0718-12: New York Times Crossword Answers 18 Jul 12, Wednesday

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: David Levinson Wilk
THEME: SAME-SEX MARRIAGE … each of the theme answers hints at a SAME-SEX MARRIAGE as the words MAN and MAN appear side by side internally:

16A. 1864’s March to the Sea? : SHER(MAN MAN)EUVER
22A. Something once consulted before plugging in headphones? : WALK(MAN MAN)UAL
37A. Wearing togas and saying “Ave,” e.g.? : RO(MAN MAN)NERISMS
47A. The Marshall Plan, e.g.? : TRU(MAN MAN)DATE

57A. Hot-button issue hinted at by 16-, 22-, 37- and 47-Across? : SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

COMPLETION TIME: 12m 17s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0


Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

6. Toronto transport : TRAM
The Toronto streetcar system is the largest such system in North America, and is comprised of eleven different streetcar routes. The Toronto system takes care of over 50 million passengers each year.

10. “Funky Cold Medina” rapper Tone ___ : LOC
Tone Lōc is the stage name of the rapper Anthony Smith.

14. Fleming and McEwan : IANS
Ian Fleming is most famous of course for writing the “James Bond” series of spy novels. You might also know that he wrote the children’s story “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang“, which was made into a cute movie released in 1968 and even a stage musical that opened in 2002.

Ian McEwan is an English novelist with a track record of writing well-received novels. His most famous work at the moment I would say is “Atonement” which has benefited from the success of the fabulous movie adaptation released in 2007.

15. Gershon of “Showgirls” : GINA
Gina Gershon is an American actress. Gershon has played a lesbian on screen a number of times and has become somewhat of a gay icon.

Showgirls” is a 1995 movie about the world of strippers and showgirls in Las Vegas. The film features a lot of nudity and several sex scenes earning it a NC-17 rating. Despite its rating, “Showgirls” was distributed in mainstream cinemas, the first NC-17 movie to get such a wide release.

16. 1864’s March to the Sea? : SHERMAN MANEUVER
The Savannah Campaign during the American Civil War is more commonly known as Sherman’s March to the Sea. General Sherman of the Union Army started his month-long march in Atlanta, Georgia and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah, Georgia on 21 December 1864.

20. Fraternity letter : RHO
Rho is the Greek letter that looks just like our Roman letter “p”.

21. Main event in “The Crucible” : TRIAL
“The Crucible” is a 1952 play by Arthur Miller that tells the story of the Salem witch trials. Miller wrote it as an allegory for the House Committee of Un-American Activities hearings that were being chaired by Senator Joe McCarthy around that time. Miller was called before the Committee himself, and was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to “name names”.

22. Something once consulted before plugging in headphones? : WALKMAN MANUAL
Walkman is a brand of portable audio and video products manufactured by Sony. The first Walkman was introduced in 1979 and popularized the practice of carrying music around and listening through lightweight headphones.

28. Counselor’s org. : ABA
The American Bar Association (ABA) was founded back in 1878 and is a voluntary association for lawyers and law students. The ABA focuses on setting academic standards for law schools and setting ethical codes for the profession.

29. It breaks in “Rock-a-Bye Baby” : BOUGH
“Rock-a-Bye Baby” is a lullaby, the history of which is much debated. Some say it originated in England, and others claim that it was the first poem that was written on American soil.

33. L’homme upstairs? : DIEU
The man (l’homme) upstairs is God (Dieu), in French.

37. Wearing togas and saying “Ave,” e.g.? : ROMAN MANNERISMS
In Ancient Rome the classical attire known as a toga (plural “togae”) was usually worn over a tunic. The tunic was made from linen, and the toga itself was a piece of cloth about twenty feet long made from wool. The toga could only be worn by men, and only if those men were Roman citizens. The female equivalent of the toga was called a “stola”.

“Ave” is the Latin for “hail”, and was used by the Romans as a greeting.

41. Milky gem : OPAL
An opal is often described as having a milky iridescence, known as “opalescence”.

43. Oscar winner Sorkin : AARON
The wonderful screenwriter Aaron Sorkin got his big break when his stage play “A Few Good Men” was picked up by a Hollywood producer. Since then Sorkin has written great films including “The American President”, “The Social Network”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Moneyball” and the excellent “The West Wing” television series. There is a new television show of his showing on HBO these days that looks very promising, called “The Newsroom”.

44. Swabby’s affirmative : AYE
“Swabbie” (also “swab, swabber”) is a slang term for a sailor, which we’ve been using since the late 1700s. A “swab” was originally a member of the crew assigned to the swabbing of the ship’s decks.

47. The Marshall Plan, e.g.? : TRUMAN MANDATE
The official name of the Marshall Plan was the “European Recovery Program”. The scheme was named after Secretary of State George Marshall who served under President Harry S. Truman. The overt goal of the plan was to rebuild the European economy, with the subplot being to resist the spread of communism throughout Europe after WWII.

54. Gerund maker : -ING
A gerund is a form of a verb that can be used as a noun. For example, the gerund of the verb “to act” is “acting”, as in the sentence, “We really enjoyed the acting”.

57. Hot-button issue hinted at by 16-, 22-, 37- and 47-Across? : SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
The concept of same-sex marriage isn’t a new one by any means, as there are references to such legal arrangements in the days of the Roman Empire and the Ming Dynasty in China. These days same-sex marriage is legal in parts of the United States, and in other countries such as Canada, Belgium, Spain and South Africa.

62. Splotchy : PIED
A skewbald horse is one with patches of white on a dark background. A piebald (or pied) horse on the other hand, is white with dark patches.

64. 1979 film with the tagline “In space no one can hear you scream” : ALIEN
The 1979 sci-fi horror movie “Alien” was the big break for Sigourney Weaver as it was her first lead role, and her character ended up as central to a whole set of sequels. The movie’s producers made a very conscious decision to cast a female in the lead role so as to have the film stand out in the male-dominated genre of science fiction.

66. Ocean predator with giant jaws : ORCA
The taxonomic name for the killer whale is Orcinus orca. The use of the name “orca”, rather than “killer whale”, is becoming more and more common. The Latin word “Orcinus” means “belonging to Orcus”, with Orcus being the name for the Kingdom of the Dead.

67. George of “Cheers” : WENDT
The character of Norm Peterson was the only customer of the bar to appear in every episode of “Cheers”, something that one couldn’t call ironic since he loved that barstool! George Wendt played Norm, and I suppose the fact the Wendt was expelled from Notre Dame after one semester, with a 0.0 GPA, that might have helped him get the role!

Down
5. Black Forest ___ : HAM
Black Forest ham is a smoked ham that is produced in the Black Forest region of southwest Germany. Black Forest ham is the most popular smoked ham in the whole of Europe.

6. Doughboy’s headgear : TIN HAT
The American soldiers that headed overseas during WWI wear often known as “doughboys”. The term had been used as early as the 1840s, and persisted till WWII when it was quickly replaced by “GI”. There are a number of theories about the origins of “doughboy”, but the exact etymology isn’t too clear.

7. Pitcher Martinez : RAMON
Ramón Martinez is a former Major League Baseball pitcher from the Dominican Republic. Ramón is the older brother of Pedro Martinez who won the Cy Young Award three times.

8. Tennis’s Ivanovic : ANA
Ana Ivanovic is a Serbian tennis player, and former world number one. As well as playing tennis, she also studies finance at university in her native Belgrade.

9. Its logo features a multicolored butterfly : MSN
MSN was originally called The Microsoft Network, introduced in 1995 as an integral part of Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system. MSN is a whole bundle of services including email, instant messaging, and the MSN.com portal (which is the 9th most visited site on the Internet).

10. Wife of Augustus : LIVIA
Livia Drusilla was the third wife of the Emperor Augustus, and a powerful woman in the Roman Empire. Livia was also the mother of Emperor Tiberius and the grandmother of Emperor Claudius. Claudius declared her a goddess after she died, and from then on Livia was referred to as the Divine Augusta.

11. 15-time N.B.A. All-Star who announced his retirement on Twitter : O’NEAL
Shaquille O’Neal is one of the heaviest players ever to have played in the NBA (weighing in at around 325 pounds). Yep, he’s a big guy … 7 foot 1 inch. He is also the oldest player active in the NBA today, pushing 40 years old.

12. Psychologist Jung : CARL
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist. He was very much associated with the analysis of dreams.

15. Expert : GURU
“Guru” is a Hindi word meaning “teacher” or “priest”.

18. Image in the final scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” : ETNA
Mt. Etna is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy, about 2 1/2 times the height of its equally famous sister, Mt. Vesuvius.

“L’Avventura” is an Italian film released in 1960, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

23. Photocopier setting : LEGAL
Like so many things it seems, our paper sizes here in North America don’t conform with the standards in the rest of the world. ISO standard sizes used elsewhere have some logic behind them in that the ratio of width to length is usually one to the square root of two. This mathematical relationship means that when you cut a piece of paper in two each half preserves the aspect ratio of the original, which can be useful in making reduced or enlarged copies of documents. Our standard size of “letter” (8.5 x 11 inches) was determined in 1980 by the Reagan administration to be the official paper size for the US government. Prior to this, the “legal” size (8.5 x 14 inches) had been the standard, since 1921.

24. Lyricist Gus : KAHN
Gus Kahn was a songwriter who was very successful on Broadway and in Hollywood. Songs that he penned include “I’ll See You in My Dreams”, “It Had to Be You” and “Makin’ Whoopee!”

30. Alley ___ : OOP
French people, and circus acrobats in particular, use the phrase “allez hop!” as words of encouragement, sort of like our “let’s go!”. The phrase was anglicized to “alley oop”.

31. Actress Thurman : UMA
Uma Thurman‘s father, Robert Thurman, was the first westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Robert raised his children in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and called his daughter “Uma” as it is a phonetic spelling of the Buddhist name “Dbuma”.

32. Explosion maker : TNT
TNT is an abbreviation for trinitrotoluene. TNT was first produced by the German chemist Joseph Wilbrand in 1863, who developed it for use as a yellow dye. The material is relatively difficult to detonate so it was on the market as a dye for some years before its more explosive properties were discovered.

33. Actress Rigg who played the only Bond girl to wed 007 : DIANA
Unfortunately, the most capable actress to play a Bond girl, Diana Rigg, was teamed with the absolute worst choice as James Bond, George Lazenby. The movie was “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, the first film made after Sean Connery quit the role.

34. U.S. ally whose capital has the letters U-S-A in the middle of its name: Abbr. : ISR
Jerusalem is regarded as a holy city in the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Israel regards Jerusalem as the country’s capital, but it isn’t recognized as such by the international community. There are no foreign embassies in Jerusalem, even though all branches of the Israeli government are located there.

35. Rock 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 …

36. Blue Angels org. : USN
“Blue Angels” is the popular name for the US Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron. The group was formed in 1946 and is the oldest of the US military’s flying aerobatic teams. The squadron took its nickname back in ‘46 from the Blue Angel nightclub that was around at that time in New York City.

38. Rudolph of “S.N.L.” : MAYA
Maya Rudolph is riding high right now, having gotten her break as a comedienne on “Saturday Night Live”. Rudolph is making a lot of appearances as an actress, both on television and in the movies. On the small screen she plays a leading role in “Up All Night” alongside Christina Applegate. On the big screen she had a prominent role in the recent hit “Bridesmaids”.

39. ___ corner : AMEN
“Amen corner” is the name given to that location in a church where the congregation is particularly vocal in responding to the preacher. It’s a term that arose in Southern Baptist churches.

44. Traitorous Aldrich : AMES
Aldrich Ames worked for the CIA until he was convicted in 1994 of spying for the Soviet Union. Prior to identifying Ames as a spy, the CIA was highly concerned at the high rate of disappearance of their own agents behind the Iron Curtain and they struggled for years to find the mole that they assumed must be working within their own ranks. After he was finally arrested, the CIA was criticized for not having identified Ames sooner, particularly as he was living an extravagant lifestyle relative to his apparent means. He is serving a life sentence in the US Penitentiary in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

45. Day after hoy : MANANA
The day after today (hoy) is tomorrow (mañana), in Spanish.

46. Many a NASA worker: Abbr. : ENGR
The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite towards the end of 1957, a development that shocked the establishment in the US. Within months President Eisenhower made his move, creating the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

48. Name said twice after “O” : ROMEO
In the balcony scene in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Juliet utters the famous line:

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

Every schoolkid must have commented with a giggle “he’s down in the garden!” Of course, “wherefore” isn’t an archaic word for “where”, but rather an old way of saying “why”. So Juliet is asking, “Why art thou Romeo, a Montague, and hence a sworn enemy of the Capulets?”

51. Author depicted next to a steamboat on a 2011 stamp : TWAIN
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was the real name of the author Mark Twain. Twain wasn’t the only pen name used by Clemens. Early in his career he signed some sketches as “Josh”, and signed some humorous letters that he wrote under the name “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass”. The name of Mark Twain came from the days when Clemens was working on riverboats on the Mississippi. A riverboatman would call out “by the mark twain” when measuring the depth of water. This meant that on the sounding line, according to the “mark” on the line, the depth was two (“twain”) fathoms, and so it was safe for the riverboat to proceed.

58. Musician Brian : ENO
Brian Eno started out his musical career with Roxy Music. However, his most oft-played composition (by far!) is Microsoft’s “start-up jingle”, the 6-second sound you hear when the Windows operating system is booting up.

59. Gen ___ : XER
The term Generation X originated in the UK where it was the name of a book by Jane Deverson. Her book detailed the results of a study of British youths in 1964, contrasting their lifestyle to those of previous generations. It was Canadian author Douglas Coupland who was responsible for popularizing the term, with his more successful publication “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture“. By the latest accepted definition, Gen-Xers were born between 1961 and 1981.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Grind : GNASH
6. Toronto transport : TRAM
10. “Funky Cold Medina” rapper Tone ___ : LOC
13. Cardiological concern : AORTA
14. Fleming and McEwan : IANS
15. Gershon of “Showgirls” : GINA
16. 1864’s March to the Sea? : SHERMAN MANEUVER
19. Abbr. before a judge’s name : HON
20. Fraternity letter : RHO
21. Main event in “The Crucible” : TRIAL
22. Something once consulted before plugging in headphones? : WALKMAN MANUAL
27. Compass heading : EAST
28. Counselor’s org. : ABA
29. It breaks in “Rock-a-Bye Baby” : BOUGH
32. Up to, informally : TIL
33. L’homme upstairs? : DIEU
37. Wearing togas and saying “Ave,” e.g.? : ROMAN MANNERISMS
41. Milky gem : OPAL
42. Qty. : AMT
43. Oscar winner Sorkin : AARON
44. Swabby’s affirmative : AYE
45. Words after count or clue : ME IN
47. The Marshall Plan, e.g.? : TRUMAN MANDATE
53. Cropped up : AROSE
54. Gerund maker : -ING
55. Typing units: Abbr. : WDS
57. Hot-button issue hinted at by 16-, 22-, 37- and 47-Across? : SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
62. Splotchy : PIED
63. Frau’s refusal : NEIN
64. 1979 film with the tagline “In space no one can hear you scream” : ALIEN
65. ___-mo : SLO
66. Ocean predator with giant jaws : ORCA
67. George of “Cheers” : WENDT

Down
1. Nasty cut : GASH
2. Not in any way, in dialect : NO HOW
3. Play space : ARENA
4. Orch. section : STR
5. Black Forest ___ : HAM
6. Doughboy’s headgear : TIN HAT
7. Pitcher Martinez : RAMON
8. Tennis’s Ivanovic : ANA
9. Its logo features a multicolored butterfly : MSN
10. Wife of Augustus : LIVIA
11. 15-time N.B.A. All-Star who announced his retirement on Twitter : O’NEAL
12. Psychologist Jung : CARL
15. Expert : GURU
17. Some outlawed international trade : ARMS
18. Image in the final scene of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” : ETNA
23. Photocopier setting : LEGAL
24. Lyricist Gus : KAHN
25. Primary : MAIN
26. Fit : ABLE
29. Bud : BRO
30. Alley ___ : OOP
31. Actress Thurman : UMA
32. Explosion maker : TNT
33. Actress Rigg who played the only Bond girl to wed 007 : DIANA
34. U.S. ally whose capital has the letters U-S-A in the middle of its name: Abbr. : ISR
35. Rock genre : EMO
36. Blue Angels org. : USN
38. Rudolph of “S.N.L.” : MAYA
39. ___ corner : AMEN
40. Bust : RAID
44. Traitorous Aldrich : AMES
45. Day after hoy : MANANA
46. Many a NASA worker: Abbr. : ENGR
47. Line on a forest map : TRAIL
48. Name said twice after “O” : ROMEO
49. Not new : USED
50. Copy : MIMIC
51. Author depicted next to a steamboat on a 2011 stamp : TWAIN
52. Just beat : EDGED
53. Hooded vipers : ASPS
56. On the way : SENT
58. Musician Brian : ENO
59. Gen ___ : XER
60. Cold and wet : RAW
61. Project’s end? : -ILE

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