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. 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. T
his is my solution to the crossword published in the New York Times today …
COMPLETION TIME: 7m 10s
THEME: Parting Words … all the theme answers are famous words of farewell from the world of entertainment
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0
TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES
Across
6. Number of Muses : NINE
In Greek mythology, the muses are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. The number of muses seems to be debated a lot, but the most popular view is that there are nine:
Calliope (epic poetry)
Clio (history)
Erato (lyric poetry)
Euterpe (music)
Melpomene (tragedy)
Polyhymnia (choral poetry)
Terpsichore (dance)
Thalia (comedy)
Urania (astronomy)
10. Best guesses: Abbr. : ESTS
Estimates might be “best guesses”.
14. Nary ___ (no one) : A SOUL
The adjective “nary” means “not one”.
15. Grandson of Adam : ENOS
Enos, as the son of Seth, was the grandson of Adam.
March Madness
17. Parting words from the Everly Brothers : BYE BYE LOVE
“Bye Bye Love” was published back in 1957, and was first recorded by the Everly Brothers, helping catapult them to stardom.
21. “___ Baba and the 40 Thieves” : ALI
“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” is a film released in 1944 directed by Arthur Lubin. It is very loosely based on the tale of Ali Baba from the book “One Thousand and One Nights”, a collection of Arabic stories compiled in what is termed the Islamic Golden Age (the 8th to 13th centuries AD). In English we often refer to the collection as “The Arabian Nights”.
“The Lone Ranger
28. Card game for two : ECARTE
Ecarte is a card game that comes to us from France, with a name that translates into ‘discarded”. It is a game like Whist, but is played with a stripped-down deck.
29. “Telephone Line” rock grp. : ELO
“Telephone Line” was released as a single in 1977, and hit the top ten listings on both sides of the Atlantic. ELO of course stands for the Electric Light Orchestra, a symphonic rock group from the north of England. Their manager was Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne (wife of Ozzy).
The British Royal family is a branch of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
34. Parting words from the Terminator : I’LL BE BACK
The 1984 movie “The Terminator” was directed by James Cameron. It was a relatively low budget production, costing $6.4 million. It has grossed around $80 million to date, so no wonder the Terminator “came back”.
38. Degs. for corporate types : MBAS
The Master of Business Administration originated in the United States, introduced in the late 19th century in response to accelerating industrialization.
Aer Lingus, may favorite airline! Well, the service isn’t great, to be honest, but when I get on board an Aer Lingus plane I feel like I am back in Ireland. Aer Lingus is the national airline of Ireland, with Aer Lingus being a phonetic spelling of the Irish “aer-loingeas” meaning “air fleet”. These days it can only lay claim to the title of Ireland’s oldest airline as it’s no longer the biggest. That honor goes to the controversial Ryan Air.
49. Parting words from the von Trapps : SO LONG, FAREWELL
“The Sound of Music” is a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, made into a celebrated movie in 1965 starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The musical is based on “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers”, a memoir by Maria von Trapp. The von Trapp family ended up in Stowe, Vermont after the war. One family descended from the Vermont von Trapps lives here in the same town in which I live in California.
56. Western Indian tribe : UTES
The Ute are a group of American Indian tribes that now reside in Utah and Colorado. The Ute were not a unified group as such, but rather a loose association of nomadic groups.
“The Apprentice
61. Halliwell of the Spice Girls : GERI
Geri Halliwell was called Ginger Spice because of her red hair when she was with the Spice Girls, although as she was quite a bit older than the rest of the group, she was less charitably sometimes referred to as “Old Spice”.
62. Claudia ___ Taylor (Lady Bird Johnson) : ALTA
Claudia Alta Taylor was named after her mother’s brother Claud. But, she had a nurse Alice Tittle who remarked that the little baby was as “purty as a ladybird”. A ladybird is what we call a ladybug on the other side of the Atlantic. So, the moniker Lady Bird stuck with the future First Lady, right from when she was a little one.
Akira Kurosawa
Down
3. Horace’s “Ars ___” : POETICA
The full name of Horace’s work is “Ars Poetica, Episula ad Pisones” (The Art of Poetry, Letters to Piso). The work describes the technical aspects of poetry in Ancient Rome, and so the term “ars poetica” has come to mean the poetry of the period.
10. W.W. II bomber ___ Gay : ENOLA
As we all know, the Enola Gay was the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. Enola Gay was the name of the mother of pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr.
Homer Jay Simpson is the father of the Simpson family, and voiced by Dan Castellaneta. Not a show that I watch …
12. Common house event before moving : TAG SALE
A tag sale is an alternative name for a garage sale.
25. Hershiser on the mound : OREL
Orel Hershiser is big into poker now that he has retired from Major League Baseball. He now lies in Las Vegas, and when he isn’t working for ESPN, he is apparently at the poker tables at least five times a week.
27. Isle of exile : ELBA
Napoleon was sent into exile twice. A coalition of European powers sent him to the island of Elba in Tuscany in 1814, only for him to escape after a year and return to power. Soon after Wellington defeated him at Waterloo, he was dispatched to the British-owned island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. I’ve visited Elba. I had envisioned it as a place full of history, and maybe it is, but it is overrun with tourists who use it as a beach getaway. I won’t be going back.
32. “___ the ramparts …” : O’ER
The words “o’er the rampart” come from “The Star Spangled Banner” written by Francis Scott Key. The lyrics were written first as a poem by Key, inspired by his witnessing of the bombarding by the British of the American forces at Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in September 1814. The words were then set to the tune of a popular British drinking song written by John Stafford Smith called “The Anacreontic Song”, with Anacreontic Society being a men’s club in London.
Fritz Lang was an Austrian-born American filmmaker. His masterpiece “Metropolis
38. Yiddish for “crazy” : MESHUGA
A new one to me …
43. North Star : POLARIS
Because the direction of the Earth’s axis moves, albeit very slowly, the position of North relative to the stars changes over time. The bright star that is closest to true north is Polaris, and so we call Polaris the pole star. 14,000 years ago, the nearest bright star to true north was Vega, and it will be so again in about 12,000 years time.
47. Mount where Noah landed : ARARAT
Mount Ararat is in Turkey, and according to the Book of Genesis it is where Noah’s ark “landed”. Ararat is a snow-capped dormant volcano, with two peaks. The higher of the two, Greater Ararat, is the tallest peak in Turkey. Ararat takes its name from a legendary Armenian hero called Ara the Beautiful (or Ara the Handsome).
Belgian artist Rene Magritte was a surrealist. His most recognized work maybe is “The Son of Man
60. ’50s prez : IKE
There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why President Eisenhower was called “Ike”. It is known however, that it goes back to his childhood, because that’s what his parents called him.