Day: January 27, 2010

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: N/A (watching a movie)
Theme: State Anagrams … e.g. TEXAS/TAXES, MAINE/ANIME
Answers I missed: 0

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES (all links go to Amazon.com) …
Across
1 B AND B: An intimate inn (in the US) is a bed & breakfast. A bed & breakfast back in Ireland is more basic, and usually cheaper than a hotel stay.

6 GROH: David Groh played Joe Gerard on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Rhoda“, during which his character married Rhoda.

14 IRENE: Irene Cara (as well as acting in “Fame”) sang the theme songs to both “Fame” and “Flashdance15 LOLA: Gwen Verdon played Lola in the 1958 movie “Damn Yankees“. The film was released as “What Lola Wants” in the UK, to avoid putting the word “Damn” on movie posters and cinema fronts.

16 MACE: Mug spray, spray for a mugger.

25 AUTOS: The LaSalle was made by GM, and the Hudson by the Hudson Motor Car Company, later absorbed into American Motors.

32 URLS: Internet addresses are Uniform Resource Locators.

33 TRU: Tru was written by Jay Presson Allen, and starred Robert Morse.

42 KNOW RYE, NEW YORK: There is a Rye City in Westchester County, and a separate Rye Town right next door.

45 ORATE: To be grandiloquent is to be bombastic or pompous. What a lovely word!

46 ZAHN: Paula Zahn resigned as an anchor with CNN in 2007. She is an accomplished cellist, and has played at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra.

54 MAINE ANIME: Anime is animation in the style of Japanese Manga comic books.

Down
8 OLE: Spanish bullfighting is corrida de toros literally “race of bulls”.

10 A MINOR: Fur Elise means simply “For Elise”, but sadly, no one knows who Elise was. It’s a beautiful piece of music by Beethoven, also known as Bagatelle in A Minor.

12 ACLU: The American Civil Liberties Union.

23 OTOS: The Oto tribe used to live at the mouth of the Platte River in Nebraska.

24 GAEA: The Greek goddess personifying the earth was Gaea (meaning “land” or “earth” in Greek). The Roman equivalent goddess was Terra Mater, “Mother Earth”.

26 DOREN: Charles Van Doren was a contestant on the fifties quiz show “Twenty One”, who admitted to receiving the answers to the questions from the show’s producers. The scandal was the basis of the 1994 movie “Quiz Show“.

38 ARAM: Aram Khachaturian was an Armenian-Russian composer, largely famous for extracts from some of his larger works, the most celebrated being the “Sabre Dance” from his ballet “Gayane“.

52 METS: Gil Hodges actually played most of his career for the Brooklyn and LA Dodgers.

55 ALE: The red triangle on the label of a bottle of Bass Ale was registered in 1875 and is UK Registered Trade Mark No: 00001.