0621-14 New York Times Crossword Answers 21 Jun 14, Saturday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Keister : CABOOSE
The word “caboose” originally came from Middle Dutch and was the word for a ship’s galley. When the last car in a train in North America was given a stove for the comfort of the crew, it took on the name “caboose”. The term has also become slang for a person’s backside.

Back in the early 1900s a keister was a safe or a strongbox. It has been suggested that this term was then used as slang by pickpockets for the rear trouser pocket in which one might keep a wallet. From this usage, keister appeared as a slang term for the buttocks in the early 1930s.

8. Soft drink company based in California : SHASTA
The soft drink company called Shasta Beverages started off bottling mineral water from Shasta Springs in Northern California back in 1889. The water was originally shipped in railroad cars that were lined with glass. Expensive, I’d say …

15. Cigar with clipped ends : CHEROOT
A cheroot cigar is cylindrical in shape, untapered and with both ends clipped. This simple shape allows them to be rolled mechanically instead of by hand, making cheroots relatively cheap to produce and to purchase.

16. Winter Olympics group : SKI TEAM
The first Winter Olympic Games was held in 1924, in Chamonix, France. The Winter and Summer Games were held in the same year until 1992, after which they were staggered so that we have an Olympic Games every two years.

18. Onetime White House resident with a cleft palate : TAD LINCOLN
Tad Lincoln was the youngest son of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln. The child was named Thomas Lincoln III after his paternal grandfather, but was soon christened “Tad” by his father as he “wiggled like a tadpole” when he was very young. Tad was born with a cleft lip and palate, which led to speech problems and difficulties chewing. On the fateful night that his parent’s went to see “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre, Tad was taken to nearby Grover’s Theatre (now the National Theatre) to see “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”. Tad heard the news of his father’s assassination from the theatre manager, like all the other patrons. The distraught 12-year-old ran around the theater screaming “They killed Papa! They killed Papa!” Tad himself passed away just six years later due to heart or lung problems.

20. Onetime capital of the Mughal Empire : AGRA
The Indian city of Agra is home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites:

– The Taj Mahal: the famous mausoleum built in memory of Mumtaz Mahal.
– Agra Fort: the site where the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond was seized.
– Fatehpur Sikri: a historic city that’s home to well-preserved Mughal architecture.

The Mughal Empire extended over much of the Indian subcontinent from 1526 to 1707.

21. Only man ever to win an L.P.G.A. Tour tournament (1962) : SNEAD
The Royal Poinciana Invitation was an official event on the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) Tour back in 1961 and 1962. The tournament was an invitational, and men and women were invited to play. In 1961, the event was won by founding LPGA member Louise Suggs. In 1962, the field consisted of 14 LPGA golfers, and Sam Snead. Snead won that year, making him the only man to win a sanctioned LPGA Tour event.

22. Handy talent? : BLUES
William Christopher Handy was a cornet player, often known as the “Father of the Blues”. Handy earned this moniker despite not being the first musician to play the blues, but rather as the person who took the blues into the mainstream repertoire. The 1958 movie “St. Louis Blues” is broadly based on his life.

24. Govt. medical agency : CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is based in Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC started out life during WWII as the Office of National Defense Malaria Control Activities. The CDC worries about much more than malaria these days …

25. Fountain spirits : NAIADS
The Naiads of Greek mythology were water nymphs, associated with fountains, wells, springs and streams. The saltwater equivalents to the freshwater Naiads were the Oceanids.

27. Travelocity competitor : KAYAK
KAYAK is a travel search engine that was founded in 2004 and has been owned by the Priceline Group since 2012.

32. ___ d’agneau (lamb dish) : RIS
Ris d’agneau is the French term for a dish made from lamb sweetbreads. Sweetbreads are usually made from the thymus or pancreas.

33. Harbors : SANCTA
“Sancta” is the plural of “sanctum”, a private place where one can hide away without fear of intrusion. I love my sanctum …

34. El Greco, after age 36 : TOLEDAN
“El Greco” (“the Greek”, in Spanish) was the nickname of the artist whose real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos. El Greco was born in Crete in 1541, and moved to Venice to study art when he was in his early twenties. A few years later he moved to the city of Toledo in central Spain, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

37. “Kramer vs. Kramer” novelist Corman and others : AVERYS
Avery Corman is an author from the Bronx, New York. Two of Corman’s novels have been made into successful movies: “Oh, God!” (published in 1971) and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (published in 1977).

39. Energy company in the Fortune 100 : HESS
The Hess Corporation is an oil company based in New York City. In 1964, the company started selling toy trucks with the Hess logo on them, in Hess gas stations. The company has been selling them every since, bringing out new models just before Christmas. Hess toy trucks have become quite collectible and the old ones can fetch a pretty penny.

40. Home pages? : LEASE
I guess the pages of a lease document might refer to one’s leased home … maybe?

41. Sierra Nevada evergreen : RED FIR
The red fir is so called because the bark of older trees takes on a red color. Red fir is a popular Christmas tree.

The American Sierra Nevada range lies in California and Nevada. The Spanish Sierra Nevada range is in Andalusia, with the name meaning “snowy range” in Spanish.

43. Like some verbs: Abbr. : IRR
Irregular (irr.)

44. Moon of Saturn : DIONE
Dione is a moon of Saturn, discovered in 1684 by Cassini. Originally Cassini named the four satellites of Saturn that he discovered “Sidera Lodoicea” (the stars of Louis). In so doing he was honoring King Louis XIV of France. These “stars of Louis” were individually named after Greek gods in 1847.

46. Strategic port raided by Sir Francis Drake in 1587 : CADIZ
Cádiz is a port city in southwestern Spain, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz is a remarkable city geographically, in that it sits on a thin spit of land that juts out into the sea.

English privateer Francis Drake raided the Spanish port of Cadiz in 1587 and occupied it for three days. Drake and his men destroyed 31 vessels and captured six others, in an event known in England as “the Singeing of the King of Spain’s Beard”. The attack was of great strategic importance, delaying the sailing of the famed Spanish Armada by a full year.

50. Anika ___ Rose, 2014 Tony nominee for “A Raisin in the Sun” : NONI
Anika Noni Rice is a singer from Bloomfield, Connecticut who is known to moviegoers as the star of the 2006 film “Dreamgirls”. More recently, Rice play Beneatha Younger in the revival of “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway.

52. Java file, e.g. : SOURCE CODE
“Source code” is a collection of computer instructions that is written in language that can be read by humans as it contains text instructions and comments. Source code is usually converted into machine code so that it can be understood and executed by a computer.

Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java was originally designed for interactive television, but didn’t fit the needs at the time. Back then it was called Oak, named after an oak tree that stood outside the designer’s office. Later it was called Green, and finally named Java, which was simply picked out of a list of random words.

54. Showed : EVINCED
To evince is to show clearly,to make evident.

56. Treats to prevent goiter, say : IODIZES
Back in 1924, a professor of pediatrics in Michigan led a campaign in the US to have producers of salt add a small amount of sodium iodide to table salt, so that the population would have a readily available source of the iodine micronutrient. His goal was to reduce the incidence of goiter in the population.

59. Legs’ diamonds? : ARGYLE
The argyle pattern is based on the Campbell tartan. The Campbell clan is based in the Argyll region (note the spelling) in the west of Scotland, giving the Argyle pattern its name.

Down
2. ___ Engineer (M.I.T. online reference service) : ASK AN
Ask an Engineer is a fun section of the MIT website that lists answers given by MIT staff to all sorts of questions submitted by visitors to the site. There you can learn how birds can sit on high voltage power lines without getting electrocuted, and how to detect a car’s keyless remote if it is lost.

3. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” originally : B-SIDE
Gloria Gaynor is a singer who had most success during the disco era, most notably with “I Will Survive” in 1979.

4. Xenophobe’s bane : OUTLANDERS
Xenophobia is the uncontrollable fear of foreigners. The word comes from Greek, with “xeno” meaning guest, stranger or foreigner, and “phobia” meaning fear, horror or aversion.

5. Frozen foods giant : ORE-IDA
Ore-Ida founders came up with the idea for Tater Tots when they were deciding what to do with residual cuts of potato. They chopped up the leftovers, added flour and seasoning, and extruded the mix through a large hole making a sausage that they cut into small cylinders. We eat 70 million pounds of this extruded potato every year!

6. ___ Parker, founding president of Facebook : SEAN
Sean Parker came to national attention in 1998 as co-founder of Napster, the file-sharing service for music that caused such a fuss in the recording industry. He started to advise the founders of Facebook in 2004, and became the company’s first president later that year. If you watch the very entertaining movie about Facebook called “The Social Network” you’ll see Parker played by Justin Timberlake. Parker comes across as very obnoxious in the film.

7. Author of the 87th Precinct series : ED MCBAIN
Evan Hunter was the adopted name of Salvatore Albert Lombino, an author and screenwriter from New York City. Hunter had a pen name that was perhaps more famous, namely Ed McBain. As McBain he wrote a successful string of crime novels starting in 1956. As Evan Hunter he is perhaps most famous for his 1954 novel “The Blackboard Jungle”, which was made into a successful film the following year.

10. Bailiwick : AREA
Bailiwick is a word dating back to the mid-1600s, and originally meant the “district of a bailiff”.

11. Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’Été,” e.g. : SONG CYCLE
Hector Berlioz was a French composer active in the Romantic period. Berlioz’s most famous work is probably his “Symphonie fantastique”.

19. Onetime Toronado, e.g., informally : OLDS
The Oldsmobile Toronado was produced by GM from 1966 to 1992.

23. Game in which top trumps are called matadors : SKAT
When I was a teenager in Ireland, I had a friend with a German father. The father taught us the game of Skat, and what a great game it is. Skat originated in Germany in the 1800s and is to this day the most popular card game in the country. I haven’t played it in decades, but would love to play it again …

26. Certain tax shelters, for short : IRAS
Individual Retirement Account (IRA)

28. Stone coal : ANTHRACITE
Anthracite is the variety of coal that has the highest carbon content. It is also the form of coal that generates the most heat when burned.

29. Setting for “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” : STALIN ERA
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is a novella by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that was first published in 1962. The novella describes one day of a prisoner in Soviet labor camp in the fifties. Famously, the first publication was in the Soviet literary magazine “Novy Mir”, which marked the first time that an account of Stalinist repression had been openly distributed in the USSR.

31. University of Phoenix specialty : E-LEARNING
The University of Phoenix is for-profit school that was founded in 1976 to serve mainly working student in the Phoenix area. The school started to offer online courses in 1989, and at its peak enrolment in 2010 had almost 600,000 students.

33. Dennis in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” e.g. : SERF
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was released as a movie in 1975, and was a great success. Some thirty years later the film’s storyline was used as inspiration for the hit musical “Spamalot”. I saw “Spamalot” recently and wasn’t that impressed. But, mine was very much a minority opinion …

36. Voter with a Green button, once : NADERITE
Ralph Nader has run as a third-party candidate for the office of President of the United States four times now, in every election from 1996 to 2008. Nader’s name was first first linked with the presidential race in 1971, when the famous Dr. Benjamin Spock offered to stand aside as candidate in the 1972 race if Nader would agree to run, but he declined.

41. Chancel arch icons : ROODS
A rood is a crucifix that specifically symbolizes the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

The chancel of a Christian church is the space surrounding the altar. The chancel sometimes includes the choir and the pulpit.

45. River bordering the Olympic host cities Grenoble and Albertville : ISERE
The Isère river gives its name to the French Department of Isère, located partly in the French Alps. In turn, Isère gave its name to a somewhat famous ship called the Isère, which in 1885 delivered the Statue of Liberty from France to America in 214 shipping crates.

Grenoble is a city at the edge of the French Alps. Grenoble hosted the 1968 Winter Olympic Games.

Albertville is a city in south-eastern France, in the Alps. The city was established in 1836 by King Charles Albert of Sardinia, which resulted in the name “Albertville”. Albertville is perhaps most famous today as the host of the 1992 Winter Olympic Games.

48. Namely : ID EST
i.e. = id est = that is, in Latin …

51. Annual race, colloquially : INDY
The first Indy 500 race was held on Memorial Day in 1911. The winner that day was one Ray Harroun. Harroun had seen someone using a rear view mirror on a horse-drawn vehicle, and decided to fit one on his Marmon “Wasp” motor car. Supposedly that was the first ever use of a rear view mirror on a motor vehicle.

55. Animation fan’s collectible : 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. Keister : CABOOSE
8. Soft drink company based in California : SHASTA
14. Comfortable way to rest : ASSURED
15. Cigar with clipped ends : CHEROOT
16. Winter Olympics group : SKI TEAM
17. Edible in a cone : PINE NUT
18. Onetime White House resident with a cleft palate : TAD LINCOLN
20. Onetime capital of the Mughal Empire : AGRA
21. Only man ever to win an L.P.G.A. Tour tournament (1962) : SNEAD
22. Handy talent? : BLUES
24. Govt. medical agency : CDC
25. Fountain spirits : NAIADS
27. Travelocity competitor : KAYAK
29. Saw home? : SHED
32. ___ d’agneau (lamb dish) : RIS
33. Harbors : SANCTA
34. El Greco, after age 36 : TOLEDAN
36. Ate at : NETTLED
37. “Kramer vs. Kramer” novelist Corman and others : AVERYS
38. Crack, say : MAR
39. Energy company in the Fortune 100 : HESS
40. Home pages? : LEASE
41. Sierra Nevada evergreen : RED FIR
43. Like some verbs: Abbr. : IRR
44. Moon of Saturn : DIONE
46. Strategic port raided by Sir Francis Drake in 1587 : CADIZ
50. Anika ___ Rose, 2014 Tony nominee for “A Raisin in the Sun” : NONI
52. Java file, e.g. : SOURCE CODE
54. Showed : EVINCED
56. Treats to prevent goiter, say : IODIZES
57. Delivers in court : RENDERS
58. Furthest stretched : TAUTEST
59. Legs’ diamonds? : ARGYLE
60. Panel composition, often : EXPERTS

Down
1. They rotate on Broadway : CASTS
2. ___ Engineer (M.I.T. online reference service) : ASK AN
3. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” originally : B-SIDE
4. Xenophobe’s bane : OUTLANDERS
5. Frozen foods giant : ORE-IDA
6. ___ Parker, founding president of Facebook : SEAN
7. Author of the 87th Precinct series : ED MCBAIN
8. Buff : SHINE
9. One given to brooding : HEN
10. Bailiwick : AREA
11. Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’Été,” e.g. : SONG CYCLE
12. Printing on many concert souvenir T-shirts : TOUR DATES
13. Spots likely to smear : ATTACK ADS
15. 79, say : C-PLUS
19. Onetime Toronado, e.g., informally : OLDS
23. Game in which top trumps are called matadors : SKAT
26. Certain tax shelters, for short : IRAS
28. Stone coal : ANTHRACITE
29. Setting for “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” : STALIN ERA
30. Helicopter-parent, say : HOVER OVER
31. University of Phoenix specialty : E-LEARNING
33. Dennis in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” e.g. : SERF
35. Like roots, periodically? : DYED
36. Voter with a Green button, once : NADERITE
38. Array of options : MENU
41. Chancel arch icons : ROODS
42. Slick, in a way : ICED UP
45. River bordering the Olympic host cities Grenoble and Albertville : ISERE
47. Sleepy sort : DOZER
48. Namely : ID EST
49. Some garnishes : ZESTS
51. Annual race, colloquially : INDY
53. Soft-soap : COAX
55. Animation fan’s collectible : CEL

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