0113-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 13 Jan 13, Sunday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
14. Like Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” : BLUESY
The Elvis Presley classic “Hound Dog” was a big hit, but his wasn’t the first version of the song to make it to number one in the charts. Presley released “Hound Dog” in 1956, but Big Mama Thornton had brought the song to the top spot back in 1953.

22. Limestone variety : OOLITE
Oolite is a sedimentary rock also called egg stone. Indeed, the term “oolite” comes from the Greek “ooion” meaning egg. The rocks are often round and white (hence the name) and are composed of calcium carbonate.

25. Ones getting hit on at salsa clubs? : BONGOS
Bongo drums are Cuban percussion instruments consisting of a pair of drums, one larger than the other, The smaller drum is called the “hembra” (female) and the larger the “macho” (male).

27. Gen. Bradley : OMAR
Omar Bradley graduated from West Point in the class of 1915, along with Dwight Eisenhower who also attained the rank of General of the Army. Bradley was the last person to hold the rank of a five-star commissioned officer, and he was the first general to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I was struck by a quotation from Bradley from later in his life:

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

28. Sledge who sang “When a Man Loves a Woman” : PERCY
“When a Man Loves a Woman” is the most famous song recorded by Percy Sledge released in 1966. Credit for writing the song was given to the bass player and organist on the recording although it was actually written by Sledge himself. Sledge wrote the song when his girlfriend left him after he lost his job on a construction site.

30. Master : SAHIB
Sahib is actually an Arabic word, which translates to “owner” or “proprietor”, or it can also mean “friend”. It is perhaps most recognized as a term of address used in India, where it is used in much the same way as we use “mister” in English.

35. Horned Frogs’ sch. : TCU
Texas Christian University (TCU) is a private school in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU used to be called AddRan Male & Female, named after an AddRan Clark, the son of Addison Clark who died at the age of 3-years-old from diphtheria. Poor young AddRan was named after his father and his brother, Addison and Randolph.

36. Like magic squares : MATHEMATICAL
A magic square is a series of numbers arranged in a square so that all lines of numbers, including diagonals, add up to the same total. Such squares have been used for centuries to create talismans designed to bring good luck.

44. “Spider-Man” director Sam : RAIMI
Sam Raimi is a very successful director and producer, responsible for the “Spider-Man” series of films among others and TV series’ such as “Xena: Warrior Princess”.

51. Author of “Unto the Sons” : TALESE
Gay Talese is an American author, famous as a journalist in the sixties at “The New York Times”. His 1971 book “Honor Thy Father” is a tale about the Bonanno crime family.

54. Poison hemlock or Queen Anne’s lace : BIENNIAL
For humans, eating just 6-8 fresh leaves from the poison hemlock plant can be fatal.

What we call “Queen Anne’s Lace” over here in the US is known by many in the British Isles as “wild carrot”. The roots of Queen Anne’s Lace are indeed edible, just like carrots, but only when they are very young because later in life they get very woody. The wild carrot was given the name Queen Anne’s Lace when it was introduced into America as the flowers do resemble white lace. There is one small red flower in the center of the plant that is said to be a drop of blood that Queen Anne spilled when she pricked herself as she was making the lace.

56. When the Festival de Cannes opens : MAI
Cannes is a city on the French Riviera, noted as host of the Cannes Film Festival. The idea of the annual film festival was adopted by the city just before WWII. However, the festival had to wait for the end of the war for its launch in 1946.

58. “Peace ___ hand” : IS AT
The words “peace is at hand” famously appeared in a statement from Henry Kissinger during rocky negotiations with the North Vietnamese towards the end of the Vietnam War. A couple of months later the US launched Operation Linebacker II, the largest heavy bombing campaign since the end of WWII. One month after the bombing campaign, President Nixon announced the unilateral withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam.

59. Comic actor Jacques : TATI
Jacques Tati was a very famous filmmaker in France.

64. Silent screen star Naldi : NITA
Nita Naldi was an American silent film actress who usually played a “femme fatale” type of role.

75. Woodstock artist Guthrie : ARLO
Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie. Both father and son are renowned for their singing of protest songs about social injustice. Arlo is most famous for his epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a song that lasts a full 18m 34s. In the song Guthrie tells how, after being drafted, he was rejected for service in the Vietnam War based on his criminal record. He had only one incident on his public record, a Thanksgiving Day arrest for littering and being a public nuisance when he was 18-years-old.

77. Atlanta Braves’ div. : NLE
The Atlanta Braves are the only team to have won baseball’s World Series in three different home cities. They won as the Boston Braves in 1914, the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and the Atlanta Braves in 1995.

83. Mother who was a Nobelist : TERESA
Mother Teresa was born in 1910 in the city that is now called Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. At birth she was given the names Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (“Gonxha” means “little flower” in Albanian). She left home at the age of 18 and joined the Sisters of Loreto, and headed to Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham in Dublin, Ireland in order to learn English. Her goal was to teach in India, and English was the language used there for instruction by the nuns. After Mother Teresa passed away in 1997 she was beatified by Pope John Paul II, a step on the road to canonization. In order for her to be beatified there had to be documented evidence of a miracle that was performed due to her intercession. The miracle in question was the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of a woman due to the application of a locket containing a picture of Mother Teresa. Documentation of a second miracle is required for her to be declared a saint.

92. Hollywood’s Patricia and others : NEALS
Patricia Neal won her Best Actress Oscar relatively late in her career, for playing the middle-aged housekeeper in 1963’s “Hud”. A few years later she was offered the role of Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate” but turned it down. Famously, Neil had an affair with Gary Cooper who was married at the time. She became pregnant with his child but he persuaded her to have an abortion. Not long afterwards Neil married British writer Roald Dahl (of “Willy Wonka” fame) and the couple had five children together before divorcing in 1983.

94. “It Happened One Night” director : CAPRA
I can’t tell you how many of Frank Capra’s movies are on my list of all-time favorites. He directed such classics as “It Happened One Night”, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”, “Lost Horizon”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “Meet John Doe”, “Arsenic and Old Lace” and the holiday favorite “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Capra also did his bit during WWII, enlisting just a few days after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Given his great talent, and the fact that he enlisted at the relatively advanced age of 44, the US Army put him to work directing 11 documentary war films in the “Why We Fight” series, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

“It Happened One Night” is a favorite film of mine, a 1934 romantic comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, and directed by Frank Capra. “It Happened One Night” has one of the sexiest scenes in movies, I think, where Claudette Colbert shows a little leg in order to hitch a ride from her and Gable.

123. One who’s beyond belief? : INFIDEL
Infidel is an English word, created by the Roman Catholic Church to describe someone who did not believe in the Catholic dogma. The word comes from Latin “infidelis” meaning “unfaithful”. During the time of the Crusades, the word “infidel” was used for any non-Christian, and particular the Saracens of North Africa.

125. High-hat : SNOOTY
“Snoot” is a variant of “snout” and is a word that originated in Scotland. The idea is that someone who is snooty, or snouty, tends to look down his or her nose at the rest of the world.

126. Tennis Hall-of-Famer born in Bucharest : NASTASE
I think that Ilie Nastase was the most entertaining tennis player of the 1970s, the days of Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. No matter how much pressure there was in a match, Nastase always had time to give the crowd a laugh.

Down
1. Women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman ___ : CATT
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. Catt was also very close to Susan B. Anthony and succeeded Anthony as head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

2. Workplace welfare org. : OSHA
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created in 1970 during the Nixon administration. OSHA regulates workplaces in the private sector and regulates just one government agency, namely the US Postal Service.

3. Workplace rights org. : NLRB
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was set up in 1935. The NLRB is an independent government agency with the roles of conducting elections for labor unions as well as investigating and rooting out any labor practices that are deemed to be unfair.

4. “Eat at ___” (classic sign) : JOE’S
“Joe’s Diner” is the name given to “any” restaurant, a placeholder that is used to refer to no diner in particular. The complementary placeholder sign is “Eat at Joe’s”.

7. Where Ponce de León died : HAVANA
Juan Ponce de León was a famous Spanish explorer and conquistador. Ponce de León led the Europeans to Florid, and it was he who gave the state its name (Spanish for “Flowery Land”). He was injured on his last voyage to Florida, supposedly by a poisoned arrow, and died from his wound in Havana, Cuba.

8. Bernstein’s “Candide,” for one : OPERETTA
“Candide” is an operetta by Leonard Bernstein that is based on the Voltaire novella of the same name. Candide was first performed in 1956, on Broadway.

9. Black ___ : OPS
“Black ops” is the name given to covert operations, activities that are usually outside of standard military protocol and may even be against the law. Funding for black ops is usually provided by a secret “black budget”.

13. Parts of pounds : PENCE
I remember the days when there used to be 240 pence (pennies) in an Irish/British pound. Life became so much easier when that was changed to 100 “new pence” in 1971.

14. Short cut : BOB
A “bob cut” is a short hairstyle in which the hair is cut straight around the head, at about the line of the jaw. Back in the 1570s a “bob” was the name given to a horse’s tail that was cut short, and about a century later it was being used to describe short hair on humans. The style became very popular with women in the early 1900s (as worn by actress Clara Bow, for example), with the fashion dying out in the thirties. The style reemerged in the sixties around the time the Beatles introduced their “mop tops”, with Vidal Sassoon leading the way in styling women’s hair in a bob cut again. Personally, I like it …

16. Bone connected to the oblique cord : ULNA
The oblique cord is a ligament, one that joins the radius and ulna in the arm near the elbow.

18. Ancient Greek school : STOICS
Zeno of Citium was a Greek philosopher famous for teaching at the Stoa Poikile, the “Painted Porch”, located on the north side of the Ancient Agora of Athens. Because of the location of his classes, his philosophy became known as stoicism (from “stoa”, the word for “porch”). And yes, we get our adjective “stoic” from the same root.

24. Muslim leader : IMAM
An imam is a Muslim leader, often the person in charge of a mosque or perhaps a Muslim community.

29. Light side : YANG
The yin and the yang can be explained using many different metaphors. In one, as the sun shines on a mountain, the side in the shade is the yin and the side in the light is the yang. The yin is also regarded as the feminine side, and the yang the masculine. The yin can also be associated with the moon, while the yang is associated with the sun.

31. Tuscan export : CHIANTI
Chianti is a red wine from Tuscany in Italy. Historically, Chianti was stored in a characteristically bulbous bottle wrapped in a straw basket. However, the pragmatists have won the day and regular wine bottles tend to be used nowadays.

32. Prie-___ (kneeling bench) : DIEU
Prie-dieu literally means “pray (to) God” in French. A prie-dieu is basically a padded kneeler, with an armrest in front and a shelf on which one placed books of prayer.

36. Gershwin’s “The ___ Love” : MAN I
“The Man I Love” is a song by George and Ira Gershwin from the musical “Lady, Be Good”.

38. Fed. agents : T-MEN
A T-man is a law-enforcement agent of the US Treasury.

39. Price abbr. : CTS
Cents (cts.)

40. Coach Parseghian : ARA
Ara Parseghian coached the Notre Dame football team from 1964 to 1974, a period known as “The Era of Ara”.

43. Singer Dion : CELINE
French-Canadienne singer Céline Dion first came to international attention when she won the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest, representing Switzerland in the competition that was hosted in Dublin, Ireland.

44. Hitch : RUB
A “rub” is a difficulty or obstruction. The usage predates Shakespeare, and comes from the game of lawn bowls, in which a rub is a fault in the bowling surface. The oft-quoted phrase “there’s the rub”, comes from Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy:

To die — to sleep.
To sleep — perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!

53. Division politique : ETAT
In French, a state (état) is a political division (division politique).

55. Playwright Fugard : ATHOL
Athol Fugard was born in South Africa. Fugard became involved in the theater, writing plays that opposed apartheid, many of which had to be produced outside of South Africa given the political climate at home. Fugard now lives in San Diego, California.

66. Many a Rubens subject : NUDE
Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish painter who worked in the city of Antwerp in Belgium. When Rubens was 53-years-old, four years after the death of his first wife, he married a 16-year-old girl. It was his young wife who inspired many of the voluptuous figures with whom Rubens became associated later in his career.

68. Parisian schools : LYCEES
The “lycée” is the last stage of secondary education in France.

79. Greenish shade : TEAL
The beautiful color of teal takes it name from the duck called a “teal”, which has dark greenish-blue (teal) markings on its head and wings.

82. Mercedes models : SLS
The Mercedes-Benz SL was first manufactured in 1954. The “SL” stands for Sport Leicht, or “Sport Light” in English.

86. German pronoun : ICH
“Ich” is the German for “I”, as in “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), the famous words of support uttered by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in a speech in West Berlin. The supposed translation of “Ich bin ein Berliner” as “I am a jelly doughnut” … that’s just an urban myth. President Kennedy’s use of German was perfectly correct.

87. Steamed bun in Chinese cookery : BAO
A baozi (also “bou”) is a steamed, filled bun in Chinese cookery.

88. E.M.T. training : CPR
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) has for decades involved the simultaneous compression of the chest to pump blood using the heart, and artificial respiration by blowing air into the lungs. Nowadays emergency services are placing more emphasis on heart compressions, and less on artificial respiration.

96. Donnybrooks : BRAWLS
A “donnybrook” is a free-for-all, named after a famous historic fair in Donnybrook, a district in Dublin, Ireland. Donnybrook Fair had the reputation as a place where there was lots of drinking and fighting. I used to hang out a lot in Donnybrook in my student days and didn’t see any fighting. But drinking …

99. Co-star of “The Stunt Man” : O’TOOLE
“The Stunt Man” is a 1980 film that tells the story of a fugitive hiding out as a stunt double on a movie set. The movie was received well by the critics and was nominated for three Academy Awards. “The Stunt Man” isn’t well known in the US though, largely due to some poor distribution. As leading actor Peter O’Toole said, “The film wasn’t released, it escaped.”

Irish actor Peter O’Toole got his big break in movies when he played the title role in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia”. But my favorite of O’Toole’s movies is much lighter fare: “How to Steal a Million” in which he stars opposite Audrey Hepburn.

100. “There Is ___ …” (song by the Cure) : NO IF
The Cure is an English rock band founded in 1976 and still going strong today, although not with the original line up. The only top ten hit the Cure had in the US is “Love Song”, released in 1989.

101. Monet’s Dutch subjects : TULIPS
Claude Monet painted the harbor of Le Havre in the north of France in 1872, giving it the title “Impression, Sunrise”. The painting is not a “realistic” representation of the scene in front of him, hence the name “impression”. It was this very painting that gave rise to the name of the Impressionist movement.

107. The Wright brothers’ home : OHIO
Wilbur was the older of the two Wright brothers, and he was born in 1867 in Millville, Indiana. By the time that Orville was born in 1871, the family was living in Dayton, Ohio. The Wrights spent a few years of their youth back in Richmond, Indiana, before settling in Dayton for the rest of their lives. The brothers both died in Dayton, Wilbur in 1912 and Orville in 1948.

109. “Hairspray” role : EDNA
In the musical “Hairspray”, Edna Turnblad is one of the main characters. “Hairspray” was originally a John Waters movie, from 1988. In that film Edna was played by Divine, a famous drag queen who featured in many Waters films. In the stage musical that opened in 2002, the original Broadway cast featured Harvey Fierstein as Edna. The 2007 movie adaptation of the musical has John Travolta in the role.

110. Some e-mail attachments : PDFS
Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents can be shared between users and read using many different applications, making them more universally accessible than documents saved by one particular program.

120. Hand-held organizer, in brief : PDA
A device like perhaps an iPhone, Droid, or Treo can be termed a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA).

121. Hollywood’s home: Abbr. : FLA
Hollywood is a city in the south of the state of Florida.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Sting : CON JOB
7. Makes a love connection? : HOOKS UP
14. Like Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” : BLUESY
20. Inclined : ASLOPE
21. Mollify : APPEASE
22. Limestone variety : OOLITE
23. Middle row : THREE FIVE SEVEN
25. Ones getting hit on at salsa clubs? : BONGOS
26. File extensions : TABS
27. Gen. Bradley : OMAR
28. Sledge who sang “When a Man Loves a Woman” : PERCY
30. Master : SAHIB
31. Stretched, in a way : CRANED
33. Nesting place for a bird : EAVE
35. Horned Frogs’ sch. : TCU
36. Like magic squares : MATHEMATICAL
42. Investor’s bottom line : NET COST
44. “Spider-Man” director Sam : RAIMI
45. Numerical prefix : TETRA-
46. Eco-conscious : GREEN
47. Like letters marked “Return to sender” : UNREAD
49. Pizza topper : SAUSAGE
51. Author of “Unto the Sons” : TALESE
54. Poison hemlock or Queen Anne’s lace : BIENNIAL
56. When the Festival de Cannes opens : MAI
58. “Peace ___ hand” : IS AT
59. Comic actor Jacques : TATI
63. Company closing? : INC
64. Silent screen star Naldi : NITA
65. Winging it? : IN FLIGHT
70. Back door : REAR EXIT
72. Lift : BUOY
73. “I’m impressed!” : OOH!
75. Woodstock artist Guthrie : ARLO
76. P.T.A.’s concern: Abbr. : EDUC
77. Atlanta Braves’ div. : NLE
78. Knee-length hip-hop shirts : TALL TEES
83. Mother who was a Nobelist : TERESA
85. Skeleton section : RIBCAGE
91. Rotating surveying tool : Y-LEVEL
92. Hollywood’s Patricia and others : NEALS
94. “It Happened One Night” director : CAPRA
95. Abruptly calls off plans, say : BAILS
96. Show some irritation : BRISTLE
98. See 119-Across : HORIZONTALLY
102. Published : RAN
103. Chorus after “All in favor” : AYES
105. Road sign that may elicit a groan : DETOUR
106. Used, as a dinner tray : ATE ON
108. Dance instruction : STEPS
112. Ditch-digging, e.g. : TOIL
113. ___-Seltzer : ALKA
117. Hip : WITH IT
119. With 98-Across, 34-Down and 48-Down, what each line in the center square should do : ADD UP TO FIFTEEN
122. Like some unexciting bids : LOWISH
123. One who’s beyond belief? : INFIDEL
124. Revolutionary figure? : PLANET
125. High-hat : SNOOTY
126. Tennis Hall-of-Famer born in Bucharest : NASTASE
127. Get ready to ride, with “up” : SADDLE

Down
1. Women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman ___ : CATT
2. Workplace welfare org. : OSHA
3. Workplace rights org. : NLRB
4. “Eat at ___” (classic sign) : JOE’S
5. Unlock, to a poet : OPE
6. One of two photos in an ad : BEFORE
7. Where Ponce de León died : HAVANA
8. Bernstein’s “Candide,” for one : OPERETTA
9. Black ___ : OPS
10. Stay fresh : KEEP
11. Pitcher’s datum : SAVE
12. Friendly introduction? : USER-
13. Parts of pounds : PENCE
14. Short cut : BOB
15. Leaves out of the bag? : LOOSE TEA
16. Bone connected to the oblique cord : ULNA
17. Top row : EIGHT ONE SIX
18. Ancient Greek school : STOICS
19. Start of an agreement that’s not really an agreement : YES, BUT …
24. Muslim leader : IMAM
29. Light side : YANG
31. Tuscan export : CHIANTI
32. Prie-___ (kneeling bench) : DIEU
34. See 119-Across : VERTICALLY
36. Gershwin’s “The ___ Love” : MAN I
37. Suffix with zillion : -AIRE
38. Fed. agents : T-MEN
39. Price abbr. : CTS
40. Coach Parseghian : ARA
41. Trail : LAG
43. Singer Dion : CELINE
44. Hitch : RUB
48. See 119-Across : DIAGONALLY
49. Snake along : SLITHER
50. Oil-rich land : EMIRATE
52. H.S. senior’s exam, once : SAT I
53. Division politique : ETAT
55. Playwright Fugard : ATHOL
57. Beginning of ___ (watershed moment) : AN ERA
65. “Yeah, that’ll happen” : I BET
66. Many a Rubens subject : NUDE
67. Bottom row : FOUR NINE TWO
68. Parisian schools : LYCEES
71. Sports car feature : ROLLBAR
79. Greenish shade : TEAL
80. 84-Down’s doings : EVIL
81. Slippery : EELY
82. Mercedes models : SLS
84. Worshiper with a pentagram : SATANIST
86. German pronoun : ICH
87. Steamed bun in Chinese cookery : BAO
88. E.M.T. training : CPR
89. Drought-prone : ARID
90. Newspapers : GAZETTES
93. Dates : SEES
96. Donnybrooks : BRAWLS
97. Mete out : RATION
99. Co-star of “The Stunt Man” : O’TOOLE
100. “There Is ___ …” (song by the Cure) : NO IF
101. Monet’s Dutch subjects : TULIPS
104. Laundry problem : STAIN
107. The Wright brothers’ home : OHIO
109. “Hairspray” role : EDNA
110. Some e-mail attachments : PDFS
111. Diamonds, e.g. : SUIT
113. Somewhat : A TAD
114. Impart : LEND
115. Bow attachment : KEEL
116. Price to play : ANTE
118. Commandment adjective : THY
120. Hand-held organizer, in brief : PDA
121. Hollywood’s home: Abbr. : FLA

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