0825-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 25 Aug 15, Tuesday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: John E. Bennett
THEME: Just Having a Ball … we have six sets of circled letters in today’s grid. The sets of circled letters are perhaps arranged in BALLS. If we read each BALL of letters in a clockwise direction, starting from the top-left, we find six kinds of BALL:

36A. Living it up … or a hint to the six groups of circled letters : JUST HAVING A BALL

– SOURBALL
– HAIRBALL
– FOOTBALL
– BASEBALL
– MEATBALL
– POOL BALL

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 5m 58s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Classic name for a man’s best friend : FIDO
“Fido”, the name for many a dog, is Latin for “I trust”.

5. ___ of the Apostles : ACTS
The Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book of the New Testament. It is believed that the author of the Gospel of Luke was the same person who wrote “Acts”.

9. Dogie, e.g. : CALF
“Dogie” is cowboy slang for a motherless calf in a herd.

14. ___ latte : CHAI
Chai is a drink made from spiced black tea, honey and milk, with “chai” being the Hindi word for “tea”. We often called tea “a cup of char” growing up in Ireland, with “char” being our slang word for tea, derived from “chai”.

The term “latte” is an abbreviation of the Italian “caffelatte” meaning “coffee (and) milk”. Note that in the correct spelling of “latte”, the Italian word for milk, there is no accent over the “e”. An accent is often added by mistake when we use the word in English, perhaps meaning to suggest that the word is French.

16. Very dry, as Champagne : BRUT
Sparkling wines can be classified according to sweetness. These classifications are, from driest to sweetest:

– Brut Nature
– Extra Brut
– Brut
– Extra Dry
– Dry
– Semi-Dry
– Sweet

18. Cousin of a croc : GATOR
Crocodiles and alligators do indeed bear a resemblance to each other, although they belong to distinct biological families. One of the main ways used to distinguish them is by their teeth and jaws. Both the upper and lower sets of teeth of a crocodile are visible when its mouth is closed, whereas only the upper teeth of an alligator are visible with the mouth shut.

24. Club ___ : MED
Club Méditerranée is usually referred to as “Club Med”. It is a French company that started in 1950 with a resort on the Spanish island of Mallorca in the Mediterranean. It was originally a “club” with annual membership dues. Now it is an operator of numerous all-inclusive resorts located all over the world.

35. More than one, in Madrid : DOS
Uno, dos, tres … (one, two, three in Spanish).

42. Letters before a moniker : AKA
Also known as (aka)

44. Summer, in St.-Étienne : ETE
The city of Saint-Étienne is the capital of the Loire department in France. The city is home to the extremely successful AS Saint-Étienne soccer team.

49. Soprano Fleming : RENEE
Renée Fleming is a marvelous soprano from Indiana, Pennsylvania. Famous for her appearances in opera houses and concert halls all over the world, Fleming is also noted for her willingness to bring her craft to the masses. She was a guest on “Sesame Street”, singing “counting lyrics” to an aria from “Rigoletto”, and she has appeared a few times on Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion”.

56. Art of punning : PARONOMASIA
Paronomasia is punning, the use of similar-sounding words to achieve a humorous effect. The term comes from the Greek “paronomasia”, which has the same meaning. Looking more closely, “par-” means “beside” and “onomasia” means “naming”.

61. Lead-in to Columbian : PRE-
The pre-Columbian era is that period in the history of the Americas before the Europeans really made their presence known. “Pre-Columbian” implies “before 1492, before the voyages of Christopher Columbus”.

64. Big steps for young companies, for short : IPOS
An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is the very first offer of stock for sale by a company on the open market. In other words, an IPO marks the first time that a company is traded on a public exchange. Companies have an IPO to raise capital to expand (usually).

65. Change in Mexico : PESOS
The coin called a “peso” is used in many Spanish-speaking countries around the world. The coin originated in Spain where the word “peso” means “weight”. The original peso was what we know in English as a “piece of eight”, a silver coin of a specific weight that had a nominal value of eight “reales”.

67. Rorschach image : BLOT
The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which a subject is asked to interpret a series of inkblots. The test was created by Swiss Freudian psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in the 1920s.

68. Mideast’s Gulf of ___ : ADEN
The Gulf of Aden is the body of water that lies south of the Red Sea, and just north of the Horn of Africa.

69. Old Mach 2 fliers, for short : SSTS
The most famous supersonic transport (SST) is the retired Concorde. Famously, the Concorde routinely broke the sound barrier, and cruised at about twice the speed of sound. Above Mach 2, frictional heat would cause the plane’s aluminum airframe to soften, so airspeed was limited.

The Mach number of a moving object (like say an airplane) is its speed relative to the speed of sound. A plane travelling at Mach 2, for example, is moving at twice the speed of sound. The term “Mach” takes its name from the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach who published a groundbreaking paper in 1877 that even predicted the “sonic boom”.

70. Yankees’ hometown rivals : METS
The New York Mets baseball team was founded in 1962, a replacement for two teams that the city had lost, namely the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. For several years the Mets played very poorly, finishing no better than second-to-last in their division. Then of course along came the “Miracle Mets” who beat the Baltimore Orioles in 1969 to claim the World Series in a huge upset.

Down
2. Ben-Gurion’s land : ISRAEL
David Ben-Gurion became the first Prime Minister of Israel, after leading the struggle for in an independent Jewish state in the Mandate of Palestine. He achieved his goal in 1948, and then had to lead Israel through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Since then, Ben-Gurion has been referred to as “Israel’s founding father”.

5. Penn or Pitt : ACTOR
Actor Sean Penn is a two-time Oscar winner, for his roles in “Mystic River” released in 2003 and “Milk” released in 2008. Penn’s celebrity on screen is only matched with his fame off the screen. Apart from his “big name” marriages to singer Madonna and actress Robin Wright, Penn is also well known for political and social activism. He perhaps inherited some of his political views from his father, actor and director Leo Penn. As an actor, Leo refused to “name names” in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and so was blacklisted in Hollywood and had to move into directing to put bread on the table. In later years as a director he gave his son Sean his first acting role, in a 1974 episode of “Little House on the Prairie”.

Brad Pitt’s first major role was playing the cowboy hitchhiker in the 1991’s “Thelma and Louise”. Pitt’s life offscreen garners as much attention as his work onscreen, it seems. The tabloids revel in the series of high-profile relationships in which he has been involved. He was engaged to Gwyneth Paltrow for a while, married to Jennifer Aniston, and he now lives with Angelina Jolie.

6. Old color print, informally : CHROMO
Chromolithography is method of printing using several colors. A similar technique can be used for photographs, with the resulting product being known as a “photochrome”.

9. Leafy greens : CHARDS
Chard is a lovely leafy vegetable, in my humble opinion. Chard is the same species as the garden beet, but chard is grown for the leaves, and beet is grown for the roots.

10. Mennen shaving product : AFTA
Afta is an aftershave in the Mennen range of products that is owned by Colgate-Palmolive.

11. Bird with a laughlike call : LOON
The bird known as a loon here in North America is called a diver in the British Isles. The name “diver” comes from the bird’s habit of swimming calmly and then suddenly diving below the surface to catch a fish. The name “loon” comes from an Old English word meaning “clumsy” and reflects the awkward gait of the bird when walking on land.

12. First assemblyman? : FORD
The Ford Model T was the first really affordable car that was offered for sale, and it was produced from 1908 to 1927. It was the Model T that ushered in the era of assembly line production, which greatly cut down the cost of manufacture. The Model T’s engine was designed to run on petrol, kerosene or ethanol.

29. Women’s suffragist ___ B. Wells : IDA
Ida B. Wells worked as an African American journalist, while providing leadership in the civil rights movement. She published a pamphlet in 1892 called “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases”, which publicized the horrors of lynching of African Americans by white mobs in the South.

31. Frequent night school subj. : 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).

36. Dutch painter Vermeer : JAN
Johannes (also “Jan”) Vermeer was born in the city of Delft in 1632, and died there some 43 years later. I just love Vermeer’s paintings, and his wonderful use of light. A great example of such a work is his “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. If you haven’t seen it, I thoroughly recommend the 2003 movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” starring Scarlett Johansson as the girl in the painting, and Colin Firth as Vermeer. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier, so it’s all just a great story as opposed to a documentary. The way the movie is shot really reflects the qualities of a Vermeer work of art. And, my wife and i are planning on taking a peek at the original painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in a couple of weeks as it is visiting one of our galleries here in San Francisco.

37. Hawaiian instrument, informally : UKE
The ukulele (“uke”) originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.

40. High-ceilinged courtyards : ATRIA
In modern architecture an atrium (plural “atria” or “atriums”) is a large open space usually in the center of a building and extending upwards to the roof. The original atrium was an open court in the center of an Ancient Roman house. One could access most of the enclosed rooms of the house from the atrium.

58. Demolish, British-style : RASE
To “raze” (“rase”, in UK English) is to level to the ground. How odd is it that “raise”, a homophone of “raze”, means to build up??!!

64. Original ThinkPad manufacturer : IBM
IBM introduced the ThinkPad in 1992, and the brand is still sold today, although no longer manufactured by IBM. IBM sold off its personal computer division in 2005 to Lenovo. A ThinkPad was used aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1993 on a mission focused on repairing the Hubble Telescope. The ThinkPad was being tested to see how it performed in space, given the high levels of radiation found in that environment. Now, there are about 100 (!) ThinkPads on board the International Space Station.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Classic name for a man’s best friend : FIDO
5. ___ of the Apostles : ACTS
9. Dogie, e.g. : CALF
13. Beginning, timewise : AS OF
14. ___ latte : CHAI
15. Granny’s “Darn it!” : OH FOO!
16. Very dry, as Champagne : BRUT
17. You would usually buy a round one : TRIP
18. Cousin of a croc : GATOR
19. Chem class site : LAB
20. There’s no reason to go on one : FOOL’S ERRAND
22. Tiny garden parasite : EELWORM
24. Club ___ : MED
25. Foxier : SLYER
26. Single-minded : OBSESSIVE
32. To the ___ degree : NTH
34. Place to put a cupped hand : EAR
35. More than one, in Madrid : DOS
36. Living it up … or a hint to the six groups of circled letters : JUST HAVING A BALL
42. Letters before a moniker : AKA
43. Archaeological site : DIG
44. Summer, in St.-Étienne : ETE
45. Makeshift fly swatter : NEWSPAPER
49. Soprano Fleming : RENEE
53. Not the sharing type : PIG
54. Academy Award category : EDITING
56. Art of punning : PARONOMASIA
61. Lead-in to Columbian : PRE-
62. Lessen : ABATE
63. Black cat crossing one’s path, e.g. : OMEN
64. Big steps for young companies, for short : IPOS
65. Change in Mexico : PESOS
66. Doe’s partner : STAG
67. Rorschach image : BLOT
68. Mideast’s Gulf of ___ : ADEN
69. Old Mach 2 fliers, for short : SSTS
70. Yankees’ hometown rivals : METS

Down
1. Stories with morals : FABLES
2. Ben-Gurion’s land : ISRAEL
3. To twice the degree : DOUBLY
4. Frequent, to a poet : OFT
5. Penn or Pitt : ACTOR
6. Old color print, informally : CHROMO
7. Follow around, as a detective might : TAIL
8. Doesn’t gulp : SIPS
9. Leafy greens : CHARDS
10. Mennen shaving product : AFTA
11. Bird with a laughlike call : LOON
12. First assemblyman? : FORD
15. Fairy tale villains : OGRES
20. “… and so ___” : FORTH
21. Come out : EMERGE
23. Traveled : WENT
27. Common pantyhose shade : BEIGE
28. ___ Jose : SAN
29. Women’s suffragist ___ B. Wells : IDA
30. W-X-Y-Z for an encyclopedia, maybe: Abbr. : VOL
31. Frequent night school subj. : ESL
33. Tried : HAD A GO
36. Dutch painter Vermeer : JAN
37. Hawaiian instrument, informally : UKE
38. Tool in a magician’s act : SAW
39. Kind of access : VIP
40. High-ceilinged courtyards : ATRIA
41. Salad ingredient that’s not green : BEET
46. Exact : SPOT ON
47. Longs (for) : PINES
48. Move at a restaurant, say : RESEAT
50. Infant bottle topper : NIPPLE
51. Implant deeply : ENROOT
52. Gets rid of : EGESTS
55. Game show sound effects : DINGS
56. Dear old dad : PAPA
57. Not up : ABED
58. Demolish, British-style : RASE
59. Cushiony ground cover : MOSS
60. Qtys. : AMTS
64. Original ThinkPad manufacturer : IBM

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