Day: January 30, 2013

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Muscles strengthened by squats : QUADS
The quadriceps femoris is the muscle group at the front of the thigh. It is the strongest muscle in the human body, and is also the leanest. The “quads” are actually a group of four muscles in the upper leg, hence the use of the prefix “quad-”.

6. Shul attendees : JEWS
Shul is another word for a synagogue. “Shul” is the term mostly used in Orthodox Judaism, “synagogue” in Conservative Judaism, and “temple” in Reform Judaism.

10. Easy-to-spread cheese : BRIE
Brie is a soft cheese, named after the French province of Brie where it originated.

14. Zac of “High School Musical” : EFRON
Zac Efron is an actor from San Luis Obispo, California. Apparently Efron is a heartthrob to “tweenyboppers”. His big break was in the Disney hit movie “High School Musical”.

“High School Musical” is a 2006 Disney film made for televison that spawned two sequels released to movie theaters worldwide. The soundtrack to “High School Musical” ended up being the best-selling album for 2006. Apparently the storyline is based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

17. Coming on to a patient, perhaps? : DOCTOR NO-NO (from “Doctor No”)
The movie and book “Dr. No” that feature the character James Bond use the abbreviation for “doctor”.

“Dr. No” may have been the first film in the wildly successful James Bond franchise, but it was the sixth novel in the series of books penned by Ian Fleming. Fleming was inspired to write the story after reading the Fu Manchu tales by Sax Rohmer. If you’ve read the Rohmer books or seen the films, you’ll recognize the similarities between the characters Dr. No and Fu Manchu.

20. Piltdown man, for one : HOAX
The Piltdown Man hoax is the most famous deception in the world of paleontology. The hoax played out in 1912 when a Charles Dawson announced that he had a skull fragment that was discovered at a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown in East Sussex in England. Most of the scientific community believed this was the fossilized remains of a form of man unknown up to that point. It was forty years later when it was determined that the skull fragment was in fact a composite of a medieval human skull, a 500-year old orangutan and some fossilized chimpanzee teeth. No one is really sure who pulled off the hoax, but I believe the police are looking at the usual suspects …

21. Deny membership to skater Starbuck? : BAN JOJO (from “banjo”)
JoJo Starbuck is a champion figure skater from Downey, California. Starbuck and her partner Kenneth Shelley won the US pair skating championship for three years in a row from 1970 to 1972. For several years, Starbuck was married to famed Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Tery Bradshaw.

26. Kedrova of “Zorba the Greek” : LILA
Lila Kedrova was a Russian-born French actress best-known for playing Mme. Hortense in the 1964 film “Zorba the Greek”. Kedrova won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for that performance.

31. Less-than sign’s keymate : COMMA
Our word “comma” comes into English via Latin from the Greek “komma” meaning “clause in a sentence”.

33. First name in scat : ELLA
Ella Fitzgerald, the “First Lady of Song”, had a hard and tough upbringing. She was raised by her mother alone in Yonkers, New York. Her mother died while Ella was still a schoolgirl, and around that time the young girl became less interested in her education. She fell in with a bad crowd, even working as a lookout for a bordello and as a Mafia numbers runner. She ended up in reform school, from which she escaped, and found herself homeless and living on the streets for a while. Somehow Fitzgerald managed to get herself a spot singing in the Apollo Theater in Harlem. From there her career took off and as they say, the rest is history.

Our word “scat” comes from a 19th-century expression “quicker than s’cat”, which meant “in a great hurry”. The original phrase probably came from the words “hiss” and “cat”.

34. “Make my ___!” : DAY
“Go ahead, make my day” is a famous line spoken by the character Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood in the 1983 movie “Sudden Impact”.

36. Dictator’s directive at a dance club? : LET MY PEOPLE GO-GO (from “Let My People Go”)
“Let my people go” is a phrase from the spiritual “Go Down Moses”.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land: Let my people go,
Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my People go.
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt’s land,
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go.

44. Close to closed : AJAR
Our word “ajar” is thought to come from Scottish dialect, in which “a char” means “slightly open”.

45. “Taras Bulba” author : GOGOL
Nikolai Gogol was a Russian writer, born in Ukraine. Gogol wrote a lot of satirical pieces that attacked corrupt bureaucracy in Russia, which led to his being exiled. His most famous work is probably “Taras Bulba”, from 1836.

50. Hollywood’s Gardner : AVA
Ava Gardner is noted for her association with some big movies, but also for her association with some big names when it came to the men in her life. In the world of film, she appeared in the likes of “Mogambo” (1953), “On the Beach” (1959), “The Night of the Iguana” (1964) and “Earthquake” (1974). The men in her life included husbands Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra. After her marriages had failed (and perhaps before!) she had long term relationships with Howard Hughes and bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin whom she met through her friend Ernest Hemingway.

51. Cowardly Lion portrayer : LAHR
Bert Lahr’s most famous role was the cowardly lion in “The Wizard of Oz”. Lahr had a long career in burlesque, vaudeville and on Broadway. Remember the catch phrase made famous by the cartoon character Snagglepuss, “Heavens to Murgatroyd!”? Snagglepuss stole that line from a 1944 movie called, “Meet the People” in which it was first uttered by none other than Bert Lahr.

53. New York site of Mark Twain’s grave : ELMIRA
Elmira is a city in the southern tier of New York State located closed close to the border with Pennsylvania. Elmira was also the family home of Olivia Langdon, wife of Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain). Mark Twain and family are buried in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

55. Bad-mouth designer Chanel? : DIS COCO (from “disco”)
“Dis” is a slang term meaning “insult” that originated in the eighties, and is a shortened form of “disrespect: or “dismiss”.

Coco Chanel was a French designer. Perhaps because I am a man, clothes design is not my forte, however, if I had to pick a designer whose clothes I really liked, it would be Chanel. She had a way of creating simpler designs that looked so elegant on a woman.

Discotheques started up during WWII in Occupied France. American-style music (like jazz and jitterbug dances) was banned by the Nazis, so French natives met in underground clubs that they called discotheques where records were often played on just a single turntable. After the war, these clubs came out into the open. One famous Paris discotheque was called “Whiskey a Gogo”. In that Paris disco, non-stop music was played using two turntables next to a dance-floor, and this concept spread around the world.

57. “Mon ___!” : DIEU
“Mon Dieu” is French for “my God”.

58. Radio City’s architectural style : DECO
Art deco is the name given to a style of design and architecture of the 1920s that actually had its roots in Belgium and then spread throughout Europe before arriving in North America. Celebrated examples of art deco architecture are the magnificent Chrysler Building in New York City completed in 1930, and the GE Building that sits in the middle of Rockefeller Center also in New York City, with the address of “30 Rock”.

64. Cheese that doesn’t spoil : EDAM
Edam cheese takes its name from the Dutch town of Edam in North Holland. The cheese is famous for its coating of red paraffin wax, a layer of protection that helps Edam travel well and prevents spoiling. You might occasionally come across an Edam cheese that is coated in black wax. The black color indicates that the underlying cheese has been aged for a minimum of 17 weeks.

65. Painter Nolde : EMIL
Emil Nolde was a German Expressionist painter. He was actually born Emil Hansen, near the village of Nolde in the Prussian Duchy of Schleswig in 1867. Hansen officially changed his name to Nolde on the occasion of his marriage in 1902.

66. Muslim woman’s veil : HIJAB
The “hijab” is a veil worn by many Muslim women in the presence of adult males who are not related to them. The hijab covers the head but leaves the face visible.

69. Potentially dangerous strain : E COLI
Escherichia coli (E. coli) are usually harmless bacteria found in the human gut, working away quite happily. However, there are some strains that can produce lethal toxins. These strains can make their way into the food chain from animal fecal matter that comes into contact with food designated for human consumption.

Down
1. Proof letters : QED
QED is used at the end of a mathematical proof or a philosophical argument. The QED acronym stands for the Latin “quod erat demonstrandum” meaning “that which was to be demonstrated”.

2. Area 51 craft, supposedly : UFO
The famed Area 51 is a remote base in the USAF Nevada Test and Training Range. There’s no question that Area 51 is an unusual base in that frontline operational units are not deployed there. It seems that it is used for developing and testing new and classified weapons facilities for the US Military and other US agencies like the CIA. The government did not even acknowledge that Area 51 existed until 1995, and this official position fuelled a theory that the base is home to UFOs that landed on Earth.

4. Dance to Tito Puente, say : DO THE MAMBO
The form of music and dance known as mambo developed in Cuba. “Mambo” means “conversation with the gods” in Kikongo, a language spoken by slaves taken to Cuba from Central Africa.

After serving in the navy in WWII for three years, the musician Tito Puente studied at Julliard, where he got a great grounding in conducting, orchestration and theory. Puente parlayed this education into a career in Latin Jazz and Mambo. He was know as “El Rey” as well as “The King of Latin Music”.

6. Give bad luck : JINX
A jinx is a charm or a spell, and the word “jinx” comes from an older word “jyng” from the 17th-century. A “jyng” was another word for the wryneck, a type of bird much used in witchcraft.

7. Rock subgenre : 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 …

9. Toast word : SKOAL
Skoal is a Swedish toast, with roots in the old Norse word “skaal” meaning “cup”.

13. Moon of Jupiter : EUROPA
As are many celestial bodies, the moon of Jupiter called Europa was named after a figure in Greek mythology. Europa was a Phoenician woman who was abducted by Zeus. Of course, Europa also gave her name to the continent of Europe.

18. Suitable for most audiences : RATED PG
The Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) film-rating system (R, PG-17, G etc.) is purely voluntary and is not backed by any law. Movie theaters agree to abide by the rules that come with the MPAA ratings in exchange for access to new movies.

22. Decorative inlay material : NACRE
Nacre is another name for mother-of-pearl. Nacre is the strong iridescent material laid down by some mollusks on the inside of their shells, and it’s also what makes up pearls. The creature lays down nacre as a defensive mechanism, protecting the soft tissue of its body from the rough surface of the outer shell. Similarly, it uses nacre to encapsulate harmful debris or a parasite that penetrates the shell, and that’s how a pearl is formed.

24. Nat or Natalie : COLE
Nat King Cole’s real name was Nathaniel Adams Coles. Cole made television history in 1956 when his own show debuted on NBC, a first for an African-American. Cole couldn’t pick up a national sponsor, so in order to save money and possibly save the show, many guest artists worked for no fee at all – the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte and Peggy Lee. The show survived for a year, but eventually Nat King Cole had to pull the plug on it himself.

Natalie Cole is of course the daughter of Nat King Cole. Natalie’s mother was Maria Cole, a singer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The most famous version of the hit song “Unforgettable” was released in 1951 by Nat King Cole. In 1991, Natalie Cole recorded a version that was mixed with an earlier 1961 version sung by her father, creating an “unforgettable” father-daughter duet that was made 26 years after Nat King Cole had passed away.

30. Fannie ___ : MAE
The Federal National Mortgage Association is commonly called Fannie Mae, a play on the acronym FNMA.

35. 2002 sequel starring Wesley Snipes : BLADE II
Wesley Snipes is a movie actor, and a martial artist. The role most associated with Snipes is the title character in the “Blade” series of films. Snipes has been in federal prison since 2010 serving a 3-year sentence for wilful failure to file tax returns.

37. Mello ___ (soft drink) : YELLO
Like so many beverages introduced by the Coca-Cola Company, Mello Yello was launched to compete against a successful drink already on the market. Mello Yello first hit the shelves in 1979, designed to take market share from Pepsico’s “Mountain Dew”.

39. City near Santa Barbara : OJAI
The city of Ojai, California is located just northwest of Los Angeles. One of the city’s claims to fame is that according to the TV shows “The Bionic Woman” and “The Six Million Dollar Man”, Jaime Sommers and Steve Austin grew up in Ojai and were childhood sweethearts!

40. Teri of “Tootsie” : GARR
The lovely Teri Garr had a whole host of minor roles in her youth, including appearances in nine Elvis movies. Garr’s big break came with the role of Inga in “Young Frankenstein”, and her supporting role in “Tootsie” earned Garr an Academy Award nomination. Sadly, Teri Garr suffers from multiple sclerosis. She is a National Ambassador for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

“Tootsie” is a 1982 comedy film starring Dustin Hoffman, directed and produced by Sydney Pollack.

41. Ocean predator : 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.

45. Traipsed (about) : GADDED
“To gad about” is to move around with little purpose. The word comes from the Middle English “gadden” meaning “to hurry”.

54. Hades’ river of forgetfulness : LETHE
The Lethe is one of the five rivers of Hades in Greek mythology. All the souls who drank from the river Lethe experienced complete forgetfulness. The Greek word “lethe” means “oblivion, forgetfulness”.

62. ___ ammoniac : SAL
Sal ammoniac is a mineral made up of ammonium chloride. It is fairly rare as it is very soluble in water and is quite soft. It is most often found around volcanic vents. Sal ammoniac used to be an ingredient in cookies, making them very crispy.

63. Geisha’s accessory : OBI
The sash worn as part of traditional Japanese dress is known as an obi. The obi can be tied in what is called a butterfly knot.

The Japanese term “geisha” best translates as “artist” or “performing artist”.

Return to top of page

For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Muscles strengthened by squats : QUADS
6. Shul attendees : JEWS
10. Easy-to-spread cheese : BRIE
14. Zac of “High School Musical” : EFRON
15. “Don’t worry about me” : I’M OK
16. Course list : MENU
17. Coming on to a patient, perhaps? : DOCTOR NO-NO (from “Doctor No”)
19. Way off : AFAR
20. Piltdown man, for one : HOAX
21. Deny membership to skater Starbuck? : BAN JOJO (from “banjo”)
23. Agree to : ACCEPT
26. Kedrova of “Zorba the Greek” : LILA
27. Genre that includes freestyling : RAP
28. Up time : BOOM
29. Cyberspace ‘zine : E-MAG
31. Less-than sign’s keymate : COMMA
33. First name in scat : ELLA
34. “Make my ___!” : DAY
35. Shiverer’s sound : BRR
36. Dictator’s directive at a dance club? : LET MY PEOPLE GO-GO (from “Let My People Go”)
42. Seek pocket change, say : BEG
43. Itinerary word : VIA
44. Close to closed : AJAR
45. “Taras Bulba” author : GOGOL
48. Marijuana, informally : WEED
49. Seeker of illicit 48-Across : NARC
50. Hollywood’s Gardner : AVA
51. Cowardly Lion portrayer : LAHR
53. New York site of Mark Twain’s grave : ELMIRA
55. Bad-mouth designer Chanel? : DIS COCO (from “disco”)
57. “Mon ___!” : DIEU
58. Radio City’s architectural style : DECO
59. “Strive for medium quality on this one”? : MAKE IT SO-SO (from “make it so”)
64. Cheese that doesn’t spoil : EDAM
65. Painter Nolde : EMIL
66. Muslim woman’s veil : HIJAB
67. Idiot : DOPE
68. Onion rings, e.g. : SIDE
69. Potentially dangerous strain : E COLI

Down
1. Proof letters : QED
2. Area 51 craft, supposedly : UFO
3. Part of a curve : ARC
4. Dance to Tito Puente, say : DO THE MAMBO
5. Buttinsky : SNOOP
6. Give bad luck : JINX
7. Rock subgenre : EMO
8. Hit the jackpot : WON BIG
9. Toast word : SKOAL
10. Key using all the black keys: Abbr. : B MAJ
11. Go straight : REFORM
12. Facing big trouble : IN A JAM
13. Moon of Jupiter : EUROPA
18. Suitable for most audiences : RATED PG
22. Decorative inlay material : NACRE
23. First fratricide victim : ABEL
24. Nat or Natalie : COLE
25. Gelding-to-be, maybe : COLT
26. Break between flights : LAYOVER
30. Fannie ___ : MAE
32. Sunday hymn accompaniment : ORGAN MUSIC
35. 2002 sequel starring Wesley Snipes : BLADE II
37. Mello ___ (soft drink) : YELLO
38. Budget chart shape : PIE
39. City near Santa Barbara : OJAI
40. Teri of “Tootsie” : GARR
41. Ocean predator : ORCA
45. Traipsed (about) : GADDED
46. City of northern Spain : OVIEDO
47. Often-removed car part : GAS CAP
48. Amnesiac’s question : WHO AM I?
52. Topmost points : ACMES
54. Hades’ river of forgetfulness : LETHE
56. Command to Fido : COME
57. Editorial strike-out : DELE
60. Give a ribbing : KID
61. Spanish eye : OJO
62. ___ ammoniac : SAL
63. Geisha’s accessory : OBI

Return to top of page

The Best of the New York Times Crossword Collections
Amazon.com Widgets