1014-12 New York Times Crossword Answers 14 Oct 12, Sunday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Yoga posture : ASANA
“Asana” is a Sanskrit word literally meaning “sitting down”. The asanas are the poses that a practitioner of yoga assumes. The most famous is the lotus position, the cross-legged pose called “padmasana”.

6. Mideast strongman : ASSAD
Dr. Bashar al-Assad is the current President of the Syrian Arab Republic and the son of the former President Hafez al-Assad whom he replaced in 2001. President Assad is a medical doctor, speaks fluent English and conversational French. Assad was studying ophthalmology in London when he met his wife, an Englishwoman.

21. “Dies ___” : IRAE
“Dies Irae” is Latin for “Day of Wrath”. It is the name of a famous melody in Gregorian Chant, one that is often used as part of the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass.

23. Special attention : TENDER LOVING CARE (TLC)
The cable channel known today as TLC started out life as The Learning Channel. Programming on TLC was originally focused on educational content, but today there is an emphasis on programming imported from the UK.

28. Against one’s will : NOT BY CHOICE (NBC)
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) has had a number of different logos in its history, including the famous peacock with which we are familiar today. The first peacock logo was introduced in the early days of color television and was designed to illustrate how wonderful color television would be, so go buy one! (NBC was owned by RCA, and they had a vested interest in sales of color television sets).

31. Island west of Maui : LANAI
Lanai is the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands. Lanai was first spotted by Europeans just a few days after Captain Cook was killed on the Big Island of Hawaii in 1779. In 1922, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company bought the whole island of Lanai and turned most of it into the world’s largest pineapple plantation. Since then, Lanai has been known as “The Pineapple Island”.

41. Farm wagon : WAIN
A wain is a horse-drawn vehicle that is used on a farm for carrying agricultural goods (as opposed to people). Nowadays the term is probably most associated with the famous oil painting by Englishman John Constable that is titled “The Hay Wain”.

44. Soap discontinued in 2011 : ALL MY CHILDREN (AMC)
AMC, formerly known as American Movie Classics, is one of my favorite television channels. Although the focus has shifted from airing classic movies to other programming, there’s still a lot of quality output. AMC’s flagship show is “Mad Men”.

50. Speakeasy’s distilling locale : BATHTUB
A speakeasy is an establishment that sells alcoholic drinks illegally. Speakeasies were very big in the US in the days of Prohibition. The obvious etymology, of a speakeasy owner asking his or her customers to “speak easy” so as not to draw attention to the authorities, is thought to have originated in 1888 in McKeesport just outside Pittsburgh.

56. Repeated phrase in “Hot Hot Hot” : OLE! OLE!
“Hot Hot Hot” is a song written and first recorded in 1982 by Arrow, a singer-songwriter from the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. “Hot Hot Hot” became a dance floor hit for Arrow, and then really took off when it was covered in 1987 by Buster Poindexter. Ole ole …

58. Ikea store, to some : MAZE
Did you know that IKEA was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943 when he was just 17-years-old??!! IKEA is an acronym that stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd (don’t forget now!). Elmtaryd was the name of the farm where Ingvar Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd is his home parish in Sweden.

59. Something with a Blue Book value : USED CAR
I think we tend to associate the term “blue book” with the Kelley Blue Book that provides valuations for vehicles. The term itself dates back to the 15th century when we started calling an almanac or other publication full of information a “blue book”.

61. 1937 hit with the lyric “You’re like the fragrance of blossoms fair” : SO RARE
“So Rare” is a song first recorded in 1937 that was destined to become a hit for Jimmy Dorsey in 1957.

62. Brown ink : SEPIA
Sepia is that lovely rich, brown-grey color so common in old photographs. The name sepia comes from the pigment derived from the ink sac of the cuttle fish, with “sepia” being the Latinized version of the Greek word for cuttlefish. The sepia tone of old photographs is not a result of deterioration over time. Rather, it is the result of a deliberate preservation process which converts the metallic silver in the photographic image to a more stable silver sulfide. Sepia-toned prints can last in excess of 150 years.

63. Comic strip with the characters Rat and Pig : PEARLS BEFORE SWINE (PBS)
The comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” is written and illustrated by Stephan Pastis. Pastis used to be a lawyer in San Francisco. Quite a career change, huh? The title of the strip comes from the Bible. According to the Book of Matthew, Jesus states in the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was founded in 1970, and is my favorite of the broadcast networks. I love PBS’s drama and science shows in particular, and always watch the election results coming in with the NewsHour team. PBS’s Big Bird seems to be making the news in the current election cycle …

75. British pens : GAOLS
Both “jail” and “gaol” are pronounced the same way, mean the same thing and are rooted in the same Latin word for “cave”. The spelling “gaol” is seen quite often in the UK, although it is gradually being replaced with “jail”. The “gaol” spelling has Norman roots and tends to be used in Britain in more formal documentation.

78. “The Gates” artist : CHRISTO
Christo Javacheff is a Bulgarian-born artist from France. Along with his wife Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, Christo created what were termed environmental works of art. Most familiar to me was the complete wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin. You might also remember a work called “The Gates”, which was made up of over 7,000 gates erected along 23 miles of pathways in New York City’s Central Park. Each of the gates was draped with orange-colored nylon fabric.

80. M.R.I., maybe : TOTAL BODY SCAN (TBS)
Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) adopted the slogan “Very Funny” in 2004. The slogan is meant to contrast TBS with its sister channel TNT, which focuses on drama shows. The TNT slogan is “Drama, Period”.

87. Egypt’s Sadat : ANWAR
Anwar Sadat was the third President of Egypt right up to the time of his assassination in 1981. Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 along with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, for the role played in crafting the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1978 at Camp David. It was this agreement that largely led to Sadat’s assassination two years later.

94. Cabinet dept. since 1889 : AGR
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) actually dates back to 1862 when it was established by then-president Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln referred to the USDA as the “people’s department”, reflecting the agrarian basis of our economy back then.

96. Stoller’s partner in songwriting : LEIBER
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were a songwriting partnership, with Leiber writing lyrics and Stoller writing music. The list of Leiber and Stoller hits is impressive, including “Hound Dog”, “Poison Ivy”, “Stand By Me”, “Jailhouse Rock” and “Spanish Harlem”.

104. What dead men are said to do : TELL NO TALES (TNT)
TNT stands for Turner Network Television. The TNT cable channel made a big splash in the eighties when it started to broadcast old black-and-white MGM movies that had been “colorized”, not something that was a big hit with the public. In recent years, the TNT programming lineup is touted with the tagline “We Know Drama”, and includes shows like “Judging Amy”, “ER” and “Cold Case”.

108. With “The,” former sketch comedy program on CBS … fittingly enough : CAROL BURNETT SHOW (CBS)
“The Carol Burnett Show” really is a classic television production. The show aired on CBS for over ten years, completing its run in 1978.

CBS used to be called the Columbia Broadcasting System. CBS is the second largest broadcaster in the world, second only to the BBC in the UK.

117. Relative of a crown : ONLAY
“Inlay” is another word for a filling in dentistry. An onlay is similar to an inlay. An onlay not only fills a hole in the tooth but it is also built up to replace a missing cusp. It’s sort of halfway between a filling and a crown, I suppose.

Down
2. “___ Evil” (Mia Farrow film) : SEE NO
“See No Evil” is a 1971 film starring Mia Farrow. It is a thriller in which Farrow plays a woman who has recently been blinded (hence the title!).

4. “Our Town” opera composer : NED ROREM
American composer Ned Rorem is famous for his musical compositions, but also for his book, “Paris Diary of Ned Rorem” that was published in 1966. He talks openly about his sexuality in the book, and also about the sexuality of others including Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber, much to some people’s chagrin.

6. Volume of the world : ATLAS
We call a book of maps an “atlas” after a collection of maps published by the famous Flemish geographer Gerhadus Mercator. Mercator’s collection contained a frontispiece with an image of Atlas the Titan from Greek mythology holding up the world on his shoulders. That image gave us our term “atlas”.

8. Old Brit. coins : SOVS
The British gold coins known as sovereigns are still in use today, although they are mainly locked in vaults as bullion and are not circulated.

9. Son in “The Royal Tenenbaums” : ARI
“The Royal Tenenbaums” is a 2001 comedy-drama film with a very impressive cast. Lots of people love this one, but not me …

11. Itty-bitty breath mint : TIC TAC
Tic Tacs aren’t American candy (as I always mistakenly believed). Tic Tacs are made by the Italian company Ferrero, and were introduced in 1969.

13. Three-time All-Star pitcher Frank : LARY
Frank Lary is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. One of Lary’s nicknames was “Yankee Killer” as in the 1950s he consistently pulled off good performances for the Detroit Tigers when pitching against the New York Yankees.

17. Takes baby steps : MINCES
“To mince” is to chop into small pieces. The meaning was extended to taking small steps in the 16th century.

18. Alka-Seltzer ad character : SPEEDY
Speedy was an animated character used in Alka-Seltzer ads from 1951 to 1964. Speedy had an Alka-Seltzer tablet as a body and another as a hat. His job was to get out the message that Alka-Seltzer provided speedy relief!

24. Frist’s successor as Senate majority leader : REID
Democrat Harry Reid became the Senate Majority leader in 2007. Reid had a big day in the Senate from a Democratic perspective with the successful passage of the so-called ObamaCare Bill. Paradoxically, Harry Reid’s wife was in hospital at the time, having broken her back in a car accident. Reid took over as Senate Majority leader from Bill Frist who retired from politics in 2007.

29. Percussionist’s setup : HI-HAT
In a drum kit, a hi-hat is that pairing of cymbals that sits on a stand and is played by using a foot pedal. The top cymbal is raised and lowered by the foot, hence creating a crashing sound.

31. Home of the oldest school in Sweden, founded in 1085 : LUND
Lund is a city in Sweden that lies almost at the country’s most southern tip. Lund is home to one of Sweden’s largest schools, Lund University, founded in 1666. I almost went to graduate school in Lund, many moons ago …

38. Hindu title of respect : BABU
“Babu” is a word used in South Asia as a sign of respect to men. It can be used to mean “boss” or “father”.

45. Blue Triangle grps. : YWCAS
The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) 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. The YWCA is quite the organization, the largest women’s group in the whole world.

48. The youngest Jetson : ELROY
“The Jetsons” is an animated show from Hanna-Barbera that had its first run in 1962-1963, and then was recreated in 1985-1987. When it was debuted in 1963 by ABC, it was the network’s first ever color broadcast.

52. “Pulp Fiction” weapon : UZI
The first Uzi sub-machine gun was designed in the late 1940s by Major Uziel Gal, who gave his name to the gun.

53. Benaderet of “The Beverly Hillbillies” : BEA
Bea Benaderet, as well as playing Kate Bradley on “Petticoat Junction” and Pearl Bodine on “The Beverly Hillbillies”, was the voice of Betty Rubble on “The Flintstones”.

57. Cinnabar, e.g. : ORE
Cinnabar is the ore from which mercury is extracted.

60. 2010 movie with a plot to steal the moon : DESPICABLE ME
“Despicable Me” is a 2010 animated comedy film. The main voice actor in the movie is the very funny Steve Carell. “Despicable Me” is a Universal Pictures production, although all the animation was done in France.

64. Pine-___ : SOL
Pine-Sol first came on the market in 1929 and is a cleaner based on pine oil.

66. Forest, in Germany : WALD
“Wald” is the German word for “forest” as in “Schwarzwald”, the Black Forest.

68. “Whatever” : MEH
“Meh!” is one of those terms unfamiliar to me, a modern colloquialism meaning, “I’m not great, but not bad”.

71. River through Orsk : URAL
The Ural River rises in the Ural Mountains in Russia and flows for half its length through Russian territory until it crosses the border into Kazakhstan, finally emptying into the Caspian Sea.

72. Central Sicilian province : ENNA
The city of Enna sits very high up in the hills of Sicily, overlooking the whole island below. Enna is the capital of the province that bears its name, which is the highest province in the whole of Italy.

74. Windy City commuters’ inits. : CTA
Chicago Transit Authority (CTA).

It seems that the derivation of Chicago’s nickname as the “Windy City” isn’t as obvious as I would have thought. There are two viable theories. First the weather can be breezy, with wind blowing in off Lake Michigan. The effect of the wind is exaggerated by the grid-layout adopted by city planners after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The second theory is that the “windy” means “being full of bluster”. Sportswriters from the rival city of Cincinnati were fond of calling Chicago supporters “windy” in the 1860s and 1870s, meaning that they were full of hot air in their claims that the Chicago White Stockings were superior to the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

79. Philosopher Kierkegaard : SOREN
Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and theologian, and I never really understood anything he wrote!

82. Ted who wrote “The Kennedy Legacy” : SORENSEN
Ted Sorensen was John F. Kennedy’s speech-writer, and he wrote a biography about the President called “Kennedy”. President Kennedy once referred to Sorensen as his “intellectual blood bank”.

84. T. S. Eliot’s middle name : STEARNS
T. S. Eliot was born in New England but grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. Much of Eliot’s college education was at Oxford, and clearly he became comfortable with life in England. In 1927 he became a British citizen, and lived the rest of his life in the UK.

87. “Nashville” director : ALTMAN
To me anyway, Robert Altman’s most famous film is “M*A*S*H”. Filming of this classic film didn’t go at all well. Altman wasn’t at all respected by the main leads in the movie, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland. In fact, Gould and Sutherland tried to get Altman taken off the film altogether.

89. Presidential middle name or last name : WILSON
Woodrow Wilson was a professor at Princeton from 1890 to 1902 at which time he was promoted to president of the university. Professor Wilson had earned his PhD. at John Hopkins University in 1886, so that when he was elected 28th President of the United States in 1912, he became the only US President to hold a PhD.

President Ronald Reagan’s middle name was Wilson. The President was born to parents Jack Reagan and Nelle Wilson.

92. Dodger Hershiser : OREL
Orel Hershiser is big into poker now that he has retired from Major League Baseball. Hershiser lives in Las Vegas, and when he isn’t working for ESPN, apparently he is at the poker tables at least five times a week.

93. Vasco da Gama’s departure point : LISBON
Vasco da Gama left on his first voyage of discovery in 1497, leaving Lisbon with four ships. He journeyed around the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost tip of Africa, and across the Indian Ocean making landfall in India. Landing in India, his fleet became the first expedition to sail directly from Europe to the sub-continent. Vasco da Gama was well known for acts of cruelty, especially on local inhabitants. One of his milder atrocities was inflicted on a priest who he labelled as a spy. He had the priest’s lips and ears cut off, and sent him on his way after having a pair of dog’s ears sewn onto his head.

95. Low-rent district : GHETTO
The first “ghetto” was an island in Venice that was used for confining Venetian Jews. The same island was used to store slag from a foundry, and “getto” was the Venetian word for “slag”. The term ghetto spread across Europe, at the beginning always associated with repressed Jewish populations. Ultimately it came to mean any urban area housing a minority group under economic and social pressure.

97. Pharmaceutical giant that makes Boniva : ROCHE
Boniva is a brand name for Ibandronic acid, a medication used to treat elevated levels of calcium in the blood.

100. “___ Gold” : ULEE’S
“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 produces. It is a favorite role for Peter Fonda and he has shared that playing Ulee 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.

101. African region including Khartoum and Timbuktu : SAHEL
The Sahel is a great swath of land in Africa south of the Sahara desert that stretches from the Atlantic in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Sahel is the region that separates the Sahara from the tropical savanna to the south.

105. Asian gold bar measure : TAEL
The Far Eastern measurement known as a tael is used to weigh out precious metals as well as herbal medicines.

106. Glassmaking material : FRIT
Frit is a pre-fused mixture of ceramic materials used in the manufacture of glass.

109. Game with Wild Draw 4 cards : UNO
In my youth I remember being taught a great card game by a German acquaintance of mine, a game called Mau Mau. Years later I discovered that Uno is basically the same game, but played with a purpose-printed deck instead of the regular deck of playing cards that’s used for Mau Mau.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Yoga posture : ASANA
6. Mideast strongman : ASSAD
11. Men’s suit specification : TALL
15. Bread dispensers : ATMS
19. Common belief : TENET
20. Complete, in informal writing : THORO
21. “Dies ___” : IRAE
22. Slow leak : DRIP
23. Special attention : TENDER LOVING CARE (TLC)
26. Lioness’s lack : MANE
27. Behind : IN ARREARS
28. Against one’s will : NOT BY CHOICE (NBC)
30. Salon worker : COLORIST
31. Island west of Maui : LANAI
32. Didn’t come right out and say : HINTED
33. Word with Army or ant : RED
34. Lapful, maybe : HOUSECAT
37. Tantrum, colloquially : HISSY
38. General headquarters? : BASE
41. Farm wagon : WAIN
42. Some baby sitters : NANAS
44. Soap discontinued in 2011 : ALL MY CHILDREN (AMC)
50. Speakeasy’s distilling locale : BATHTUB
54. Buzzer : BEE
55. Buzzes : WHIRS
56. Repeated phrase in “Hot Hot Hot” : OLE! OLE!
58. Ikea store, to some : MAZE
59. Something with a Blue Book value : USED CAR
61. 1937 hit with the lyric “You’re like the fragrance of blossoms fair” : SO RARE
62. Brown ink : SEPIA
63. Comic strip with the characters Rat and Pig : PEARLS BEFORE SWINE (PBS)
67. A little off : AMISS
69. Not well : POORLY
70. Behind : PAST DUE
73. Low-battery signal : BEEP
74. Dog with “rough” and “smooth” breeds : COLLIE
75. British pens : GAOLS
77. Southwest terminal? : -ERN
78. “The Gates” artist : CHRISTO
80. M.R.I., maybe : TOTAL BODY SCAN (TBS)
83. Old-fashioned boiler input : COALS
85. “Have you ___ good?” : BEEN
86. Tex. neighbor : OKLA
87. Egypt’s Sadat : ANWAR
90. What a pusher may push in a park : STROLLER
94. Cabinet dept. since 1889 : AGR
96. Stoller’s partner in songwriting : LEIBER
98. Like some coincidences : EERIE
99. Enters hurriedly : RUSHES IN
104. What dead men are said to do : TELL NO TALES (TNT)
106. You may go under it at a hotel : FALSE NAME
107. Stock: Abbr. : MDSE
108. With “The,” former sketch comedy program on CBS … fittingly enough : CAROL BURNETT SHOW (CBS)
110. Bit of science : ATOM
111. Farm fowl : HENS
112. Chilled : ON ICE
113. Some up-and-comers : TEENS
114. Teetotaler’s amount : NONE
115. Or follower : ELSE
116. Some classwork : NOTES
117. Relative of a crown : ONLAY

Down
1. Top of a ladder, maybe : ATTIC
2. “___ Evil” (Mia Farrow film) : SEE NO
3. Chronicle : ANNAL
4. “Our Town” opera composer : NED ROREM
5. On the ground, in ballet : A TERRE
6. Volume of the world : ATLAS
7. Pet that doesn’t need much brushing, say : SHORTHAIR
8. Old Brit. coins : SOVS
9. Son in “The Royal Tenenbaums” : ARI
10. Italian ladies : DONNAS
11. Itty-bitty breath mint : TIC TAC
12. Omani or Yemeni : ARABIAN
13. Three-time All-Star pitcher Frank : LARY
14. Hanger-on : LEECH
15. Warning : ADMONISHMENT
16. Blue eyes and blond hair : TRAITS
17. Takes baby steps : MINCES
18. Alka-Seltzer ad character : SPEEDY
24. Frist’s successor as Senate majority leader : REID
25. Outta here : GONE
29. Percussionist’s setup : HI-HAT
31. Home of the oldest school in Sweden, founded in 1085 : LUND
35. Palm products : OILS
36. Recipe unit : TABLESPOON
38. Hindu title of respect : BABU
39. Round in Britain, maybe : ALES
40. More likely to crash? : SLEEPIER
41. Boating hazards : WHIRLPOOLS
43. “Uh-uh, laddie” : NAE
45. Blue Triangle grps. : YWCAS
46. Not burn completely : CHAR
47. It might extend above a side door : ROOFLET
48. The youngest Jetson : ELROY
49. Only a day away, say : NEAR
51. Cassette player : TAPEDECK
52. “Pulp Fiction” weapon : UZI
53. Benaderet of “The Beverly Hillbillies” : BEA
57. Cinnabar, e.g. : ORE
60. 2010 movie with a plot to steal the moon : DESPICABLE ME
61. Prefix with comedy : SERIO-
62. Wuss : SISSY
64. Pine-___ : SOL
65. Split in a hurry : BOLT
66. Forest, in Germany : WALD
67. Epitome of simplicity : ABC
68. “Whatever” : MEH
71. River through Orsk : URAL
72. Central Sicilian province : ENNA
74. Windy City commuters’ inits. : CTA
75. Lottery winner’s feeling : GLEE
76. Departure from the norm : ABERRANCE
79. Philosopher Kierkegaard : SOREN
81. Competent : ABLE
82. Ted who wrote “The Kennedy Legacy” : SORENSEN
84. T. S. Eliot’s middle name : STEARNS
87. “Nashville” director : ALTMAN
88. Must : NEED TO
89. Presidential middle name or last name : WILSON
91. Take off again, as pounds : RELOSE
92. Dodger Hershiser : OREL
93. Vasco da Gama’s departure point : LISBON
94. #2: Abbr. : ASST
95. Low-rent district : GHETTO
97. Pharmaceutical giant that makes Boniva : ROCHE
100. “___ Gold” : ULEE’S
101. African region including Khartoum and Timbuktu : SAHEL
102. “___ roll!” (bettor’s cry) : I’M ON A
103. Full of the latest : NEWSY
105. Asian gold bar measure : TAEL
106. Glassmaking material : FRIT
109. Game with Wild Draw 4 cards : UNO

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