1117-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 17 Nov 15, Tuesday

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
6. Cry after a diva’s performance : BRAVA!
To express appreciation for a male performer at an operatic performance, traditionally one calls out “bravo!”. Appreciation for a female performer is shown by using “brava!”, and for more than one performer by using “bravi!”

11. Airport overseer, for short : FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was set up in 1958 (as the Federal Aviation Agency). The agency was established at that particular time largely in response to an increasing number of midair collisions. The worst of these disasters had taken place two years earlier over the Grand Canyon, a crash between two commercial passenger airplanes that resulted in 128 fatalities.

14. PlayStation user : GAMER
Sony introduced the PlayStation line of video game consoles in 1994.

15. Maker of the first waterproof and dustproof wristwatch : ROLEX
My most prized possession is a beautiful stainless steel Rolex watch that my uncle bought while serving with the RAF in Canada during WWII. Rolex watches were made available to the Canadian servicemen at that time as they were shipping overseas. My uncle brought his Rolex home to Ireland after the war. He needed money for booze one weekend and so sold the watch to my Dad, for five pounds. My Dad gave it to me just before he died, as he knew I loved the watch, and my brothers weren’t interested in it all. Not so long ago I had the watch appraised ($3,000), and my brothers suddenly took a liking to it! Still, it’s not something that will ever be sold, that’s for sure …

17. *Hall-of-Fame jockey who won the Triple Crown twice : EDDIE ARCARO
Eddie Arcaro was a very successful jockey, the only rider to win the US Triple Crown twice. Arcaro also won more American classic races than any other jockey.

19. Vardalos of the screen : NIA
Not only is the delightful Nia Vardalos the star of the 2002 hit movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, she also wrote the screenplay. The film never made it to number one at the box office, but it still pulled in more money than any other movie in history that didn’t make it to number one. That record I think reflects the fact that the film wasn’t a blockbuster but rather a so-called “sleeper hit”, a movie that people went to see based on referrals from friends. The big fat mistake came when a spin-off TV show was launched, “My Big Fat Greek Life”. It ran for only 7 episodes.

20. Many a George W. Bush supporter : NEOCON
By definition, a neoconservative supports the use of American power and military to bring democracy, liberty, equality and human rights to other countries.

President George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut. A little bit of trivia: Sylvester Stallone was born on the same day, in New York City.

23. Ex-Yankee Martinez : TINO
First baseman Tino Martinez has retired from Major League Baseball. Martinez played for a number of teams including the Mariners, Yankees, Cardinals and Devil Rays. Martinez was born and raised in Tampa, Florida and as a boy he worked in his father’s cigar factory.

27. Bits of Morse code : DAHS
Dahs and dits are the sound equivalents of dashes and dots in Morse Code.

29. Sault ___ Marie : STE
Sault Ste. Marie is the name of two cities on either side of the Canada-US border, one in Ontario and the other in Michigan. The two cities were originally one settlement in the 17th century, established by Jesuit Missionaries. The missionaries gave the settlement the name “Sault Sainte Marie”, which can be translated as “Saint Mary’s Falls”. The city was one community until 1817, when a US-UK Joint Boundary Commission set the border along the St. Mary’s River.

33. Sweater ball : PILL
“Pill” is the name given to small, ball-like fuzz found on woollen garments. The term comes from the Latin “pilula” meaning “little ball”, which also gives us the word “pill” that is used for a tablet of medicine.

34. “The Joy Luck Club” author : AMY TAN
Amy Tan lives not too far from here, in Sausalito just north of San Francisco. Tan is an American writer of Chinese descent whose most successful work is “The Joy Luck Club”. “The Joy Luck Club” was made into a movie produced by Oliver Stone in 1993. The novel and movie tell of four Chinese-American immigrant families in San Francisco who start the Joy Luck Club, a group playing Mahjong for money and eating delicious food.

38. “Treasure Island” author’s inits. : RLS
Robert Louis Stevenson’s (RLS) most celebrated work I’d say is “Treasure Island”, originally written as a series for a children’s magazine in 1881. I remember “Treasure Island” as the first “real” novel I read as a youngster …

40. Vietnam War protest grp. : SDS
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was an activist group in the sixties. The SDS organized the largest student strike in the history of the United States on 26 April 1968, with about a million students staying away from class that day. The “Students for a Democratic Society” name was revived in 2006 with the foundation of a new US-based student organization with left wing beliefs. Today’s SDS was founded by a pair of high school students from Greenwich Village, New York.

41. ___ Hill, N.C. : CHAPEL
Chapel Hill is one of the three corner-cities of North Carolina’s Research Triangle, along with Durham and Raleigh. The city is named for an Anglican “chapel of ease” that was built in 1752 and that sat atop a hill, around which Chapel Hill is located today.

49. Keats collection : ODES
The poet John Keats is famous for writing a whole series of beautiful odes. The most renowned are the so-called “1819 Odes”, a collection from the year 1819 that includes famous poems such as “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Psyche”.

51. Mother of Ares and Hephaestus : HERA
In Greek mythology, Hera was the wife of Zeus and was noted for her jealous and vengeful nature, particularly against those who vied for the affections of her husband. The equivalent character to Hera in Roman mythology was Juno. Hera was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea.

The Greek god Ares is often referred to as the Olympian god of warfare, but originally he was regarded as the god of bloodlust and slaughter. Ares united with Aphrodite to create several gods, including Phobos, Deimos and Eros. The Roman equivalent to Ares was Mars.

In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the god of blacksmiths, sculptors, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. The Roman equivalent of Hephaestus was Vulcan. Given his spheres of influence, it is perhaps not surprising that Hephaestus made all of the weapons for the gods of Olympus.

55. “Brandenburg Concertos” instruments : VIOLAS
The six, beautiful Brandenburg Concertos were composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721.

57. Any of the Baltic states, once: Abbr. : SSR
Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)

The natives of modern day Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are sometimes referred to as Balts, a reference to the Baltic Sea on which the three countries lie. The term “Balt” is also used for someone who speaks one of the Baltic languages, a group of languages spoken by people mainly residing within the borders of Latvia and Lithuania, as well as in some immigrant communities around the world.

62. Classic toothpaste brand : IPANA
Ipana toothpaste was introduced in 1915 and was at the height of its popularity in the forties and fifties. Sales declined in the sixties and the product was withdrawn from the US market in the seventies. Bucky the Beaver was the “spokesman” for Ipana. Bucky the Beaver’s slogan was “Brusha… Brusha… Brusha. Get the New Ipana – it’s dandy for your teeth!”

64. Subject of Boyle’s law : GAS
Irishman Robert Boyle is regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry, although his early work would better be described as “alchemy”. His name is best known from Boyle’s Law, his experimental observation that the pressure of a gas decreases proportionally as its volume increases.

65. Barbershop quartet harmonizer : TENOR
Barbershop music is played in the a cappella style, meaning that it is unaccompanied vocal music. Barbershop music originated in the African American communities in the South, as gospel quartets often gathered in neighborhood barber shops to sing together.

66. Run-down : SEEDY
We use the word “seedy” to mean “shabby”. The usage probably arose from the appearance of a flowering plant that has gone to seed.

Down
4. Company advertised with the slogan “So easy a caveman can do it” : GEICO
GEICO was founded in 1936 with a very specific mission, to provide auto insurance for employees of the federal government and their families, hence the name Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO). GEICO is a private company, despite the word “government” in its name. The founders’ idea was to focus on government employees as they believed such a group represented a lower risk profile than the rest of the population. Nowadays any qualifying person can take out a policy with GEICO.

5. Cookie that outcompeted Hydrox : OREO
The Oreo cookie was first introduced in 1912. The Oreo was intended to be a competitor to the very similar Hydrox cookie which had debuted four years earlier. The Oreo won the resulting battle on the grocery store shelves …

7. Miami Beach’s Eden ___ resort : ROC
The Eden Roc Miami Beach Hotel is a luxury resort hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. It has been around for a while, and was featured in several episodes of “I Love Lucy”. It was also a location used at the end of the movie “Married to the Mob”.

8. State whose flag has eight gold stars : ALASKA
Seven stars on the flag of the state of Alaska form the pattern of stars known as the Big Dipper, which is found in the constellation of Ursa Major. Ursa Major (Big Bear) symbolizes an animal that is indigenous to Alaska. The eight star on the flag represents Polaris, the North Star. The arrangement of the stars on the flag roughly represents the arrangement of the stars in night sky.

10. Neuron appendage : AXON
A nerve cell is more correctly called a neuron, and the long nerve fiber that is part of a neuron is called the axon. A neuron that has no definite axon is referred to as “apolar” or “nonpolar”. In apolar neurons the nerve impulses radiate in all directions.

12. Certain druggie : ACID HEAD
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 …

13. Letters before an alias : AKA
Also known as (aka)

18. Caribbean island whose name means “eel” : ANGUILLA
The genus of fishes known as Anguilla is made up of freshwater eels. These eels spend their lives in rivers, lakes or estuaries but return to the ocean to spawn. The genus gives its name to the island of Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean Sea. The island was so named because it is said to be shaped like an eel.

22. Attack-launch time : D-DAY
The most famous D-Day in history was June 6, 1944, the date of the Normandy landings in WWII. The term “D-Day” is used by the military to designate the day on which a combat operations are to be launched, especially when the actual date has yet to be determined. What D stands for seems to have been lost in the mists of time although the tradition is that D just stands for “Day”. In fact, the French have a similar term, “Jour J” (Day J), with a similar meaning. We also use H-Hour to denote the hour the attack is to commence.

25. Browser history listings : URLS
Internet addresses (like NYTCrossword.com and LAXCrossword.com) are more correctly called Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).

26. Org. for Cardinals and Ravens : NFL
The Arizona Cardinals were founded in 1898 as the Chicago Cardinals. That makes the Cardinals the oldest, continuously-run professional football team in the whole country.

The Baltimore football team’s name “the Ravens” has a literary derivation. Baltimore was the home of the writer Edgar Allan Poe, and so the team took its moniker from his most famous poem, “The Raven”. The name was selected in a fan contest.

28. ___ souci : SANS
“Sans souci” is a French term that translates literally as “without worry”, so we use it to mean “carefree”.

31. Ladies’ man : CASANOVA
Giacomo Casanova was an 18th-century adventurer from Venice. We know so much about him, and his reputation as a womanizer, because he left us his autobiography “Histoire de ma vie” (Story of My Life). A guy recounting stories of his love life and conquests. All true, I am sure …

32. Correct, as text : EMEND
The verb “to amend” means “to change for the better, put right, alter by adding”. The related verb “to emend” is used more rarely and mainly in reference to the editing of professional writing. Both terms are derived from the Latin “emendare” meaning “to remove fault”.

35. Dos x dos x dos : OCHO
In Spanish “dos” (two) cubed is “ocho” (eight).

36. Zimbabwe, formerly : RHODESIA
The country now known as Zimbabwe started out as a British colony called Southern Rhodesia, and later just “Rhodesia”. The original colony was named for Cecil Rhodes, the British empire builder.

39. Old French coins : ECUS
The ecu is an Old French coin. When introduced in 1640, the ecu was worth three livres (an older coin, called a “pound” in English). The word “ecu” comes from the Latin “scutum” meaning “shield”. The original ecu had a coat of arms on it, a shield.

43. Note after fa : SOL
The solfa syllables are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la & ti.

45. Style of sleeve : RAGLAN
The hereditary title of Baron Raglan was created in 1852 as a reward for Lord Fitzroy Somerset for his service commanding the British troops during the Crimean War. It’s the raglan sleeve that gives the name to the raglan coat. A raglan sleeve extends right to the collar of the garment. That design was created to suit the first Baron Raglan, who had lost his arm at the Battle of Waterloo.

46. ___ Curtis Industries (onetime cosmetics giant) : HELENE
Helene Curtis Industries was based in Chicago, and was taken over by Unilever in 1996. Helene Curtis was the first company to use the term “hairspray”, when it introduced aerosol products in 1950.

51. Singer Lena : HORNE
Lena Horne was an American jazz singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne started out her career as a nightclub singer and then began to get some meaty acting roles in Hollywood. However, she ended up on the blacklist during the McCarthy Era for expressing left wing political views. One of Horne’s starring roles was in the 1943 movie “Stormy Weather” for which she also performed the title song.

53. “___ Makes You Happy” (Sheryl Crow tune) : IF IT
Sheryl Crow famously dated cyclist Lance Armstrong from 2003-2006. Armstrong has stated publicly more than once that Crow’s music cured his cancer.

56. Rainbow goddess : IRIS
In Greek mythology the goddess Iris was viewed as the link between the gods and humanity, a messenger. Iris was also the goddess of the rainbow.

59. ___-Cat : SNO
The brand name Sno-Cat is owned by the Tucker company. All “snowcats” are tracked vehicles built to work in snow, famously used in expeditions to the polar regions. The modern Sno-Cat from Tucker differs from its competitors in that it has four, independently-mounted tracks.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Friend in a western : AMIGO
6. Cry after a diva’s performance : BRAVA!
11. Airport overseer, for short : FAA
14. PlayStation user : GAMER
15. Maker of the first waterproof and dustproof wristwatch : ROLEX
16. “Ewww!” : ICK!
17. *Hall-of-Fame jockey who won the Triple Crown twice : EDDIE ARCARO
19. Vardalos of the screen : NIA
20. Many a George W. Bush supporter : NEOCON
21. Smoothed, as wood : SANDED
23. Ex-Yankee Martinez : TINO
24. Residue in a bathtub drain : GUNK
27. Bits of Morse code : DAHS
29. Sault ___ Marie : STE
30. *Six times the length of one side squared, for a cube : SURFACE AREA
33. Sweater ball : PILL
34. “The Joy Luck Club” author : AMY TAN
35. Heavenly ball : ORB
38. “Treasure Island” author’s inits. : RLS
39. Suffix with legal : -ESE
40. Vietnam War protest grp. : SDS
41. ___ Hill, N.C. : CHAPEL
43. Read electronically : SCAN
44. *Engage in boisterous play : HORSE AROUND
46. Cool, in jive talk : HEP
49. Keats collection : ODES
50. “And another thing …” : ALSO …
51. Mother of Ares and Hephaestus : HERA
52. “What’s ___ you?” : EATING
55. “Brandenburg Concertos” instruments : VIOLAS
57. Any of the Baltic states, once: Abbr. : SSR
58. *Unauthorized detention : FALSE ARREST
61. Sharpshooter’s skill : AIM
62. Classic toothpaste brand : IPANA
63. With 60-Down, what the answer to each starred clue has : INNER
64. Subject of Boyle’s law : GAS
65. Barbershop quartet harmonizer : TENOR
66. Run-down : SEEDY

Down
1. Customer service workers : AGENTS
2. Achieved one’s goal : MADE IT
3. “That’s enough for me” : I’M DONE
4. Company advertised with the slogan “So easy a caveman can do it” : GEICO
5. Cookie that outcompeted Hydrox : OREO
6. “It’s c-c-cold!” : BRR!
7. Miami Beach’s Eden ___ resort : ROC
8. State whose flag has eight gold stars : ALASKA
9. Aloe ___ : VERA
10. Neuron appendage : AXON
11. *Painting, music, dance, etc. : FINE ARTS
12. Certain druggie : ACID HEAD
13. Letters before an alias : AKA
18. Caribbean island whose name means “eel” : ANGUILLA
22. Attack-launch time : D-DAY
25. Browser history listings : URLS
26. Org. for Cardinals and Ravens : NFL
28. ___ souci : SANS
30. Shopping binge : SPREE
31. Ladies’ man : CASANOVA
32. Correct, as text : EMEND
35. Dos x dos x dos : OCHO
36. Zimbabwe, formerly : RHODESIA
37. *What wearers of sleeveless garments have : BARE ARMS
39. Old French coins : ECUS
42. “Hey, mister” : PSST!
43. Note after fa : SOL
45. Style of sleeve : RAGLAN
46. ___ Curtis Industries (onetime cosmetics giant) : HELENE
47. Cleared the blackboard : ERASED
48. Danish or tart : PASTRY
51. Singer Lena : HORNE
53. “___ Makes You Happy” (Sheryl Crow tune) : IF IT
54. What’s exposed by a ponytail : NAPE
56. Rainbow goddess : IRIS
57. Droop : SAG
59. ___-Cat : SNO
60. See 63-Across : EAR

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