Across? CRUNCH TIME
60. Bedframe part SLAT
61. Notes after dos RES
62. Pop singer Spector who fronted a ’60s girl group named for her RONNIE
63. Alley prowlers TOMS
64. Function USE
65. Chuck who broke the sound barrier YEAGER

Down
1. Up-tempo Caribbean dance MAMBO
2. River of Grenoble ISERE
3. Kids’ imitation game SIMON SAYS
4. Vietnam neighbor LAOS
5. Part of USDA: Abbr. AGR
6. Multiple Grammy-winning cellist YO-YO MA
7. Catchall option in a survey question OTHER
8. They’re related to the severity of the crimes JAIL TERMS
9. Caveman Alley OOP
10. Summoned as a witness SUBPOENAED
11. Novel on a small screen, perhaps EBOOK
12. “Falstaff” was his last opera VERDI
13. Wipe clean ERASE
18. Tax pro: Abbr. CPA
22. Cyclades island IOS
24. Nothing to write home about SO-SO
25. Applaud CLAP
27. Feats like the Yankees’ 1998, ’99 and 2000 World Series wins THREE-PEATS
29. Opposite of NNW SSE
30. 6’3″, 5’4″, etc.: Abbr. HTS
31. Close associates COMPADRES
32. Roadside assistance org. AAA
34. Preparing to use, as a hose UNCOILING
35. Tampa Bay NFLer BUC
36. RR stop STA
38. Jamie of “M*A*S*H” FARR
39. Arabian leader EMIR
44. Play a part ACT
45. Discern DESCRY
46. Take by force WREST
47. “Is anybody here?” HELLO?
48. Quran religion ISLAM
49. Underlying reason CAUSE
50. Relatives KIN
52. Mrs. Eisenhower MAMIE
53. Snide smile SNEER
56. Sicilian volcano ETNA
58. French vineyard CRU
59. Earth chopper HOE

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