LA Times Crossword Answers 26 Jul 2018, Thursday

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Constructed by: Paul Coulter
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Reveal Answer: Stewed Pears

Themed answers start with the letter string “PEARS”, but that letter string has been “STEWED”, has the order of the letters changed:

  • 51A. Cooked fruit dessert … and a cryptic hint to the start of 17-, 31- and 38-Across : STEWED PEARS
  • 17A. Led : SPEARHEADED
  • 31A. Barbecue favorite : SPARERIBS
  • 38A. Reduces, as spending : PARES DOWN

Bill’s time: 8m 14s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1. Org. that awards the Spingarn Medal : NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) awards the Spingarn Medal every year, to honor outstanding achievement by an African American. The award was created in 1914 and is named for Joel Elias Spingarn, the NAACP’s first Chairman of the Board.

6. Bochco series : LA LAW

“L.A. Law” ran on NBC from 1986 to 1994, and was one of the network’s most successful drama series. It took over from the equally successful “Hill Street Blues” in the Thursday night 10 p.m. slot until, after a six-year run, it was itself replaced by yet another respected drama, “E.R.” The opening credits showed that famous California licence plate. The plate was on a Jaguar XJ for most of the series, but moved onto a Bentley towards the end of the run. For each series the registration sticker was updated, so no laws were being broken.

Steven Bochco is a television producer and writer. He created such shows as “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blue”.

11. Peter, Paul and Mary: Abbr. : STS

Saints (sts.)

14. Counterpart of “a” : ALPHA

The Greek alphabet starts with the letter “alpha”, and ends with the letter “omega”.

15. Bacteria in undercooked meat : E COLI

Escherichia coli (E. coli) are usually harmless bacteria found in the human gut, working away quite happily. However, there are some strains that can produce lethal toxins. These strains can make their way into the food chain from animal fecal matter that comes into contact with food designated for human consumption.

19. Bonanza contents : ORE

A bonanza is a mine with a rich pocket of ore that can be exploited. “Bonanza” is the Spanish word for a rich lode, and we imported the term into English. “Bonanza” originally meant “fair weather at sea”, and from that came to mean “prosperity, good fortune”. Ultimately, “bonanza” comes from the Latin “bonus” meaning “good”.

20. Many a Bon Appétit subscriber : FOODIE

“Bon Appétit” is a monthly food and drink magazine that has been published since 1956. One of the magazines most celebrated features is its annual list of Best New Restaurants in the US.

26. Ball beauties : BELLES

A beau (plural “beaux”) is the boyfriend of a belle, a young lady. “Beau” and “belle” are the masculine and feminine forms of the French word for “handsome, beautiful”.

31. Barbecue favorite : SPARERIBS

Spareribs are so called because “spare” can indicate the absence of fat.

37. “O wad some Pow’r the giftie __ us”: Burns : GIE

“To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” is a 1786 poem by Scottish poet Robert Burns. With an unlikely subject, the narrator addresses a louse that he notices roaming around the bonnet of an upper-class lady in church.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!

A translation from Scots dialect is:

Oh, would some Power give us the gift
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!

41. Melonlike tropical fruit : PAPAWS

The papaya (also “papaw”) tropical fruit is native to Mexico and South America. When cultivating papaya trees, only female plants are used. Female plants produce just one, high-quality fruit per tree. Male plants produce several fruit per tree, but they are very poor quality.

42. Slapstick trio member : STOOGE

If you’ve seen a few of the films starring “The Three Stooges” you might have noticed that the line up changed over the years. The original trio was made up of Moe and Shemp Howard (two brothers) and Larry Fine (a good friend of the Howards). This line up was usually known as “Moe, Larry and Shemp”. Then Curly Howard replaced his brother when Shemp quit the act, creating the most famous trio, “Moe, Larry And Curly”. Shemp returned when Curly had a debilitating stroke in 1946, and Shemp stayed with the troupe until he died in 1955. Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser, and then “Curly-Joe” DeRita. When Larry Fine had a stroke in 1970, it effectively marked the end of the act.

Slapstick is a physical form of comedy or horseplay. Back in the late 19th century, the term “slapstick” described a device made from two sticks loosely fastened together, which could be “slapped” together to create a sound effect offstage. The sound effect added to the laugh when a clown or actor was given a slap on stage.

46. Fishing lure : SPINNER

A spinnerbait (sometimes “spinner”) is a fishing lure that spins when moved through the water. As a result, the lure mimics the movement of small fish that are the prey of larger fish.

50. Mike and __: fruity candy : IKE

Mike and Ike is a brand of fruit-flavored candy made by Just Born starting in 1940. Just Born launched quite a unique marketing campaign in 2012 asserting that Mike and Ike had “split up due to creative differences”. The campaign involved production of two different boxes for the candy showing one or the other name scratched out. Clever …

56. Part of mpg : PER

Miles per gallon (mpg)

57. Quilt filler : EIDER

Eiders are large sea ducks. Their down feathers are used to fill pillows and quilts, giving the name to the quilt called an “eiderdown”.

58. Latin stars : ASTRA

“Astrum” (plural “astra”) is a Latin word meaning “star”.

59. “Star Trek” rank: Abbr. : ENS

An extra in “Star Trek” is often an ensign (ens.).

61. Bikini blast : N-TEST

The testing of US nuclear weapons by the US at Bikini Atoll in the middle of 1946 went by the codename “Operation Crossroads”. The tests used A-bombs and were designed to measure the effect of blasts on navy vessels. There were three tests planned, but the third had to be cancelled as the Navy couldn’t decontaminate the ships used in the second test.

Down

1. Hip-hop artist who narrates Netflix’s “The Get Down” : NAS

Rapper Nas used to go by an earlier stage name “Nasty Nas”, and before that by his real name “Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones”. Nas released his first album “Illmatic” in 1994, and inventively titled his fifth studio album “Stillmatic”, released in 2001. Not my cup of tea, I would say …

“The Get Down” is a Netflix show about a group of teenagers in New York City witnessing the rise of hip-hop and disco music in the 1970s.

2. Hurdle for Hannibal : ALP

Hannibal was a military commander from Ancient Carthage. Hannibal lived during a time of great conflict between Carthage and the Roman Republic, as the Romans worked to extend their influence over the Mediterranean region. Famously, Hannibal took on Rome on their own territory by marching his army, including his war elephants, over the Alps into Italy. His forces occupied much of Italy for 15 years.

4. Plant-eating scarab beetles : CHAFERS

Chafers are beetles in the scarab family. Chafer larvae are referred to as chafer grubs, and are infamous for the amount of damage they can do to the roots of plants, and especially grasses.

5. Sentence shortener : PAROLE

The term “parole” is a French word that we use in English, with the French “parole” meaning “word, speech”. Of particular interest is the French phrase “parole d’honneur” which translates as “word of honor”. In the early 1600s we started using “parole” to mean a promise by a prisoner of war not to escape, as in the prisoner giving his “word of honor” not to run off. Over time, parole has come to mean conditional release of a prisoner before he or she has served the full term of a sentence.

6. City on the Aire : LEEDS

I went to school for a while not far from Leeds in West Yorkshire in the north of England. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Leeds was a major center for the production and trading of wool, and then with the onset of mechanization it became a natural hub for manufacture of textiles. These days Leeds is noted as a shopping destination and so has been dubbed “the Knightsbridge of the North”.

The Aire is a major river in Yorkshire in the north of England. It rises in North Yorkshire and ultimately flows into the River Ouse in eastern Yorkshire.

7. Antioxidant berry in smoothies : ACAI

Açaí (pronounced “ass-aye-ee”) is a palm tree native to Central and South America. The fruit has become very popular in recent years and its juice is a very fashionable addition to juice mixes and smoothies.

8. Valuable deposit : LODE

A lode is a metal ore deposit that’s found between two layers of rock or in a fissure. The mother lode is the principal deposit in a mine, usually of gold or silver. “Mother lode” is probably a translation of “veta madre”, an expression used in mining in Mexico.

11. Informer : STOOL PIGEON

Stoolies, also called “canaries”, will sing to the cops given the right incentive. “Stoolie” is short for “stool pigeon”. A stool pigeon was a decoy bird tied to a stool so as to lure other pigeons. Originally a stoolie was a decoy for the police, rather than an informer, hence the name.

12. Pang : THROE

Our contemporary word “throe”, meaning a spasm of pain, has been around since the early 1600s. It is a different spelling of the word “throwe” that had been around since around 1200 AD and which meant pain, particularly a pang of childbirth or the agony of death. Pain, from cradle to grave …

18. You might hear music on it : HOLD

That would be while on hold on the phone. Doo be doo be doo …

23. Make confetti of : RIP UP

The word “confetti” is related to “confection”. The original confetti were small candies thrown during carnivals in Italy. This custom migrated to England, and eventually evolved into the practice of tossing small pieces of paper instead of confections.

24. Name on a 1945 bomber : ENOLA

The Enola Gay was the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima in August 1945. Enola Gay was the name of the mother of pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr.

26. Spartan : BARE

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece that was famous for her military might. Spartan children had a tough upbringing, and newborn babies were bathed in wine to see if the child was strong enough to survive. Every child was presented to a council of elders that decided if the baby was suitable for rearing. Those children deemed too puny were executed by tossing them into a chasm. We’ve been using the term “spartan” to describe something self-disciplined or austere since the 1600s.

29. Mountain lake : TARN

A tarn is a mountain lake that has been formed by glacial excavation.

31. Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture __” : SHOW

“The Last Picture Show” is a 1966 novel by Larry McMurtry that was adapted into a very successful 1971 film of the same name. Both novel and movie are coming-of-age works set in small-town Texas in the early 1950s.

The author Larry McMurtry’s most famous novels are 1961’s “Horseman, Pass By” (adapted to film as “Hud”), 1966’s “The Last Picture Show”, 1975’s “Terms of Endearment” and 1985’s “Lonesome Dove” (for which McMurtry won a Pulitzer). He also co-wrote the adapted screenplay for 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain”, which is based on a short story by Annie Proulx.

32. __-watch : BINGE

I’m a big fan of binge-watching, the practice of watching perhaps two or three (even four!) episodes of a show in a row. My wife and I will often deliberately avoid watching a recommended show live, and instead wait until whole series have been released on DVD or online. I’m not a big fan of “tune in next week …”

33. Feast where the Haggadah is read : SEDER

The Haggadah is an ancient Jewish text that is traditionally read aloud at the Passover seder. The Haggadah (“telling” in Hebrew) acts as a guide to the seder ritual, which commemorates the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt.

35. Bad-mouths : ASPERSES

To asperse is to spread false charges or make insinuations. The more common expression is “to cast aspersions”. “To asperse” comes from the Latin “aspergere” meaning “to sprinkle”. So, “to asperse” is also the term used when sprinkling holy water.

36. “Saving Private Ryan” event : D-DAY

The most famous D-Day in history was June 6, 1944, the date of the Normandy landings in WWII. The term “D-Day” is used by the military to designate the day on which a combat operations are to be launched, especially when the actual date has yet to be determined. What D stands for seems to have been lost in the mists of time although the tradition is that D just stands for “Day”. In fact, the French have a similar term, “Jour J” (Day J), with a similar meaning. We also use H-Hour to denote the hour the attack is to commence.

“Saving Private Ryan” is an epic 1998 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, a real “must see”. The D-Day invasion scenes were shot over a two-month period on the southeast coast of Ireland.

42. 5’7″ Webb, shortest to win the NBA Slam Dunk Contest : SPUD

Spud Webb is a retired NBA point guard. In 1986, Webb won the NBA’s annual Slam Dunk Contest, despite being one of the shortest players in the league (at only 5’ 7”).

In basketball, a player makes a slam dunk by jumping up and powering the ball downward into the basket with his or her hands over the rim. The term “slam dunk” was coined by Chick Hearn, an announcer for the L.A. Lakers. The NBA even holds an annual Slam Dunk Contest.

43. __ Alley : TIN PAN

Tin Pan Alley was originally a specific location, i.e. West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. The area was associated with the music publishing business from about 1885 to the start of the Great Depression The name itself is possibly a reference to the tinny sound of cheap pianos that were common at the time.

44. Beef : GRIPE

A beef is a complaint or a grievance. It’s not quite clear how “beef” came to have this meaning, but one suggestion is that derives from the habit of soldiers at the end of the 1800s complaining about the quality or availability of beef in their rations.

45. Like Cognac casks : OAKEN

Cognac is a famous variety of brandy named after the town of Cognac in the very west of France. To be called cognac, the brandy must be distilled twice in copper pot stills and aged at least two years in very specific French oak barrels.

46. About 1.3 cubic yards : STERE

The stere is a metric measure, although it is not part of the modern metric system. Nowadays the stere is used as a measure for firewood, and is equal to one cubic meter.

49. “A Prayer for __ Meany”: John Irving novel : OWEN

“A Prayer for Owen Meany” is a novel by John Irving that was first published in 1989. Although Irving’s work is an independent story, it is written as a homage to “The Tin Drum” by Günter Grass.

54. Syst. of cars on tracks : Abbr. : RRS

Railroad (RR)

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. Org. that awards the Spingarn Medal : NAACP
6. Bochco series : LA LAW
11. Peter, Paul and Mary: Abbr. : STS
14. Counterpart of “a” : ALPHA
15. Bacteria in undercooked meat : E COLI
16. Not just “a” : THE
17. Led : SPEARHEADED
19. Bonanza contents : ORE
20. Many a Bon Appétit subscriber : FOODIE
21. Tablet download : E-BOOK
23. Flips, in a way : RESELLS
26. Ball beauties : BELLES
27. Hardened : INURED
28. Decline to recline? : STAY UP
30. Bursts : POPS
31. Barbecue favorite : SPARERIBS
34. Suffix with glob : -ULE
35. Held closely (to) : ADHERED
37. “O wad some Pow’r the giftie __ us”: Burns : GIE
38. Reduces, as spending : PARES DOWN
40. Manage (for oneself) : FEND
41. Melonlike tropical fruit : PAPAWS
42. Slapstick trio member : STOOGE
44. Loosey-__ : GOOSEY
46. Fishing lure : SPINNER
47. Less experienced : RAWER
48. Plump : ROTUND
50. Mike and __: fruity candy : IKE
51. Cooked fruit dessert … and a cryptic hint to the start of 17-, 31- and 38-Across : STEWED PEARS
56. Part of mpg : PER
57. Quilt filler : EIDER
58. Latin stars : ASTRA
59. “Star Trek” rank: Abbr. : ENS
60. Tea go-with : SCONE
61. Bikini blast : N-TEST

Down

1. Hip-hop artist who narrates Netflix’s “The Get Down” : NAS
2. Hurdle for Hannibal : ALP
3. Act like : APE
4. Plant-eating scarab beetles : CHAFERS
5. Sentence shortener : PAROLE
6. City on the Aire : LEEDS
7. Antioxidant berry in smoothies : ACAI
8. Valuable deposit : LODE
9. Tap output : ALE
10. Innocent-looking : WIDE-EYED
11. Informer : STOOL PIGEON
12. Pang : THROE
13. Goes after : SEEKS
18. You might hear music on it : HOLD
22. Cloud : BLUR
23. Make confetti of : RIP UP
24. Name on a 1945 bomber : ENOLA
25. Dominant states : SUPERPOWERS
26. Spartan : BARE
28. Expels : SPEWS
29. Mountain lake : TARN
31. Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture __” : SHOW
32. __-watch : BINGE
33. Feast where the Haggadah is read : SEDER
35. Bad-mouths : ASPERSES
36. “Saving Private Ryan” event : D-DAY
39. Let up : EASE
40. Most affectionate : FONDEST
42. 5’7″ Webb, shortest to win the NBA Slam Dunk Contest : SPUD
43. __ Alley : TIN PAN
44. Beef : GRIPE
45. Like Cognac casks : OAKEN
46. About 1.3 cubic yards : STERE
48. Give a makeover : REDO
49. “A Prayer for __ Meany”: John Irving novel : OWEN
52. Personal quirk : TIC
53. Downed a sub? : ATE
54. Syst. of cars on tracks : Abbr. : RRS
55. Convened : SAT

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