Quicklinks:
Solution to today’s crossword in the New York Times
Solution to today’s SYNDICATED New York Times crossword in all other publications
CROSSWORD SETTER: Jeremy Newton
THEME: The C-Major Scale … the circled letters are notes, all correctly placed on a “stave”, and are the first notes of the most famous theme from the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. That’s the bit that’s sung, “Freude, schöner Götterfunken”. Also, there are theme answers that relate to the same piece of music:
16A. Composer of 20-Across : BEETHOVEN
20A. Work by 16-Across : ODE TO JOY
57A. How the circled letters of 20-Across are played : IN C-MAJOR
62A. Items you might play 20-Across on : PIANO KEYS
COMPLETION TIME: 6m 32s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0
Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
Mr. T’s real name is Laurence Tureaud. He is famous for many things, including wearing excessive amounts of jewelry. He started this habit when he was working as a bouncer, wearing jewelry items that had been left by customers at a night club, so that the items might be recognized and claimed. It was also as a bouncer that he adopted the name Mr. T. His catchphrase comes from the movie “Rocky III”. Before he goes up against Rocky Balboa, Mr. T says, “No, I don’t hate Balboa, but I pity the fool”. He parlayed the line into quite a bit of success. He had a reality TV show called “I Pity the Fool”, and produced a motivational video called “Be Somebody … or Be Somebody’s Fool!”.
The deltoid muscle is actually a group of muscles, the ones that cover the shoulder and create the roundness under the skin. The deltoid muscle is triangular in shape, resembling the Greek letter delta, hence the name.
Delta is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, and is equivalent to our Roman letter “D”. The upper case letter delta is a triangle, leading to the use of the word delta to describe things that are triangular in shape, such as a delta wing on an aircraft, and the river delta at the mouth of the Nile.
Mimi Rogers is a favorite actress of mine, although she hasn’t really had the starring roles in the big movies. Off screen she is famous for her association with her second husband, Tom Cruise, and it was Mimi who introduced Tom to Scientology. Mimi Rogers can also be seen playing a lot of so-called “celebrity poker”, and she is on the board of directors of the World Poker Tour.
14. Sioux adversary : OMAHA
The Omaha Nation was one of the most welcoming of the Native American tribes, never resisting the influx of European explorers and traders. They even fought alongside Union troops during the American Civil War, and have stood by the US people ever since. Regardless, the Omaha people lost most of their land, and now reside on the Omaha Reservation in northeastern Nebraska and western Iowa.
15. Blitzed : RAN AT
“Blitz”, as it is used in English, means a fast-moving and overwhelming attack It is a shortened version of the German word “blitzkrieg”. The blitzkrieg was a tactic used by the Germans running up to and during WWII. In the original German blitzkrieg, the army and air-force threw everything into a rapid penetration of enemy lines without stopping to reinforce its flanks. The word “blitz” means “lightning” (and “krieg” means “war”).
(20. Work by 16-Across : ODE TO JOY)
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 has to be one of the most recognizable pieces of music in the classical repertoire. “Ode to Joy”, based on the final movement of the work, is now the anthem of the European Union. If you’d like to see a fictional tale that explores Beethoven’s life at the time he was writing the Ninth Symphony, I highly recommend you take a look at the 2006 movie “Copying Beethoven
18. Annual athletic awards : ESPYS
The ESPY Awards are a creation of the ESPN sports television network. One difference with similarly named awards in the entertainment industry is that the winners are chosen solely based on viewer votes.
19. When Othello kills himself : ACT V
One of the most famous Moors in literature is Othello, the title character in William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello, the Moor of Venice”. The word “Moor” describes various peoples of North Africa, usually of the Muslim faith. At the height of their geographic influence, the Moors occupied much of the Iberian peninsula, calling it Al Andalus (from which modern Andalusia gets its name).
In Shakespeare’s play, Othello commits suicide in Act V, Scene II, rather then be taken into custody.
(16. Composer of 20-Across : BEETHOVEN)
“Ode to Joy” is a poem written in 1785 by German poet Friedrich Schiller. Ludwig van Beethoven gave the poem great notoriety when he used it in his Ninth “Choral” Symphony first performed in 1824.
27. Prod : EGG ON
The verb “edge” has been used to mean to incite, to urge on, from the 16th century. Somewhere along the way “edge” was mistakenly replaced with “egg”, giving us our term “egg on”.
“Living Still Life” (also sometimes called “Still Life – Fast Moving”) is a 1956 work by Salvador Dali. It is truly an example of surrealism, as it uses all the components of a traditional still life, items “resting” on a table, but Dali paints them all in motion, floating above the table’s surface.
I’ve had the privilege of visiting the Dali Museum in Figueres, just north of Barcelona. If you ever get the chance, it’s a must see.
29. Band with low numbers, in brief : VHF
I think that the reference here is to the fact that the Very High Frequency (VHF) band is actually at the low-end of practical use for broadcasting. But, I may be wrong …
The radio spectrum is divided up into bands based on frequency. So, a “high” band would be a band with relatively high frequencies. FM radio falls into the band called Very High Frequency, or VHF. AM radio uses lower frequencies, and so falls into the lower bands of Low, Medium and High Frequency (LF, MF, and HF). Television signals use frequencies even higher than VHF, the Ultra High Frequency band (UHF).
33. U.S.A.F. rank : LT COL
The rank of Lieutenant Colonel ranks above a major and below a colonel, in many armed services around the world.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is also known as “the Beeb”, a name given to the network by the great Peter Sellers on the classic British radio comedy called “The Goon Show”.
A “telly” is the what we’d call a television in the British Isles, as opposed to a “TV”.
Maureen Dowd is a celebrated columnist for “The New York Times” as well as a best-selling author. Dowd won a Pulitzer for her columns about the Monica Lewinski scandal.
47. Tendency for one’s mind to wander, for short : ADD
The “official” name for the condition we sometimes still refer to as “attention deficit disorder” (ADD) is “attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD).
51. Midsize bra features : C-CUPS
The word “brassière” is of course French in origin, but it isn’t the word the French use for a “bra”. In France what we call a bra is a “soutien-gorge”, translating to “held under the neck”. The word “brassière” is indeed used in France but there it describes a baby’s undershirt, a lifebelt or a harness. “Brassière” comes from the Old French word for an “arm protector” in a military uniform (“bras” is the French for “arm”). Later “brassière” came to mean “breast plate” and from there was used for a type of woman’s corset. The word jumped into English around 1900.
Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, changing his name to Muhammad Ali when he converted to Islam in 1964. Who can forget Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame for the 1996 games in Atlanta? Ali was presented with a gold medal during those ’96 Games, a replacement for the medal he won at the 1960 Olympics. He had thrown the original into the Ohio River as a gesture of disgust after being refused service at a “whites only” restaurant.
66. Rice-sized pastas : ORZOS
Orzo is pasta that has been formed into granular shapes, much like barley. And indeed, “orzo” is the Italian word for “barley”.
“Sloth”, meaning “indolence, sluggishness”, comes from the Middle English word “slowe”, the same root for our contemporary word “slow”. The animal, the sloth, is named for its slow-moving behavior.
Down
Gabrielle Reece is quite the athlete. She was on the team that won the first ever Beach Volleyball World Championship, in 1997. She is also a great golfer, and tried hard to make it onto the LPGA circuit.
3. Small biter in Niger : TSETSE FLY
Tsetse flies live on the blood of vertebrate mammals. The name “tsetse” comes from Tswana, a language of southern Africa, and translates simply as “fly”. Tsetse flies are famous for being carriers of the disease known as “sleeping sickness”. The disease is caused by a parasite which is passed on to humans when the tsetse fly bites into human skin tissue. If one considers all the diseases transmitted by the tsetse fly, then it is responsible for over a quarter of a million deaths each year.
The Republic of Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa that gets its name from the Niger River. 80% of the country lies within the bounds of the Sahara Desert.
“The Simpsons” is one of the most successful programs produced by the Fox Broadcasting Company. Homer Simpson’s catchphrase is “D’oh”, now such a famous exclamation that it has been included in the OED since 2001.
5. Rock music genre : EMO
The musical genre of “emo” originated in Washington D.C. in the 80s, and takes its name from “emotional hardcore”. Not my cup of tea …
6. John : LAV
The use of “john” as a slang term for a toilet is peculiar to North America. It probably comes from the older slang term of “jack” or “jakes” that has been around since the 16th century. In Ireland we still refer to a toilet as “the jacks”.
I think we all remember Telly Savalas playing the title role in the detective drama “Kojak”, but do we recall his performance in the 1962 “Birdman of Alcatraz”? Savalas played a supporting role opposite Burt Lancaster in that movie, earning himself an Oscar nomination. Another of his more significant roles was Pontius Pilate in the 1965 epic “The Greatest Story Ever Told”. Savalas had to shave his head to play Pilate, and he liked the look so much he remained bald for the rest of his life.
Masonite is a hardboard, invented in 1924 by William Mason who gave his name to the product. Masonite is used in anything from doors to the bodies of guitars.
10. Dressed for bed, briefly : IN PJS
Our word “pajamas” comes to us from the Indian subcontinent, where “pai jamahs” were loose fitting pants tied at the waist and worn at night by locals, and ultimately by the Europeans living there. And “pajamas” is another of those words that I had to learn to spell differently when I came to America. In the British Isles the spelling is “pyjamas”.
11. Month after abril : MAYO
In Spanish, mayo (May) comes before abril (April).
17. Rating for most episodes of “The Simpsons” : TVPG
“The Simpsons” television show is meant to be set in “anytown, USA”, so the creators chose the name Springfield as it is one of most common town and city names in the country.
Eva Marie Saint is an American actress, who won the Best Supporting Actress for playing Edie Doyle in the 1954 movie “On the Waterfront”. My favorite of her movies is the 1959 Hitchcock classic, “North by Northwest”, in which she starred opposite Cary Grant. Eva Marie ratcheted back her career at its height, right after her success in “North by Northwest”. She opted instead to spend more time with her husband and children, taking very few roles. That marriage is still going strong, and she has two children and three grandchildren.
30. Every other hurricane : HER
Hurricanes are given names primarily to help the public keep track of dangerous systems. The names are decided ahead of the hurricane season, with the first system given a name beginning with A, the second, B etc. The names are alternated from male to female throughout the season. Also, if the first storm of the season is given a male name, then the following year a female name is chosen. For hurricanes in the North Atlantic, names are assigned for every letter, except Q, U, X, Y and Z.
36. Trip producer : LSD
LSD is short for LySergic acid Diethylamide. A Swiss chemist called Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 in a research project looking for medically efficacious ergot alkaloids. But it wasn’t until some five years later, when Hofmann ingested some of the drug accidentally, that its psychedelic properties were discovered. That is so trippy, man …
38. Order to Rex : SIC ‘EM, BOY
Sic ’em is an attack order given to a dog, instructing the animal to growl, bark or even bite. The term dates back to the 1830s, with “sic” being a variation of “seek”.
41. Feminine org. since the 1850s : YWCA
The Young Women’s Christian Association was founded in the late 1800s about 50 years after the YMCA, although the two organizations have always been independent of each other. Having said that, some local YWCA and YMCA organizations have amalgamated and often share facilities. Like the YMCA, the YWCA movement has its roots in England, but its headquarters is now in Geneva, Switzerland. It is quite the organization, the largest women’s group in the whole world.
“Eazy-duz-It” is the first album released by rapper Eazy-E.
Eazy-E was the stage name of rapper Eric Lynn Wright. Eazy-E had a pretty liberal lifestyle, fathering seven children to six different women. In 1995 he died due to complications from AIDS. He was only 32 years old.
49. Small, medium or large: Abbr. : ADJ
Small, medium and large are all adjectives.
53. Dirt, slangily : SCUZZ
The slang term “scuzz”, meaning dirt or grime, is possibly a melding of the words “scum” and “fuzz”.
The boxer, Mike Tyson said some pretty graphic things about his opponents, for example:
– About Lennox Lewis, “My main objective is to be professional but to kill him.”
– About Razor Ruddock, “I’m gonna make you my girlfriend.”
– About Tyrell Biggs, “He was screaming like my wife.”
57. Fox hit since 2002, informally : IDOL
“American Idol” is a spin-off show, created after the amazing success of the British television show “Pop Idol”. I can’t stand the program …
Nora Ephron has many talents, including writing film scripts and novels. Many of the movies that she writes, she also directs. These would include some of my favorites of all time like “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You’ve Got Mail” and most recently, the wonderful “Julie & Julia”. And, did you know that Nora Ephron’s second marriage was to journalist Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame?
63. ___ king : A LA
A dish prepared “a la king” (usually chicken or turkey), is food prepared in a cream sauce, with mushrooms, pimentos, green peppers and sherry.
64. Ho Chi Minh Trail locale, for short : ‘NAM
The Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn’t just one trail, but rather a whole maze of routes that ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, through the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. Practically the entire trail was hidden from the air using natural and man-made camouflage that was constantly maintained.
For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Actor whose original name was Laurence Tureaud : MR T
4. Some muscles or sorority women, informally : DELTS
9. Actress Rogers : MIMI
13. Green light : YES
14. Sioux adversary : OMAHA
15. Blitzed : RAN AT
16. Composer of 20-Across : BEETHOVEN
18. Annual athletic awards : ESPYS
19. When Othello kills himself : ACT V
20. Work by 16-Across : ODE TO JOY
22. Can’t stomach : DESPISE
26. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, etc. : EVENS
27. Prod : EGG ON
28. “Still Life – Fast Moving” artist : DALI
29. Band with low numbers, in brief : VHF
31. ___ use (worthless) : OF NO
33. U.S.A.F. rank : LT COL
37. They’re difficult to grasp : EELS
39. What to watch the Beeb on : TELLY
42. Alarmed squeals : EEKS
43. “Here, have one” : TRY IT
45. Pulitzer winner Maureen : DOWD
47. Tendency for one’s mind to wander, for short : ADD
48. Learn fast, maybe : CRAM
51. Midsize bra features : C-CUPS
53. Dilapidated : SEEDY
54. Least clear, as a memory : HAZIEST
57. How the circled letters of 20-Across are played : IN C-MAJOR
60. Ali, before he was Ali : CLAY
61. “No ___!” (“Of course!”) : DOUBT
62. Items you might play 20-Across on : PIANO KEYS
66. Rice-sized pastas : ORZOS
67. Acquired relative : IN-LAW
68. “___ ’nuff!” : SHO
69. Slothful : LAZY
70. Best competitive effort, informally : A-GAME
71. Do something wrong : SIN
Down
1. “Whoops!” : MY BAD
2. Volleyball champion/model Gabrielle : REECE
3. Small biter in Niger : TSETSE FLY
4. “I am an idiot!” : D’OH
5. Rock music genre : EMO
6. John : LAV
7. TV’s Kojak : THEO
8. Smoothed, as wood : SANDED
9. Composite board material : MASONITE
10. Dressed for bed, briefly : IN PJS
11. Month after abril : MAYO
12. Not big at all, informally : ITSY
15. Share again, as a story : RETELL
17. Rating for most episodes of “The Simpsons” : TVPG
21. Actress ___ Marie Saint : EVA
23. “Where did ___ wrong?” : I GO
24. Downy : SOFT
25. -trix alternative : -ENNE
29. Dog doc : VET
30. Every other hurricane : HER
32. So last year : OLD
34. Unending : CEASELESS
35. Green-lit : OK’D
36. Trip producer : LSD
38. Order to Rex : SIC ‘EM, BOY
40. Fishing spot for Scots : LOCH
41. Feminine org. since the 1850s : YWCA
44. Dog biscuits, e.g. : TREATS
46. “Eazy-___-It” (double-platinum album by Eazy-E) : DUZ
49. Small, medium or large: Abbr. : ADJ
50. Shortsightedness : MYOPIA
52. Horse on a ticket : PICK
53. Dirt, slangily : SCUZZ
55. Give a greeting : SAY HI
56. He said about an opponent “My main objective is to be professional but to kill him” : TYSON
57. Fox hit since 2002, informally : IDOL
58. Writer Ephron : NORA
59. Circus or wedding staple : RING
63. ___ king : A LA
64. Ho Chi Minh Trail locale, for short : ‘NAM
65. Have bills : OWE