1116-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Nov 13, Saturday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: David Steinberg
THEME: None
BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: Did not finish after 60 minutes!
ANSWERS I MISSED: Too many to mention!

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Air protection program? : APPLECARE
AppleCare is hardware warranty and support service provided by Apple for its products.

The MacBook Air is a notebook computer from Apple that is extremely thin and very light.

10. Italian alternative : RANCH
Ranch dressing has been the best selling salad dressing in the country since 1992. The recipe was developed by Steve Henson who introduced it in the fifties to guests on his dude ranch, Hidden Valley Ranch in Northern California. His ranch dressing became so popular that he opened a factory to produce packets of ranch seasoning that could be mixed with mayonnaise and buttermilk. Henson sold the brand for $8 million in 1972.

16. Where Union Pacific is headquartered : OMAHA
The Union Pacific Railroad is the largest railroad in the US. Union Pacific operates over 8,000 locomotives, and all of that rolling stock operates west of Chicago and New Orleans.

17. 1992 chart-topper that mentions “my little turn on the catwalk” : I’M TOO SEXY
The English band called Right Said Fred is named for a famous song back in the UK that was a hit for comic actor Bernard Cribbins in 1962. Right Said Fred’s best known hit was “I’m Too Sexy”. Fun song …

18. Tar : MATEY
I think that the implication here is that “matey” is a slang term for a sailor, although I’ve never heard the term used that way.

A Jack Tar, or just “tar”, was a seaman in the days of the British Empire. The term probably arose due to a sailor’s various uses of tar back then, including waterproofing his clothes and using tar in his hair to slick down his ponytail.

19. 65-Across’s title: Abbr. : DET
Detective (Det.)

20. Evian competitor : NAYA
The Naya brand of bottled water uses a spring in the Laurentian Mountains in Quebec as its source.

Évian-les-Bains (or simply Évian) is in the very east of France, on the shores of Lake Geneva directly across the lake from Lausanne, Switzerland. As you might imagine, Évian is the home of Évian mineral water, the most successful business in town. I can’t stand the taste of Évian water …

21. Gun shows? : OATERS
The term “oater” that is used for a western movie comes from the number of horses seen, as horses love oats!

22. A or O, but not B : ALER
The Oakland Athletics (usually “the A’s”) baseball franchise was founded back in 1901 as the Philadelphia Athletics. The team became the Kansas City Athletics in 1955 and moved to Oakland in 1968.

The Baltimore Orioles (sometimes “the O’s”) were one of the eight charter teams of MLB’s American League, so the franchise dates back to 1901. Prior to 1901, the team has roots in the Minor League Milwaukee Brewers, and indeed entered the American League as the Brewers. In 1902 the Brewers moved to St. Louis and became the Browns. The team didn’t fare well in St. Louis, so when it finally relocated to Baltimore in the early fifties the team changed its name completely, to the Baltimore Orioles. The owners so badly wanted a fresh start that they traded 17 old Browns players with the New York Yankees. The trade didn’t help the team’s performance on the field in those early days, but it did help distance the new team from its past.

24. First name in fashion : RALPH
Ralph Lauren is an American fashion designer, born Ralph Liftshitz in the Bronx, New York. Lauren started off working as a salesman for Brooks Brothers after spending two years in the US Army. He then opened a necktie store, featuring his own tie designs. The ties were sold under the name “Polo”, which became Lauren’s most famous brand. Other Lauren brands are Purple Label and Black Label.

27. ___ Fund Management (investment company) : SOROS
Soros Fund Management is a hedge fund management company that was founded by George Soros in 1969.

29. Strike-monitoring 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.

30. Contact on Facebook : POKE
When you “poke” someone on Facebook, an icon shows up on the poked person’s Facebook page telling them they have been “poked” and by whom. I guess it’s a way of saying “hi”, but I am very much a Facebook neophyte …

31. Time reversal? : STET
“Stet” is a Latin word meaning “let it stand”. In editorial work, the typesetter is instructed to disregard any change previously marked by writing the word “stet” and then underscoring that change with a line of dots or dashes.

“Time” magazine has a readership of about 25 million, making it the largest circulation weekly news magazine in the world.

39. Long, slender glass for drinking beer : ALE YARD
A yard of ale is a very tall glass, one that is just under a yard (three feet) long. It holds about 60 fluid ounces of beer. I’ve tried drinking out of one, and it is extremely difficult. There is a bulb at the bottom of the glass. When you get towards the end of the drink, that bulb causes a kind of airlock and the remainder of the beer rushes to the top of the glass splashing you in the face.

41. River to the North Sea : TYNE
The River Tyne is in the northeast of England. The most famous city on the river is Newcastle upon Tyne.

42. Lowly one : PEON
A peon is a lowly worker with no real control over his/her working conditions. The word comes into English from Spanish where it has the same meaning.

43. Quarterly magazine published by Boeing : AERO
“Aero” magazine is a quarterly publication issued by Boeing to its customers.

45. Norwegian Romanticist : GRIEG
Edvard Grieg is Norway’s best known composer, active in the Romantic Era. His most famous works are the gorgeous Piano Concerto in A minor, and his incidental music for the play “Peer Gynt” by Henrik Ibsen.

50. Sch. in Madison, N.J. : DREW U
Drew University is a private school in Madison, New Jersey. The university was founded in 1867 as a Methodist seminary using funds from the estate of Daniel Drew, a railroad tycoon.

52. ___ Gunn, “Breaking Bad” co-star : ANNA
Anna Gunn is an actress from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is best known for playing Skyler White on the TV show “Breaking Bad”.

I hadn’t seen the AMC drama “Breaking Bad” until recently when my wife borrowed the first and second seasons from our local library. It is a very well written show about a high school teacher stricken by lung cancer who turns to a life of crime to make money.

58. Star opening? : TRI-
TriStar is a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures, founded in 1982 as Nova Pictures. The company logo features Pegasus, the winged horse.

60. Prevent a crash, say : FORCE QUIT
“Force Quit” is a command that can be used in Apple’s operating system. It is used to shut down a program that has frozen.

Down
1. Springblade producer : ADIDAS
Springblade is a line of running shoes made by Adidas.

The Adidas company history goes back to Adolf “Adi” Dassler making his own sports shoes in his mother’s laundry room in Bavaria after returning from WWI. With his brother, Adi founded Dassler shoes. The companies big break came in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, when Adi persuaded American sprinter Jesse Owens to use his shoes, and with the success of Jesse Owens came success for the fledgling shoe company. After WWII the brothers split, acrimoniously. Adi’s brother, Ru-dolf Da-ssler, formed “Ruda” shoes (later to become Puma), and Adi Das-sler formed “Adidas”.

2. Marmalade fruit : POMELO
The pomelo is a citrus fruit native to Southeast Asia. Apparently it tastes like a sweet, mild grapefruit. I don’t think I have ever had one …

4. Wall Street inits. : LBO
A leveraged buyout (LBO) is a transaction in which an investor acquires a controlling volume of stock in a company, but buys that stock with borrowed funds (hence “leveraged”). Often the assets of the acquired company are used as collateral for the borrowed money. There is a special form of LBO known as a management buyout (MBO) in which the company’s own management team purchases the controlling interest.

5. ___ Musk, co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal : ELON
Elon Musk is successful businessman who has founded or led some very high-profile companies, namely PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX.

6. Millan who’s known as “the Dog Whisperer” : CESAR
Cesar Millan is the real name of television’s “Dog Whisperer”. Millan has been working with overly aggressive dogs on his show “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” since 2004. Millan was an illegal immigrant from Mexico in the US back in 1990, became legal in 2000 and then became a US citizen in 2009.

8. ___ Place (Edmonton Oilers’ arena) : REXALL
Rexall Place is an indoor sports arena in Edmonton, Alberta that is home to the Edmonton Oilers hockey team and the Edmonton Rush lacrosse team.

Rexall is a chain of drugstores in Canada that started out in 1902 as a retailers’ cooperative called United Drug Stores. The name “Rexall” was derived from the “Rx” abbreviation used for prescriptions. Rexall used a very interesting marketing concept in 1936. The company sent “The Million Dollar Rexall Streamlined Convention Train” on a tour all over the US. The train had 12 cars which included product displays, convention facilities and a dining car. The idea was to allow local druggists to attend a convention without having the cost of travel, and of course to promote products and the brand.

9. Frozen food aisle eponym : EDY
Dreyers’ ice cream sells its products under the name Dreyers in the Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states. The company’s founders were William Dryer and Joseph Edy.

12. “G-Funk Classics” rapper : NATE DOGG
Nate Dogg was the stage name of rapper Nathaniel Hale from Clarksdale,Mississippi. Nate Dogg is no longer with us as he died at the age of 41 after suffering multiple strokes.

21. “Holy smokes!” : OH BABY!
23. Long Island Rail Road station : ROSLYN
Roslyn is a village on the North Shore of Long Island, New York.

The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is the commuter rail service that runs all over Long Island, New York with 124 stations and 700 miles of track. More people use the LIRR than any other commuter railroad in the US. It is also the only commuter railroad in the country that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

28. Spartan gathering place : STOA
A stoa was a covered walkway in Ancient Greece. A stoa usually consisted of columns lining the side of a building or buildings, with another row of columns defining the other side of the walkway. The columns supported a roof. Often stoae would surround marketplaces in large cities.

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece, famous for her military might. Spartan children had a tough upbringing, and newborn babies were bathed in wine to see if the child was strong enough to survive. Every child was presented to a council of elders that decided if the baby was suitable for rearing. Those children deemed too puny were executed by tossing them into a chasm. We’ve been using the term “spartan” to describe something self-disciplined or austere since the 1600s.

30. Bakery/cafe chain : PANERA
Panera Bread is a chain of bakery/coffeehouses. It’s a good place to get online while having a cup of coffee. Back in 2006 and 2007, Panera was the largest provider of free Wi-Fi access in the whole of the US.

32. Schwab rival : E*TRADE
E*Trade is mainly an online discount brokerage. It was founded in 1982 in Palo Alto, California, and I used to drive by its headquarters almost every day. The company is now run out of New York City. E*Trade produces those famous Super Bowl ads with the talking babies staring into a webcam.

34. Rhames of “Mission: Impossible” : VING
Ving Rhames is a Hollywood actor from New York City. Rhames appears alongside Tom Cruise in the “Mission Impossible” series of films. In fact, only Cruise and Rhames appear in all four of the “Mission Impossible” movies.

36. Early tragedienne Duse : ELEONORA
Eleanora Duse was an Italian actress, known professionally simply as “Duse”. There is a theory that our term “doozy” derived from Eleanora’s family name. I guess she was a “doozy”.

37. 1990s sci-fi series : AEON FLUX
“Aeon Flux” is a sci-fi film from 2005 starring Charlize Theron in the title role.

40. Alternative to die : DER
“Der” and “die” are German words meaning “the”. “Der” is used with a masculine noun and “die” is used with a feminine noun.

47. Italian P.M. Letta : ENRICO
Enrico Letta is the current Prime Minister of Italy, having taken office in 2013.

48. Boot covering : GAITER
A “gaiter” is a heavy cloth or piece of leather that covers the leg from the instep up to the ankle or perhaps knee.

55. Certain spirits : RYES
For whiskey to be labelled as “rye” in the US, it has to be distilled from at least 51% rye grain. In Canada however, a drink called rye whiskey sometimes contains no rye at all.

57. Frankie Avalon’s “___ Dinah” : DE DE
“De De Dinah” was a 1958 hit for Frankie Avalon.

Frankie Avalon is a singer and actor who was a famous teen idol. Notably, he teamed up with actress and singer Annette Funicello in a series of “Beach Party” movies in the sixties.

60. Org. with a top 10 list : FBI
What we know today as the FBI was set up in 1908 as the BOI, the Bureau of Investigation. The name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. The Bureau was set up at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was largely moved to do so after the 1901 assassination of President McKinley, as there was a perception that anarchists were threatening law and order .

61. Shopper’s choice : QVC
The QVC shopping channel was founded in 1986 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The company now has operations not only in the US but also in the UK, Germany, Japan and Italy. That means QVC is reaching 200 million households. The QVC acronym stands for Quality, Value and Convenience.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Air protection program? : APPLECARE
10. Italian alternative : RANCH
15. Tight squeeze for a couple? : DOUBLE BED
16. Where Union Pacific is headquartered : OMAHA
17. 1992 chart-topper that mentions “my little turn on the catwalk” : I’M TOO SEXY
18. Tar : MATEY
19. 65-Across’s title: Abbr. : DET
20. Evian competitor : NAYA
21. Gun shows? : OATERS
22. A or O, but not B : ALER
24. First name in fashion : RALPH
26. One going for the big bucks : DOE
27. ___ Fund Management (investment company) : SOROS
29. Strike-monitoring org. : NLRB
30. Contact on Facebook : POKE
31. Time reversal? : STET
33. Tore to shreds : SAVAGED
35. Diehard sort : ZEALOT
38. Dangerous things to go on : BINGES
39. Long, slender glass for drinking beer : ALE YARD
41. River to the North Sea : TYNE
42. Lowly one : PEON
43. Quarterly magazine published by Boeing : AERO
45. Norwegian Romanticist : GRIEG
49. Anti : CON
50. Sch. in Madison, N.J. : DREW U
52. ___ Gunn, “Breaking Bad” co-star : ANNA
53. Killing it : ON FIRE
56. Make a touchdown : LAND
58. Star opening? : TRI-
59. Turning blue, maybe : MOLDY
60. Prevent a crash, say : FORCE QUIT
62. Triumphant cry : I RULE!
63. “Buy high and sell low,” e.g. : BAD ADVICE
64. Baselines? : X-AXES
65. Case worker : INSPECTOR

Down
1. Springblade producer : ADIDAS
2. Marmalade fruit : POMELO
3. Green piece : PUTTER
4. Wall Street inits. : LBO
5. ___ Musk, co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal : ELON
6. Millan who’s known as “the Dog Whisperer” : CESAR
7. Temporarily inactive : ABEYANT
8. ___ Place (Edmonton Oilers’ arena) : REXALL
9. Frozen food aisle eponym : EDY
10. See 11-Down : ROMA
11. She loves, in 10-Down : AMAT
12. “G-Funk Classics” rapper : NATE DOGG
13. Iroquoian tongue : CHEROKEE
14. Provincials : HAYSEEDS
21. “Holy smokes!” : OH BABY!
23. Long Island Rail Road station : ROSLYN
25. Old phone trio : PRS
28. Spartan gathering place : STOA
30. Bakery/cafe chain : PANERA
32. Schwab rival : E*TRADE
34. Rhames of “Mission: Impossible” : VING
35. Pioneering underground publication of the 1960s : ZAP COMIX
36. Early tragedienne Duse : ELEONORA
37. 1990s sci-fi series : AEON FLUX
40. Alternative to die : DER
41. In the direction of : TOWARDS
44. Make further advances? : RELOAN
46. Sense : INTUIT
47. Italian P.M. Letta : ENRICO
48. Boot covering : GAITER
51. Open, in a way : UNCAP
54. Kind of threat : IDLE
55. Certain spirits : RYES
57. Frankie Avalon’s “___ Dinah” : DE DE
60. Org. with a top 10 list : FBI
61. Shopper’s choice : QVC

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5 thoughts on “1116-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Nov 13, Saturday”

  1. Bill, this is the first time I read that you had such a difficult time. My husband lost his streak. I don't even attempt Saturdays, so nothing different for me.

  2. Joan Liuzzi…..this was a HARD puzzle for both husband and me….somewhat gratifying to see you had some problems, as well….always read your "after remarks" …..you are a true "words-man"….a dying breed, I fear…..

  3. @Tricia
    Yes, this puzzle didn't sit well with me at all. There was so much information in today's puzzle that was new to me. The setter is very young, and I guess I am just too old 🙂 I am sorry to hear that your husband's streak of clearances came to an end.

    @Joan
    Well, at least something good came out of my miserable experience with this puzzle 🙂 It helps to share the pain! And thanks for the kind words about the blog. I am glad you are enjoying reading it. I enjoy writing it up 🙂

  4. I was done after the top left corner; I figured "ORANGE" as the main ingredient in marmalade, so couldn't make any more headway there. This puzzle was impenetrable, if you ask me.

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