0130-10 New York Times Crossword Answers 30 Jan 10

The name’s William Ernest Butler, but please call me Bill. I grew up in Ireland, but now live out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m retired now, from technology businesses that took our family all over the world. I answer all emails, so please feel free to email me at bill@paxient.com

If you are working on the New York Times crossword in any other publication, you are working on the syndicated puzzle. Here is a link to my answers to today’s SYNDICATED New York Times crossword. To find any solution other than today’s, enter the crossword number (e.g. 1225, 0107) in the “Search the Blog” box above.

This is my solution to the crossword published in the New York Times today …

Completion Time: 30m 19s
Theme: None
Answers I missed: 3 … CANIFF (MADIFF), CAV (MAV), NOSH (DOSH)

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES …
Across
9 CANIFF: As well as “Steve Canyon“, Milton Caniff also drew “Terry and the Pirates“. 


15 ONION SET: An onion set is a small onion bulb, up to an inch in diameter.

16 ATONAL: Atonal music is not written in any particular key, and therefore does not have a key signature.

17 PIT VIPER: Pit vipers are a subfamily of vipers, so called because they all possess “pits” ” deep depressions on either side of the head, between the nostril and the eye. These pits are openings to heat sensitive organs that give the snake an ability to detect prey based on its heat signature.

19 STEELY DAN: Steely Dan’s heyday was in the seventies, when they released “Can’t Buy a Thrill“, and they are still going today.

22 EARL: Robin Hood is a figure from English folklore, celebrated in story and song. Some stories suggest that Robin Hood the outlaw was actually a nobleman originally, the Earl of Huntington.

29 FRAS: The title “Fra” (brother) is used by Italian monks. Fra Giocondo was an Italian architect, and Fra Angelico was an Italian Renaissance painter.

35 ORLY: Paris-Orly Airport is Paris’s second international airport (after Charles de Gaulle), and Paris Beauvais Tille Airport is used by the budget airlines, as it is a 75 minute coach ride to the city center.

37 DBL: A double is a substantial hit in baseball.

38 SANE: Back in the British Isles “balmy” (more commonly “barmy”) is a slang term meaning not so sane.

39 PASO: A paso is a step in a dance, like salsa.

43 GODEL: Kurt Godel one the first Albert Enstein Award along with Julian Schwinger.

45 ED MCMAHON: Of course Ed McMahon was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on “The Tonight Show“. McMahon was trained as a fighter in WWII, but did not see action. However, he flew 85 combat missions in Korea.


49 IRONIC: “The Cherry Orchard” was Anton Chekhov’s last play.

54 RETSYN: Retsyn is the name that Cadbury uses for a mixture of copper gluconate and partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil. The copper gluconate gives Retsyn a green color, and apparently helps to freshen the breath.

Down
1 COPSE: A copse is a small stand of trees.

2 ANITA: The Pointer Sisters started out in 1969 as a pair, June and Bonnie Pointer. They grew to a quartet when sisters Anita and Ruth joined the lineup. Bonnie left he group to go solo, and the Pointer Sisters achieved their greatest success as a trio.

3 TITER: Remember those titrations we did in the chemistry lab at school? They were to measure the concentration of solutions, known as the “titer”.

5 ANIL: Anil is another name for the indigo plant, as well as the name for the blue dye that is obtained from it. And that blue is relatively close to “navy” blue.


6 I SPY: In the game of I spy, one spots something, and the guessing starts.

7 REED: The English Horn is also known as the Cor Anglais, and is a double-reed woodwind instrument.

9 CAVS: The Cleveland Cavaliers are a professional basketball team.

11 NOSH: A nosh is a light snack, a term derived from Yiddish.

20 NEMESIS: Macduff eventually kills Macbeth, at the end of Shakespeare’s play.

24 LASSEN: Only two volcanoes in the Cascade range have erupted in the 20th century, Mount St. Helens in 1980, and Mount Lassen in 1915.

27 AMANDA: Carolyn Gold Heilbrun wrote her mystery novels under the pen name Amanda Cross. “Death in a Tenured Position” won the Nero Award in 1981.

39 PAPAL: The Papal States stretched across a large swath of Italy up to the 1800’s, and were territories under the direct control of the papacy. Nowadays the singular form, the Papal State is used to describe the Vatican City enclave within the city of Rome.

40 A HERO: William Makepeace Thackeray subtitled “Vanity Fair“… A Novel without a Hero … warning us that there are no unflawed characters in the story. I very much enjoyed the 2004 “Vanity Fair” movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

46 MLLE: An unmarried (or married) man is referred to as Monsieur (M.) in France, and an unmarried woman is Mademoiselle (Mlle.).

48 MOCS: Presumably moc is short for a moccasin shoe.