0610-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 10 Jun 13, Monday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Zhouqin Burnikel
THEME: Pa’s in Front … today’s themed answers are made up of two words, each of which starts with PA-:

16A. Comedian with a mock 1968 presidential campaign : PAT PAULSEN
23A. Money that doesn’t completely satisfy a debt : PART PAYMENT
37A. Tricky task in a driver’s test : PARALLEL PARKING
45A. Event that might have a pillow fight : PAJAMA PARTY

59A. Casino cry … or a hint for 16-, 23-, 37- and 45-Across : COME TO PAPA!

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 6m 07s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

9. Old PC monitors : CRTS
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) … there aren’t many of them available in stores these days!

13. Radio’s “___ in the Morning” : IMUS
Don Imus’s syndicated radio show “Imus in the Morning” broadcasts from New York City.

14. Lerner’s partner in musicals : LOEWE
Frederick Loewe was a composer best known for his collaborations with the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, the most famous of which were “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot”.

15. Meat cut that may be “tender” : LOIN
Loin is the tissue along the top of the ribs.

16. Comedian with a mock 1968 presidential campaign : PAT PAULSEN
Pat Paulsen was a comedian noted for his television work with the Smothers Brothers. The Smothers Brothers had the idea to get Paulsen to run for US President in 1968, as a mock candidate. He seemed to take to the idea and ended up running in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1988, 1992 and 1996.

27. Bob Schieffer’s network : CBS
Bob Schieffer is a television journalist who has worked for CBS News since 1969. Notably, Schieffer has been the moderator of CBS’s “Face the Nation” since 1991. Schieffer is also an accomplished songwriter and collaborated on four songs that have been recorded by Washington band Honky Tonk Confidential.

28. Roman god of love : AMOR
Cupid, the Greek god of desire, was also known as Amor. “Cupido” is Latin for “desire” and “amor” is Latin for “love”.

40. Kindergartner, e.g. : TOT
“Kindergarten” is of course a German term, literally meaning “children’s garden”. The term was coined by the German education authority Friedrich Fröbel in 1837, when he used it as the name for his play and activity institute that he created for young children to use before they headed off to school. His thought was that children should be nourished educationally, like plants in a garden.

42. Furniture chain founded in Sweden : IKEA
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.

43. Floppy feature of a dachshund : EAR
The dachshund breed of dog was originally bred to chase and flush out badgers. The name “dachshund” is German and translates as “badger dog”.

44. Co. in a 2000 merger that became Verizon : GTE
GTE was a rival to AT&T, the largest of the independent competitors to the Bell System. GTE merged with Bell Atlantic in 2000 to form the company that we know today as Verizon.

45. Event that might have a pillow fight : PAJAMA PARTY
Our word “pajamas” comes to us from the Indian subcontinent, where “pai jamahs” were loose fitting pants tied at the waist and worn at night by locals and ultimately by the Europeans living there. And “pajamas” is another of those words that I had to learn to spell differently when I came to America. In the British Isles the spelling is “pyjamas”.

52. Stock market debut, for short : IPO
An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is the very first offer of stock for sale by a company on the open market. In other words, an IPO marks the first time that a company is traded on a public exchange. Companies have an IPO to raise capital to expand (usually).

55. “La Bohème” or “La Traviata” : OPERA
“La bohème” by Giacomo Puccini is the second most frequently performed opera in the US (after Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”). The lead female role in the piece is Mimì, a seamstress.

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” was originally titled “Violetta” after the main character in the piece. The title “La Traviata” translates into “The Woman Gone Astray”, reflecting Violetta’s life as a courtesan.

56. Psychologist Alfred : ADLER
Alfred Adler was one of the group of medical professionals that founded the psychoanalytic movement. Today Adler is less famous than his colleague, Sigmund Freud.

57. Wrigley Field player : CUB
The Chicago Cubs is one of only two charter members of the baseball’s National League who are still playing, the other being the Atlanta Braves. The Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, which is a long time ago. In fact, the Cubs have the longest championship drought of any professional sports team in North America.

The famous ballpark that is home to the Chicago Cubs was built in 1914. Back then it was known as Weegham Park, before becoming Cubs Park when the Cubs arrived in 1920. It was given the name Wrigley Field in 1926, after the owner William Wrigley, Jr. of chewing gum fame.

58. The “I” in M.I.T.: Abbr. : INST
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) moved into its magnificent mile-long campus on the Cambridge side of the Charles River in 1906. The campus was built largely with funds donated by George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company.

59. Casino cry … or a hint for 16-, 23-, 37- and 45-Across : COME TO PAPA!
The “casino” originated in the 1700s, first describing a public room for music or dancing. The name “casino” is a diminutive of “casa” meaning “house”.

61. Actor Rogen : SETH
Seth Rogen is a Canadian comedian who got a lot of credit for his supporting role in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”. That led to him being cast as the lead in the 1970 film “Knocked Up”. I am afraid that I haven’t seen either movie …

62. Beethoven dedicatee : ELISE
“Fur Elise” is a beautiful piece of music written by Beethoven, and is also known as “Bagatelle in A Minor”. “Fur Elise” means simply “For Elise”, but sadly no one knows the identity of the mysterious dedicatee.

66. Ward of “CSI: NY” : SELA
The actress Sela Ward turns up in crosswords a lot. Ward played Teddy Reed in the TV show “Sisters” in the nineties, and was in “Once and Again” from 1999-2002. I don’t know either show, but I do know Ward from the medical drama “House” in which she played the hospital’s lawyer and Greg House’s ex-partner. That was a fun role, I thought. More recently Ward has been playing a lead role on “CSI: NY” and is a very welcome and much-needed addition to the cast …

Down
2. Spitting ___ : IMAGE
“Spitting image” is used to describe someone who looks very much like another. The phrase used to be written as “spit and image”, and makes use of the concept that a person is made up the the stuff of one’s parents (i.e. the spit) and has the look of one’s parents (i.e. the image). The expression “you are the very spit of your mother/father” used the same ideas.

4. Mentalist’s skill, briefly : ESP
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

5. Certain IM user : AOLER
Even though instant messaging (sending IMs) has been around since the 1960s, it was AOL who popularized the term “instant message” in the eighties and nineties.

8. Kyoto currency : YEN
The Korean Won, the Chinese Yuan, and the Japanese Yen (all of which are Asian currencies) take their names from the Chinese written character that represents “round shape”.

The city of Kyoto was once the capital of Japan, and in fact the name “Kyoto” means “capital city” in Japanese.

10. Noir’s counterpart in roulette : ROUGE
In the game of roulette, players can bet on red (rouge) and black (noir).

The name “roulette” means “little wheel” in French, and the game as we know it today did in fact originate in Paris, in 1796.

11. Giant in Greek myth : TITAN
The Titans were a group of twelve older deities in Greek mythology. In the celebrated Battle of the Titans, they were overthrown by the Olympians, who were twelve younger gods.

14. Moon goddess : LUNA
“Luna” is the Latin word for “moon”, and is the name given to the Roman moon goddess. The Greek equivalent of Luna was Selene. Luna had a temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome but it was destroyed during the Great Fire that raged during the reign of Nero.

17. Snakes along the Nile : ASPS
The asp is a venomous snake found in the Nile region of Africa. It is so venomous that the asp was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as a means of execution. Cleopatra observed such executions noting that the venom brought on sleepiness without any painful spasms. When the great queen opted to commit suicide, the asp was therefore her chosen method.

28. Residence like 2-B or 7-J: Abbr. : APT
Apartment (apt.)

29. ___ Zedong : MAO
Mao Zedong was born on December 16, 1893 in the Hunan Province of China. As Mao was the son of a peasant farmer, his prospects for education were limited. Indeed he left school at age 13 to work on the family farm but did eventually get to secondary school in Changsha, the provincial capital. In the years following, Mao continued his education in Beijing and actually turned down an opportunity to study in France.

30. Santa ___, Calif. : CLARA
The Santa Clara Valley, just a few miles from me at the south of San Francisco Bay, is better known as “Silicon Valley”. The term “Silicon Valley” dates back to 1971 when it was apparently first used in a weekly trade newspaper called “Electronic News” in articles written by journalist Don Hoefler.

32. Yale grad : ELI
Eli is the nickname for a graduate of Yale University, a term used in honor of the Yale benefactor Elihu Yale.

33. King Kong, notably : APE
When RKO released the 1933 movie “King Kong”, the promotional material listed the ape’s height as 50 feet. During filming, a bust was created for a 40-foot ape, as well as a full-size hand that went with a 70-foot Kong.

35. Number dialed before an area code : ONE
Area codes were introduced in the 1940s. Back then the “clicks” one heard when dialling a number led to mechanical wear on various pieces of equipment. In order to minimize overall mechanical wear, areas with high call volumes were given the most efficient area codes (lowest number of clicks). That led to New York getting the area code 212, Los Angeles 213 and Chicago 313.

36. Augusta National org. : PGA
Golf’s Masters Tournament is the first of the four major championships in the annual calendar, taking place in the first week of April each year. It is played at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia and has a number of traditions. One is that the winner is awarded the famous “green jacket”, but he only gets to keep it for a year and must return the jacket to the club after twelve months.

44. Greek street food : GYRO
A gyro is a traditional Greek dish, a sandwich made with pita bread containing meat, tomato, onion and tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber sauce). The meat for gyros is usually roasted on a tall vertical spit and is sliced from the spit as required. The name “gyro” comes from the modern Greek word “gyros” meaning “circle”, a reference to the meat turning as it is grilled in a rotating circular motion.

45. Sang-froid : POISE
“Sang-froid” is coolness, composure. The term is French for “cool blood”.

46. Sleep problem : APNEA
Sleep apnea (“apnoea” in British English) can be caused by an obstruction in the airways, possibly due to obesity or enlarged tonsils.

48. Renaissance painter Veronese : PAOLO
Paolo Veronese was a Renaissance painter from the Italian city of Verona (hence his name “Veronese”). Veronese is most famous for his paintings “The Wedding at Cana” and “The Feast at the House of Levi”.

50. Like non-oyster months : R-LESS
There is a traditional warning that one shouldn’t eat shellfish in a month without an R i.e. May through August. That’s because these are the warmer months here in the northern hemisphere when algae blooms can spread toxins that are soaked up by clams, mussels and oysters. Personally, I only eat shellfish in months containing a Q … that would be never …

53. Eliza, to Henry Higgins : PUPIL
Eliza Doolittle is Professor Henry Higgins’ speech student in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”. Of course “Pygmalion” was adapted by Lerner and Loewe to become the Broadway musical “My Fair Lady”. The musical spun off the wonderful 1964 film of the same name starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. To cockney Eliza Doolittle, Professor Henry Higgins was “‘Enry ‘Iggins”.

54. Illinois senator-turned-president : OBAMA
President Obama served three terms in the Illinois State Senate, from 1997 to 2004. The future President ran unsuccessfully for the US House of Representatives in 2000, and then successfully for the US Senate in 2004. Famously, State Senator Obama delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, just a few months before winning that US Senate seat.

59. Collectible frame : CEL
In the world of animation, a cel is a transparent sheet on which objects and characters are drawn. In the first half of the 20th century the sheet was actually made of celluloid, giving the “cel” its name.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Pleasant : NICE
5. Pretentious : ARTY
9. Old PC monitors : CRTS
13. Radio’s “___ in the Morning” : IMUS
14. Lerner’s partner in musicals : LOEWE
15. Meat cut that may be “tender” : LOIN
16. Comedian with a mock 1968 presidential campaign : PAT PAULSEN
18. Detroit product : AUTO
19. Printing units: Abbr. : PGS
20. Villain’s look : SNEER
21. Puff piece? : CIGAR
22. “Absolutely!” : YES!
23. Money that doesn’t completely satisfy a debt : PART PAYMENT
25. ___ and hers : HIS
27. Bob Schieffer’s network : CBS
28. Roman god of love : AMOR
30. Manufacture : CREATE
34. Cut off, as a branch : LOP
37. Tricky task in a driver’s test : PARALLEL PARKING
40. Kindergartner, e.g. : TOT
41. Gents’ counterparts : LADIES
42. Furniture chain founded in Sweden : IKEA
43. Floppy feature of a dachshund : EAR
44. Co. in a 2000 merger that became Verizon : GTE
45. Event that might have a pillow fight : PAJAMA PARTY
52. Stock market debut, for short : IPO
55. “La Bohème” or “La Traviata” : OPERA
56. Psychologist Alfred : ADLER
57. Wrigley Field player : CUB
58. The “I” in M.I.T.: Abbr. : INST
59. Casino cry … or a hint for 16-, 23-, 37- and 45-Across : COME TO PAPA!
61. Actor Rogen : SETH
62. Beethoven dedicatee : ELISE
63. Job for a barber : TRIM
64. “___ does it!” : EASY
65. A great deal : LOTS
66. Ward of “CSI: NY” : SELA

Down
1. A bit cold, as weather : NIPPY
2. Spitting ___ : IMAGE
3. Truncates : CUTS SHORT
4. Mentalist’s skill, briefly : ESP
5. Certain IM user : AOLER
6. Put back to zero, as a tripmeter : RESET
7. Insignificant punk : TWERP
8. Kyoto currency : YEN
9. Alleges : CLAIMS
10. Noir’s counterpart in roulette : ROUGE
11. Giant in Greek myth : TITAN
12. Angry bull’s sound : SNORT
14. Moon goddess : LUNA
17. Snakes along the Nile : ASPS
21. Modern lead-in to cafe : CYBER-
24. Represent : ACT AS
26. Long-term bank offering, briefly : IRA
28. Residence like 2-B or 7-J: Abbr. : APT
29. ___ Zedong : MAO
30. Santa ___, Calif. : CLARA
31. Stoplight color : RED
32. Yale grad : ELI
33. King Kong, notably : APE
34. “Whatever!” : LIKE I CARE!
35. Number dialed before an area code : ONE
36. Augusta National org. : PGA
38. Andes animal : LLAMA
39. Do-it-yourselfer’s purchase : KIT
43. Coarse, as humor : EARTHY
44. Greek street food : GYRO
45. Sang-froid : POISE
46. Sleep problem : APNEA
47. Remarks not to be taken seriously : JESTS
48. Renaissance painter Veronese : PAOLO
49. Own up (to) : ADMIT
50. Like non-oyster months : R-LESS
51. Head: Fr. : TETE
53. Eliza, to Henry Higgins : PUPIL
54. Illinois senator-turned-president : OBAMA
59. Collectible frame : CEL
60. A touchdown is worth six: Abbr. : PTS


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2 thoughts on “0610-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 10 Jun 13, Monday”

  1. I always think that a theme is really only relevant when you need it to solve the puzzle. That said, we all have different experiences and so many will find the theme supefluous and many will find it helpful in filling the grid.

    At least I think so! 🙂

    Thanks for taking time to comment.

Comments are closed.