0113-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 13 Jan 15, Tuesday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Soy-based soup : MISO
Miso is the name of the seasoning that makes the soup. Basic miso seasoning is made by fermenting rice, barley and soybeans with salt and a fungus (!) to produce a paste. The paste can be added to stock to make miso soup, or perhaps to flavor tofu.

10. What milk will do if you add lemon juice : CLOT
The main protein in milk is called casein. The name of the protein comes from “caseus”, Latin for “cheese”. The outer surface of casein holds a negative charge, so molecules of casein repel each other and remain evenly distributed in milk. The addition of an acid to milk, such as lemon juice, neutralizes the negative charge. The neutral casein molecules no longer repel each other, and form into clumps. The milk has clotted or curdled.

14. Diva’s number : ARIA
“Diva” comes to us from Latin via Italian. “Diva” is the feminine form of “divus” meaning “divine one”. The word is used in Italy to mean “goddess” or “fine lady”, and especially is applied to the prima donna in an opera. We often use the term to describe a singer with a big ego.

15. “Wake Up Little ___” (Everly Brothers hit) : SUSIE
“Wake Up, Little Susie” is a song most famously associated with the Everly Brothers, as it was a hit for the duo in 1957. “Wake Up, Little Susie” is, or at least used to be, the favorite song of President George W. Bush.

The Everly Brothers are noted for their steel guitar sound, and their great use of harmony. Their harmony onstage wasn’t reflected off the stage though. In 1973 the brothers decided to pursue separate careers and scheduled a farewell performance attended by many fans, family and stalwarts from the music industry. Don Everly came on stage too drunk to perform, and eventually brother Phil just stormed off into the wings, smashing his guitar as he left. The boys didn’t talk to each other for ten years after that incident. Phil Everly passed away in January 2014.

16. Diced dish : HASH
“Hash”, meaning a dish of beef and vegetables mashed together, is a very American term and one that really surprised me when I first came across it. “Hash” just seems like such an unappetizing item, but I soon found out how delicious it was. The name “hash” in this context comes from the French “hacher” meaning “to chop”. Back in the early 1900s the dish called “hashed browned potatoes” was developed, which quickly morphed into “hash browns”. From there the likes of corned beef hash was introduced.

17. Tourist attraction in Charlottesville, Va. : MONTICELLO
The beautiful Virginia plantation called Monticello, located near Charlottesville, was the home of President Thomas Jefferson. The main house is situated atop an 850-foot peak, and perhaps this is why Jefferson chose the name. “Monticello” is Italian for “little mount”.

Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home, first appeared on US currency in 1928, when it featured on the reverse of a two-dollar bill. The image was replaced on the bill in 1966. Monticello also appears on the reverse of the 5-cent coin, starting in 1938 and continuing to this day.

20. Lee who directed “Life of Pi” : ANG
Taiwanese director Ang Lee sure has directed a mixed bag of films, mixed in terms of genre but not in terms of quality. He was at the helm for such classics as “Sense & Sensibility” (my personal favorite), “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “Hulk”, “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi”.

The 2012 movie “Life of Pi” is based on a 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel. The “Pi” in the title is an Indian boy called Pi Patel who finds himself adrift for 227 days in small boat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

21. One of “dose,” in Brooklyn : DAT
In Brooklynese, one of “dose” (those) is “dat” (that).

23. Largest wild animal in the United States : AMERICAN BISON
There two species of bison left (four species are extinct). We are most familiar with the American bison (commonly called the American buffalo), but there is also a European bison, sometimes called a “wisent”. The American bison is the largest land animal roaming wild in the Americas today.

28. Seville snacks : TAPAS
“Tapa” is the Spanish word for “lid”, and there is no clear rationale for why this word came to be used for an appetizer. There are lots of explanations cited, all of which seem to involve the temporary covering of one’s glass of wine with a plate or item of food to either preserve the wine or give one extra space at the table.

40. Neutral shade : ECRU
The shade called ecru is a grayish, yellowish brown. The word “ecru” comes from French and means “raw, unbleached”. “Ecru” has the same roots as our word “crude”.

41. School singing group : GLEE CLUB
The TV show called “Glee” has proven to be very popular. The storyline focuses on a high school glee club in Lima, Ohio called New Directions.

44. Eating non-halal, to Muslims : TABOO
The word “taboo” was introduced into English by Captain Cook in his book “A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean”. Cook described “tabu” (likely imitative of a Tongan word that he had heard) as something that was both consecrated and forbidden.

“Halal” is a term for an action or object that is permissible under Islamic Law. In particular “halal” is used to describe food that can be consumed. Anything that is not allowed is called “haraam”.

47. “Out of many, one” : E PLURIBUS UNUM
From 1776, “E pluribus unum” was the unofficial motto of the United States. “E pluribus unum” is Latin for “Out of many, one”. It was pushed aside in 1956 when an Act of Congress designated “In God We Trust” as the country’s official motto.

52. Inkwell item : QUILL
Quills have been used as writing implements since the 6th century. Historically, goose, swan and turkey feathers have been the quills of choice. A bird’s feather is well suited for writing, as the hollow shaft acts as a reservoir for ink which then flows to the tip due to capillary action. Choice of feather is important. Right-handed writers are best served by feathers from the left wing, as the feather curves away from the palm of the hand when writing. The tip of the quill is sharpened using a “quill knife”. This quill knife is the ancestor of what we know today as a “penknife”.

53. Simile’s center : AS A
A simile is a figure of speech in which a comparison is made between two things that are alike. For example, “cute as a kitten” and “as busy as a bee”.

54. Berserk : MAD
Our word “berserk” meaning “deranged” comes from the “Berserkers”, Norse warriors described in Old Norse literature. Berserkers were renowned for going into battle in a fury, and some believe that they consumed drugged food to get themselves worked up for the fighting ahead.

58. Billboard’s top rock group of 2000-09 … or where to find a 23-Across (before 1939) or 17-Across (today) : NICKELBACK
Nickelback is a rock band that formed in Hanna, Alberta in 1995 and is now based in Vancouver.

The 5-cent American coin known as a nickel is actually made up of 75% copper and 25% nickel. The first nickel was introduced in 1866, and was named the “Shield nickel” due to the shield design on the front of the coin. The current design is the Jefferson nickel, which was introduced in 1938.

62. Arthur of tennis : ASHE
Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979 Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

63. Title for Tuck : FRIAR
Friar Tuck is a character who appears in the legends of Robin Hood. Tuck is a jovial man, found of his food and wine, and a member of Robin’s merry band of outlaws.

67. Actress Lamarr : HEDY
Hedy Lamarr was an American actress, originally from Vienna in modern-day Austria. Not only was Lamarr a successful Hollywood performer, during WWII she was the co-inventor of the frequency-hopping spread-spectrum method of transmitting radio signals that is still used to this day in wireless communication. Impressive …

Down
3. Country in which English and Mandarin are official languages : SINGAPORE
The Asian city-state of Singapore takes its name from the Malay word “Singapura” which means “Lion City”. However, lions in the wild never made it to Singapore, so the city is probably misnamed and perhaps should have been called “Tiger City”.

6. It’s chalked in a pool hall : CUE TIP
The more correct name for the game of pool is pocket billiards. The name “pool” arose after pocket billiards became a common feature in “pool halls”, places where gamblers “pooled” their money to bet on horse races.

7. Nonnative speaker’s course, in brief : ESL
English as a Second Language (ESL) is sometimes referred to as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

9. “The Matrix” hero : NEO
Keanu Reeves is a Canadian actor whose most celebrated roles were a metalhead in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989), a cop in “Speed” (1994) and the main antagonist Neo in “The Matrix” series of films. Although Reeves is a Canadian national, he was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Reeves has some Hawaiian descent, and the name “Keanu” is Hawaiian for “the coldness”.

The 1999 movie sensation “The Matrix” was meant to be set in a nondescript urban environment. It was actually shot in Australia, as one of the co-producers of the film was the Australian company, Village Roadshow Pictures. You can pick up all sorts of clues about the location when watching the film, including a view of Sydney Harbour Bridge in a background shot. Also, traffic drives along on the left and there are signs for the “lift” instead of an “elevator”.

10. Potluck supper serving, maybe : CHILI
The full name of the dish that is often called simply “chili” is “chili con carne”, Spanish for “peppers with meat”. The dish was first created by immigrants from the Spanish Canary Islands in the city of San Antonio, Texas (a city which the islanders founded). The San Antonio Chili Stand was a popular attraction at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and that stand introduced the dish to the rest of America and to the world.

12. Prefix with -plasty : OSTEO-
Osteoplasty is a form of plastic surgery performed on bone, often a repair of a graft.

13. Rose’s protection : THORN
Believe it or not, roses don’t have any thorns. Thorns are derived from shoots, spines are derived from leaves, and prickles are derived from the epidermis. The rose’s defensive barbs are in fact prickles.

18. I.e., spelled out : ID EST
“Id est” is Latin for “that is”, and is often abbreviated to “i.e.” when used in English.

22. Cousin of a bassoon : OBOE
The oboe is perhaps my favorite of the reed instruments. The name “oboe” comes from the French “hautbois” which means “high wood”. When you hear an orchestra tuning before a performance you’ll note (pun intended!) that the oboe starts off the process by playing an “A”. The rest of the musicians in turn tune to that oboe’s “A”.

Our modern bassoon first appeared in the 1800s and has had a place in the concert orchestra ever since.

24. Bea Arthur sitcom : MAUDE
Actress Bea Arthur’s most famous roles were on television, as the lead in the “All in the Family” spin-off “Maude” and as Dorothy Zbornak in “The Golden Girls”. Arthur also won a Tony for playing Vera Charles on stage in the original cast of “Mame” in 1966, two years after she played Yente the matchmaker in the original cast of “Fiddler on the Roof”.

25. Image on the reverse of a Canadian quarter : CARIBOU
The Canadian quarter is officially known as the 25-cent piece. The reverse of the coin is frequently changed, usually for commemorative purposes. The coin was introduced in 1870, and originally featured a caribou on the reverse.

27. Setting for a classic Agatha Christie mystery : NILE
Agatha Christie wrote a very successful crime novel called “Death on the Nile” that was first published in 1937. That novel had started off life as a play, which was was never performed, one that Christie called “Moon on the Nile”. Christie then adapted the novel back into a play again calling it “Murder on the Nile”, which opened in London in 1946.

29. ___ Prize, annual international award for mathematics : ABEL
The Abel Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement in the field of mathematics. It has been presented annually by the King of Norway since 2001, and is sometimes described as “the mathematician’s Nobel Prize”.

33. Run out of rhythm? : A-E-I-O-U
None of the five “main” vowels appear in the word “rhythm”.

35. “___ Tu” (1974 hit) : ERES
We have a big event across Europe every year called the Eurovision Song Contest. Each nation enters one song in competition with each other, and then voters across the whole continent decide on the winner. That’s how ABBA got their big break when they won in 1974 with “Waterloo”. In 1972, Spain’s entry was “Eres tu” (the Spanish for “You Are”) sung by the band Mocedades. “Eres tu” came second in the competition, but should have won in my humble opinion.

38. Jai ___ : ALAI
Even though jai alai is often said to be the fastest sport in the world because of the speed of the ball, in fact golf balls usually get going at a greater clip. Although, as a blog reader once pointed out to me, you don’t have to catch a golf ball …

39. Ernest nicknamed “The Texas Troubadour” : TUBB
Ernest Tubb was a pioneering country music singer and songwriter. Tubb’s biggest hit was “Walking the Floor Over You”, which he released in 1941. Tubb was born on a farm near Crisp, Texas and had the nickname “the Texas Troubadour”. By the by, Crisp is now a ghost town.

42. Computer key near Shift : CTRL
The control key (Ctrl.)

43. One year’s record : ANNAL
“Annal” is a rarely used word, the singular of the more common “annals”. An annal would be the recorded events of one year, with annals being the chronological record of events in successive years. The term “annal” comes from the Latin “annus” meaning “year”.

45. Resident of the so-called “Chicago of Japan” : OSAKAN
The Japanese city of Osaka used to be called Naniwa, with the name changing to Osaka some time before 1500. “Osaka” can be translated either as “large hill” or “large slope”. Osaka is sometimes referred to as “the Chicago of Japan” as it is a major center of commerce and industry.

47. Splenda rival : EQUAL
Splenda and Equal are brand names for the artificial sweetener called sucralose.

50. “___ Gold” (1997 Peter Fonda film) : ULEE’S
“Ulee’s Gold” is a highly respected film from 1997 in which Peter Fonda plays the title role of Ulee. Ulee’s “gold” is the honey that Ulee produces. It is a favorite role for Peter Fonda and he has shared that playing Ulee brought to mind his father Henry Fonda, who himself kept a couple of hives. So if you see Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold” you’re witnessing some characteristics that Peter saw in his father.

55. LSD : ACID
LSD (colloquially known as “acid”) is short for lysergic acid diethylamide. A Swiss chemist called Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD in 1938 in a research project looking for medically efficacious ergot alkaloids. It wasn’t until some five years later when Hofmann ingested some of the drug accidentally that its psychedelic properties were discovered. Trippy, man …

56. Big Apple-based designer label : DKNY
Donna Karan is an American fashion designer, creator of the Donna Karan New York (DKNY) clothing label. Karan was very much raised in the fashion industry, as her mother was a model and her stepfather a tailor.

Apparently the first published use of the term “Big Apple” to describe New York City dates back to 1909. Edward Martin wrote the following in his book “The Wayfarer in New York”:

“Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city. . . . It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.”

Over ten years later, the term “big apple” was used as a nickname for racetracks in and around New York City. However, the concerted effort to “brand” the city as the Big Apple had to wait until the seventies and was the work of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau.

60. Org. in “The Bourne Ultimatum” : CIA
“The Bourne Identity” is a great spy novel written by Robert Ludlum, and first published in 1980. It has been ranked as the second best spy novel of all time, just behind the even more enjoyable “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” by John le Carre. I’ll agree with that sentiment. Ludlum wrote two sequels, and all three parts of the Bourne Trilogy have been made into very successful movies now, starring Matt Damon in the title role. Ludlum died before he could write more than three novels featuring Jason Bourne, but five more titles in the series have been published, written by Eric Van Lustbader. I must check them out …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Soy-based soup : MISO
5. Huge amount : OCEAN
10. What milk will do if you add lemon juice : CLOT
14. Diva’s number : ARIA
15. “Wake Up Little ___” (Everly Brothers hit) : SUSIE
16. Diced dish : HASH
17. Tourist attraction in Charlottesville, Va. : MONTICELLO
19. Word after bump or break : INTO
20. Lee who directed “Life of Pi” : ANG
21. One of “dose,” in Brooklyn : DAT
22. Born earlier : OLDER
23. Largest wild animal in the United States : AMERICAN BISON
28. Seville snacks : TAPAS
30. Picnic table place : PATIO
31. Roughly : ABOUT
32. Turned loose : RELEASED
37. Geek : NERD
38. “Once upon ___ …” : A TIME
40. Neutral shade : ECRU
41. School singing group : GLEE CLUB
43. Ran : AIRED
44. Eating non-halal, to Muslims : TABOO
46. All but the signal, in radio : NOISE
47. “Out of many, one” : E PLURIBUS UNUM
52. Inkwell item : QUILL
53. Simile’s center : AS A
54. Berserk : MAD
57. Press : URGE
58. Billboard’s top rock group of 2000-09 … or where to find a 23-Across (before 1939) or 17-Across (today) : NICKELBACK
62. Arthur of tennis : ASHE
63. Title for Tuck : FRIAR
64. Not “fer” : AGIN
65. “Sure, why not?!” : LET’S!
66. Slants : LEANS
67. Actress Lamarr : HEDY

Down
1. Doll’s cry : MAMA!
2. Press : IRON
3. Country in which English and Mandarin are official languages : SINGAPORE
4. Feedbag bit : OAT
5. 2012 award for 20-Across : OSCAR
6. It’s chalked in a pool hall : CUE TIP
7. Nonnative speaker’s course, in brief : ESL
8. Hurt : AIL
9. “The Matrix” hero : NEO
10. Potluck supper serving, maybe : CHILI
11. Touches down : LANDS
12. Prefix with -plasty : OSTEO-
13. Rose’s protection : THORN
18. I.e., spelled out : ID EST
22. Cousin of a bassoon : OBOE
24. Bea Arthur sitcom : MAUDE
25. Image on the reverse of a Canadian quarter : CARIBOU
26. “Up and ___!” : AT ‘EM
27. Setting for a classic Agatha Christie mystery : NILE
28. Zippy flavor : TANG
29. ___ Prize, annual international award for mathematics : ABEL
33. Run out of rhythm? : A-E-I-O-U
34. Practice game, in sports : SCRIMMAGE
35. “___ Tu” (1974 hit) : ERES
36. “Bro!” : DUDE!
38. Jai ___ : ALAI
39. Ernest nicknamed “The Texas Troubadour” : TUBB
42. Computer key near Shift : CTRL
43. One year’s record : ANNAL
45. Resident of the so-called “Chicago of Japan” : OSAKAN
47. Splenda rival : EQUAL
48. Prize in horse racing : PURSE
49. Ignite : LIGHT
50. “___ Gold” (1997 Peter Fonda film) : ULEE’S
51. Tech support callers : USERS
55. LSD : ACID
56. Big Apple-based designer label : DKNY
58. Gridiron grp. : NFL
59. Vexation : IRE
60. Org. in “The Bourne Ultimatum” : CIA
61. “Phooey!” : BAH!

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