0822-14 New York Times Crossword Answers 22 Aug 14, Friday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Something that goes from a pit to your stomach? : BBQ SANDWICH
It is believed that our word “barbecue” comes from the Taíno people of the Caribbean in whose language “barbacoa” means “sacred fire pit”.

12. Snarky sound : HEH
“Snark” is a term that was coined by Lewis Carroll in his fabulous 1876 nonsense poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Somehow, the term “snarky” came to mean “irritable, short-tempered” in the early 1900s.

15. It has billions of barrels : SAUDI ARABIA
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest Arab country in the Middle East and is the world’s largest oil producer, home to the world’s largest oil reserves. The Saudi dynasty started in central Arabia in 1744 when the secular leader Muhammad ibn Saud joined forces with the Islamic scholar and Imam, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. At the time, Saud was a ruler of a town near Riyadh and he was determined to bring “true” Islam to the Arabian peninsula. Since 1744 the fortunes of the Saudi family have risen and fallen, but it is that same family who rules what we know today as Saudi Arabia.

16. Queen of Thebes, in myth : INO
Ino was a mortal queen of Thebes through her marriage to King Athamas. In Greek mythology, Ino became the goddess Leukothea after her death. As Leukothea she provided divine aid to Odysseus, according to Homer’s “Odyssey”. She provided Odysseus with a magical veil that he used to escape from Poseidon.

Thebes was a city in Ancient Egypt located on the river Nile, the ruins of which are now found with the bounds of the modern city of Luxor. The ruins of Ancient Thebes include the famous Luxor Temple and and Karnak Temple, as well as the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens.

19. Sashimi selection : AHI
Yellowfin tuna is usually marketed as “ahi”, its Hawaiian name. Yellowfin tuna is one big fish, often weighing over 300 pounds.

“Sashimi” is thinly sliced raw fish, although it can also be raw meat. The word “sashimi” translates literally as “pierced body”, which may be a reference to the practice of sticking the tail and fin to sliced fish to identify it.

21. Dos little words? : TE AMO
In Spanish, one might say “I love you” (te amo), just two (dos) little words.

23. Esther of “Good Times” : ROLLE
Esther Rolle was an actress best known for playing the character Florida Evans on the sitcom “Maude” and on the show’s spinoff “Good Times”.

28. Brand of bait pellets : D-CON
“d-Con” is a line of rodent control products that has been around for over 50 years.

29. Fix : SPAY
Our verb “to spay”, meaning “to surgically remove the ovaries of” (an animal) comes from an old Anglo-French word “espeier” meaning “to cut with a sword”.

30. Walt Disney Concert Hall designer : FRANK GEHRY
Frank Gehry is an architect from Toronto who is based in Los Angeles. Listed among Gehry’s famous creations are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in Spain, The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and his own private residence in Santa Monica, California. He is currently working on the upcoming Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial that will be placed in Washington, D.C. I hope to see that one day …

32. Cop : STEAL
“To cop” is “to steal”, from the Latin “capere” meaning “to take”.

35. G squared? : MIL
One G, one grand, one thousand dollars …

“A mil” is slang for “a million dollars”.

37. Spotmatic, e.g., briefly : SLR
SLR stands for “single lens reflex”. Usually cameras with changeable lenses are the SLR type. The main feature of an SLR is that a mirror reflects the image seen through the lens out through the viewfinder, so that the photographer sees exactly what the lens sees. The mirror moves out of the way as the picture is taken, and the image that comes through the lens falls onto unexposed film, or nowadays onto a digital sensor.

Spotmatic is a line of SLR cameras from Pentax that was produced between 1964 and 1976. The original intention was for the camera to use spot metering (hence the model name), but actually this was changed to average metering.

43. Screen entertainers with many gigs? : IPADS
Ipads can be entertaining tablet computers, with many gigabytes (gigs) of memory.

47. “All the President’s Men” figure : DEEP THROAT
Mark Felt was the Associate Director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal of the early seventies. Felt was also the secret informant who provided secret information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of “The Washington Post”, who broke the story. Felt was given the pseudonym “Deep Throat” by the newspaper’s managing editor, and was a reference to the “deep” background information that was provided and was a play on the “Deep Throat” pornographic film that was released in 1972. To their credit, Woodward and Bernstein refused to reveal the identity of Deep Throat for almost three decades. It was Felt who actually gave up his name to the public, in 2005, after which Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the facts.

51. Actress Blanchett : CATE
Cate Blanchett is a great Australian actress, and winner of an Academy Award for playing Katherine Hepburn in “The Aviator”. Winning for that role made Blanchett the first person to win an Academy Award for playing an actor (Hepburn) who had also won an Oscar. Now that, that is trivial information …

53. Parts of kingdoms : PHYLA
Taxonomy is the classification of organisms or maybe even just items into groups or categories. We are most familiar with the classification of organisms in the major taxonomic ranks called “taxons” i.e.

– Life
– Domain
– Kingdom
– Phylum
– Class
– Order
– Family
– Genus
– Species

54. Juan’s sweetheart : AMIGA
In Spanish, an “amigo” is a male friend, and an “amiga” is a female friend.

56. ___ rock (some George Harrison music) : RAGA
Raga isn’t really a type of music, but has been described as the “tonal framework” in which Indian classical music is composed. Ravi Shankar was perhaps the most famous raga virtuoso (to us Westerners). Western rock music with a heavy Indian influence might be called raga rock.

George Harrison is often referred to as the “quiet Beatle”, although he did have a profound influence on the direction taken by the Fab Four. It was Harrison who first became an admirer of Indian culture and led the rest of the group into the Indian way of life. Harrison went as far as embracing the Hindu religion.

64. Occasion to do a late shift?: Abbr. : DST
On the other side of the Atlantic, Daylight Saving Time (DST) is known as “summer time”. The idea behind summer/daylight-savings is to move clocks forward an hour in spring and backwards in the fall so that afternoons have more daylight.

65. Member of a “great” quintet : LAKE ONTARIO
A famous mnemonic for remembering the names of the Great Lakes is HOMES: standing for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior.

66. ___ Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro : SAO
Sao Gonçalo is the second largest city in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, after the state of capital of Rio de Janeiro.

67. Mideast president who wrote “The Battle for Peace,” 1981 : EZER WEIZMAN
Ezer Weizman was the seventh President of Israel. Earlier in his career, Weizman was a combat pilot in the UK’s Royal Air Force and later rose to Commander of the Israeli Air Force. He also served as Israel’s Minister of Defense before becoming President.

Down
1. Regulus A and Bellatrix : B STARS
Stars are usually classified based on the color of the light that they emit. These classifications are, from hottest to coolest, O, B, A, F, G, K and M. One way to remember the order of these letters is to use the mnemonic “Oh, be a fine girl, kiss me”. The colors of these stars range from blue (class O) to red (class M). Our sun is class G, a yellow star, but I think we all know that …

Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation of Leo. Regulus is a multiple star and what we see as one entity is actually made up of four stars rotating around a common center of mass. “Regulus” is Latin for “prince”.

3. Show fear of : QUAIL AT
“To quail” means “to cower”.

4. Govt. project whose logo depicted a shield in space : SDI
One of the positive outcomes of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a change in US defense strategy. The new approach was to use missiles to destroy incoming hostile weapons, rather than using missiles to destroy the nation attacking the country. The former doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction went by the apt acronym of MAD …

5. Danny of the Celtics : AINGE
Danny Ainge is a retired professional basketball and baseball player, now serving as the President of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics. Ainge was an outstanding athlete from an early age, and is the only person to be named a high-school All American in the three sports of football, basketball and baseball.

6. Curiosity producer : NASA
NASA’s Curiosity rover is the fourth in a series of unmanned surface rovers that NASA has sent to Mars. Previous rovers are the Sojourner rover (1997), Spirit rover (2004-2010) and Opportunity rover (2004-present). Curiosity rover was launched in November of 2011, and landed on Mars in August 2012 after having travelled 350 million miles. After that long journey, Curiosity landed just 1½ miles from its targeted touchdown spot.

7. First course selection : DRIVER
A driver is often the first club selected on a golf course.

9. Counterpart of “abu” : IBN
In Arabic names, “ibn” is a word meaning “son of”. The words “bin” and “ben” are also used for “son of”. The word “bint” means “daughter of”. Similarly, in Hebrew “ben” is used to mean “son of”, and “bat” is used to mean “daughter of”.

10. “Burn Notice” grp. : CIA
“Burn Notice” is an action drama TV series that originally aired from 2007 to 2013 on the USA Network. The show’s title refer to “burn notices” issued by intelligence agencies, a document that discredits a source or agent that has become unreliable.

12. Literally, “fire bowl” : HIBACHI
The traditional hibachi in Japan is a heating device, often a ceramic bowl or box that holds burning charcoal. This native type of hibachi isn’t used for cooking, but rather as a space heater (a brazier). Here in the US we use the term hibachi to refer to a charcoal grill used as a small cooking stove, which in Japanese would be called a “shichirin”. “Hibachi” is Japanese for “firepot” coming from “hi” meaning “fire”, and “bachi” meaning “bowl, pot”.

14. Cache for cash, say : HOMONYM
Strictly speaking, homonyms are words that have the same spelling and the same pronunciation but different meanings e.g. skate (a fish) and skate (worn on the foot). However, the term “homonyms” can also apply in common parlance to words that are pronounced OR spelled the same way but have different meanings. So one might also called the words ere, air, err and heir all homonyms as they all can be pronounced the same way. Strictly speaking, this is a list of homophones. I know, I don’t like ambiguity either …

22. 1963 Pulitzer winner Leon : EDEL
Leon Edel wrote a highly respected biography of author Henry James, for which Edel won a Pulitzer Prize.

24. It’s KOH, chemically : LYE
What we call “lye” is usually sodium hydroxide (NaOH), although historically the term was used for potassium hydroxide (KOH). Lye has many uses, including to cure several foodstuffs. Lye can make olives less bitter, for example. The chemical is also found in canned mandarin oranges, pretzels and Japanese ramen noodles. More concentrated grades of lye are used to clear drains and clean ovens. Scary …

26. “The Killing” star Mireille ___ : ENOS
Mireille Enos is an actress from Kansas City. Enos is perhaps best known for her TV work, playing Sarah Linden on “The Killing” and for playing twins Kathy and JoDean Marquart on “Big Love”. Enos is married to actor Alan Ruck, who I mainly remember playing Cameron Frye in the great movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

31. T. S. of literature : GARP
John Irving’s 1978 novel “The World According to Garp” is somewhat biographical. In fact, Irving’s mother found parts of the novel difficult to read, recognizing elements of herself in Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields.

33. Member of a Latin trio : AMAT
“Amo, amas, amat: … “I love, you love, he/she/it loves”, in Latin.

36. Line to Jamaica in N.Y.C. : LIRR
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.

39. “Dream” group in Barcelona in 1992 : TEAM USA
In 1989, the International Basketball Federation changed its rule requiring amateur status for participants in the Olympic Games (although prior to the ruling, European and South American professionals could play). So the US was able to field the “Dream Team” at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Since the rules changed, the US won gold in four out of the five Olympic tournaments.

41. QuickTime or RealPlayer format option : MPEG
The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was established in 1988 to set standards for audio and video compression. The standards they’ve come up with use the acronym MPEG.

42. Like boors vis-à-vis gentlemen : COARSER
We use the French phrase “vis-a-vis” to mean “with regard to” or “in relation to”. The literal translation from the French is “face to face”. When we imported the phrase into English in the mid-1700s, it had two other meanings that were more faithful to the original. Firstly, it could be a “face to face” meeting (not so today), and secondly, it was a type of carriage in which the occupants faced each other.

46. So-called “Helen of the West Indies” : ST LUCIA
The Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia has a population of less than 200,000. Remarkably, Saint Lucia has produced two Nobel Laureates: economist Arthur Lewis and poet Derek Walcott. Saint Lucia is often called “Helen of the West Indies”. Apparently this is because the island changed hands between French and British over fourteen times since the 1650s. As such, it is the “land that launched a thousand ships”, just as Helen of Troy was “the face that launched a thousand ships”.

48. Director of the 2012 comedy “This Is 40” : APATOW
Judd Apatow is best known for producing the TV series “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared”. Not my cup of tea …

“This Is 40” is a 2012 comedy written and directed by Judd Apatow and starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. “This Is 40” is a sequel to the 2007 Apatow movie “Knocked Up”. I haven’t seen either, and am not itching to do so …

57. Replicator, e.g. : GENE
A gene is a section of a chromosome that is responsible for a particular characteristic in an organism. For example, one gene may determine eye color and another balding pattern. We have two copies of each gene, one from each of our parents, with each copy known as an allele.

61. ___-Boy : LA-Z
La-Z-Boy is a furniture manufacturer based in Monroe, Michigan. Although the company makes furniture for every room in the house, it is famous for it’s recliner chairs found in family rooms all over the country.

62. Old White House nickname : IKE
President Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas and given the name David Dwight Eisenhower, but by the time he made it to the White House he was going by the name Dwight D. Eisenhower. Growing up, his family called him Dwight, and when “Ike” enrolled in West Point he himself reversed the order of his given names.

63. Guerra’s opposite : PAZ
In Spanish, the opposite of guerra (war) is paz (peace).

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Something that goes from a pit to your stomach? : BBQ SANDWICH
12. Snarky sound : HEH
15. It has billions of barrels : SAUDI ARABIA
16. Queen of Thebes, in myth : INO
17. One may tell a conductor to slow down : TRAIN SIGNAL
18. Sound of a slug : BAM!
19. Sashimi selection : AHI
20. Buckled : GAVE
21. Dos little words? : TE AMO
23. Esther of “Good Times” : ROLLE
25. Large part of some herds : EWES
28. Brand of bait pellets : D-CON
29. Fix : SPAY
30. Walt Disney Concert Hall designer : FRANK GEHRY
32. Cop : STEAL
34. Monarchial support : ROYALISM
35. G squared? : MIL
37. Spotmatic, e.g., briefly : SLR
38. Unhelpful reply to “How did you do that?” : IT’S MAGIC
43. Screen entertainers with many gigs? : IPADS
47. “All the President’s Men” figure : DEEP THROAT
49. Like many hipsters : ARTY
51. Actress Blanchett : CATE
52. Pie hole : TRAP
53. Parts of kingdoms : PHYLA
54. Juan’s sweetheart : AMIGA
56. ___ rock (some George Harrison music) : RAGA
58. With 59-Across, race that’s not very competitive : FUN
59. See 58-Across : RUN
60. Pill holder : BLISTER PACK
64. Occasion to do a late shift?: Abbr. : DST
65. Member of a “great” quintet : LAKE ONTARIO
66. ___ Gonçalo, Rio de Janeiro : SAO
67. Mideast president who wrote “The Battle for Peace,” 1981 : EZER WEIZMAN

Down
1. Regulus A and Bellatrix : B STARS
2. Gets rounds around town? : BARHOPS
3. Show fear of : QUAIL AT
4. Govt. project whose logo depicted a shield in space : SDI
5. Danny of the Celtics : AINGE
6. Curiosity producer : NASA
7. First course selection : DRIVER
8. Do battle : WAGE WAR
9. Counterpart of “abu” : IBN
10. “Burn Notice” grp. : CIA
11. Freeze : HALT
12. Literally, “fire bowl” : HIBACHI
13. Doesn’t just attract : ENAMORS
14. Cache for cash, say : HOMONYM
22. 1963 Pulitzer winner Leon : EDEL
24. It’s KOH, chemically : LYE
26. “The Killing” star Mireille ___ : ENOS
27. Like some lobbies : SKYLIT
30. Trip up? : FLIGHT
31. T. S. of literature : GARP
33. Member of a Latin trio : AMAT
36. Line to Jamaica in N.Y.C. : LIRR
38. Bar necessities : ID CARDS
39. “Dream” group in Barcelona in 1992 : TEAM USA
40. Mounted below the surface of : SET INTO
41. QuickTime or RealPlayer format option : MPEG
42. Like boors vis-à-vis gentlemen : COARSER
44. Masseur gratifier : AAH!
45. Raise crops on the Plains, maybe : DRY FARM
46. So-called “Helen of the West Indies” : ST LUCIA
48. Director of the 2012 comedy “This Is 40” : APATOW
50. Try to pull off, say : YANK ON
53. Epic start : PART I
55. Cutting it : ABLE
57. Replicator, e.g. : GENE
61. ___-Boy : LA-Z
62. Old White House nickname : IKE
63. Guerra’s opposite : PAZ

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