0316-10 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Mar 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, or leave a comment below.

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

COMPLETION TIME: 8m 18s
THEME: LOADED … the theme answers are all things that might be LOADED, i.e BOOZE HOUND, BEAST OF BURDEN, TRICK QUESTION, MACHINE GUN
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES
Across
5. Troop group: Abbr. : BSA
As every little boy knows, the Scouting movement was founded by Lord Baden Powell, in 1907. The Boy Scouts of America soon followed, in 1910.

12. Classic door-to-door marketer : AVON
In 1886, a young man called David McConnell, was selling books door-to-door. To enhance his sales numbers, he was giving out free perfume to the ladies of the houses he visited. Seeing as his perfume was more popular than his books, he founded the California Perfume Company in New York City, and started manufacturing and selling across the country. The company name was changed to Avon in 1939, and the infamous “Avon Calling” marketing campaign started in 1954.

15. Radames’s love, in opera : AIDA
“Aida” is the famous opera by Giuseppe Verde, actually based on a scenario written by a French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, who also designed the costumes and stages for the opening performance.  The opera opened in 1871, first playing in an opera house in Cairo. In the storyline, Aida is an Ethiopian princess brought into Egypt as a slave. Radames is an Egyptian commander that falls in love with her, and then, of course, complications arise!

21. Film bomb of 1987 : ISHTAR
I guess “Ishtar” did bomb, ’cause I’ve never heard of it. It stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman as lounge singers working in Morocco! There’s a Cold War plot, and thank goodness, it’s a comedy. It’s so bad apparently, that it never even made it to DVD.

25. Sch. with home games at Pauley Pavilion : UCLA
You remember H. R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s celebrated Chief of Staff? He headed the campaign to build a new sports arena on the UCLA campus. He raised almost a million dollars, as well as a million dollar matching sum from Edwin W. Pauley. Pauley was an oil man, and served as Regent to the University of California for many years.

27. Kwame ___, advocate of pan-Africanism and the first P.M. of Ghana : NKRUMAH
Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast into independence from British rule, under its new name as Ghana. He was leader of his country from 1952 to 1966, when he and his government was overthrown in a military coup (backed by the CIA). He went into exile in Guinea, never returning to Ghana.

33. Pronto : PDQ
Pretty Damn Quick!

35. Lucy of “Kill Bill” : LIU
Lucy Liu is an Asian-American actress, born in Queens, New York. Her big break came when she was chosen to play the Ling Woo character in “Ally McBeal“. I liked her in the 2000 film “Charlie’s Angels“, but as I am no fan of Quentin Tarantino, I did not enjoy “Kill Bill“.

47. Computer data acronym : ASCII
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) lists codes for 32 “control” characters, as well as the 95 printable characters. These binary codes are the way that our computers can understand what we mean when we type say a letter, or a number.

55. Soft white cheese : BRIE
Brie, the cheese, originated in the old French province of Brie, now known as the department of Seine-et-Marne. Interestingly (if you are into the French language) the province is known as la Brie (feminine noun) whereas the cheese is le Brie (masculine).

56. Program file-name extension : EXE
In the Windows Operating System, a file with the extension .exe is an “executable” file.

61. Poet laureate Dove : RITA
As well as being appointed to the position of Poet Laureate in 1993, American poet and author Rita Dove was the second African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

62. Ryan in Cooperstown : NOLAN
Nolan Ryan is famous for having more career strikeouts that any other pitcher. However, he also holds the record for the most career walks and wild pitches.

63. Newsman Roger : MUDD
After a career with CBS and NBC, Roger Mudd is today anchor for the History Channel. He is perhaps best known for his 1979 interview with Senator Edward Kennedy. Ted Kennedy’s lackluster responses to some of Mudd’s questions were cited as the reason support plummeted for his 1980 Presidential nomination.

65. The Cards, on scoreboards : STL
The St. Louis Cardinals were originally called the “Brown Stockings”, changing their name to the “Perfectos” in 1899. That obviously didn’t go down well with the locals, as they changed it one year later to the Cardinals.

Down
1. Disney fawn : BAMBI
The 1942 Disney classic “Bambi” is based on a book written by Felix Salten called “Bambi, A Life in the Woods”. There is a documented phenomenon known as the Bambi Effect, whereby people take an interest in animal rights, after having watched the scene where Bambi’s mother is shot by hunters.

5. ___ jumping : BUNGEE
The first Bungee jump using the modern latex cord was from the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, England. It was an illegal jump, with all five jumpers getting arrested soon after.

7. Ballantine product : ALE
Peter Ballantine was a Scotsman who moved to the United States, founding his brewery in in Newark, New Jersey in 1849. Ballantine was very successful in its day, the third largest brewery in the country in the fifties, when it was the television sponsor of the new York Yankees. However, sales eventually declined and it had to close its doors in the sixties. The brand names are now owned by the Pabst Brewing Company, and apparently the beer sold under the label today bears no resemblance to the beer made by the Scotsman. If you’re a fan of the TV show “Frasier” you will probably recall that Frasier’s Dad drank Ballantine beer all the time.

8. German design school founded in 1919 : BAUHAUS
The literal translation to the term “Bauhaus” is “House of Building”. It was a school (meaning education establishment) that operated from 1919 to 1933. It became famous for its approach to design across many disciplines, everything from art to typography.

11. Catherine ___, last wife of Henry VIII : PARR
Henry VIII was of course the English King with the most wives. Well, something rubbed off on his last wife, Catherine Parr. She was to become the most-married Queen. By the time she married Henry, she had been widowed twice, and after Henry died, she married once again.

14. “How many months have 28 days?,” e.g. : TRICK QUESTION
The correct answer to the trick question is of course, twelve.

20. Zest : GUSTO
The word “gusto” comes from the Latin word “gustus” meaning “taste”.

31. Hollywood or Sunset: Abbr. : BLVD
Hollywood Boulevard is home to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, with stars placed in the sidewalk. Sunset Boulevard crosses Hollywood Blvd at one end, and is 22 miles long. The most famous part of Sunset Boulevard is the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, much visited by the big names of the entertainment industry.

41. Expressionless : DEADPAN
The term deadpan, slang for an impassive expression, comes from dead (expressionless) and pan (slang for “face”).

44. Scala of “The Guns of Navarone” : GIA
Gia Scala’s most famous role was that of the mute resistance fighter in “The Guns of Navarone“. She was born in Liverpool, England, to an Irish mother and Italian father. She lived some years in Italy before moving to New York City. It’s probably good that she was a mute in “The Guns of Navarone” as who knows what her accent was like!

50. Water or rust : OXIDE
Yep, water is an oxide, of hydrogen. And rust is an oxide of iron.

53. Trompe l’___ : OEIL
Trompe l’oeil translates from French as “trick the eye”. Trompe l’oeil is the very realistic representation of a three-dimensional object or feature, even though it is painted on a two-dimensional surface, usually a wall or a ceiling.

54. Utah ski resort : ALTA
Alta ski resort actually lies within the Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area.

59. Cyclades island : IOS
The Cyclades are a Greek group of islands in Aegean lying southeast of the Greek mainland. There are about 200 islands in the group, almost all of which are the peaks of a submerged mountain range. Ios is one of the larger islands, 11 miles long and 6 miles wide.

60. ___, amas, amat … : AMO
I love, you love, he/she loves … in Latin.