0407-12: New York Times Crossword Answers 7 Apr 12, Saturday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
15. What a telemarketer often hears before a click : I’M NOT INTERESTED
What telemarketers hear in this house before the click is “Can you please put me on your Do Not Call List?”

18. Three in a match, maybe : SETS
There might be three sets in a tennis match, say.

19. Covent Garden area : WEST END
The West End of London is part of the central area of the city that contains many tourist attractions and in particular a large number of theaters. The West End of London is also home to the most expensive office space in the world.

Covent Garden in London’s West End is associated with the Royal Opera House that is located in the area, and with the former fruit and vegetable market that used to sit right at the center of the district. The name “Covent Garden” comes from the fact that there once was a walled garden in the area owned by the Benedictine Monks of the Abbey of St. Peter in Westminster. The abbey rented out the walled garden calling it “Convent Garden”, and this morphed into the area’s current name.

32. Back 40? : LASHES
The term “40 lashes” comes from a traditional punishment that was meted out by an assembly of judges in the Biblical Land of Israel. It seems that although the sentence called for 40 lashes, in practice only 39 strokes were administered.

37. The Cherokee deemed it good training for war : LACROSSE
Even though lacrosse was dropped from the Olympics after the 1908 games, it is currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity outside of North America.

39. Like Lennon/McCartney songs : COWRITTEN
John Lennon and Paul McCartney made an agreement before they became famous that they would always give joint credit for their songs. In the early days, the duo wrote their songs together, working alongside each other. Soon they would write songs individually, with one giving the other limited input. Regardless, the Lennon-McCartney attribution was used for all the songs they wrote either individually or together right up to 1974. The partnership was officially dissolved in December 1974, in the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World, Florida. There John Lennon put his signature to official documents couriered to him by Apple’s lawyers (Apple being the Beatles record label).

40. Checked the meter? : SCANNED
The meter of a poem is its rhythmic structure.

53. Scottie : ABERDEEN TERRIER
Aberdeen Terrier is another name for the Scottish Terrier, commonly referred to as the Scottie. One of the most famous Scotties in American history was Fala, the much-loved dog belonging to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Also, the Scottie is famous as one of the playing pieces in the original game of Monopoly.

55. Site of the first British colony in the Caribbean, 1624 : ST KITTS
Saint Kitts is the more familiar name for Saint Christopher Island, part of the West Indies. Saint Kitts, along with the neighboring island of Nevis, is part of the country known as the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Saint Kitts has had a troubled history, with the Spanish, British and French all vying for control of the island. Most of the population today is descended from slaves brought onto Saint Kitts to farm tobacco and then sugar cane. Most of the slaves were from Africa, although Irish and Scottish slaves were also used.

Down
1. Leap-the-___ (world’s oldest operating roller coaster) : DIPS
Leap-The-Dips is the world’s oldest operating wooden roller coaster, and you can ride it at Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The coaster opened for service in 1902, and was reopened in 1999 after being restored. It’s a pretty tame ride though, as the cars only travel at an average speed of 10 mph.

2. Hungary’s ___ Nagy : IMRE
Imre Nagy was twice Prime Minister of Hungary. He was ahead of his time, I think. His second term as Prime Minister came during the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in October 1956. The Soviet’s invaded of course, and arrested Nagy. He was tried in secret, sentenced to death and hanged.

4. Huge-taloned menaces : ROCS
The mythical roc is a huge bird of prey, reputedly able to carry off and eat elephants.

6. Parmesan pronoun : MIO
I guess Parmesan is meant to be the adjective “from Parma”. Parma is a city in northern Italy, famous for its ham and cheese.

8. Heroic son of Prince Anchises : AENEAS
“The Aeneid” is Virgil’s epic poem that tells of the journey of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy to become the ancestor of all Romans.

11. He got a tennis scholarship from U.C.L.A. : ASHE
Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979 Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

12. Old bomber : B-TEN
The Martin B-10 bomber entered service in 1934. It was the first bomber to have retractable landing gear, an internal bomb bay and a powered gun turret. It was built for speed and was 50% faster than its predecessor biplane bombers, and at the time of its introduction, the B-10 was so fast it could outpace any fighter in the air.

13. Fat part : LEAD
I guess the idea is that a “fat” (juicy, meaty) part in a play or movie is the “lead” role.

14. Reds great Roush : EDD
Edd Roush was a big hitter who played Major League Baseball, starting in 1913 for the Chicago White Sox. He jumped ship to the Federal League in 1914, a league set up to compete with the already well-established National and American Leagues. The upstart league only lasted a couple of seasons. When Edd Roush passed away in 1988 at the age of 94, he was the last surviving player from the short-lived Federal League.

16. Traitors’ Gate locale : TOWER OF LONDON
The spectacular castle called the Tower of London sits right on the north bank of the River Thames in the center of London. The Tower dates back to the years just following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The victorious William the Conqueror built the Tower’s central keep (called the White Tower) in 1078. The Tower of London has been used for many purposes over the centuries, as a residence, a prison, and was even home to the Royal Mint. Famously it houses the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, and has done so since 1303.

The Traitor’s Gate is the name given to a water gate entrance to the Tower of London, a means of access into the Tower from the River Thames. The gate was originally built simply as an extra means of access for the royal family, at the order of King Edward I (1239-1307). From the early 1600s the gate became the traditional entrance for prisoners being brought to the Tower, giving the gate the name that is used today.

20. Present : NONCE
The quaint phrase “for the nonce” means “for the present”, “for now”.

22. 1930s film dog : TOTO
In movie “The Wizard of Oz” Toto is played by a terrier, but in the books by L. Frank Baum, Toto was just described as “a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny wee nose”.

24. “___ signo vinces” (Constantine I’s motto) : IN HOC
“In hoc signo vinces” is the Latin for “in this sign you will conquer”. The original phrase was Greek, and it was adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great as his motto.

Constantine the Great (aka Constantine I and St. Constantine) was Emperor of Rome from 306 to 337. Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, and along with co-Emperor Licinius he proclaimed religious tolerance throughout the Roman Empire. It was Constantine who gave his name to the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Also, the famous Arch of Constantine in Rome was built to commemorate one of Constantine’s military victories. This arch that was the model for many famous arches around the world including the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Marble Arch in London, and the arch in the main facade of Union Station in Washington, DC.

26. Two are often put in : CENTS
If I could put in my two cents …

27. “My Fair Lady” setting : ASCOT
Ascot Racecourse is used for thoroughbred horse racing, and is located in the town of Ascot, Berkshire in England. The course is located just six miles from Windsor Castle, and is often visited by members of the royal family. Royal Ascot is the name given to the most famous race meeting in the year, at which members of the royal family attend each day, arriving in horse-drawn carriages amidst great ceremony.

Eliza Doolittle is Professor Henry Higgins’s speech student in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”. Of course “Pygmalion” was adapted by Lerner and Loewe to become the Broadway musical “My Fair Lady”. The musical spun off the wonderful 1964 film of the same name, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. To cockney Eliza Doolittle, Professor Henry Higgins was ‘Enry ‘Iggins.

29. Its capital is Wiesbaden : HESSE
Wiesbaden is the capital city of the federal state of Hesse in southwestern Germany. Wiesbaden is one of the oldest spa towns in Europe, and its name translates literally to “meadow baths”.

30. European city whose name sounds like two letters of the alphabet : ESSEN
I knew a man back in Ireland, a German national from the city of Essen. He had very sad tales to tell from the days of WWII. As a young boy he lost his (socialist) parents during the Nazi purges early in the war. In 1943 he was living with his grandmother and still attending school when he was drafted into the army along with the rest of his class (at 14 years of age). His platoon leader was his school teacher who made a point of tutoring the boys in place of military drilling. One day he was on guard duty with his class/platoon at the dam above the city, and along come the Dam Busters with their bouncing bombs. The raid was successful (from the perspective of the Allies), but he described terrible famine faced by the people below the dam due to flooding of the farmland that surrounded the factories.

32. Shameful gain : LUCRE
Our word “lucre” meaning “money, profits” comes from the Latin “lucrum” meaning the same thing.

39. “The Last of the Mohicans” craft : CANOES
James Fenimore Cooper’s most famous works are his collection of historical novels known as the “Leatherstocking Tales” featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, and his romantic novel “The Last of the Mohicans”. James Fenimore was the son of William Cooper, a US Congressman. The Cooper family lived in Cooperstown, New York, a community actually founded by James’s father William Cooper.

41. One engaged in bucket-making : CAGER
In the early days of basketball, when a ball went out of bounds possession was awarded to the player who first retrieved the ball. This led to mad scuffles off the court, often involving spectators. As the game became more organized courts were routinely “caged”, largely because of this out of bounds rule, to limit interaction with the crowd. So basketball players are sometimes referred to as “cagers”. Quite sensibly, the out of bounds rule was changed …

Basketball truly is an American sport. It was created in 1891 by a James Naismith at the YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts. His goal was to create something active and interesting for his students in the gym. The first “hoops” were actually peach baskets, with the bottoms of the baskets intact. When you got the ball into the “net”, you had to clamber up and get it back out again in order to continue the game!

43. St. ___, Cornwall : IVES
You might remember the nursery rhyme “As I was going to St. Ives” from the third “Die Hard” movie, “Die Hard With a Vengeance”, in which it is treated as a riddle. The rhyme goes like this:

“As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives
Each wife had seven sacks
Each sack had seven cats
Each cat had seven kits
Kits, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St Ives?”

There is more than one place called St. Ives in England, but most think the reference is to the seaside town of St. Ives in Cornwall. By the way, the answer to the riddle is “one”, because just the narrator was going to St. Ives, and the rest were characters he met along the way.

44. Frobe who played Goldfinger : GERT
Gert Fröbe was a German actor, best known to us in the English-speaking world as the man who played Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film “Goldfinger”. Fröbe had been a member of the Nazi Party before WWII and as a result of this, “Goldfinger” was banned in Israel for a while. But then the family of two German Jews came forward and explained that Fröbe had helped with their escape by hiding them from the Gestapo. They formally thanked the actor, and the film was released.

45. Sign letters on the cross : INRI
The letters on the cross on which Jesus died were INRI. INRI is an acronym for the Latin “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum”, which translates into English as Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews.

46. Execute a 47-Down, e.g. : EDIT
47. See 46-Down : STET
“Stet” is the Latin word meaning “let it stand”. In editorial work, the typesetter is instructed to disregard any change previously marked by writing the word “stet” beside the change and then underscoring the change with a line of dots (or dashes).

48. Rocky outcrops : TORS
A tor is a high rocky hill. “Tor” comes from the Old English “torr”, the word for a tower or rock, which in turn comes from the Old Welsh “twrr”, meaning a heap or a pile.

49. China’s ___ dynasty : HAN
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China and lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD. It came after the Qin Dynasty, and before the Three Kingdoms.

50. Affliction a k a “blue devils” : DTS
The episodes of delirium that can accompany withdrawal from alcohol are called Delirium Tremens (the DTs). The literal translation of this Latin phrase is “trembling madness”.

51. Strawberry was one : MET
Darryl Strawberry is a former Major League Baseball player who was very successful playing with the both the New York Mets and the New York Yankees. Strawberry’s success on the field was matched with a colorful reputation of the field. He was suspended by league in 1995 for the use of cocaine. I remember seeing him play at a minor league game in Syracuse around that time, as he worked his way back into the majors.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Many a museum dinosaur display : DIORAMA
8. Suited to the stage : ACTABLE
15. What a telemarketer often hears before a click : I’M NOT INTERESTED
17. Reward in the offing? : PRICE ON ONE’S HEAD
18. Three in a match, maybe : SETS
19. Covent Garden area : WEST END
20. Taking some doing : NOT EASY
23. Stains : DISCOLORS
27. Bleed (for) : ACHE
31. Probably will : INTEND TO
32. Back 40? : LASHES
34. Nonstarter’s lack : CHANCE OF SUCCESS
36. Threaten collapse : TOTTER
37. The Cherokee deemed it good training for war : LACROSSE
38. Masters : ACES
39. Like Lennon/McCartney songs : COWRITTEN
40. Checked the meter? : SCANNED
42. Provider of up-to-the-minute info? : BIG HAND
45. Follower of blood and guts : -IEST
49. Might just : HAVE A GOOD MIND TO
53. Scottie : ABERDEEN TERRIER
54. Homemakers out on a limb? : NESTERS
55. Site of the first British colony in the Caribbean, 1624 : ST KITTS

Down
1. Leap-the-___ (world’s oldest operating roller coaster) : DIPS
2. Hungary’s ___ Nagy : IMRE
3. Doing the job : ON IT
4. Huge-taloned menaces : ROCS
5. Put down : ATE
6. Parmesan pronoun : MIO
7. Name meaning “grace” : ANN
8. Heroic son of Prince Anchises : AENEAS
9. Mustard family member : CRESS
10. Easily snapping : TESTY
11. He got a tennis scholarship from U.C.L.A. : ASHE
12. Old bomber : B-TEN
13. Fat part : LEAD
14. Reds great Roush : EDD
16. Traitors’ Gate locale : TOWER OF LONDON
20. Present : NONCE
21. Senior : OLDER
22. 1930s film dog : TOTO
23. Mandates : DICTA
24. “___ signo vinces” (Constantine I’s motto) : IN HOC
25. 29-Down, for one : STATE
26. Two are often put in : CENTS
27. “My Fair Lady” setting : ASCOT
28. Where to feel the beat? : CHEST
29. Its capital is Wiesbaden : HESSE
30. European city whose name sounds like two letters of the alphabet : ESSEN
32. Shameful gain : LUCRE
33. Nose-burning : ACRID
35. Like much lumber : SAWN
39. “The Last of the Mohicans” craft : CANOES
40. Strawberry is one : SHADE
41. One engaged in bucket-making : CAGER
42. Toots : BABE
43. St. ___, Cornwall : IVES
44. Frobe who played Goldfinger : GERT
45. Sign letters on the cross : INRI
46. Execute a 47-Down, e.g. : EDIT
47. See 46-Down : STET
48. Rocky outcrops : TORS
49. China’s ___ dynasty : HAN
50. Affliction a k a “blue devils” : DTS
51. Strawberry was one : MET
52. Chafe : IRK

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