1215-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 15 Dec 15, Tuesday

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Solution to today’s crossword in the New York Times
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CROSSWORD SETTER: David Levinson Wilk
THEME: Bobs Up and Down … each of today’s themed answers contains a hidden word. That word is the family name of a famous BOB. Collectively, these hidden BOBS are written in the UP- and DOWN-direction alternatively:

15D. Moves like a buoy in the ocean … or a hint to the shaded parts of this puzzle? : BOBS UP AND DOWN

3D. Elton John’s dedicatee for “Candle in the Wind 1997” : PRINCESS OF WALES (hiding Bob FOSSE upwards)
4D. Classic board game with a Peppermint Forest : CANDY LAND (hiding Bob DYLAN downwards)
35D. 1980 one-woman comedy produced by Lorne Michaels : GILDA LIVE (hiding Bob VILA upwards)
10D. Don Juan types : SMOOTH OPERATORS (hiding Bob HOPE downwards)

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 6m 33s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

4. Perp pursuer : COP
“To cop” was northern British dialect for “to seize, catch”. This verb evolved in the noun “copper”, describing a policeman, someone who catches criminals. “Copper” is often shortened to “cop”.

Perpetrator (perp.)

7. Bully’s response : SAYS ME!
Says who? Says me!

14. Monomaniacal mariner : AHAB
Captain Ahab is the obsessed and far from friendly captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”. The role of Captain Ahab was played by Gregory Peck in the 1956 John Huston film adaptation. Patrick Stewart played Ahab in a 1998 miniseries in which Peck made another appearance, as Father Mapple.

Monomania is a preoccupation with one particular emotion or idea.

16. Hullabaloo : CLAMOR
Our word “hullabaloo” meaning a “commotion” is a derivative of an older term “hollo-ballo”. “Hollo-ballo” was a word used for an uproar in the north of England and Scotland.

20. How a lot of Generation X’s music was released : ON CD
The term Generation X originated in the UK where it was the name of a book by Jane Deverson. Her book detailed the results of a study of British youths in 1964, contrasting their lifestyle to those of previous generations. It was Canadian author Douglas Coupland who was responsible for popularizing the term, with his more successful publication “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”. By the latest accepted definition, Gen-Xers were born between 1961 and 1981.

22. 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”.

28. Palindromic bird : TIT
One of my favorite words is “Aibohphobia”, although it doesn’t appear in the dictionary and is a joke term. “Aibohphobia” is a great way to describe a fear of palindromes, by creating a palindrome out of the suffix “-phobia”.

29. Verdi opera based on a Shakespeare play : OTELLO
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Otello” was first performed in 1887 at La Scala Theater in Milan. The opera is based on Shakespeare’s play “Othello” and is considered by many to be Verdi’s greatest work.

30. Grecian subject of a Keats poem : URN
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”.

31. At the home of : CHEZ
“Chez” is a French term meaning “at the house of”, which comes from the Latin word “casa” meaning “cottage” or “hut”.

32. They often line up near WRs on a football field : TES
In football, tight ends (TEs) line up near wide receivers (WRs).

39. Two cents, so to speak : INPUT
“To put in one’s two cents” is to add one’s opinion. The American expression derives from the older English version, which is “to put in one’s two pennies worth”.

42. Neurotic condition, for short : OCD
Apparently obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is the fourth most commonly diagnosed mental disorder, making it about as common as asthma.

48. Hallucination producer : LSD
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 …

52. Dandelion, e.g. : WEED
The name “dandelion” comes from the French “dent de lion” meaning “lion’s tooth”. The name is a reference to the coarse, tooth-like edges of a dandelion’s leaves.

53. “O” follower : CANADA
Canada’s national anthem “O Canada” was commissioned in 1880 by the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, so the original words are in French. The first English translation was made in 1906. The current English lyrics have been revised a few times, but the French version remains the same as it did back in 1880.

54. MouthHealthy.org grp. : ADA
American Dental Association (ADA)

55. Capital on the Red River : HANOI
Hanoi was the capital of North Vietnam, and Saigon the capital of South Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, Hanoi was made capital of the reunified state. Saigon, the larger metropolis, was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi is located in the delta of the Red River, and is just over 50 miles from the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea.

57. 1990s Senate majority leader Trent : LOTT
Trent Lott was raised Democrat in Mississippi, but served in Congress as a Republican. Lott ran into trouble for remarks he made that were interpreted as being racially motivated, and ended up resigning in 2007.

58. “The Jazz Singer” star : JOLSON
The classic musical “The Jazz Singer” was released in 1927, and became the biggest box office success for the Warner Bros. to date. Famously, it was a “talkie”, and is now regarded as one of the films that signalled the impending end of the “silent era”. Star of the movie is Al Jolson, who performs six songs including “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye)” and “My Mammy”.

60. “The Greatest Generation” subj. : WWII
Tom Brokaw is a much-respected television journalist mostly seen on NBC. Brokaw is also the author of the excellent 1998 history of WWII and its aftermath called “The Greatest Generation”.

64. Iris part : AREOLE
An areola (sometimes “areole”) in anatomy is a small ring of color, as in the areola surrounding the nipple, and the areola surrounding the pupil of the eye. “Areola” comes from Latin, meaning “small open space”, and is a diminutive of the Latin word “area”, meaning “open space”.

66. Diamond stat : RBI
Run batted in (RBI)

68. Amal Clooney ___ Alamuddin : NEE
“Née” is the French word for “born” when referring to a female. The male equivalent is “né”.

Amal Alamuddin married celebrated Hollywood actor George Clooney in 2014. Alamuddin was born in Beirut, Lebanon and moved with her family to London when she was a toddler. She is a lawyer specializing in international law, with one of her more renowned clients being the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange.

Down
1. Tonsil-checking sounds : AHS
The palatine tonsils are located at the back of the human throat. The exact role that tonsils play isn’t completely understood, but it is known that they are in the first line of defense in the body’s immune system. They provide some level of protection against pathogens that are ingested and inhaled.

2. Twinings product in an orange box : PEKOE TEA
A pekoe (or more commonly “orange pekoe”) is a medium-grade black tea. There is no orange flavor in an orange pekoe tea. The “orange” name most likely derived from the name of the trading company that brought the tea to Europe from Asia.

3. Elton John’s dedicatee for “Candle in the Wind 1997” : PRINCESS OF WALES (hiding Bob FOSSE upwards)
Diana, Princess of Wales was a close friend of the English singer Elton John. At the princess’s funeral, Elton John performed a revised version of his song “Candle in the Wind” to honor his departed friend. The song was released as a single under the name “Candle in the Wind 1997” It became the fastest and best-selling song of all time, and remains the only single ever to be “certified diamond” in the US.

Bob Fosse won more Tony Awards for choreography than anyone else, a grand total of eight (and another Tony for direction). Fosse also won an Oscar for Best Director for his 1972 movie “Cabaret”, even beating out the formidable Francis Ford Coppola who was nominated that same year for “The Godfather”.

4. Classic board game with a Peppermint Forest : CANDY LAND (hiding Bob DYLAN downwards)
The board game Candy Land first went on the market in 1949, and in 2005 was named the most popular “toy” of the whole 1940s decade.

As is well known, the real name of singer Bob Dylan is Robert Zimmerman. Zimmerman chose that particular stage name because he was greatly influenced by the poetry of the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.

6. Web ___ : PAGE
In essence, the World Wide Web is a vast collection of documents that is accessible using the Internet, with each document containing hyperlinks which point to other documents in the collection. So the “Web” is different from the Internet, although the terms are often used interchangeably. The Web is the collection of documents, and the Internet is the global network of computers on which the documents reside.

8. Mathematician Turing and others : ALANS
Alan Turing was an English mathematician. He was deservedly well-respected for his code-breaking work during WWII at Bletchley Park in England. However, despite his contributions to cracking the German Enigma code and other crucial work, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He agreed to chemical castration, treatment with female hormones, and two years later he committed suicide by taking cyanide. Turing’s life story is told in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead. I thoroughly enjoyed that film …

9. Nickname on the 1960s-’80s Red Sox : YAZ
Yaz is the nickname for Carl Yastrzemski, who played his whole career with the Boston Red Sox.

10. Don Juan types : SMOOTH OPERATORS (hiding Bob HOPE downwards)
I remember my first non-business visit to Los Angeles. I was a typical tourist and bought a map showing the homes of the stars and drove around Beverly Hills absorbing all the glitz. At one point I drove past a Rolls Royce that was stopped in oncoming traffic, waiting to make a left turn. The window was down, and the driver was puffing away on a big cigar. It was none other than Bob Hope. Seeing him there right beside me, that was a big thrill …

Don Juan is a flighty character who has been featured by a number of authors, poets and composers, including Molière, Byron, and Mozart. In the underlying legend, Don Juan ends up talking to the statue of the dead father of one of his conquests. Don Juan dines with the ghost of the dead man and when shaking the hand of the ghost he is dragged away to hell.

11. “Tuesdays With ___” (Mitch Albom best seller) : MORRIE
“Tuesday’s with Morrie” is a novel by Mitch Albom, first published in 1997. The story is a work of nonfiction, telling the tale of sociologist Morrie Schwartz and his students, one of whom is the author Mitch Albom. Albom has frequent visits with his old professor when he discovers that Morrie is dying from ALS.

12. Fake : ERSATZ
Something described as “ersatz” is a copy, and usually not a good one. “Ersatz” comes from the German verb “ersetzen” meaning “to replace”.

21. Rank above maj. : COL
Our word “colonel” ultimately derives from the Latin “columna” meaning “pillar, column”, as in a column of soldiers.

23. 2014 Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper film : SERENA
The 2014 film “Serena” stars Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as a newlywed couple struggling to maintain their timber company in North Carolina in the thirties. The movie is based on a 2008 novel of the same name by Ron Rash.

25. “The lady ___ protest too much” : DOTH
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a line spoken by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother in the play by William Shakespeare.

35. 1980 one-woman comedy produced by Lorne Michaels : GILDA LIVE (hiding Bob VILA upwards)
“Gilda Live” is a 1980 film that centered on a one-woman show by Gilda Radner in Boston. The movie was produced by Lorne Michaels, the man behind “Saturday Night Live”, in which Gilda Radner co-starred.

Gilda Radner was a comedian and actress, one of the original cast members of the hit television show “Saturday Night Live”. Radner left her first husband to marry comedic actor Gene Wilder, whom she met while they were both filming the Sidney Poitier movie “Hanky Panky”.

44. Fond du ___, Wis. : LAC
“Fond du lac” is French and translates as “bottom of the lake”, an apt name for the city of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin located at the foot of Lake Winnebago. If you like to play the lottery, you might want to stop off in Fond du Lac as there is a stretch of South Main Street called “Miracle Mile”. Back in 1993, someone bought a ticket there and won $100 million. Then in 2006, another store sold a ticket that won $209 million. These things always come in threes, so buy your tickets now …

47. Hat for Frank Sinatra : FEDORA
A fedora is a lovely hat, I think. It is made of felt, and is similar to a trilby, but has a broader brim. “Fedora” was a play written for Sarah Bernhardt and first performed in 1889. Bernhardt had the title role of Princess Fedora, and on stage she wore a hat similar to a modern-day fedora. The play led to the women’s fashion accessory, the fedora hat, commonly worn by women into the beginning of the twentieth century. Men then started wearing fedoras, but only when women gave up the fashion …

50. Singer Yoko : ONO
Yoko Ono was born into a prosperous Japanese family, and is actually a descendant of one of the emperors of Japan. Her father moved around the world for work, and she lived the first few years of her life in San Francisco. The family returned to Japan, before moving on to New York, Hanoi and back to Japan just before WWII, in time to live through the great fire-bombing of Tokyo in 1945. Immediately after the war the family was far from prosperous. While Yoko’s father was being held in a prison camp in Vietnam, her mother had to resort to begging and bartering to feed her children. When her father was repatriated, life started to return to normal and Yoko was able to attend university. She was the first woman to be accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University.

59. Drunkard : SOT
Our word “sot” comes from the Old English “sott”, meaning “fool”. The word “sot” started to be associated with alcohol and not just foolery in the late 1500s.

61. Suffix with Manhattan or Brooklyn : -ITE
The island we know as Manhattan was inhabited by the Lenape Indians when the first Europeans explorers arrived in the area. According to the logbook of one of the officers on explorer Henry Hudson’s yacht, the island was called “Manna-hata” in the local language, from which the modern name derives.

The New York City borough of Brooklyn used to be its own city, but was annexed by its larger neighbor in 1989. Brooklyn takes its name from the original village that was settled by the Dutch, which they called Breuckelen. The village in turn took its name from the town of Breukelen back in the Netherlands.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Something a software developer develops : APP
4. Perp pursuer : COP
7. Bully’s response : SAYS ME!
13. ___ Majesty : HER
14. Monomaniacal mariner : AHAB
16. Hullabaloo : CLAMOR
17. Item on a chairlift : SKI
18. “Ain’t happening” : NO GO
19. They may be involved in close shaves : RAZORS
20. How a lot of Generation X’s music was released : ON CD
22. Buddy of “The Beverly Hillbillies” : EBSEN
24. “… ___ lack thereof” : OR A
25. Lures : DECOYS
27. Gets the picture : SEES
28. Palindromic bird : TIT
29. Verdi opera based on a Shakespeare play : OTELLO
30. Grecian subject of a Keats poem : URN
31. At the home of : CHEZ
32. They often line up near WRs on a football field : TES
33. Open-mouthed : AGAPE
35. Slime : GOO
36. Invites to one’s home : HAS IN
38. Sprinted : RAN
39. Two cents, so to speak : INPUT
42. Neurotic condition, for short : OCD
43. Completely : IN ALL
45. Spanish “that” : ESA
46. Not for sure : IFFY
48. Hallucination producer : LSD
49. Absolutely ate up : ADORED
51. Just-made : NEW
52. Dandelion, e.g. : WEED
53. “O” follower : CANADA
54. MouthHealthy.org grp. : ADA
55. Capital on the Red River : HANOI
57. 1990s Senate majority leader Trent : LOTT
58. “The Jazz Singer” star : JOLSON
60. “The Greatest Generation” subj. : WWII
62. Punch line? : OOF!
64. Iris part : AREOLE
65. Child’s punishment, maybe : NO TV
66. Diamond stat : RBI
67. Like sailing ships : MASTED
68. Amal Clooney ___ Alamuddin : NEE
69. ___ ed : SEX

Down
1. Tonsil-checking sounds : AHS
2. Twinings product in an orange box : PEKOE TEA
3. Elton John’s dedicatee for “Candle in the Wind 1997” : PRINCESS OF WALES
4. Classic board game with a Peppermint Forest : CANDY LAND
5. “Well, whaddya know!” : OHO!
6. Web ___ : PAGE
7. One at a multiplex : SCREEN
8. Mathematician Turing and others : ALANS
9. Nickname on the 1960s-’80s Red Sox : YAZ
10. Don Juan types : SMOOTH OPERATORS
11. “Tuesdays With ___” (Mitch Albom best seller) : MORRIE
12. Fake : ERSATZ
15. Moves like a buoy in the ocean … or a hint to the shaded parts of this puzzle? : BOBS UP AND DOWN
21. Rank above maj. : COL
23. 2014 Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper film : SERENA
25. “The lady ___ protest too much” : DOTH
26. Soak, in dialect : SOG
31. Dupe : CON
34. Out of bed : ARISEN
35. 1980 one-woman comedy produced by Lorne Michaels : GILDA LIVE
37. Frigid : ICY
40. Was : USED TO BE
41. “There, look what I did!” : TADA!
44. Fond du ___, Wis. : LAC
46. Stuck : IN A JAM
47. Hat for Frank Sinatra : FEDORA
48. Didn’t stand up straight : LEANED
50. Singer Yoko : ONO
52. Complete : WHOLE
56. “Victory is mine!” : I WON!
59. Drunkard : SOT
61. Suffix with Manhattan or Brooklyn : -ITE
63. Repair : FIX

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4 thoughts on “1215-15 New York Times Crossword Answers 15 Dec 15, Tuesday”

  1. 12:04, no errors. A bit slow on this one; not sure why. (The clue for 63D was missing, but that was a minor annoyance. Occasionally, one or two clues are missing from the Denver Post copy of the puzzle. I'm not sure how this happens;, but I assume someone copies the puzzle manually from an NYT source and misses a little chunk. Later in the week, this can be a more serious problem than it is on a Tuesday.)

  2. 12:57, no errors. Some of the answers required more than a couple of seconds of thought, times add up. Had no idea who Amal Clooney is, guess I should read more celebrity gossip rags. (not gonna happen).

  3. I also struggled a *little bit* with this one. 14:21, no errors. A few of the down clues sent me in the wrong direction for a while.

  4. Typical NYT grid in such as the clues are. Zero errors, not too much trouble in most respects.

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