LA Times Crossword 4 Sep 18, Tuesday

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Constructed by: Paul Coulter
Edited by: Rich Norris

Today’s Theme (according to Bill): Sweets

Themed answers are expressions that include something “sweet”:

  • 16A. With 58-Across, “sweet” expression about consequences : YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR …
  • 58A. See 16-Across : … CAKE AND EAT IT TOO
  • 22A. With 48-Across, “sweet” expression about consequences : THAT’S THE WAY THE …
  • 48A. See 22-Across : … COOKIE CRUMBLES
  • 36A. Experiencing some “sweet” consequences : EATING HUMBLE PIE

Bill’s time: 5m 54s

Bill’s errors: 0

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Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

6. Forearm bone : ULNA

The humerus is the long bone in the upper arm. The bones in the forearm are the radius and ulna. “Ulna” is the Latin word for “elbow”, and “radius” is Latin for “ray”.

10. Balls and strikes caller : UMP

Back in the 15th century, “an umpire” was referred to as “a noumpere”, which was misheard and hence causing the dropping of the initial letter N. The term “noumpere” came from Old French “nonper” meaning “not even, odd number”. The idea was that the original umpire was a third person called on to arbitrate between two, providing that “odd number” needed to decide the dispute.

13. Off-the-cuff : AD LIB

“Ad libitum” is a Latin phrase meaning “at one’s pleasure”. In common usage, the phrase is usually shortened to “ad lib”. On the stage, the concept of an ad lib is very familiar.

14. What insomniacs count : SHEEP

Our word “insomnia” ultimately comes from the Latin prefix “-in” meaning “not” and “somnus” meaning “sleep”.

15. Slithery squeezer : BOA

Boa constrictors are members of the Boidae family of snakes, all of which are non-venomous. Interestingly, the female boa is always larger than the male.

19. Courses for coll. credit : APS

The Advanced Placement (AP) program offers college-level courses to kids who are still in high school. After being tested at the end of the courses, successful students receive credits that count towards a college degree.

20. __ de cologne : EAU

Back in 1709, an Italian perfume-maker moved to Cologne in Germany. There he invented a new fragrance that he named Eau de Cologne after his newly adopted town. The fragrance is still produced in Cologne, using a secret formulation. However, the terms “Eau de Cologne” and “cologne”, are now used generically.

21. Defensive trenches : MOATS

A moat is a protective trench that surrounds a castle, say, or a an exhibit in a zoo. A moat may or may not be filled with water.

28. Funnyman Jay : LENO

Jay Leno was born James Leno in New Rochelle, New York. Jay’s father was the son of Italian immigrants, and his mother was from Scotland. Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and actually dropped out of school on the advice of a high school guidance counsellor. However, years later he went to Emerson college and earned a Bachelor’s degree in speech therapy. Leno also started a comedy club at Emerson in 1973. Today Jay Leno is a car nut and owns about 200 vehicles of various types. You can check them out on his website: www.jaylenosgarage.com.

29. Supercharged engine, for short : TURBO

A turbocharger is a device that is designed to extract more power out of an internal combustion engine. It does so by increasing the pressure of the air entering the intake. The pressure increase comes from the use of a compressor that is powered, cleverly enough, by the engine’s own exhaust gases.

36. Experiencing some “sweet” consequences : EATING HUMBLE PIE

The phrase “humble pie” derives from a medieval meat dish called “umble pie”. The filling in umble pie usually contained the offal (heart, liver, lungs and kidneys) of deer. The name “umble” came from the French “nomble” meaning “deer’s innards”.

42. Car nut : LUG

A lug nut is a nut on which one side is tapered. Lug nuts are used to secure wheels to a vehicle.

44. Kind of butter used in moisturizers : SHEA

Shea butter is a common moisturizer and lotion used as a cosmetic. It is a fat that is extracted from the nut of the African shea tree. There is evidence that shea butter was used back in Cleopatra’s Egypt.

46. Half upfront? : HEMI-

Ever wonder what the difference is between the prefixes “hemi-”, “demi-” and “semi-”, all of which mean “half”? Well, the general observation is that words using the “demi-” prefix date back to the days of Norman influence over the English language. As a result, “demi-” turns up in the world of period costume and coats of arms. Words using “hemi-” tend to have Greek roots, and are prevalent in the world of the sciences and the medical field. Words with “semi-” tend to have Latin roots, and are most often found in music and the arts, and mathematics.

54. Photographer Adams : ANSEL

As an avid amateur photographer, I have been a big fan of the work of Ansel Adams for many years and must have read all of his books. Adams was famous for clarity and depth in his black and white images. Central to his technique was the use of the zone system, his own invention. The zone system is a way of controlling exposure in an image, particularly when there is a high contrast in the subject. Although the technique was developed primarily for black & white film, it can even apply to digital color images. In the digital world, the main technique is to expose an image for the highlights, and one or more images for the shadows. These images can then be combined digitally giving a final photograph with a full and satisfying range of exposures.

63. Acapulco aunt : TIA

The Mexican city of Acapulco is on the southwest coast of the country, in the state of Guerrero. The name “Acapulco” translates from the local language into “at the big reeds”.

66. Bargain bin abbr. : IRR

Irregular (“irr.” or “irreg.”)

67. Thanksgiving side dish : YAMS

Although in the US we sometimes refer to sweet potatoes as “yams”, the yam is actually a completely different family of plants. True yams are more common in other parts of the the world than they are in this country, and are especially common in Africa.

Down

1. Poet Angelou : MAYA

Maya Angelou is an African-American author and poet. Angelou recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1983. Here are some words of wisdom from the great lady:

I work very hard, and I play very hard. I’m grateful for life. And I live it – I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.

5. Entrepreneur-helping org. : SBA

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is a government agency with the mission of assisting small businesses. The SBA doesn’t give loans itself, but it does act as a guarantor under the right circumstances. The SBA was set up in 1953, and isn’t a favorite with fiscal conservatives.

9. Theoretical primate : APEMAN

The term “missing link” is usually applied to the concept that there existed some form of animal that is a hybrid between apes and humans. The idea that there was some “apeman” is discounted these days by the scientific community, who now favor the theory of evolution.

10. WWII sea attacker : U-BOAT

The term “U-boat” comes from the German “Unterseeboot” (undersea boat). U-boats were primarily used in WWII to enforce a blockade against enemy commercial shipping, with a main objective being to cut off the supplies being transported to Britain from the British colonies and the US. The epic fight for control of the supply routes became known as the Battle of the Atlantic.

11. River delta area : MOUTH

A river delta is a triangular landform at the mouth of a river created by the deposition of sediment. The most famous “delta” in the United States isn’t actually a delta at all. The Mississippi Delta is an alluvial plain that lies 300 miles north of the river’s actual delta, yet it is known as the Mississippi River Delta. Very confusing …

17. Loch with a legend : NESS

Loch Ness is one of the two most famous lakes in Scotland. Loch Ness is famous for its “monster”, and Loch Lomond is famous for the lovely song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”. Oh, ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road …

18. Up-and-down toy : YO-YO

The first yo-yos date back to at least 500 BC. There is even an ancient Greek vase painting that shows a young man playing with a yo-yo. Centuries later Filipinos were using yo-yos as hunting tools in the 1500s. “Yo-yo” is a Tagalog (Filipino) word meaning “come-come” or simply “return”.

23. Prefix with dextrous : AMBI-

Someone who is ambidextrous can write with both hands or use both hands with equal ease. A fairly literal translation of “ambidextrous” is “right-handed on both sides” as “dexter” is Latin for “right-handed”.

24. Warner Bros. creation : TOON

The Warner Bros. film studio was founded by four Warner brothers, although their original family name was Wonskolaser. The older brothers emigrated from Poland as children with their parents, and changed their name when they landed in Baltimore, Maryland in 1889.

25. Jack of “Rio Lobo” : ELAM

Jack Elam was a movie actor noted for playing the bad guy in Westerns. When Elam was a Boy Scout, he was accidentally stabbed in the eye with a pencil. The incident left him blind in that eye, and the iris remained skewed to the outside of his face. This gave him a crazed, wide-eyed look that helped add a sense of menace to the characters Elam played.

“Rio Lobo” is a Western movie that was released in 1970, starring John Wayne. “Rio Lobo” is the third film in a trilogy that was directed by Howard Hawks, the other two films being “Rio Bravo” (1959) and “El Dorado” (1966). “Rio Lobo” was the last film that Hawks directed.

26. Jack of “Dragnet” : WEBB

Jack Webb played Sergeant Joe Friday on “Dragnet” on both TV and radio … and what a voice he had! Off the screen, Webb was a lover of jazz, and he played the cornet. It was within the world of jazz that he met and fell in love with Julie London, the famous singer with “the smoky voice”. The couple married and had two kids together.

The TV detective show “Dragnet” opened up each episode with lines spoken by the character Sergeant Joe Friday:

This is the city, Los Angeles, California, I work here. I’m a cop.

In later series, the phrase “I’m a cop” was replaced with “I carry a badge”.

29. Vietnamese New Year : TET

The full name for the New Year holiday in Vietnam is “Tet Nguyen Dan” meaning “Feast of the First Morning”, with the reference being to the arrival of the season of spring. Tet usually falls on the same day as Chinese New Year.

30. Abu Dhabi’s federation: Abbr. : UAE

Abu Dhabi is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

31. GPS suggestion : RTE

A global positioning system (GPS) might point out a route (rte.).

32. Found really groovy : DUG

The term “groovy” meaning “neat, cool” comes from the jazz slang phrase “in the groove”.

33. Antipollution org. : EPA

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

34. Nintendo game console since 2006 : WII

Introduced in 2006, Nintendo’s Wii quickly became the biggest-selling game console in the world.

38. ’50s Red Scare gp. : HUAC

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was formed by the US House of Representatives in 1947 and disbanded in 1975. The House Committee is best remembered for its investigation of the Hollywood film industry in the late forties and fifties, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of people. The House Committee had no formal connection with the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

After WWII, the United States went through what was called a “Red Scare”, the fear of communist infiltration in American society and government. Senator Joseph McCarthy became a lightning rod for this movement when he chaired Senate hearings in the fifties designed to root out communist infiltrators. The period (1947-1956) is referred to as the Second Red Scare. The First Red Scare was at its height in 1919-1920, and was a fear of Bolshevism that arose after the Russian Revolution.

39. Souvlaki meat : LAMB

Souvlaki is a “fast food” from Greece consisting of meat (often lamb) grilled on a skewer, and sometimes served in a pita sandwich.

44. __-Ball: midway game : SKEE

Skee-Ball is that arcade game where you roll balls up a ramp trying to “bounce” it into rings for varying numbers of points. The game was first introduced in Philadelphia, in 1909.

Back at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago there were rides and amusements that were all concentrated in one place, away from the exhibition halls. The rides included the world’s first Ferris wheel, and one could also see Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show. All these attractions were located in the mile-long linear park on the South Side of Chicago known as Midway Plaisance. Ever since then, the attractions at any fair have been located at “the midway”.

45. Two-time Oscar winner Swank : HILARY

The actress Hilary Swank had her first major role in “The Next Karate Kid” released in 1994, in which she played the first female student of the sensei Mr. Miyagi.

46. Luau dances : HULAS

The hula is a native dance of Hawaii that uses arm movements to relate a story. The hula can be performed while sitting (a noho dance) or while standing (a luna dance).

48. Spiny desert bloomers : CACTI

The cactus (plural “cacti”) is a member of a family plants that are particularly well-adapted to extremely dry environments. Almost all cacti are native to the Americas, although some succulent plants from the old world are similar in appearance and are often mislabeled as “cacti”.

50. Liam’s “Schindler’s List” role : OSKAR

Oskar Schindler is the protagonist in the Steven Spielberg movie “Schindler’s List”. Schindler was a real person who survived WWII. During the Holocaust, Schindler managed to save almost 1,200 Jews from perishing by employing them in his factories. After the war, Schindler and his wife were left penniless having used his assets to protect and feed his workers. For years the couple survived on the charity of Jewish groups. Schindler tried to make a go of it in business again but never had any real success. He died a pauper in 1974 in Hildesheim, not far from Hanover. His last wish was to be buried in Jerusalem. Schindler was the only former member of the Nazi Party to be buried on Mount Zion.

Irish actor Liam Neeson got his big break when he played Oskar Schindler in the Spielberg epic, “Schindler’s List”. Neeson was in the news a few years ago when he lost his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, in a tragic skiing accident in 2009.

52. Cosmetician Lauder : ESTEE

Estée Lauder was a very successful businesswoman, and someone with a great reputation as a salesperson. Lauder introduced her own line of fragrances in 1953, a bath oil called “Youth Dew”. “Youth Dew” was marketed as a perfume, but it was added to bathwater. All of a sudden women were pouring whole bottles of Ms. Lauder’s “perfume” into their baths while using only a drop or two of French perfumes behind their ears. That’s quite a difference in sales volume …

59. Cultural funding org. : NEA

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an agency funded by the federal government that offers support and financing for artistic projects. The NEA was created by an Act of Congress in 1965. Between 1965 and 2008, the NEA awarded over $4 billion to the arts, with Congress authorizing around $170 million annually through the eighties and much of the nineties. That funding was cut to less than $100 million in the late nineties due to pressure from conservatives concerned about the use of funds, but it is now back over the $150 million mark. I wonder how long that will last though …

60. Beaver’s output : DAM

Beavers build dams so that they can live in and around the slower and deeper water that builds up above the dam. This deeper water provides more protection for the beavers from predators such as bears. Beavers are nocturnal animals and do all their construction work at night.

62. Prom rental : TUX

Apparently, the style of men’s evening dress called a “tuxedo” was first worn to a country club event in 1886 in New York. The use of a dark dinner jacket without tails became fashionable at the club with the members, and the tradition spread from there. The country club was located in Tuxedo Park, New York, giving the style of dress its name.

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Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1. Sail supports : MASTS
6. Forearm bone : ULNA
10. Balls and strikes caller : UMP
13. Off-the-cuff : AD LIB
14. What insomniacs count : SHEEP
15. Slithery squeezer : BOA
16. With 58-Across, “sweet” expression about consequences : YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR …
19. Courses for coll. credit : APS
20. __ de cologne : EAU
21. Defensive trenches : MOATS
22. With 48-Across, “sweet” expression about consequences : THAT’S THE WAY THE …
27. Forest floor growth : MOSS
28. Funnyman Jay : LENO
29. Supercharged engine, for short : TURBO
32. Bit of gel : DAB
33. Flock female : EWE
36. Experiencing some “sweet” consequences : EATING HUMBLE PIE
41. Gym shirt : TEE
42. Car nut : LUG
43. Be of use to : AVAIL
44. Kind of butter used in moisturizers : SHEA
46. Half upfront? : HEMI-
48. See 22-Across : … COOKIE CRUMBLES
54. Photographer Adams : ANSEL
55. Yale student : ELI
56. Soak (up), as sauce : SOP
58. See 16-Across : … CAKE AND EAT IT TOO
63. Acapulco aunt : TIA
64. Enjoys a novel : READS
65. Songs for two : DUETS
66. Bargain bin abbr. : IRR
67. Thanksgiving side dish : YAMS
68. Daisy variety : OXEYE

Down

1. Poet Angelou : MAYA
2. Take home from an animal shelter : ADOPT
3. Partly melted snow : SLUSH
4. Idiosyncrasy : TIC
5. Entrepreneur-helping org. : SBA
6. “Yeah” : UH-HUH
7. Pasture : LEA
8. Ariz. neighbor : NEV
9. Theoretical primate : APEMAN
10. WWII sea attacker : U-BOAT
11. River delta area : MOUTH
12. Break down grammatically : PARSE
14. Sports figures : STATS
17. Loch with a legend : NESS
18. Up-and-down toy : YO-YO
23. Prefix with dextrous : AMBI-
24. Warner Bros. creation : TOON
25. Jack of “Rio Lobo” : ELAM
26. Jack of “Dragnet” : WEBB
29. Vietnamese New Year : TET
30. Abu Dhabi’s federation: Abbr. : UAE
31. GPS suggestion : RTE
32. Found really groovy : DUG
33. Antipollution org. : EPA
34. Nintendo game console since 2006 : WII
35. Slithery swimmer : EEL
37. Pure joy : GLEE
38. ’50s Red Scare gp. : HUAC
39. Souvlaki meat : LAMB
40. Bad to the bone : EVIL
44. __-Ball: midway game : SKEE
45. Two-time Oscar winner Swank : HILARY
46. Luau dances : HULAS
47. Discharge : EMIT
48. Spiny desert bloomers : CACTI
49. “We’re live!” studio sign : ON AIR!
50. Liam’s “Schindler’s List” role : OSKAR
51. Marshy grasses : REEDS
52. Cosmetician Lauder : ESTEE
53. Like a chimney sweep : SOOTY
57. Sit for a picture : POSE
59. Cultural funding org. : NEA
60. Beaver’s output : DAM
61. Altar vow : I DO
62. Prom rental : TUX

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