LA Times Crossword Answers 25 Apr 14, Friday

Share today’s solution with a friend:
FacebookTwitterGoogleEmail

CROSSWORD SETTER: Samuel A. Donaldson
THEME: No Longer X-Rated … today’s themed answers are common phrases ending with the letter X, but with that X changed to a G:

8A. *Scarlet letter? SIN TAG (from “sin tax”)
20A. *Rio jokester? BRAZILIAN WAG (from “Brazilian wax”)
33A. *Law against certain intra-family marriages? OEDIPUS REG (from “Oedipus Rex”)
38A. *Game disc on the farm? CHICKEN POG (from “chickenpox”)
48A. *Fighter running on tequila? MARGARITA MIG (from “margarita mix”)

59A. Like the answers to starred clues before they were edited for content? X-RATED

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 17m 37s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Sputnik letters CCCP
The acronym CCCP stands for “Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик”, which translates from Russian as “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, the USSR.

The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite towards the end of 1957, the first in a series of SPACE missions. That first satellite was just a “ball” trailing four antennas. The ball was only 23 inches in diameter. Sputnik 2 was launched just a month later, and carried the first living passenger into orbit, a dog called Laika. The word “sputnik” means “co-traveller” in Russian.

15. Tax-advantaged vehicle IRA
Individual retirement account (IRA)

17. Collins contemporary BAEZ
Joan Baez is an American folk singer and a prominent activist in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and environmental protection. Baez has dated some high-profile figures in her life including Bob Dylan, Steve Jobs (of Apple) and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead.

Judy Collins is a singer-songwriter and social activist who was born and raised in Seattle. One of Collins’ most famous recordings is “Send in the Clowns” from the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music”.

20. *Rio jokester? BRAZILIAN WAG (from “Brazilian wax”)
A “wag” or a “card” is a very amusing person, one who is often quite eccentric.

Brazilian waxing is the removal of all hair in the pelvic area. The practice took off (pun) relatively recently with introduction of thong bikinis, especially for the beaches of Brazil. Brazilian waxing was popularized here in the US by J. Sisters International Salon in Manhattan, New York that opened in 1987. The “J Sisters” were seven real sisters from Brazil, named Jocely, Jonice, Joyce, Janea, Jussara, Juracy and Judseia Padilha.

27. General of Chinese cuisine TSO
General Tso’s chicken is an American creation, often found on the menu of a Chinese restaurant. The name General Tso may be a reference to General Zuo Zongtang of the Qing Dynasty, but there is no clear link.

28. “Bueller? Bueller?” actor Stein BEN
Many of us know Ben Stein as a very smart and entertaining TV personality. Before focusing on his screen career, Stein was a speechwriter for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was written and directed by John Hughes and released in 1986. There are so many classic scenes in the film, including two wonderful musical interludes. The more sedate of these is a vignette shot in the Art Institute of Chicago that is beautifully filmed. The more upbeat musical scene is a rendition of “Twist and Shout” during a Von Steuben Day parade.

29. “Die Lorelei” poet HEINE
Heinrich Heine was a German romantic poet whose work often became noted through the derivative lieder composed by Robert Schumann in particular. Heine died in 1856, after spending the last eight years of his life bedridden. I like his last words … “God will forgive me. It’s his job.”

Lorelei is the name of a legendary mermaid who lured fishermen by singing a beautiful song so that they steered their boats onto rocks lurking beneath the water’s surface.

31. Shaver brand WAHL
The Wahl Clipper Corporations is a company based in Sterling, Illinois that makes grooming clippers for both humans and animals.

33. *Law against certain intra-family marriages? OEDIPUS REG (from “Oedipus Rex”)
“Oedipus Rex” (also “Oedipus the King”) is a tragedy penned by the Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles. The play tells the story of Oedipus, a man who becomes king of Thebes. Famously, Oedipus was destined from birth to murder his father and marry his mother.

35. First-century Judean monarch Herod __ AGRIPPA
Herod Agrippa was the grandson of Herod the Great, and like his grandfather was a Roman client king of Judea. It is thought that Herod Agrippa is the “Herod” mentioned in the Bible’s “Acts of the Apostles”, the king who imprisoned Peter and who had killed James son of Zebedee. Agrippa’s grandfather was the King Herod who ordered the Massacre of the Innocents described in the Gospel of Matthew. This was Herod’s attempt to kill the young Jesus by ordering the murder of all boys aged two or younger in Bethlehem and vicinity.

38. *Game disc on the farm? CHICKEN POG (from “chickenpox”)
Chickenpox is a viral infection, a classic disease of childhood most commonly caught by 4-10 year olds. There is a complication that can arise later in life as the virus sometimes reactivates to cause shingles.

The game of pogs was originally played with bottle caps from POG fruit juice. The juice was named for its constituents, passion fruit, orange and guava.

40. Prefix with morph ECTO-
Back in the forties, the American psychologist William Herbert postulated that a person’s temperament could be associated with body-type. This theory has largely been debunked, but his classification of the population into three body-types is still used today:

Ectomorphic: a slim person with low levels of fat storage and thin muscles
Mesomorphic: a muscular person with relatively low levels of fat
Endomorphic: a person who has higher levels of stored fat

43. Muscle prone to tears, briefly ACL
The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of four major ligaments that support the knee.

44. Fashion monogram YSL
Yves Saint-Laurent was a French fashion designer, actually born in Algeria. Saint-Laurent started off working as an assistant to Christian Dior at the age of 17. Dior died just four years later, and as a very young man Saint-Laurent was named head of the House of Dior. However, in 1950 Saint-Laurent was conscripted into the French Army and ended up in a military hospital after suffering a mental breakdown from the hazing inflicted on him by his fellow soldiers. His treatment included electroshock therapy and administration of sedatives and psychoactive drugs. He was released from prison, managed to pull his life back together and started his own fashion house. A remarkable story …

48. *Fighter running on tequila? MARGARITA MIG (from “margarita mix”)
No one seems to know for sure who first created the cocktail known as a margarita. The most plausible and oft-quoted is that it was invented in 1941 in Ensenada, Mexico. The barman mixed the drink for an important visitor, the daughter of the German ambassador. The daughter’s name was Margarita Henkel, and she lent her name to the new drink. The basic recipe for a margarita is a mixture of tequila, orange-flavored liqueur (like Cointreau) and lime juice.

The Russian fighter jets that we know as “MiGs” are so called because they were designed by the Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau, and MiG is an acronym for “Mikoyan-and-Gurevich” in Russian.

52. Tevye-playing Tony winner ZERO MOSTEL
Zero Mostel was a stage and screen actor best known perhaps for playing Tevye on stage in “Fiddler on the Roof” and Max Bialystock in the original screen version of “The Producers”. Mostel was one of those many actors whose career languished during the 1950s as he found himself blacklisted by Senator McCarthy and co. But he rebounded, and achieved his greatest success in the sixties.

55. Prom rental LIMO
The word “limousine” actually derives from the French city of Limoges. The area around Limoges is called the Limousin, and it gave its name to a cloak hood worn by local shepherds. In early motor cars, a driver would sit outside in the weather while the passengers would sit in the covered compartment. The driver would often wear a limousin-style protective hood, giving rise to that type of transportation being called a “limousine”. Well, that’s how the story goes anyway …

A prom is a formal dance held upon graduation from high school (we call them “formals” over in Ireland). The term “prom” is short for “promenade”, the name given to a type of dance or ball.

56. Inverse trig function ARCSIN
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. These inverted ratios should not be confused with the “inverse” trigonometric functions e.g. arcsine, arccosine and arctangent. These inverse functions are the reverse of the sine, cosine and tangent. For example, the arctangent can be read as “What angle is equivalent to the following ration of opposite over adjacent?”

58. Foreign attorneys’ degs. LLBS
Bachelor of Laws (LLB) is a an undergraduate degree in law. The abbreviation “LLB” stands for Legum (LL, for the plural “laws”) Baccalaureus (B, for Bachelor).

60. Call for help SOS
The combination of three dots – three dashes – three dots, is a Morse signal first introduced by the German government as a standard distress call in 1905. The sequence is remembered as the letters SOS (three dots – pause – three dashes – pause – three dots), although in the emergency signal there is no pause between the dots and dashes, so SOS is in effect only a mnemonic. Similarly, the phrases “Save Our Souls” and “Save Our Ship” are also mnemonics, introduced after the “SOS” signal was adopted.

Down
1. Georgia county planned to be the 2017 home of the Braves COBB
The Atlanta Braves baseball team has announced that it will move from Turner Field in Atlanta to a new park to be built in Cobb County, Georgia, which is just northwest of Atlanta.

6. German crowd? DREI
In German, two (zwei) is company by three (drei) is a crowd.

8. Gymnast Johnson who was a “Dancing With the Stars” winner SHAWN
Shawn Johnson is a retired gymnast who won gold and silver medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Johnson also won season eight of “Dancing with the Stars”, partnered with Mark Ballas.

9. Inner Hebrides isle IONA
Although the small island of Iona lies just off the west coast of Scotland, it was the site of a monastery built in the Middle Ages by a monk from Ireland names Colm Cille (also known as Columba). Colm Cille and his followers were sent into exile from the Irish mainland and settled in Iona, as at that time the island was part of an Irish kingdom. This monastery in Iona expanded its influence over the decades and founded other institutions all over Ireland and Great Britain. It is believed that the famous Book of Kells may have been written, or at least started, at the monastery on Iona. Iona is also the burial site for Macbeth, King of Scotland who was immortalized in Shakespeare’s fictional account of the king’s life.

10. Da __, Vietnam NANG
Da Nang is a major Vietnamese port city on the South China Sea. During the Vietnam War, Da Nang was the site of a major air base used by the South Vietnamese and US air forces. At the height of the war, Da Nang was the biggest airport in the whole world.

11. Play about Capote TRU
“Tru” was written by Jay Presson Allen and is a play about Truman Capote that premiered in 1989. There is a classic anachronism in the piece. It is set in Capote’s New York City apartment at Christmas 1975. At one point the Capote character talks about suicide, saying that he has enough pills to stage his own Jonestown Massacre. The Jonestown Massacre didn’t happen until three years later, in 1978.

24. Site of Los Angeles’ Museum Row MIRACLE MILE
The Miracle Mile is a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard that is home to many museums as well as the La Brea Tar Pits. The name “Miracle Mile” arose in the late 1920s after the area developed within a few years from a 20-foot-wide dirt road to a busy thoroughfare.

25. Like krypton INERT
The noble gases (also “rare gases”) are those elements over on the extreme right of the Periodic Table. Because of their “full” complement of electrons, noble gases are very unreactive. The six noble gases that occur naturally are helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon.

28. Contoured chairs BEANBAGS
The original beanbag chair was designed by an Italian company called Zanotta in 1969. That first model was called “il sacco” and is still made today. The idea came from staff at the Zanotta factory who would take their breaks sitting on bags filled with styrofoam.

32. Ottoman nobility AGHAS
“Aga” (also “agha”) is a title that was used by both civil and military officials in the Ottoman Empire.

Osman I was the man who established the Ottoman Dynasty, with “Ottoman” coming from the name “Osman”. This is despite the fact that the “Ottoman Empire” came about with the conquest of Constantinople, and that didn’t happen until almost 130 years after Osman I died.

33. Ajar, poetically OPE
Our word “ajar” is thought to come from Scottish dialect, in which “a char” means “slightly open”.

34. Curly-tailed canine PUG
The pug is a breed of dog of Chinese origin. Our current family pet is a boxer/pug cross, a good-looking mutt!

36. Soccer stat PKS
Penalty kick (PK)

39. 1979 World Series champs PIRATES
The Pittsburgh Pirates (nicknamed the Bucs or Buccos) joined baseball’s National League in 1887 just six years after the league was formed. The Pirates played in the first ever World Series, in 1903, and actually won their first World Series in 1909.

47. 1994 film king SIMBA
Simba is the main character in the Disney animated feature, “The Lion King”. “Simba” is the Swahili word for “lion”.

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

52. Either of two stubborn Seuss characters ZAX
“The Zax” is a character who appears in “The Sneetches and Other Stories” by Dr. Seuss. “The Zax” is actually the title of one of the four stories in the collection.

54. Early ‘N Sync label RCA
‘N Sync was a boy band from Orlando, Florida that was formed in 1995. The name of the group came from a comment by the mother of band member Justin Timberlake, who said the boys voices sounded “in sync”. But, it’s also true that the letters of the name ‘N Sync are the last letters of the given names of the five band members:

– Justin Timberlake
– Chris Kirkpatrick
– Joey Fatone
– Lance “Lansten” Bass
– JC Chasez

Share today’s solution with a friend:
FacebookTwitterGoogleEmail

Return to top of page

For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Sputnik letters CCCP
5. Insert ADD
8. *Scarlet letter? SIN TAG (from “sin tax”)
14. “Hello, I didn’t see you there” OH HI
15. Tax-advantaged vehicle IRA
16. Like unmiked orators, maybe HOARSE
17. Collins contemporary BAEZ
18. Like some sales SEMIANNUAL
20. *Rio jokester? BRAZILIAN WAG (from “Brazilian wax”)
22. Part of a black suit SPADE
23. It may be packed GUN
24. Grand squared MIL
27. General of Chinese cuisine TSO
28. “Bueller? Bueller?” actor Stein BEN
29. “Die Lorelei” poet HEINE
31. Shaver brand WAHL
33. *Law against certain intra-family marriages? OEDIPUS REG (from “Oedipus Rex”)
35. First-century Judean monarch Herod __ AGRIPPA
37. Portion portion SUBPART
38. *Game disc on the farm? CHICKEN POG (from “chickenpox”)
40. Prefix with morph ECTO-
41. Healthy greens KALES
42. Storage unit BIN
43. Muscle prone to tears, briefly ACL
44. Fashion monogram YSL
45. A long way FAR
46. Waffle __ FRIES
48. *Fighter running on tequila? MARGARITA MIG (from “margarita mix”)
52. Tevye-playing Tony winner ZERO MOSTEL
55. Prom rental LIMO
56. Inverse trig function ARCSIN
57. Spreading tree ELM
58. Foreign attorneys’ degs. LLBS
59. Like the answers to starred clues before they were edited for content? X-RATED
60. Call for help SOS
61. “Uh-huh” YEAH

Down
1. Georgia county planned to be the 2017 home of the Braves COBB
2. Blackens CHARS
3. It doesn’t provide lasting enjoyment CHEAP THRILL
4. Quick lunch, perhaps PIZZA SLICE
5. Window alternative AISLE
6. German crowd? DREI
7. Broken DAMAGED
8. Gymnast Johnson who was a “Dancing With the Stars” winner SHAWN
9. Inner Hebrides isle IONA
10. Da __, Vietnam NANG
11. Play about Capote TRU
12. Hard-rock link AS A
13. Crystallize GEL
19. How a chorus may sing IN UNISON
21. Vow on a stand I DO
24. Site of Los Angeles’ Museum Row MIRACLE MILE
25. Like krypton INERT
26. Not a __ stand on LEG TO
28. Contoured chairs BEANBAGS
29. Connecting flight site HUB
30. In particular ESPECIALLY
31. Nonsensical WACKY
32. Ottoman nobility AGHAS
33. Ajar, poetically OPE
34. Curly-tailed canine PUG
36. Soccer stat PKS
39. 1979 World Series champs PIRATES
43. What life imitates, so it’s said ART
45. Fern leaf FROND
46. Festival features FILMS
47. 1994 film king SIMBA
48. Very MOST
49. Grenoble gal pal AMIE
50. Move shortly? RELO
51. “My stars!” GOSH!
52. Either of two stubborn Seuss characters ZAX
53. Go off ERR
54. Early ‘N Sync label RCA

Return to top of page