0711-12: New York Times Crossword Answers 11 Jul 12, Wednesday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Body part first transplanted in 2010 : FACE
The first partial face transplant was carried out in France, in 2005. The recipient was a lady whose face had been terribly mauled by a dog. The first full face transplant also took place in Europe, by a team of thirty doctors in Spain in 2010. The victim had been badly disfigured in a shooting accident.

9. Band-Aid co. : J AND J
“Band-Aid” is a brand name owned by Johnson & Johnson, although like many popular brands “band-aid” has become the generic term for an adhesive bandage, at least here in North America. The generic term we use in the British Isles for the same product is “plaster” …

15. ___ the Tentmaker : OMAR
Omar the Tentmaker is a sobriquet for the Persian philosopher and polymath, Omar Khayyám.

Omar Khayyam was a Persian with many talents. He was a poet, as well as an important mathematician, astronomer and physician. A selection of his poems were translated by one Edward Fitzgerald in a collection called “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”.

16. Basketball’s Stoudemire : AMAR’E
Amar’e Stoudemire is a professional basketball player with the New York Knicks.

17. Joe Clark in “Lean on Me,” e.g. : SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
“Lean on Me” is a film released in 1989 based on the true story of a high school principal in Paterson, New Jersey. Morgan Freeman plays the hero of the piece who works to improve test scores so that his inner city school isn’t taken over by the state.

20. Hockey’s Sid the Kid : CROSBY
Sidney Crosby is a professional ice hockey player from Canada, currently captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Crosby has the nicknames “The Next One” and “Sid the Kid”.

22. Singer ___ Rose : AXL
Axl Rose is the lead vocalist of the American rock band, Guns N’ Roses.

Guns N’ Roses is a hard rock band founded in 1985 that is still going strong. The group was pulled together by Axl Rose, the lead vocalist. The lead-guitar player back then was Tracii Guns, and it was the combination of Axl and Tracii’s “family” names that led to the band being called Guns N’ Roses.

23. Innsbruck locale: Abbr. : AUS
The Austrian state of Tyrol has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world, especially if you love the mountains. It is in the very west of the country, just south of Bavaria in Germany. The capital city of Tyrol is the famous Innsbruck.

24. The Hadean was the first one, ending about 4 billion years ago : EON
The Hadean isn’t an official geologic eon, but it is noted as the “age” just after the Earth formed, about 4.5 billion years ago. The name “Hadean” comes from the Greek work “Hades” meaning “Underworld”.

34. Davis who portrayed a president : GEENA
The actress Geena Davis portrayed President Mackenzie Allen in the television show “Commander in Chief” on ABC. I thought “Commander in Chief” was a show with great potential, but sadly it was cancelled after just 18 episodes.

As well as being a successful Hollywood actress, Geena Davis is an accomplished archer and came close to qualifying for the US archery team for the 2000 Summer Olympics. Davis is also a member of American Mensa. She is quite the lady …

35. Indolent : OTIOSE
Otiose means “lazy, indolent”, and comes from the Latin word “otium” meaning “leisure”.

36. Rock’s Cream, e.g. : TRIO
Cream were a supergroup from Britain, meaning the band was comprised of musicians from other successful groups. Band members included Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker.

39. Genesis craft : ARK
Genesis 6:19-20 states that Noah was instructed to take two animals of every kind into the ark. Later, in Genesis 7:2-3, Noah was instructed to take on board “every clean animal by sevens … male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth”. Apparently “extras” (7 rather than 2) were needed for ritual sacrifice.

41. “Hair” producer Joseph : PAPP
Joseph Papp was theatrical producer and founder of the Public Theater in New York City. After his death, the Public Theater was named in his memory, the Joseph Papp Public Theater. Papp is also known for producing the original version of the hit musical “Hair”.

42. Grand Canal site : VENICE
The Grand Canal is a large, S-shaped canal that traverses the city of Venice in Italy. For centuries there was only one bridge across the canal, the famed Rialto Bridge. Now there are four bridges in all, including a controversial structure that was opened to the public in 2008, the Ponte della Costituzione.

48. Ripe territory for pirates, once : SPANISH MAIN
When one thinks of the word “main” in the context of the sea, the Spanish Main usually comes to mind. Indeed, the use of the more general term “main”, meaning the sea, originates from the more specific “Spanish Main”. “Spanish Main” originally referred to land and not water, as it was the name given to the main-land coast around the Caribbean Sea in the days of Spanish domination of the region.

50. Watson’s creator : IBM
Watson is a program still in development at IBM. It is designed to answer questions that are posed in natural language, so that it should be able to interpret questions just as you and I would, no matter how the question is phrased. The program is named after the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson. Watson competed in a few memorable episodes of “Jeopardy!” in 2011 taking out two of the best players of the quiz show. That made for fun television.

55. Depression-era agcy. : NRA
The National Recovery Agency (NRA) was set up in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The intent of the NRA was to root out destructive competition and at the same time set minimum standards for workers and minimum selling prices. However the NRA was short-lived as it was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.

63. Losing player in the first Super Bowl : KANSAS CITY CHIEF
The Kansas City Chiefs professional football team started out as the Dallas Texans, in 1960.

Super Bowl I was played in January 1967 between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. The Packers emerged victorious in a game with a score of 35-10.

66. Butler who didn’t give a damn : RHETT
Rhett Butler hung out with Scarlett O’Hara at the Tara plantation in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”. In the book, Tara was founded by Scarlett’s father, Irish immigrant Gerald O’Hara. He named his new abode after the Hill of Tara back in his home country, the ancient seat of the High King of Ireland.

67. Post-marathon feeling : ACHE
The marathon is run over 26 miles and 385 yards, and of course commemorates the legendary messenger-run by Pheidippides from the site of the Battle of Marathon back to Athens. The distance run today was decided in 1921, and matches the route of the modern-day Marathon-Athens highway.

68. Automobile builder Ferrari : ENZO
Enzo Ferrari was an Italian race car driver, and founder of the Ferrari car manufacturer. Ferrari died in 1988, and in 2003 the company named the Enzo Ferrari model after its founder.

70. Fight stoppers, for short : TKOS
In boxing, a knockout (KO) is when one of the fighters can’t get up from the canvas within a specified time, usually 10 seconds. This can be due to fatigue, injury, or the participant may be truly “knocked out”. A referee, fighter or doctor may also decide to stop a fight without a physical knockout, especially if there is concern about a fighter’s safety. In this case the bout is said to end with a technical knockout (TKO).

Down
3. Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson or Steve Doocy : CO-HOST
Gretchen Carlson is the co-host of the Fox News show “Fox & Friends”, alongside Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade. Carson took up a career in television journalism after winning the 1989 Miss America Pageant.

Steve Doocy is a co-host on Fox News’s morning show called “Fox & Friends”. Doocy also worked as the live Times Square reporter for ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”.

4. Slaughter in baseball : ENOS
Enos Slaughter has a remarkable playing record in Major League Baseball, over a 19-year career. His record is particularly remarkable given that he left baseball for three years to serve in the military during WWII.

5. Mount ___ (Seven Sisters college) : HOLYOKE
The Seven Sisters are a group of (traditionally women’s) colleges in the northeast of the country. The seven are:

– Mount Holyoke
– Vassar
– Wellesley
– Smith
– Radcliffe
– Bryn Mawr
– Barnard

8. Architectural decoration : FRIEZE
A frieze is an architectural feature found in many Roman and Greek buildings. Inside a room, frieze is the name given to the upper part of the wall, between the picture rail and the crown molding. Outside of a room, the term frieze is the name given to any extended decoration that is positioned above eye level. Perhaps the most famous frieze comes from the Parthenon in Athens. Over a third of this highly decorated feature was removed from Athens and taken to London in the early 1800s by the Earl of Elgin, where they remain on display in the British Museum. These famous “Elgin Marbles” are subject of much controversy as the legality of the removal is in dispute.

9. Lottery lure : JACKPOT
The term “jackpot” dates back to the 1800s and is from the game of poker. In some variants there are progressive antes, meaning that players have to “ante up” when no player has a pair of “jacks” or better … building a “jackpot”.

11. Big name in auto parts : NAPA
The National Automotive Parts Association (NAPA) is a retailers’ cooperative that supplies replacement parts for cars and trucks.

12. “Moonraker” villain : DRAX
Sir Hugo Drax is the antagonist in the James Bond novel (and movie) “Moonraker”. Ian Fleming chose the name for the character as he had a friend in real life, Sir Reginald Drax, a British admiral.

25. “99 Luftballons” singer : NENA
Nena is a German singer (Nena became the name of her band as well), and she had a big hit with one of my favorite songs of the eighties, “99 Luftballons” (and the version she recorded in English: “99 Red Balloons”). The English translation of the German title isn’t literal, with the color “red” added just so that the title had the right number of syllables. A “Luftballon” is the name given to a child’s toy balloon in German.

30. Former West Coast N.F.L.’er : LA RAM
The St. Louis Rams have won the Super Bowl only once, in 1999 against the Tennessee Titans. The Rams were based in Cleveland from 1936-45, Los Angeles from 1946-94 and St. Louis from 1995 to the present day.

31. Org. for R.V. owners : KOA
Kampgrounds of America (KOA) was founded in 1962 by a Montana businessman Dave Drum, who opened up his first property along the Yellowstone River. His strategy was to offer a rich package of services including hot showers, restrooms and a store, to those people used to camping in the rough. The original campground was an immediate hit and Drum took on two partners and sold franchises all over the country. There are about 500 KOA sites today.

36. Some Samsungs : TVS
Samsung is huge multinational company based in Seoul, South Korea. We tend to think of Samsung as a supplier of consumer electronics perhaps, but the company is into so much more. Samsung Heavy Industries is the world’s second-biggest shipbuilder, and Samsung Techwin is a major manufacturer of aeronautic and weapons systems. The name “Samsung” means “three stars” in Korean.

40. ’80s Chrysler offering : K-CAR
Chrysler’s K-cars were designed to carry 6 passengers, on two bench seats. Remember taking a corner a little too fast on those seats, in the days when no one wore seat belts?

43. The Plame affair, informally : CIAGATE
Robert Novak broke a story in 2003 naming Valerie Plame Wilson, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a covert CIA agent. Valery Plame worked at a clothing store in Washington D.C. after graduating college before she was accepted into the CIA officer training class of 1985/86. She was to work for the CIA for over twenty years, before being “outed” in 2003.

44. Cable sports 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 ESPY winners are chosen solely based on viewer votes.

47. “Giant Brain” of 1946 : ENIAC
The acronym ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (although many folks insist that the C was for “Computer”). ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was designed to calculate artillery firing tables, but it ended up being used early on to make calculations necessary for the development of the hydrogen bomb. Given its uses, it’s not surprising to hear that development of ENIAC was funded by the US Army during WWII.

49. Jazz lover, in old slang : HEP CAT
The slang term “hep” meaning “cool” has the same meaning as the later derivative term “hip”. The origins of “hep” seem unclear, but it was adopted by jazz musicians of the early 1900s.

56. Les Nessman’s station : WKRP
The sitcom “WKRP in Cincinnati” was produced by MTM, the production company established by Mary Tyler Moore and her husband for the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. “WKRP” was a successful enough show when it originally aired, but then became a blockbuster in syndication. It became MTM’s most watched program, even outstripping the original “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”.

57. Diamond Head’s isle : OAHU
O’ahu has been called “The Gathering Place”, although the word “O’ahu” has no translation in Hawaiian. It seems that O’ahu is simply the name of the island. One story is that it is named after the son of the Polynesian navigator that first found the islands.

Diamond Head on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu was given its name by British sailors in the 1800s. These sailors found calcite crystals in the rock surrounding the volcanic tuff cone, and mistook the crystals for diamonds.

58. Scott Turow memoir : ONE L
While “One L” is a name used in general for first year law students, “One L” is also the title of an autobiographical narrative by author Scott Turow, telling of his experiences as a first year student at Harvard Law School.

62. Ostrich’s cousin : RHEA
The rhea is a flightless bird native to South America. The rhea takes its name from the Greek titan Rhea, an apt name for a flightless bird as “rhea” comes from the Greek word meaning “ground”.

64. Some GPS lines: Abbr. : STS
GPS stands for Global Positioning System. The modern GPS system that we use today was built by the US military who received the massive funding needed because of fears during the Cold War of the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. We civilians, all round the world, owe a lot to President Ronald Reagan because he directed the military to make GPS technology available to the public for the common good. He was moved to do so after the Soviet Union shot down KAL flight 007 carrying 269 people, just because the plane strayed accidentally into Soviet airspace.

Return to top of page

For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Body part first transplanted in 2010 : FACE
5. Peeved mood : HUFF
9. Band-Aid co. : J AND J
14. Worshiped one : ICON
15. ___ the Tentmaker : OMAR
16. Basketball’s Stoudemire : AMAR’E
17. Joe Clark in “Lean on Me,” e.g. : SCHOOL PRINCIPAL
20. Hockey’s Sid the Kid : CROSBY
21. Overly compliant : MEEK
22. Singer ___ Rose : AXL
23. Innsbruck locale: Abbr. : AUS
24. The Hadean was the first one, ending about 4 billion years ago : EON
26. Patio bug-killer sounds : ZAPS
28. Re-serve cause : LET
29. Item on a superintendent’s chain : SKELETON KEY
34. Davis who portrayed a president : GEENA
35. Indolent : OTIOSE
36. Rock’s Cream, e.g. : TRIO
39. Genesis craft : ARK
41. “Hair” producer Joseph : PAPP
42. Grand Canal site : VENICE
45. Ranch units : ACRES
48. Ripe territory for pirates, once : SPANISH MAIN
50. Watson’s creator : IBM
53. Bewildered look : GAPE
54. Slugger’s stat : RBI
55. Depression-era agcy. : NRA
56. Try to win : WOO
59. Cheats : GYPS
61. Brought in : EARNED
63. Losing player in the first Super Bowl : KANSAS CITY CHIEF
66. Butler who didn’t give a damn : RHETT
67. Post-marathon feeling : ACHE
68. Automobile builder Ferrari : ENZO
69. It may be checked in a checkup : PULSE
70. Fight stoppers, for short : TKOS
71. Ripening agent : AGER

Down
1. Word before year or conservative : FISCAL
2. Build up : ACCRUE
3. Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson or Steve Doocy : CO-HOST
4. Slaughter in baseball : ENOS
5. Mount ___ (Seven Sisters college) : HOLYOKE
6. Whisk broom-wielding official, for short : UMP
7. Raise things : FARM
8. Architectural decoration : FRIEZE
9. Lottery lure : JACKPOT
10. Friend in Montréal : AMI
11. Big name in auto parts : NAPA
12. “Moonraker” villain : DRAX
13. Take shape : JELL
18. Needing a seat belt extender, say : OBESE
19. “Peachy!” : NEATO
25. “99 Luftballons” singer : NENA
27. Uses shears : SNIPS
30. Former West Coast N.F.L.’er : LA RAM
31. Org. for R.V. owners : KOA
32. Disputed ability : ESP
33. “Yer darn tootin'” : YEP
34. Part of an auctioneer’s cry : GOING
36. Some Samsungs : TVS
37. Public regard, informally : REP
38. “___ pig’s eye!” : IN A
40. ’80s Chrysler offering : K-CAR
43. The Plame affair, informally : CIAGATE
44. Cable sports awards : ESPYS
46. Some steaks : RIB EYES
47. “Giant Brain” of 1946 : ENIAC
49. Jazz lover, in old slang : HEP CAT
50. One of nine for nine : INNING
51. Piece of cake : BREEZE
52. Crazy about : MAD FOR
56. Les Nessman’s station : WKRP
57. Diamond Head’s isle : OAHU
58. Scott Turow memoir : ONE L
60. Green around the gills : SICK
62. Ostrich’s cousin : RHEA
64. Some GPS lines: Abbr. : STS
65. Albeit, briefly : THO

Return to top of page