0901-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 1 Sep 15, Tuesday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Michael Torch
THEME: Vowel Sound Progression … each of today’s theme answers ends with a word starting with an S-sound, and ending with an N-sound. The middle of the word is a long vowel-sound, progressing from an A-sound to a U-sound:

17A. Locale of the Île de la Cité : RIVER SEINE
25A. Highway investigation site : CRASH SCENE
36A. Request from one seeking help from above : LORD, GIVE ME A SIGN
46A. Like clothing customized from raw fabric : CUT AND SEWN
57A. Phrase over a movie poster : COMING SOON

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 6m 52s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Buddy of “The Beverly Hillbillies” : EBSEN
The actor Buddy Ebsen is best known for playing Jed Clampett in television’s “The Beverly Hillbillies”, as wells the title character on the seventies detective series “Barnaby Jones”. Ebsen had been cast in the role of the Tin Man in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, but he developed an allergy to the aluminium dust that was used in the makeup. He ended up in hospital and had to walk away from the part. Ebsen blamed “The Wizard of Oz” on persistent problems that he had with his lungs in subsequent years. But Ebsen lived 16 years longer that any of the other major cast members of the film, so maybe he got the last laugh!

“The Beverly Hillbillies” was a rags-to-riches sitcom that aired from 1962 to 1971, a creation of writer Paul Henning. Buoyed by the success of “Hillbillies”, Henning created another sitcom in 1965, one that was a complete opposite in terms of plot, the riches-to-rags story of “Green Acres”.

17. Locale of the Île de la Cité : RIVER SEINE
There are two famous islands in the middle of the River Seine in Paris, one being the Île de la Cité, and the other Île Saint-Louis. Île de la Cité is the most renowned of the two, as it is home to the cathedral of Notre Dame.

19. Rug rat : TYKE
“Tyke” has been used playfully to describe a young child since at least 1902, but for centuries before that a tyke was a cur or mongrel, or perhaps a lazy or lower-class man.

21. “___ Yankees” : DAMN
In the musical show “Damn Yankees”, the title refers to the New York Yankees baseball team that dominated the sport in the fifties. That said, the show tells the story of the a man who sells his soul to help his beloved Washington Senators team beat the Yankees and win the pennant. So, “Damn Yankees” is yet another version of the classic German legend of “Faust”. The show was written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, a production that turned out to be a very successful follow-up to their prior hit, “The Pajama Game”. The future was looking really rosy for Adler and Ross but, sadly, Jerry Ross died of an obstructive lung disease only a few weeks after “Damn Yankees” opened on Broadway in 1955. He was just 29 years old.

33. Classic car inits. : REO
The REO Motor Company was founded by Ransom E. Olds (hence the name REO). The company made cars, trucks and buses, and was in business from 1905 to 1975 in Lansing, Michigan. Among the company’s most famous models were the REO Royale and the REO Flying Cloud.

40. Santa ___ winds : ANA
The Santa Ana winds are the very dry air currents that sweep offshore late in the year in Southern California. Because these air currents are so dry, they are noted for their influence over forest fires in the area, especially in the heat of the fall. The winds arise from a buildup of air pressure in the Great Basin that lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. Under the right conditions, that air spills over the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and basically “falls” down the side of the Sierra range, heading for the ocean. As the air falls it becomes drier and heats up so that relative humidity can fall to below 10% by the time it hits the coast.

42. Riches : LUCRE
Our word “lucre” meaning “money, profits” comes from the Latin “lucrum” that means the same thing.

43. Street one block over from Second, maybe : MAIN
The most common street name in the US is “Second Street”. “First Street” comes in only at number three, and this is because many cities and towns forego the use of “First” and instead go with “Main” or something more historical in nature. “Elm Street” appears on the list at number fifteen.

44. Castor bean, for one : OILSEED
The castor bean is the seed of the castor oil plant, although it isn’t actually a true “bean”. The castor seed is the source of castor oil, which has several medicinal uses.

54. 2016 Olympics city : RIO
Even though the 2016 Olympic Games is a “summer” competition, it will be held in Rio de Janeiro in the winter. As Rio is in the southern hemisphere, the planned date of the opening of 5th August 2016 falls in the local season of winter. The 2016 games will also be first to be held in South America, and the first to be hosted by a Portuguese-speaking country.

56. Little pup : RUNT
Back around 1500. a runt was an old or decayed tree stump, and by the early 1600s “runt” was being used to describe animals that were similarly old and decayed. Ultimately “runt” came to mean the smallest and often sickest in a litter.

60. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” e.g. : PLEA
In the first “Star Wars” movie, Princess Leia hides plans for the Galactic Empire’s Death Star in the droid named R2-D2. She also records a holographic message, so when it is played we can see Princess Leia as a hologram, asking for help to destroy the Death Star:

I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.

Down
1. Shade of many a lampshade : 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”.

3. Like the name “Leningrad” : SOVIET ERA
St. Petersburg in Russia is an absolutely beautiful city to visit. The city was renamed to Petrograd in 1914, Leningrad in 1924 and back to St. Petersburg in 1991.

4. Suffix with ethyl : -ENE
Ethylene (also called ethene) has a gazillion uses, including as an anesthetic and an aid to hastening the ripening of fruit. Ethylene’s most common use is as a major raw material in the manufacture of plastics (like polyethylene).

5. One scoring 100% on Sporcle quizzes, say : NERD
Sporcle.com is a trivia quiz website. The name is derived from the word “oracle” apparently. I like the web site’s mission statement: “We actively and methodically search out new and innovative ways to prevent our users from getting any work done whatsoever.”

6. One’s wife, informally : THE MRS
Mr. is the abbreviation for “master”, and Mrs. is the abbreviation for “mistress”.

7. Madrid’s ___ Sofia Museum : REINA
The Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid is Spain’s national museum of 20th-century art. The museum features a lot of work by Spanish artists, most famously Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. The gallery’s most famous work is Picasso’s large oil painting “Guernica”.

8. Hotelier Schrager who co-founded Studio 54 : IAN
Ian Schrager is a hotelier and property developer who is very much associated with boutique hotels. Along with Steve Rubell, Schrager opened New York’s Studio 54 in 1977. However, the two partners fell foul of the law for skimming unreported income from the club’s receipts. Rubell and Schrager were both sentenced in 1980 to three and a half years in prison.

10. Prison riot town : ATTICA
The Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York is used to incarcerate the toughest of the state’s convicts. Famous people who have spent time in Attica include David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) and Mark David Chapman (who killed John Lennon). Attica was the site of a famous riot in 1971 involving almost 1,000 inmates. Control of the prison was restored by the authorities after several days of unrest that left 39 people dead, including ten guards and other prison employees.

13. Alfred Nobel, for one : SWEDE
Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist and businessman. Nobel is famous for the invention of dynamite during his lifetime, as well as for instituting the Nobel Prizes by providing the necessary funds in his will.

18. Beneficial baseball outs, for short : SACS
Sacrifice fly, in baseball …

24. Oklahoma city : ENID
Enid, Oklahoma takes its name from the old railroad station around which the city developed. Back in 1889, that train stop was called Skeleton Station. An official who didn’t like the name changed it to Enid Station, using a character from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”. Maybe if he hadn’t changed the name, the city of Enid would now be called Skeleton, Oklahoma! Enid has the nickname “Queen Wheat City” because is has a huge capacity for storing grain, the third largest grain storage capacity in the world.

27. Sound in body : HALE
“Hale” is an adjective meaning “healthy”. Both the words “hale” and “healthy” derive from the the Old English “hal” meaning healthy.

28. F.D.R.’s dog : FALA
Fala was the famous Scottish Terrier that was ever present at the side of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for many years. The terrier was a Christmas gift to the president from his cousin, who had named the dog Big Boy while she trained him as a puppy. President Roosevelt renamed him after an ancestor of his from Falahill in Scotland, so the dog’s full name was Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. Fala lived on for several years after the president’s passing. I’ve had the privilege of visiting the gravesites of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York, and Fala is buried just a few feet away from his master.

29. Winner (and host) of the 1966 FIFA World Cup : ENGLAND
The 1966 FIFA World Cup was held in England, and marked the only time that the English team has won soccer’s most prestigious tournament.

33. Grocery item known as “The San Francisco Treat” : RICE-A-RONI
Rice-a-Roni was introduced in 1958 by the Golden Grain Macaroni Company of San Francisco. The company was run by an Italian immigrant and his four sons. The wife of one of the sons served a pilaf dish at a family diner that was a big hit, so her brother-in-law created a commercial version by blending dry chicken soup mix with rice and macaroni. Sounds like “a San Francisco treat” to me …

35. Linear, for short : ONE-D
The dimension of an object is defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify each point in the object. Therefore a line is one-dimensional, as you only need an x-coordinate to specify a particular point on the line. A surface is two-dimensional, as you need both an x-coordinate and a y-coordinate to locate a point on the surface. The inside of a solid object is then three-dimensional, needing an x-, y- and z-coordinate to specify a point, say within a cube.

37. Footnote abbr. : IBID
Ibid. is short for the Latin word “ibidem” and is typically found in footnotes and bibliographies. Ibid. is used to refer the reader to the prior citation, instead of giving the same information all over again (title, author etc.).

43. Cocktail often served with a pineapple garnish : MAI TAI
The Mai Tai cocktail is strongly associated with the Polynesian islands, but the drink was supposedly invented in 1944 in Trader Vic’s restaurant in Oakland, California. One recipe is 6 parts white rum, 3 parts orange curaçao, 3 parts Orgeat syrup, 1 part rock candy syrup, 2 parts fresh lime juice, all mixed with ice and then a float added of 6 parts dark rum.

46. Complains : CARPS
The word “carp” used to mean simply “talk” back in the 13th century, with its roots in the Old Norwegian “karpa” meaning “to brag”. A century later the Latin word “carpere” meaning “to slander” influenced the use of “carp” so that it came to mean “find fault with”.

47. Throat dangler : UVULA
The uvula is that conical fleshy projection hanging down at the back of the soft palate. The uvula plays an important role in human speech, particularly in the making of “guttural” sounds. The Latin word for “grape” is “uva”, so “uvula” is a “little grape”.

48. Contents of an HP cartridge : TONER
The key features of a laser printer (or copier) are that it uses plain paper and produces quality text at high speed. Laser printers work by projecting a laser image of the printed page onto a rotating drum that is coated with photoconductors (material that becomes conductive when exposed to light). The areas of the drum exposed to the laser carry a different charge than the unexposed areas. Dry ink (toner) sticks to the exposed areas due to electrostatic charge. The toner is then transferred to paper by contact and is fused into the paper by the application of heat. So, that explains why paper coming out of a laser printer is warm, and sometimes powdery …

49. Chair designer Charles : EAMES
Charles and Ray Eames were a husband-wife team of furniture designers. One of the more famous of their designs is the Eames lounge chair that comes with an ottoman. This trendy piece of furniture featured in a late episode of the television show “Frasier”. In the show, Frasier’s Dad remarks that the Eames chair is so comfortable that he might have gotten rid of his tatty old recliner a long time ago.

53. Former New York archbishop : EGAN
Edward Egan served as Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York from 2000 to 2009. Egan was made a cardinal in 2001.

55. Title word before “You,” “U” or “Yesterday” in hit songs : ONLY
The 1955 hit by the Platters is more completely called “Only You (and You Alone)”.

“Only U” is a 2004 song by American singer-songwriter Ashanti.

“Only Yesterday” is a 1975 song released by the Carpenters.

57. Engine part : CAM
Cams are wheels found on the cam shaft of a car’s engine that are eccentric in shape rather than circular. The rotation of the cams causes the intake and exhaust valves of the cylinders to open and close.

59. ___-cone : SNO
A sno-cone (also “snow cone”) is just a paper cone filled with crushed ice and topped with flavored water. Italian ice is similar, but different. Whereas the flavoring is added on top of the ice to make a sno-cone, Italian ice is made with water that is flavored before it is frozen.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Buddy of “The Beverly Hillbillies” : EBSEN
6. Small combo : TRIO
10. Music and dance, for two : ARTS
14. Witchy sort : CRONE
15. Foam on a beer : HEAD
16. Spring event : THAW
17. Locale of the Île de la Cité : RIVER SEINE
19. Rug rat : TYKE
20. Prefix with brow : UNI-
21. “___ Yankees” : DAMN
22. Pointed : AIMED
23. “Well, I’ll be!” : GEE!
25. Highway investigation site : CRASH SCENE
28. Goal of exercise : FITNESS
30. It’s a laugh : HA-HA
31. Had home cooking : ATE IN
32. 30 minutes, in the N.F.L. : HALF
33. Classic car inits. : REO
36. Request from one seeking help from above : LORD, GIVE ME A SIGN
40. Santa ___ winds : ANA
41. 90-degree angle iron : L-BAR
42. Riches : LUCRE
43. Street one block over from Second, maybe : MAIN
44. Castor bean, for one : OILSEED
46. Like clothing customized from raw fabric : CUT AND SEWN
50. Show age, in a way : SAG
51. Steer clear of : AVOID
52. Lotion additive : ALOE
54. 2016 Olympics city : RIO
56. Little pup : RUNT
57. Phrase over a movie poster : COMING SOON
60. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” e.g. : PLEA
61. Wows : AWES
62. Invalidate : ANNUL
63. Draped dress : SARI
64. Work well together : MESH
65. Clamorous : NOISY

Down
1. Shade of many a lampshade : ECRU
2. Them’s fighting words : BRING IT ON
3. Like the name “Leningrad” : SOVIET ERA
4. Suffix with ethyl : -ENE
5. One scoring 100% on Sporcle quizzes, say : NERD
6. One’s wife, informally : THE MRS
7. Madrid’s ___ Sofia Museum : REINA
8. Hotelier Schrager who co-founded Studio 54 : IAN
9. Dedicated poem : ODE
10. Prison riot town : ATTICA
11. Hot to trot, e.g. : RHYME
12. Spoken for : TAKEN
13. Alfred Nobel, for one : SWEDE
18. Beneficial baseball outs, for short : SACS
22. Post-eruption phenomenon : ASH FALL
24. Oklahoma city : ENID
26. Hoax : SHAM
27. Sound in body : HALE
28. F.D.R.’s dog : FALA
29. Winner (and host) of the 1966 FIFA World Cup : ENGLAND
32. Pronoun for a ship : HER
33. Grocery item known as “The San Francisco Treat” : RICE-A-RONI
34. Flagrant : EGREGIOUS
35. Linear, for short : ONE-D
37. Footnote abbr. : IBID
38. Movers’ trucks : VANS
39. Figure (out) : SUSS
43. Cocktail often served with a pineapple garnish : MAI TAI
44. Wise-looking : OWLISH
45. Wise to : IN ON
46. Complains : CARPS
47. Throat dangler : UVULA
48. Contents of an HP cartridge : TONER
49. Chair designer Charles : EAMES
53. Former New York archbishop : EGAN
55. Title word before “You,” “U” or “Yesterday” in hit songs : ONLY
57. Engine part : CAM
58. “You ___ me one” : OWE
59. ___-cone : SNO

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5 thoughts on “0901-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 1 Sep 15, Tuesday”

  1. 12:08, no errors, good Tuesday puzzle.

    To 'SUSS it out' is an expression which describes the process of figuring something out through careful, detailed analysis. Don't hear it used much, maybe it is used more in England.

  2. Another "invisible theme". It's not hinted at anywhere in the puzzle, and completely escapes notice at the end. Utter waste of time.

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