Day: August 9, 2010

Announcement
I am test driving a new feature at the bottom of each post. There you will find a selection of clips/trailers from movies and TV shows mentioned in today’s crossword. If folks find the feature useful/entertaining, I will continue to include it … Bill.

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.

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

COMPLETION TIME: 9m 56s
THEME: BITE, CHEW, SWALLOW and DIGEST … these words about eating start the theme answers i.e. BITE THE BULLET, CHEW THE SCENERY, SWALLOW THE BAIT, DIGEST THE NEWS
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

TODAY’S WIKI-EST, AMAZONIAN GOOGLIES
Across
5. “Hannah Montana” star Miley : CYRUS
Miley Cyrus is 17 years old now, and became famous playing the Disney Channel character “Hannah Montana”. She is of course the daughter of country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. When she was born, Billy Ray and his wife named Miley “Destiny Hope”, but then she became known as “Smiley” as she was always smiling as a baby, and this got shortened to Miley over time. Cute …

10. Height: Prefix : ACRO
Our prefix “acro-” comes from the Greek “akros” meaning “at the top”.

14. Roman tyrant : NERO
The emperor Nero had quite the family life. When he was just 16-years-old he married his stepsister, Claudia Octavia. He also had his mother and stepbrother executed .

16. ___ the line (obeyed) : TOED
The origins of the phrase “toe the line” are disputed, it appears. My favorite explanation is that in the days of yore in the British Navy, barefooted seaman would have to appear for inspection, with there toes all lined up along “the line” of one of the planks on the deck.

19. Any volume of the Oxford English Dictionary : TOME
The “Oxford English Dictionary” contains over 300,000 “main” entries, and 59 million words in total. It is said it would take a single person 120 years to type it out in full. The longest entry for a single word is that for “put”.

20. Accept an inevitable hardship : BITE THE BULLET
The term “bite the bullet” is military slang dating back to the 1700s. Its origins lie in the custom of having a patient bite a bullet during surgery in order to quell some of the screams!

23. Source of after-hours $$$ : ATM
After normal banking hours one can still get some cash out of the Automated Teller Machine.

25. Giants great Mel : OTT
I don’t think Mel Ott took steroids! At 5′ 9″ he weighed just 170 lb.. Yet he was the first National League player to hit over 500 home runs. Ott died in a car accident in New Orleans in 1958, at age 49 years.

27. Ham it up : CHEW THE SCENERY
The phrase “chew the scenery” means to overact, to play the part with too much emphasis or emotion.

34. Boozehounds : SOTS
Our word “sot” comes from the Old English words “sott”, meaning a fool. The word “sot” started to be associated with alcohol and not just foolery in the late 1500s.

35. Poet Pound and others : EZRAS
Ezra Pound was an American poet who spent much of his life wandering the world, spending years in each of London, Paris, and Italy. In Italy, his work and sympathies for Mussolini’s regime led to his arrest at the end of the war. His major work was the epic, albeit incomplete “The Cantos”. The poem is divided into 120 sections, each known as a canto.

37. Emcee’s spot : DAIS
Emcee: meaning “MC”, the Master (or Mistress) of Ceremonies.

41. Succulent houseplant : ALOE
Aloe vera is a succulent plant that grows in relatively dry climates. The plants leaves are full of biologically active compounds that have been extensively studied. Regardless of the studies, aloe vera has been used for centuries in herbal medicine, mainly for topical treatment of wounds.

43. Fall for a flimflam : SWALLOW THE BAIT
Flim-flam is another word for a confidence trick. The term has been in use since the 1500s, would you believe?

48. Site of many Chicago touchdowns : O’HARE
O’Hare International is the fourth busiest airport in the world. The original airport was constructed on the site between 1942 an 1943, and was used by the Douglas Aircraft Company for the manufacture of planes during WWII. Before the factory and airport were built there was a community in the area called Orchard Place, so the airport was called Orchard (OR) Place Airport/Douglas (D) Field. This name is the derivation of the airport’s current location identifier: ORD.

51. Understand what’s happening : DIGEST THE NEWS

58. Burden : ONUS
“Onus” is the Latin word for “burden”.

61. ___ Reader (alternative magazine) : UTNE
The “Utne Reader” is known for aggregation and republication of articles on politics, culture and the environment from other alternative sources of media. It was founded in 1984, with “Utne” being the family name of the couple that started publication.

62. Davy Crockett died defending it, with “the” : ALAMO
The Battle of the Alamo took place in 1836 after thirteen days of siege by the Mexican Army led by President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Only two people defending the Alamo Mission survived the onslaught. One month later, the Texian army got its revenge by attacking and defeating the Mexican Army in the Battle of San Jacinto. During the surprise attack on Santa Ana’s camp, many of Texian soldiers were heard to cry “Remember the Alamo!”.

Down
2. ___ Aviv : TEL
The full name of Israel’s second largest city is Tel Aviv-Yafo. Tel Aviv translates into “Spring Mound”, a name chosen in 1910.

4. Indian doll maker : HOPI
The Hopi nation live on a reservation that actually resides within the much larger Navajo reservation, in Arizona.

5. “The Iceman ___” : COMETH
“The Iceman Cometh” is a play written by American playwright Eugene O’Neill, first performed in 1946, in Broadway. The play centers on some down and out men in a shabby saloon in Manhattan. The title is a reference to the “ice man”, the man who would have delivered ice to homes back in the time of the play. The reference is to a bawdy joke is that the “ice man” was having an affair with someone’s wife.

6. Actress Mimieux of “The Time Machine” : YVETTE
Yvette Mimieux is an American actress, born to a French father and Mexican mother. She had a lot of initial success in Hollywood, in the early sixties, but was never able to regain the same level of celebrity in later years. Her most famous role was that of Weena, opposite Rod Taylor in the excellent 1960 film “The Time Machine”.

7. Babe with a bat : RUTH
Jack Dunn was the owner/manager of the Baltimore Orioles back in 1913, when he signed on George Herman Ruth as a pitcher. The other players called Ruth “Jack’s newest babe”, and the name stuck.

8. Beekeeper in a 1997 film : ULEE
“Ulee’s Gold” is a highly respected film from 1997, in which Peter Fonda plays the title role of Ulee. Ulee’s “gold” is the honey that Ulee produced. It is a favorite role for Peter Fonda, and he has shared that the role brought into mind his father, Henry Fonda, who himself kept a couple of hives. So if you see Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold”, you’re witnessing some characteristics that Peter saw in his father.

9. Many a Bosnian : SERB
Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of six federal units in former Yugoslavia, and gained its independence after the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. There are three main ethnic groups in the country. The largest group is Bosniaks, the second is the Bosnian Serbs, and the third is the Bosnian Croats.

10. Churchill’s predecessor and successor : ATTLEE
Clement Attlee served was leader of Britain’s Labour Party and served as Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government during the war years under the leadership of Winston Churchill, a Conservative. Attlee swept into power right after WWII in a landslide victory over Churchill, and was responsible for major changes not only Britain but around the waning British Empire. It was under Attlee that former British colonies like India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka and Jordan became independent. Also, the Palestine Mandate was terminated in 1948, and the state of Israel was formally created the very next day.

11. Hoosegow : COOLER
“Hoosegow” (and “the cooler”) is a slang term for “jail”. It is a mispronunciation of the Mexican Spanish word “juzgao” meaning “court” or “tribunal”.

13. Clifford ___, “Awake and Sing!” dramatist : ODETS
The first play that American playwright Clifford Odets had produced, was “Waiting for Lefty” in 1935. However, the first play he wrote was actually “Awake and Sing!“, which was produced soon after “Waiting for Lefty”, and many consider it to be his masterpiece.

24. “Comin’ ___ the Rye” : THRO
“Comin’ Thro the Rye” was the first novel of Ellen Buckingham Mathews, written under one of her pen names, Helen Mathers, and published in 1875. Mathews was a popular English novelist in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

28. Vocabulary: Abbr. : WDS
One has a vocabulary of words (wds).

30. “Alias” org. : CIA
“Alias” is a TV show that was aired from 2001 to 2006, and starred Jennifer Garner as a CIA agent. Much as I love Jennifer Garner as an actress, I never saw the show …

31. Warrant officer’s superior: Abbr. : ENS
An ensign is the most junior rank of commissioned officer (usually) in many armed forces. The name comes from the tradition that the junior officer would be given the task of carrying the ensign flag.

36. Dr. Seuss’ “If I Ran the ___” : ZOO
“If I Ran the Zoo” is a book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1950. Apparently this book is famous for using the word “nerd”, the first time it had been seen in print.

Dr. Seuss’s real name was Theodore Seuss Geisel. Dr. Seuss is simply a pen name.

37. Society girl, for short : DEB
Deb is short for “debutante”.

38. “Delta of Venus” author : ANAIS NIN
Anais Nin was a French writer, famous for her journals that she wrote for over sixty years from the age of 11 right up to her death. She also wrote highly regarded erotica, and cited D. H. Lawrence as one author from whom she drew inspiration.

39. What the white of an eye surrounds : IRIS
The iris is the colored part of the eye, which has an aperture in the center that can open or close depending on the level of light hitting the eye.

40. Actor Rogen of “Knocked Up” : SETH
Seth Rogen is a Canadian comedian, who got a lot of credit for his supporting role in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”. That led to him being cast as the lead in the 1970 film “Knocked Up“. I am afraid that I have seen neither movie …

42. Richard of “Chicago” : GERE
I find Richard Gere to be a most interesting character off the screen, and someone who has played such great roles on the screen. Gere has been studying Buddhism since 1978, and is a very visible supporter of the Dalai Lama and the people of Tibet.

43. Japanese for “the way of the gods” : SHINTO
It might perhaps be best not to describe Shinto as a religion, but more as a spirituality of the Japanese people that encompasses folklore, history and mythology. Having said that, “Shinto” translates literally as “Way of the Gods”. Most people in Japan described as practicing Shinto, also practice Buddhism.

44. Conestogas, e.g. : WAGONS
A Conestoga wagon is a large, covered wagon that was used in many of the wagon trains that crossed North America in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The name was taken from the Conestoga Valley near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where the design was developed. The Conestoga wagon resembled a boat on wheels, and often the gaps between the planks were caulked so that it would float when crossing water.


45. Craggy mountain ridges : ARETES
An arete is ridge of rock forming the border between to parallel valleys that have been formed by glaciation. If this ridge is rounded, it is called a “col”. However, if it is “sharpened”, with rock falling way with successive freezing and thawing, then it is called an “arete”. Arete is the French word for “fishbone”.

46. “___ & Louise,” 1991 film : THELMA
“Thelma & Louise” is a thought-provoking movie, but one that is very entertaining. It was directed by Ridley Scott in 1991, and stars two fabulous leads in Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon. You’ll also spot Brad Pitt in there as well, in his first significant role in a movie.

47. Jim who created Kermit the Frog : HENSON
Jim Henson may have been the most famous puppeteer in history given the success of his creation, “The Muppets”. Sadly, Henson died unexpected in 1990 at the age of 53. He had two memorial services, one in New York City, and one in London. Both services were joyous occasions that featured many appearances by his most famous puppets.

59. Wire service inits. : UPI
United Press International was one of the biggest news agencies in the world, sending out news by wire to the major newspapers. It ran foul of the change in media formats at the end of the last century, and lost many of its clients as the afternoon newspapers shut down due to the advent of television news. UPI, which once employed thousands of people, still exists but with only a handful of employees.

Movies and TV shows from today’s crossword
Just select a title, and press the “play” button …
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