0828-14 New York Times Crossword Answers 28 Aug 14, Thursday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Much of Brides magazine : AD PAGES
“Brides” is a monthly magazine that was first published way back in 1934. The mission of the magazine is to provide resources for brides planning a wedding.

8. Wall St. operator : ARB
“Arb” is short for an arbitrageur, one who profits from the purchase of securities in one market and the subsequent sale in another, hence taking advantage of price discrepancies across markets.

11. [as per the original] : SIC
“Sic” indicates that a quotation is written as originally found, perhaps including a typo. “Sic” is Latin for “thus, like this”.

15. Toscanini, for one : MAESTRO
“Maestro” is often used to address a musical conductor. “Maestro” is the Italian word for “master”.

17. Kitschy quality : NO TASTE
“Kitsch” is a German word, an adjective that means “gaudy, trash”.

20. Retailer owned by Gap : OLD NAVY
Old Navy is a store brand founded and owned by The Gap. The name Old Navy was taken from the Old Navy Cafe in Paris.

The Gap is a San Francisco-based clothing retailer founded in 1969. The name “the Gap” was a homage to the popular sixties term “the generation gap”.

22. “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” e.g. : NOEL
“Noël” is the French word for the Christmas season, ultimately coming from the Latin word for “birth” (natalis). Noel has come to be used as an alternative name for a Christmas carol.

The Christmas carol “We Three Kings” is a favorite of mine. The carol was written in 1857 by the rector of an Episcopal church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania called John Henry Hopkins, Jr. Hopkins composed “We Three Kings” for a Christmas pageant in New York City.

23. Part of a spiral galaxy farthest from the center : OUTER ARM
Our galaxy is the Milky Way, and the nearest “spiral galaxy” to ours is the Andromeda Galaxy. Andromeda is not the nearest galaxy, as that honor belongs to the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy.

32. 1960s TV’s Cousin ___ : ITT
In the television sitcom “The Addams Family”, the family had a frequent visitor called Cousin Itt. Itt is a short man with long hair that runs from his head to the floor. Cousin Itt was played by Italian actor Felix Silla.

34. Stable color : ROAN
A roan horse has an even mixture of white and colored hairs on the body with the head, lower legs, mane and tail having a more solid color.

36. Adolf Hitler, e.g., according to a 1983 hoax : DIARIST
The German magazine “Stern” is famous for having published in 1983 excerpts from “The Hitler Diaries”, supposedly lost diaries written by Adolf Hitler recovered from a plane crash near Dresden in 1945. The editors of “Stern”, in trying to balance secrecy with the need for authentication, apparently did a shoddy job in determining if these books were indeed written by Hitler. Within weeks of the publication of the extracts in a blaze of publicity, the documents were proven to be obvious fakes written on modern paper with modern ink. Stern paid almost one million dollars in the early eighties for the fake diaries, much of which was never recovered.

38. Depression Era architectural movement : MODERNE
Art Moderne is an architectural style that was popular in the 1930s. Art Moderne emerged as a streamlined variant of Art Deco, less ornamental and with purer lines. One example of Art Modern architecture is the design of the Emerald City seen in the movie “The Wizard of Oz”.

40. H2O, to a tot : WAWA
A water molecule is composed of an oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms on roughly opposite sides (about a 150-degree angle). So, sometimes the molecule is represented by “HOH”, although more usually it’s “H2O”.

41. What makes a top stop? : ESS
The word “top” can be made into “stop” by adding a letter S (ess) in the front.

47. Party request : RSVP
RSVP stands for “répondez s’il vous plaît”, which is French for “please, answer”.

53. Where most of Russia is : ASIA
Russia occupies over one eighth of the world’s inhabited land area, making it the largest country in the world.

59. Approval for un hombre : SI, SENOR
In Spanish, a man (un hombre) might say “yes, sir” (si, senor).

60. 1920s-’30s Ford output : MODEL AS
The Ford Model A was the original car produced by the Ford Motor Company. The first production run lasted from 1903 to 1904, when it was replaced by the Model C. The name “Model A” was brought back in 1927 and used for the successor to the Model T.

62. Some washers : GES
The General Electric Company is usually referred to simply as “GE”. One of the precursor companies to GE was Edison General Electric, founded in 1890 by the inventor Thomas Edison. What we know today as GE was formed two years later when Edison merged his company with Charles Coffin’s Thomson-Houston Electric Company. In 1896, GE was selected as one of the 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average. GE is the only one of the original 12 that is still on that list. I spent over ten years with GE at the beginning of my working career, and in fact it was GE that asked me to transfer to the US back in the 1980s …

63. Event at Victoria’s Secret or Nordstrom : BRA SALE
Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 in San Francisco, California. The founder wanted to create an environment where men were comfortable buying lingerie for their wives and girlfriends, an alternative to a department store.

The Nordstrom chain of fashion stores was founded in 1901 by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin as a retailer of shoes, under the name “Wallin & Nordstrom”. The store’s name changed to just “Nordstrom” in 1930, soon after both founders retired and sold their shares to Nordstrom’s two sons.

Down
1. Boutros-Ghali’s successor as U.N. chief : ANNAN
Kofi Annan is a diplomat from Ghana who served as General Secretary of the UN for ten years until the beginning of 2007. Annan attended the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1971-72, and graduated with a Master of Science degree.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian diplomat, the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Boutros-Ghali was nominated for a second term as Secretary-General in 1996, but the US used its right of veto to block the appointment. According to senior delegates, the US wasn’t too happy with his handling of the international crisis in Bosnia.

2. Golden, in Guadalajara : DE ORO
Guadalajara is a populous city in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The Mexican city is named after the city of the same name in the center of Spain.

5. Yanks : GIS
The initials “G.I.” stand for “Government Issue” and not “General Infantry” as is often believed. GI was first used in the military to denote equipment made from Galvanized Iron and during WWI, incoming German shells were nicknamed “GI cans”. Soon after, the term GI came to be associated with “Government Issue” and eventually became an adjective to describe anything associated with the Army.

The term “Yankee” originated back in the 1600s when Dutch settlers used to called English colonists “Jankes”, a disparaging term meaning “Little Johns”.

6. This, in Tijuana : ESTO
Tijuana is the largest city in the Mexican state of Baja California, and lies just across the US-Mexico border from San Diego. Tijuana is also the most westerly of all Mexican cities. A lot of Tijuana’s growth took place in the twenties as tourists flocked south of the border during the days of prohibition in the US. One of the many casinos and hotels that flourished at that time was Hotel Caesar’s in the Avenida Revolución area. Hotel Caesar’s claims to be the birthplace of the now ubiquitous Caesar Salad.

7. Writer/illustrator Silverstein : SHEL
Author Shel Silverstein had a varied career and did a lot more than write books. Silverstein was a poet, composer, cartoonist and screenwriter among other things. One of his successful children’s books is “The Giving Tree”, which was first published in 1964. “The Giving Tree” tells of a young boy who has a special relationship with a tree in a forest. The message of the book seems to be that the tree provides the little boy with everything he needs.

10. 21-/40-Down on 1950s-’60s TV : BEAVER’S DAD (WARD Cleaver)
Ward Cleaver and his wife June were the parents of Wally Cleaver and his younger brother “The Beaver”. The four family members appeared in the fifties sitcom “Leave It to Beaver”.

We used to see a lot of American television programming growing up in Ireland, but “Leave It to Beaver” was one show that didn’t make it across the Atlantic. I’ve seen a couple of episodes, and I am not sure it would travel well. The show went on the air for the first time the day that Sputnik was launched by the Russians, and aired its last show just a few months before President Kennedy was assassinated. An iconic series, by all accounts.

11. Orchestra section: Abbr. : STR
Strings (str.)

12. Something a fund manager may manage, for short : IRA
Individual retirement account (IRA)

13. Lift : COP
“To cop” is “to steal”, from the Latin “capere” meaning “to take”.

16. Disposable cup material : STYRENE
Styrene is a sweet-smelling, colorless liquid that is used to make the plastic called polystyrene.

24. 21-/40-Down in Hollywood : ACTRESS SELA (Sela WARD)
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 played a lead role on “CSI: NY” and was a very welcome and much-needed addition to the cast …

26. Rations (out) : METES
To “mete out” is to distribute by allotments. The verb comes from the Old English word “metan” meaning “to measure”, which is also believed to be the root of our word “meter”.

28. 21-/40-Down to a penologist : PRISON WING (prison WARD)
“Penology” is the study of the punishment of crime and the management of prisons.

32. Clarification lead-in : ID EST
i.e. = id est = that is, in Latin …

35. Los Angeles’s U.S.S. ___ Museum : IOWA
The USS Iowa that saw action in WWII was the fourth ship to be so called by the US Navy. Among her many missions, the Iowa carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Casablanca in 1943 for one of the famed war summits with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. We can visit the Iowa at the Port of Los Angeles now, as it is now a floating museum.

43. Certain soundboard knobs : FADERS
A fader is a knob (or usually a slider) that gradually increases or decreases the level of an audio signal. You’ll often see audio engineers at a performance or in a recording studio sliding buttons up and down. Those are faders.

46. Dugout, for one : CANOE
The boat called a canoe takes its name from the Carib word “kenu” meaning “dugout”. It was Christopher Columbus who brought “kenu” into Spanish as “canoa”, which evolved into our English “canoe”.

49. Out : PASSE
“Passé” is a French word, meaning “past, faded”.

51. Bausch & ___ (eye-care brand) : LOMB
Bausch & Lomb is an American company headquartered in Rochester, New York. It is a major supplier of contact lenses and associated eye-care products. As one might guess, the company was founded (in 1853) by two German immigrants, John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb. Bausch was an optician, and Lomb the “money man”. The company was set up originally to manufacture monocles.

52. ___ effort : E FOR
Apparently the phrase “E for effort” originated as a WWII campaign in the US to help boost productivity in factories.

54. Screening org. : TSA
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks.

55. It’s mostly nitrogen : AIR
Air is mainly composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (1%). We hear a lot about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It makes up (or should make up!) about 0.04%, but that’s an important 0.04%.

56. Presidential advisory grp. : NSC
The National Security Council (NSC) was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. The NSC is chaired by the sitting president and meets in the White House Situation Room.

58. Rx overseer : FDA
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

There seems to some uncertainty about the origin of the symbol “Rx” that’s used for a medical prescription. One explanation is that it comes from the astrological sign for Jupiter, a symbol put on prescriptions in days of old to invoke Jupiter’s blessing to help a patient recover.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Much of Brides magazine : AD PAGES
8. Wall St. operator : ARB
11. [as per the original] : SIC
14. In the general vicinity : NEARISH
15. Toscanini, for one : MAESTRO
17. Kitschy quality : NO TASTE
18. Cornered : IN A TRAP
19. Bust ___ (laugh hard) : A RIB
20. Retailer owned by Gap : OLD NAVY
22. “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” e.g. : NOEL
23. Part of a spiral galaxy farthest from the center : OUTER ARM
27. Ones who cry uncle? : NEPHEWS
31. Feed a line to again : RECUE
32. 1960s TV’s Cousin ___ : ITT
34. Stable color : ROAN
35. Query for clarification : ISN’T IT?
36. Adolf Hitler, e.g., according to a 1983 hoax : DIARIST
38. Depression Era architectural movement : MODERNE
39. Exit : EGRESS
40. H2O, to a tot : WAWA
41. What makes a top stop? : ESS
42. Manage : SEE TO
43. Pretenses : FACADES
45. Diner or sleeper : TRAIN CAR
47. Party request : RSVP
50. Rot : TWADDLE
53. Where most of Russia is : ASIA
54. Something not seen on a nudist, maybe : TAN LINE
57. Compensates for : OFFSETS
59. Approval for un hombre : SI, SENOR
60. 1920s-’30s Ford output : MODEL AS
61. Parabola, for one : ARC
62. Some washers : GES
63. Event at Victoria’s Secret or Nordstrom : BRA SALE

Down
1. Boutros-Ghali’s successor as U.N. chief : ANNAN
2. Golden, in Guadalajara : DE ORO
3. 21-/40-Down to a doctor : PATIENT AREA (hospital WARD)
4. Good for planting : ARABLE
5. Yanks : GIS
6. This, in Tijuana : ESTO
7. Writer/illustrator Silverstein : SHEL
8. Nearly perfect : A-MINUS
9. Attacked : RAN AT
10. 21-/40-Down on 1950s-’60s TV : BEAVER’S DAD (WARD Cleaver)
11. Orchestra section: Abbr. : STR
12. Something a fund manager may manage, for short : IRA
13. Lift : COP
16. Disposable cup material : STYRENE
21. With 40-Down, how rain falls … or a literal description of the answers to the four theme clues : DOWN
24. 21-/40-Down in Hollywood : ACTRESS SELA (Sela WARD)
25. Trashes : RUINS
26. Rations (out) : METES
28. 21-/40-Down to a penologist : PRISON WING (prison WARD)
29. Carriage puller, in rural dialect : HOSS
30. Not fast : EAT
32. Clarification lead-in : ID EST
33. “Easy there, ___” : TIGER
35. Los Angeles’s U.S.S. ___ Museum : IOWA
37. Give an alias : RETITLE
38. Bud : MAC
40. See 21-Down : WARD
43. Certain soundboard knobs : FADERS
44. Wipes out : ERASES
46. Dugout, for one : CANOE
48. Key : VITAL
49. Out : PASSE
51. Bausch & ___ (eye-care brand) : LOMB
52. ___ effort : E FOR
54. Screening org. : TSA
55. It’s mostly nitrogen : AIR
56. Presidential advisory grp. : NSC
58. Rx overseer : FDA

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