0318-10 New York Times Crossword Answers 18 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: N/A (watching “The Quiet Man” for Paddy’s Day!)
THEME: EIGHT(H) NOTES … the theme squares make up the do-re-me scale of EIGHT NOTES, and visually make up a pair of EIGHTH NOTES
ANSWERS I MISSED: 2 … ISADORE (ISATORE), IDE (ITE)

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES
Across
15. Middle name of Sen. Joe Lieberman : ISADORE
I tried to find out why Joe Lieberman has the name Isadore, but couldn’t come up with anything. If anyone knows, I’d apprecite hearing about it. Unusual name for a guy!

16. Resting place for the deceased : MAUSOLEUM
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was the grave of King Mausolus of Persia, known as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. This gave us our modern word “mausoleum”: a building containing a burial chamber. The most famous mausoleum in the world has to be the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.

19. Red ___ (sushi order) : TAI
Tai is the Japanese name for sea bream.

21. Reference abbr. : ET AL.
Et alii is the equivalent of et cetera, with et cetera being used in place of a list of objects, and et alii used for a list of names.

22. Ming’s 7’6″ and Bryant’s 6’6″, e.g.: Abbr. : HGTS
Yao Ming, at 7’6″ is the tallest man playing in the NBA. Kobe Bryant is just a wee lad, but I hear he is pretty good at basketball …

26. D.O.E. part: Abbr. : ENER
In this case the DOE is the Department of Energy.

30. Tiberius’ “to be” : ESSE
Tiberius was the second Emperor of Rome, succeeding Augustus (himself the adopted son of Julius Caesar).

32. Last test before starting some advanced deg. programs : GRE
Passing the Graduate Record Examination is usually a requirement for entry into graduate school here in the US.

33. Request of a frog in a fairy tale : KISS
It’s only in the modern version of “The Frog Prince“, a fairy tale written down by the Brothers Grimm, that the frog turns into a prince with a kiss. Earlier versions have him changing when he thrown against a wall, or when he spends a night on the princess’s pillow.

38. [Refer to blurb] : EIGHTH NOTES
Outside of America, an eighth note is called a quaver, being held for one eighth of the duration of a whole note (or semibreve to us Europeans).

40. Last name in ice cream : EDY
Dreyer’s ice cream sells it’s products under the name Dreyers in Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states.

42. Laborer’s suffix : IER
For example, farrier, glazier.

45. Double-bladed ___ II razor : TRAC
Gillette introduced the Trac II in 1971, the world’s first twin-blade razor.

51. Doily material : LACE
There was a draper in London in the seventeenth century called Doiley, and he gave his name to fabric that he sold, which in turn gave its name to the ornamental mats we call doilies. I can’t stand them!

59. Latin motto “Ars ___ artis” : GRATIA
It seems that the phrase “art for art’s sake” has its origins in France in the nineteenth century, where the slogan is expressed as “l’art pour l’art”. The Latin version came much later, in 1924, when MGM’s publicist chose it for the studio’s logo, sitting under Leo the lion. Who’d o’ thunk it?

61. Tilly of Tinseltown : MEG
Both Meg Tilly and her sister Jennifer are actresses. Meg has been unlucky in her career in some respects. She started out as a dancer, but had to give it up due to a serious accident. As an actress she was cast in the plum role of Constanze Mozart in “Amadeus”, but had to drop out from the role when she hurt her leg playing soccer with some local children during shooting of the film. Meg Tilly has given up acting, in favor of writing books.

65. Renaissance cradle city : FLORENCE
It is generally accepted that the Renaissance started in Florence in the 14th century, earning it the title of “Cradle of the Renaissance“.

66. Resident of the Winter Palace before 1917 : TSARINA
The Winter Palace is a magnificent building in St. Petersburg in Russia, home to the Russian tsars (and tsarinas). It houses the famous Hermitage Museum.

67. Last-column element on the periodic table : RARE GAS
The rare gases are better known as the noble gases, but neither term is really very accurate. Noble gas might be a better choice though, as they are all relatively nonreactive. But rare they are not. Argon, for example, is a major constituent of the air that we breathe.

Down
1. Rémy Martin units : FIFTHS
A fifth is so called as it is approximately one fifth of a US gallon. In China, the name Remy Martin is not used, but rather the more colorful “man-headed horse”, describing the centaur logo on the bottle.

2. Lasagna cheese, sometimes : ASIAGO
Asiago is a region in northeastern Italy, famous for its Asiago cheese. Lasagna was originally the name of a cooking pot, but came to mean a dish that was cooked in it. Lasagna was also used as the name of the flat noodle used in the dish. If you order lasagna on the other side of the Atlantic, you’ll notice the “lasagne” spelling, the pural of “lasagna”, used as there are more than one layers of the pasta in the dish.

3. Late New York senator Jacob : JAVITS
Jack Javits was trained as a lawyer before going into politics. He put his career on hold during WWII, even though he was too old for front-line service. Instead he served in the army’s Chemical Warfare Department, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel by the end of the war.

4. Lanthan- suffix : IDE
The element lanthanum (at. no. 57) gives it name to the lanthanide series of elements (at. nos. 58-71).

5. Michael’s sister La ___ : TOYA
When the La Toya Jackson’s mother, Katherine, became a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, La Toya and her brother, Michael, used to spend many mornings working door-to-door preaching, spreading the word of Jehovah.

6. Mideast peace conference attendee, 1993 : ARAFAT
The Oslo Accords grew out of secret negotiations between high level PLO and Israeli delegates in a residence in Oslo. The teams shared the same house while they conducted 14 meetings, and while eating all their meals together at the same table, the negotiators came to respect one another, and apparently friendships developed. Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the resulting accord in the presence of President Bill Clinton.

9. Refusal for Rob Roy : NAE
Rob Roy’s full name was Robert Roy McGregor, itself an Anglicization of the Scottish Raibeart Ruadh.

10. Millet’s moon : LUNE
The reference is, I think, to Jean-Francois Millet, the French painter. “Lune” is the French word for “moon”.

13. Mister Belvedere and others : BUTLERS
“Mr. Belvedere” ran on ABC from 1985 to 1990. The television show was based on the novel “Belvedere” by Gwen Davenport, published in 1947. There was also a film released in 1948 based on the same book, called “Sitting Pretty“, starring Robert Young and Maureen O’Hara (who is brilliant in “The Quiet Man” that I am watching here).

14. Record of 1947 “Peg ___ Heart” : O’ MY
The song “Peg O’ My Heart” appeared in the 1913 musical “Ziegfield Follies“. The 1947 version referred to in the clue is by the Harmonicats, who had the most successful recording, that made the number spot in the charts that year.

23. “Reginald” writer : SAKI
Hector Hugh Munro was a British writer, actually born in Burma. He was most famous for his short stories, which he published using the pen name “Saki”. Many of his short stories featured characters Reginald and Clovis, with Reginald featuring in many of the titles.

34. Fashionista ___ Moon Zombie : SHERI
Sheri Moon Zombie (what a name!) was born Sheri Lyn Skurkis, but changed her named to Sheri Moon. She picked up the Zombie when she married Rob Zombie (originally Robert Cummings). As a fashion designer, she is known for her “Total Skull” clothing line. I don’t have any “Total Skull” clothes …

39. Fatal virus : EBOLA
The Ebola virus causes a very nasty form of hemorrhagic fever. The name comes from the site of the first known outbreak of the disease, in a mission hospital in the Ebola River Valley in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

48. “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” was published in this year : MCMIII
“Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” is a children’s novel published in 1903, and written by Kate Douglas Wiggin. Wiggin wrote a sequel, and then years later her great nephew, Eric Wiggin, wrote several contemporary versions of the Rebecca novels.

54. Repeat New York City Marathon winner Grete ___ : WAITZ
Grete Weitz is the most successful runner of the New York City marathon, winning nine times in the ten years between 1978 and 1988. Grete is a Norwegian, from Oslo, and understandably a national icon.

55. Lazy : OTIOSE
Otiose comes from the Latin word “otium”, meaing “leisure”.

60. Miscellanies : ANAS
An ana (or plural anas) is a collection, including literature, that represent the character of a particular place or a person.