LA Times Crossword Answers 8 Nov 2017, Wednesday

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Constructed by: C.C. Burnikel
Edited by: Rich Norris

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Today’s Theme: Snapchat

The starting and ending letters in today’s themed answers spell out a synonym of CHAT. So, those CHAT words have been SNAPPED, to make room for the middle letters in each answer:

  • 38D. Popular mobile app … and, as shown by circles, what the inner parts of the answers to starred clues do : SNAPCHAT
  • 16A. *Golfer’s guide for measuring distances : YARDAGE BOOK (“yak” snapped)
  • 28A. *Philatelist’s find : RARE STAMP (“rap” snapped)
  • 44A. *Hybrid retriever : GOLDEN LAB (“gab” snapped)
  • 61A. *Winter warming spell : JANUARY THAW (“jaw” snapped)

Bill’s time: 6m 15s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5. “__ and the Swan”: Rubens painting : LEDA

In Greek mythology, Leda was the beautiful Queen of Sparta who was seduced by Zeus when he took the form of a swan. Leda produced two eggs from the union. One egg hatched into Clytemnestra and the beautiful Helen of Troy, over whom was fought the Trojan War. The other egg hatched into the twins Castor and Pollux. Castor and Pollux had different fathers according to the myth. Pollux was the son of Zeus and was immortal, while Castor was the son of Leda’s earthly husband, and so he was a mortal. In the world of the arts, William Butler Yeats wrote a famous sonnet called “Leda and the Swan” in 1924, and Peter Paul Rubens made a copy of a now-lost painting called “Leda and the Swan” by Michelangelo.

9. Paper Mate product : PEN

The Paper Mate pen was introduced in 1949 by the Frawley Pen Company, with the attraction being that it delivered a revolutionary ink that dried instantly on paper.

12. 1936 Olympics standout : OWENS

Jesse Owens is famous for winning four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, much to the chagrin of Adolph Hitler. Jesse’s real name was James Cleveland Owens, and he went by “JC” as a child. However, his Alabama accent was misconstrued at school when his family moved to Cleveland, so teachers and classmates called him “Jesse” instead of “JC”, and the name stuck.

15. “Te __”: Rihanna song : AMO

The singer Rihanna was born and grew up on the island of Barbados and moved to the US when she was 16-years-old to pursue a singing career. “Rihanna” is her stage name, as she was born Robyn Rihanna Fenty. The name “Rihanna” is derived from the Welsh name “Rhiannon”.

21. Contact lens solution brand : RENU

ReNu is a brand name of contact lens products sold by Bausch & Lomb.

22. Soft boot material : SUEDE

Suede is leather made from the underside of the skin, mainly from a lamb. As such it is very soft, although not as durable as leather made from the exterior skin. The soft leather was, and is still used for making gloves. Back in 1859 these gloves were called “gants de Suede” in France, or “gloves of Sweden”. So, the name “suede” comes from the French word for Sweden.

24. Winner’s wreath : LAUREL

In the Ancient Olympic Games, the winner of an event was awarded an olive wreath. When the games were revived in 1896, the winners were originally given a silver medal and an olive branch, with runners-up receiving a bronze medal and a laurel branch. The tradition of giving gold, silver and bronze medals began at the 1904 Summer Olympic Games held in St. Louis, Missouri.

26. Church seating : PEWS

A pew is a bench in a church, one usually with a high back. The original pews were raised and sometimes enclosed seats in the church used by women and important men or families. “Pew” comes from the Old French “puie” meaning “balcony, elevation”.

28. *Philatelist’s find : RARE STAMP (“rap” snapped)

“Philately” is the more formal name given to the practice of collecting postage stamps. The term “philately” was coined (in French, as “philatélie) in 1864 by French collector Georges Herpin. He came up with it from the Greek “phil-” meaning “loving” and “ateleia” meaning “exemption from tax”. Apparently “exemption from tax” was the closest thing Herpin could find to “postage stamp”.

36. Superhero in an armored suit : IRON MAN

Iron Man is another one of those comic book superheroes, this one created by Stan Lee for Marvel Comics. The character has become very famous in recent years since the appearance of the 2008 action movie “Iron Man” starring Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role. Iron Man’s love interest, Pepper Potts, is routinely played by Gwyneth Paltrow in the same series of films.

41. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” novelist : STOWE

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s most famous and most successful work is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. It was also her first novel. Her second was published in 1856:”Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp”.

44. *Hybrid retriever : GOLDEN LAB (“gab” snapped)

A golden Labrador is a cross between a golden retriever and a Labrador. The same cross is also referred to as a “goldador”.

50. One of his stories is the source of the idiom “sour grapes” : AESOP

Our expression “sour grapes” is an allusion to one of Aesop’s fables, the story of “The Fox and the Grapes”. In the fable, a squirrel could climb up to grapes high in a tree that a fox was unsuccessful in getting to. On seeing this, the fox said, “It’s okay, the grapes were sour anyway”.

54. Sonny and Cher, e.g. : POP DUO

Singing duo Sonny & Cher started out in the mid-1960s as backing singers working with Phil Spector. The couple married in 1964, and the next year released their breakthrough numbers “Baby Don’t Go” and “I Got You Babe”. Sonny and Cher divorced in 1975, and dissolved their act that same year. Cher moved onto a successful solo career that continues to this day. Sonny Bono was elected as a US Congressman for California in 1995. Sadly, he didn’t finish his term in the House as he died from injuries sustained in a skiing accident in 1998.

57. Sulu portrayer John : CHO

John Cho is an actor and musician who was born in Seoul, South Korea but who has lived in the US since he was a young boy. Cho’s break in movies came in playing Harold Lee in the ”Harold & Kumar” films. He is now making a name for himself playing Mr. Sulu in the latest “Star Trek” movies.

60. Kin of net : COM

The .com domain was one of the six original generic top-level domains specified. The complete original list is:

  • .com (commercial enterprise)
  • .net (entity involved in network infrastructure e.g. an ISP)
  • .mil (US military)
  • .org (not-for-profit organization)
  • .gov (US federal government entity)
  • .edu (college-level educational institution)

66. Mario Bros. console letters : NES

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was sold in North America from 1985 to to 1995. The NES was the biggest selling gaming console of the era. Nintendo replaced the NES with Wii, which is also the biggest-selling game console in the world.

Mario Bros. started out as an arcade game back in 1983, developed by Nintendo. The more famous of the two brothers, Mario, had already appeared in an earlier arcade game “Donkey Kong”. Mario was given a brother called Luigi, and the pair have been around ever since. In the game, Mario and Luigi are Italian American plumbers from New York City.

Down

1. Georgetown hoopster : HOYA

The athletic teams of Georgetown University are known as the Hoyas. The name is derived from “Hoya Saxa”, a traditional cheer yelled out at Georgetown games as far back as 1893. The term is a mixture of Greek and Latin, with the Greek word “hoya” meaning “such” or “what”, and “saxa” translating from Latin as “rocks” or “small stones”. The cheer is usually rendered in English as “what rocks!”.

6. Musk of Tesla Motors : ELON

Elon Musk is successful businessman who has founded or led some very high-profile companies, namely PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Musk was born and raised in South Africa, and moved to Canada when he was seventeen years old, and then to the US two years later.

9. Bakery-café chain : PANERA

Panera Bread is a chain of bakery/coffeehouses. A Panera restaurant is a good place to get online while having a cup of coffee. Back in 2006 and 2007, Panera was the largest provider of free Wi-Fi access in the whole of the US.

10. “8 Mile” rapper : EMINEM

Rap star Eminem’s real name is Marshall Mathers. Mathers grew up poor in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He was raised by a single-mom as the family was abandoned by his father when he was 18 months old. Marshall and his mother moved around the country before settling in a suburb of Detroit. He didn’t do well at school, and dropped out at the age of 17. But in the end he made it pretty big …

23. “Miracle on Ice” team, for short : USA

Team USA won the gold medal in men’s hockey at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The victory was a surprising one given the decades-long dominance of the USSR team. The “big result” for the American team was the epic victory against the Soviets, a victory often referred to as the “Miracle on Ice”. The US went on to defeat Finland in the final and secured the gold medal.

25. Yoga position : ASANA

“Asana” is a Sanskrit word literally meaning “sitting down”. The asanas are the poses that a practitioner of yoga assumes. The most famous is the lotus position, the cross-legged pose called “padmasana”.

26. “Masterpiece” network : PBS

PBS’s wonderful “Masterpiece Theatre” changed its name to “Masterpiece” in 2008. At the same time, three different versions of the show were introduced:

  • “Masterpiece Classic” introduced by Gillian Anderson, and then Laura Linney
  • “Masterpiece Mystery!” introduced by Alan Cumming
  • “Masterpiece Contemporary” introduced by Matthew Goode, and then David Tennant

29. Sleep study subject : APNEA

Sleep apnea (“apnoea” in British English) can be caused by an obstruction in the airways, possibly due to obesity or enlarged tonsils.

38. Popular mobile app … and, as shown by circles, what the inner parts of the answers to starred clues do : SNAPCHAT

Snapchat is a messaging system that allows users to send photos and video clips to a limited list of recipients. The photos and clips, called “snaps”, can be viewed for only a few seconds before they are deleted from the recipient’s device, and from the Snapchat servers.

39. __ capita : PER

“Per capita” is a Latin term used to mean “per person, per unit of population”. The literal translation of the term is “by heads”.

41. Badlands Natl. Park site : SDAK

Badlands may be “bad lands” for agriculture (hence the name), but they can be beautiful. A badlands is an extensive area from which the topsoil has been eroded by wind and water, leaving exposed rock and very little vegetation. One of the most beautiful badlands areas in the US is preserved for the nation as South Dakota’s Badlands National Park.

45. 1962 Lawrence portrayer : O’TOOLE

Irish actor Peter O’Toole got his big break in movies when he played the title role in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia”. My favorite of O’Toole’s movies is much lighter fare, namely “How to Steal a Million” in which he stars opposite Audrey Hepburn. O’Toole never won an Oscar, but holds the record for the greatest number of Best Actor nominations without a win.

“Lawrence of Arabia” is a 1962 movie that recounts the real life story of T. E. Lawrence, a British army officer famous for his role in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I. The title role in the film is played by Irish actor Peter O’Toole. The role of Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish is played by Omar Sharif.

51. Lux. setting : EUR

Luxembourg is a relatively small country in the middle of Europe, just 1,000 square miles in area with a population of over half a million. The country is a representative democracy (just like the United Kingdom) and it has a constitutional monarch, namely Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. As such, Luxembourg is the only remaining sovereign Grand Duchy in the world.

52. Tofu beans : SOYS

Tofu is another name for bean curd, and is a Japanese word meaning just that … bean that has curdled. Tofu is produced by coagulating soy milk, using either salt or something acidic. Once the protein has coagulated, the curds are pressed into the familiar blocks. Personally I love tofu, but my wife, she absolutely hates it …

56. Fourth-down play : PUNT

That would be football.

62. Article in some hip-hop titles : THA

I guess “tha” is slang for “the” in the world of rap …

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. “That cracks me up!” : HA HA!
5. “__ and the Swan”: Rubens painting : LEDA
9. Paper Mate product : PEN
12. 1936 Olympics standout : OWENS
14. Goes it alone : SOLOS
15. “Te __”: Rihanna song : AMO
16. *Golfer’s guide for measuring distances : YARDAGE BOOK (“yak” snapped)
18. Playful bite : NIP
19. House vote : AYE
20. Like much store-brand merchandise : LOW-END
21. Contact lens solution brand : RENU
22. Soft boot material : SUEDE
24. Winner’s wreath : LAUREL
26. Church seating : PEWS
28. *Philatelist’s find : RARE STAMP (“rap” snapped)
31. On __ of: for : BEHALF
34. Family guys : PAPAS
35. Overhead expanse : SKY
36. Superhero in an armored suit : IRON MAN
38. Place for a hot stone massage : SPA
41. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” novelist : STOWE
42. Became clear to, with “on” : DAWNED
44. *Hybrid retriever : GOLDEN LAB (“gab” snapped)
48. Tough to learn : HARD
49. “Finally!” : AT LAST!
50. One of his stories is the source of the idiom “sour grapes” : AESOP
53. Relax in the tub : SOAK
54. Sonny and Cher, e.g. : POP DUO
57. Sulu portrayer John : CHO
60. Kin of net : COM
61. *Winter warming spell : JANUARY THAW (“jaw” snapped)
63. Fla. neighbor : ALA
64. Athlete’s rep : AGENT
65. Facebook option : SHARE
66. Mario Brothers console letters : NES
67. Exercise break : REST
68. Casino conveniences : ATMS

Down

1. Georgetown hoopster : HOYA
2. On the road : AWAY
3. “These are the reasons” : HERE’S WHY
4. “Go on … ” : AND …
5. Place for a hoop : LOBE
6. Musk of Tesla Motors : ELON
7. Kid’s drawing tablet : DOODLE PAD
8. Pose a question : ASK
9. Bakery-café chain : PANERA
10. “8 Mile” rapper : EMINEM
11. Orange juice specification : NO PULP
13. Customer-drawing sign word : SALE
14. Waste conduit : SEWER
17. Supreme being : GOD
21. Road grooves : RUTS
23. “Miracle on Ice” team, for short : USA
25. Yoga position : ASANA
26. “Masterpiece” network : PBS
27. “There’s a mouse in our house!” : EEK!
29. Sleep study subject : APNEA
30. Ewe guy : RAM
32. Low-calorie brews : LITES
33. Place for big headlines : FRONT PAGE
37. Hooting bird : OWL
38. Popular mobile app … and, as shown by circles, what the inner parts of the answers to starred clues do : SNAPCHAT
39. __ capita : PER
40. Mix in : ADD
41. Badlands Natl. Park site : SDAK
43. Detective’s question : WHO?
44. Garage container : GAS CAN
45. 1962 Lawrence portrayer : O’TOOLE
46. Peruvian pack animals : LLAMAS
47. Not skilled in : BAD AT
51. Lux. setting : EUR
52. Tofu beans : SOYS
55. Change for a five : ONES
56. Fourth-down play : PUNT
58. Inflict pain on : HARM
59. Is in arrears : OWES
61. Cookie container : JAR
62. Article in some hip-hop titles : THA

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17 thoughts on “LA Times Crossword Answers 8 Nov 2017, Wednesday”

  1. 11:50. The theme was out of my comfort zone as I know nothing of snapchat. That said, I was told by a friend their pix on shapchat remain for 24 hours rather than for a few seconds. Can anyone explain? Has the app changed, or are there different ways of viewing? Just curious.

    So I guess ancient Olympians after winning an event would feel a LAUREL and hearty?…..

    Best –

  2. LAT: 11:21, no errors. Newsday: 6:22, no errors. WSJ: 11:29, no errors.

    Weird morning in progress here. Oddness abounds. Case in point: my first attempt to do the LAT puzzle on the Washington Post site resulted in a graph of a parabola having equation y=-cx**2, for some constant c. Very odd. Very odd indeed. My second attempt gave me a puzzle clearly labeled “Tuesday, November 7”, but I didn’t recognize it, so I went ahead and did it and it turned out to be Wednesday’s puzzle after all. (For the record, I don’t much like the WP web site, but it’s never done anything quite that bizarre before.)

    I’ve printed a copy of yesterday’s Croce, but I haven’t been able to work up the courage to start it. And maybe I’ll just go back to bed … ?

  3. @Jeff … Appreciated the pun!

    And I do not understand Snapchat. At all.

    And can anyone tell me how to get a superscript “2” in a post here? (I put in the HTML codes I used to use and they didn’t work.)

    1. WordPress has a funny coding set, both to block out page exploits, but to also enable certain things. Like Youtube videos. The blog writer gets a lot more to play with than the average commenter, so it gets tough to figure out what you can do. Like colors – as you may have seen on my blog, you can put things in different colors – and I use that to emphasize certain parts of theme words instead of bold like Bill does here. But you can’t do colors in comments like this. Or embed images or youtube videos sometimes.

      Anyway, the documentation suggests sub and sup style XML tags around the items you want to do that with. But as I see now, it’s unsupported in comments. Usually I just do like you did or put a ^.

      1. Thanks, Glenn. Perhaps, if and when I do more with that WordPress web site I set up, I’ll figure some of this stuff out …

        And, as long as I’m here … I did do yesterday’s Croce puzzle. I didn’t time it, because it was just sitting there and I just kind of got sucked into doing it, but at least I finished it with no errors.

  4. 8:11, no errors. Played out about the same as yesterday. Managed about 1/4 so far on yesterday’s Croce, but it’s pretty par for the course for me. So can’t complain too much.

    Then I ended up pulling out an old puzzle and redoing it (#8 on Bill’s list for longest puzzle for him to do in this blog’s history). It was fun to read the old comments, and see how much better I did on it yesterday. Still DNFed on the area around DENOVO and LSEVEN after about 60 minutes, but at least I mostly managed to do it this time. And I agree with the others, it does play like a Friday NYT, or easier since I have had harder times with those than that one. Don’t know how many others I have back from that time I mostly couldn’t do then, but it’d be half-fun to see how I do with some of the harder ones now. Mainly the question to be answered is when I started getting active on the blog to know what I originally bombed out on.

    1. @Glenn –

      Oops – This is Jeff. I forgot to sign in after 2 days of actually remembering…

      Interesting trip down memory lane. I remember that puzzle. It was a David Steinberg effort before I knew who he was. In the posts, I’m asking about NYT puzzles so I guess I hadn’t started doing those yet.

      Sometimes I forget I’m 54 years old, I didn’t start doing puzzles until around age 50, and I’ve been doing the NYT puzzles daily for only about a year. I should cut myself some slack when I compare myself (unfavorably) to 30 year vets like Bill and Dave…

      Best –

  5. Jeff, great pun … much appreciated and enjoyed. 😉

    I had a good time with this puzzle – By the ‘feared’ CC no less. Since it was a Wed., I guess the clues had to be easy …. The theme seemed decipherable but I am not familiar with the App Snapchat.
    In a humorous vein, if the pictures remain only for 24 hours …. does it mean you can upload risky ( risque’ ) ones, without the fear that it may come and haunt you in the future ? … or can somebody download those, and keep them for ever, on another website, like a sword of Damocles … to be used against you, in the future, in some form of blackmail. ?

    On notes on half dollars, yesterday, I once had a shopgirl. in a rural area, next to a highway exit, surreptitiously pass me a black quarter, …. in an effort to, so to say, pass off a bad penny. I kept it … and a few polishings later, I realised that it was a 1962 quarter, which was over 60 pct. silver … worth about 3 or 4 or 6 dollars today.
    I also had a five dollar red seal, currency note, slipped into some change in the Amish country. sadly, it is worth only 5.70 at max….. but still, an interesting keepsake.

    On Jesse Owens, I highly recommend the movie, Race. I’ve watched it two times, already.

    Finally, some inevitable politics …. I have read very very extensively on the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns and battles of WW I , and in my humble opinion, the dedication, and courage, of the ANZAC the Australian and New Zealand light horse brigades against the German led Ottoman Armies should get atleast 90 percent of the credit for winning that area ( including Lebanon, Syria and Mesopotamia – ) of the war. IMHO, Mr. Lawrence of Arabia, was way over rated.

    Have a nice day, folks.

  6. Dave Kennison, your crossword attempt of a graph , with the parabola formula of ……. y = -cx**2
    had me thinking …. unless c is ( has to be – ) a negative number,

    Because, otherwise, we have x = Sqr.root( – y/c ) …. which would result in a square root of a negative number . …. which would be an imaginary number,….( if both y and c are positive numbers ) ….. in a coordinate geometry excersize of real numbers.
    If I am wrong, please let me know !!

    I always studied Parabolas as
    y**2 = 4 Ax + C
    or y = ax**2 + bx + c

    In furtherance, of Snapchat, may I offer a classic, sleazy, risque’, thesis of an old mathematical short story … Miss Polly Nomial …. I read it fifty years ago, from a student magazine from the MIT students association ….

    If you are sensitive to obscene language, please DO NOT CLICK on the above. !!!

  7. @Dave
    FWIW, there’s a handful of other sites that offer the LAT puzzle, but pretty much dupe the technology used in other sites. Another alternate is the Chicago Tribune. It depends on whether it works for you or not and if you like it or not. Part of why I like PUZ is simply because if I can get the file, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to get always.

    @Jeff
    It’s hard for me to see in the moment, especially since I measure my progress based on a few weeks more than a few years, but it was kind of fun to mostly conquer that puzzle and see from the comment how I did back then. I am making progress, though I guess the hard part is being frustrated over still not being able to do too many puzzles successfully in a reasonable amount of time (much more than comparing my times). I did find out, my first post on here was the beginning of June 2015 – my best remembrance is February on when I actually started picking up crossword puzzles. So good baseline anyhow if I want to try any more in my pile.

    1. @Glenn … I guess I should find a way to download the LAT puzzle in a “.puz” file …

  8. Dave Kennison, I read a little more about Parabolas ,,, and found out that I am completely wrong !!@!

    y = -cx**2 is perfectly real …. and allowed.

    In general, a Parabola is ….. y = f(x) = ax**2

    If a > 0 the parabola, symmetrical around the y axis, points or opens upwards.
    If a < 0 …. less than zero . or a negative number, it is still a parabola, symmetrical around the y axis, and points downwards or opens downwards.
    If a = 0 then it is not a parabola. …. merely an infinite number of points on the x axis …. ( little joke. Lol )

    Sorry to have bothered you.

    1. @Vidwan … Yes, what I got instead of the LAT crossword was a parabola “opening downwards” (which is what I clumsily tried to suggest with my formula). The mystifying thing about it is: “How in the heck does a piece of software that is meant to draw a crossword puzzle instead manage to draw a parabola (of whatever variety)? And what might it do the next time I try to use it?”

      I probably should add that along the left edge of the screen appeared some things that looked like the right halves of squares from a crossword puzzle, some all-black and some containing half-letters. I scrolled down a long way, to the point where the two sides of the parabola disappeared off-screen to the left and right, and the half-squares continued. As an old FORTRAN programmer, I have to ask, “What sort of drawing utility would do such a thing?” Well, no matter, I suppose, but it did get my day off to a rather surreal start … ?

  9. Fairly easy Wednesday, except for the SE; took about 15 minutes, not counting the SE, where I had 2 errors. I put in SOYa, since it was 4 letters and that left a_ARE for the Facebook option. After going through the alphabet, I finally opted for “w”, giving awARE.

    “Soys” still sounds pretty flaky to me.

    Sigh!!

  10. Hi gang!! ?
    No errors on a fun Wednesday. The only problems came where I read the clue number incorrectly and wondered, for example, how O’TOOLE could possibly fit where BAD AT eventually went! ? The number 47 looked like 45….I need new contacts…..!!
    On another note: for me, there is only one Sulu, and that’s George Takei. I’m not a big Star Trek fan per se, but Mr Takei just charms me. ? I actually follow him on Facebook (I’m a geek…) — I enjoy his posts! I wish he were my nextdoor neighbor ?.
    Be well~~™?

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