0121-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 21 Jan 16, Thursday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: David Phillips
THEME: Side Bars … we have two columns on the left, and two columns on the right of the grid, each filled with types of BAR:

35A. With 44-Across, off-the-record discussions … or 12 answers in this puzzle? : SIDE
44A. See 35-Across : BARS

1D. Concession stand : SNACK BAR
2D. High-carb bite : POWER BAR
11D. It might include “copy” and “paste” : TOOLBAR
12D. Chocolate treat since 1932 : MARS BAR
30D. Place for steamers : CLAM BAR
31D. Place to order a mai tai, maybe : TIKI BAR
32D. Low-class watering hole : DIVE BAR
33D. Feature of many a wedding reception : OPEN BAR
54D. It’s below “C V B N M” : SPACEBAR
55D. Sneeze guard locale : SALAD BAR
56D. Beach formation : SAND BAR
57D. Buffet with shells : TACO BAR

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 11m 26s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 2 … TRIMOTOR (Trimobor!!!), ALTA (Alba)

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

10. Bill issuer, for short : ATM
ATM (Automatic Teller Machine)

13. 3 Musketeers filling : NOUGAT
Today’s 3 Musketeers candy bar comprises a chocolate whipped filling in a chocolate covering. There’s a “3” in the name of the bar because it was introduced in 1932 with three pieces in one package, with chocolate, strawberry and vanilla fillings. The latter flavors were dropped during WWII due to wartime sugar restrictions.

16. Mauna ___ : LOA
Mauna Loa on the “big island” of Hawaii is the largest volcano on the planet (in terms of volume). The name “Mauna Loa” is Hawaiian for “Long Mountain”.

18. Ford aircraft of the 1920s-’30s : TRIMOTOR
The Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company made the Ford Trimotor in the twenties and thirties, a three-engined transport aircraft. There are a handful of “Tin Geese” still flying today.

21. Flame-colored gemstones : FIRE OPALS
Fire opals are almost transparent, unlike other opals that are richly iridescent. Although almost transparent, fire opals usually have a warm yellow, orange or red color. The most famous fire opals are also called Mexican fire opals, and come from the state of Querétaro in north-central Mexico.

22. Hindu god pictured playing a flute : KRISHNA
In the Hindu tradition, Krishna is recognized as the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Lord Vishnu. Krishna is usually depicted as a boy or young man playing a flute.

26. Like Liederkranz cheese : SMELLY
Liederkranz is a American cheese, a re-creation of Europe’s Limburger cheese. Perhaps a little disappointingly, Liederkranz was invented by Emil Frey, the same man who later came up with Velveeta.

32. Outburst accompanying a facepalm : D’OH!
“The Simpsons” is one of the most successful programs produced by the Fox Broadcasting Company. Homer Simpson’s catchphrase is “D’oh!”, which became such a famous exclamation that it has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 2001. “D’oh!” can be translated as “I should have thought of that!”

37. ___ Air : IPAD
The iPad Air is Apple’s 5th-generation tablet computer. The Air is just 7.5 mm thick, and is 22% lighter than the iPad 2.

39. Alternative to Mega Millions : LOTTO
Originally “Lotto” was a type of card game, with “lotto” being the Italian for “a lot”. We’ve used “lotto” to mean a gambling game since the late 1700s.

42. Minor, as a sin : VENIAL
In some Christian denominations, sins can be either venial or mortal in terms of severity, with mortal sins being the more grievous.

46. “Didn’t need to know that” : TMI
Too much information! (TMI)

47. Georgia of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” : ENGEL
Georgia Engel is a very funny comedy actress who is best known for playing Georgette Baxter, wife of Ted Baxter, on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Engel’s father was a Vice Admiral in the Coast Guard, and her sister was Miss Hawaii for 1967.

50. Onetime Mustang option : T-TOP
A T-top is a car roof that has removable panels on either side of a rigid bar that runs down the center of the vehicle above the driver.

The Ford Mustang car was introduced in 1964. Back then the Mustang wasn’t a brand new design, but was based on the Ford Falcon. The Mustang was the first of the “pony cars”, American models that are compact and affordable, as well as sporty in image and performance.

52. Like elephant seals : EARLESS
Elephant seals are very large, but take their name from the large proboscis of the male, which is said to resemble the trunk of an elephant.

There are three families of seals. The first is the walrus family, the second the eared seals (like sea lions), and thirdly the earless seals (like elephant seals).

60. Auto parts giant : NAPA
The National Automotive Parts Association (NAPA) is a retailers’ cooperative that supplies replacement parts for cars and trucks.

64. Big mfr. of 10-Acrosses : NCR
(10A. Bill issuer, for short : ATM)
NCR is an American company that has been in business since 1884, originally called the National Cash Register Company. The company has done well in a market where new technologies seem to be constantly disrupting the status quo.

65. North Atlantic hazard : BERG
An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that is floating freely after having broken off from a glacier or ice shelf. Out use of “iceberg” comes from the Dutch word for the same phenomenon “ijsberg”, which translates literally as “ice mountain”.

66. Six Nations tribe : SENECA
The Seneca nation’s name came from their principal village of Osininka. There is no link at all with Seneca the famous Roman statesman, and the similarity in name is just a coincidence.

67. Jane in court cases : DOE
Although the English court system does not use the term today, “John Doe” first appeared as the “name of a person unknown” in England in 1659, along with another unknown, Richard Roe. The female equivalent of John Doe is Jane Doe, with the equivalent to Richard Roe being Jane Roe (as in Roe v. Wade, for example).

69. “He hath ___ the fateful lightning …” (“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyric) : LOOSED
In 1856 William Steffe wrote the tune that was eventually used for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Before long it was one of the most popular tunes of the day, sung with a number of different lyrics. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Thomas Bishop composed lyrics to a famous abolitionist version of the tune, “John Brown’s Body”. The word’s to “John Brown’s Body” became less remembered than the strident melody, so Julia Ward Howe wrote the famous patriotic lyrics that spread through the ranks of the Union forces under the title of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Down
3. Day before mardi : LUNDI
In French, “lundi” (Monday) is the day before “mardi” (Tuesday).

6. French connections : ETS
“Et” is the French word for “and”.

8. Andy who won Olympic gold in tennis in 2012 : MURRAY
Andy Murray is a tennis player from Scotland who has been the British number one for several years now. Much to the delight of the locals, Murray won the Wimbledon Championship in 2013, making him the first British male player to win in 77 years. Murray also won Olympic gold in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

9. Pitcher’s delivery : SPIEL
A spiel is a lengthy speech or argument designed to persuade, like a sales pitch. “Spiel” comes to us from German, either directly (“spiel” is the German for “play”) or via the Yiddish “shpil”.

10. Province bordering Sask. : ALTA
Alberta (Alta.) is a big province, about the size of Texas. Alberta is named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Princess Louise also donated her name to Lake Louise, the large glacial lake in the province, now within the bounds of Banff National Park.

The Canadian province of Saskatchewan (Sask.) takes its name from the Saskatchewan River. The river in turn takes its name from the Cree name, which translates as “swift flowing river”. The capital of Saskatchewan is Regina, although the biggest city in the province is Saskatoon.

12. Chocolate treat since 1932 : MARS BAR
Having lived on both sides of the Atlantic, I find the Mars Bar to be the most perplexing of candies! The original Mars Bar is a British confection (and delicious) first manufactured in 1932. The US version of the original Mars Bar is called a Milky Way. But there is candy bar called a Milky Way that is also produced in the UK, and it is completely different to its US cousin, being more like an American “3 Musketeers”. And then there is an American confection called a Mars Bar, something different again. No wonder I gave up eating candy bars …

19. Works with librettos : OPERAS
A “libretto” can be the book that contains the text of a dramatic musical work, with the text also being called a libretto.

21. Golf Channel analyst Nick : FALDO
Nick Faldo is an English golfer, a winner of six major tournaments and a former World No. 1. For some years now Faldo has been the lead golf analyst for CBS Sports. In 2009 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, so if you’re chatting with him, don’t forget to address him as Sir Nick …

23. Royal Navy letters : HMS
The ship prefix “HMS” is used by the warships of the Royal Navy, and stands for “Her/His Majesty’s Ship/Submarine”. The prefix “RMS” is used by ships of the merchant navy, and stands for “Royal Mail Ship/Steamer”.

24. Sam of “Jurassic Park” : NEILL
Sam Neill is a very talented actor from New Zealand. I really enjoyed Neill in a 1983 television miniseries called “Reilly, Ace of Spies”, about a British spy operation during WWI. He is perhaps better-known for his roles in the movies “Omen III”, “Dead Calm”, “Jurassic Park” and “The Hunt for Red October”.

30. Place for steamers : CLAM BAR
Soft-shell clams are so called because they have thin calcium carbonate shells that are easily broken. They are known as “steamers”, especially in the New England where they are often served at a clambake.

31. Place to order a mai tai, maybe : TIKI BAR
The world’s first tiki bar was called “Don the Beachcomber”, and was opened in L.A. in 1933 by Ernest Gantt (also known as “Donn Beach”). The bar became famous for its exotic rum cocktails. Gantt was called to serve in WWII, and the business expanded dramatically under his ex-wife’s management so that there was a 160-restaurant chain waiting for Gantt when he returned stateside.

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.

32. Low-class watering hole : DIVE BAR
“Dive” is slang for a disreputable or run-down bar or nightclub. The term dates back to the 1870s and probably arose from the sense that won had to “dive down” into such an establishment, as they were usually located in basements.

40. ___ Tots : TATER
Ore-Ida’s founders came up with the idea for Tater Tots when they were deciding what to do with residual cuts of potato. They chopped up the leftovers, added flour and seasoning, and extruded the mix through a large hole making a sausage that they cut into small cylinders. We eat 70 million pounds of this extruded potato every year!

45. Camera with a mirror-and-prism system, for short : SLR
SLR stands for “single lens reflex”. Usually cameras with changeable lenses are the SLR type. The main feature of an SLR is that a mirror reflects the image seen through the lens out through the viewfinder, so that the photographer sees exactly what the lens sees. The mirror moves out of the way as the picture is taken, and the image that comes through the lens falls onto unexposed film, or nowadays onto a digital sensor.

49. Weather phenomenon named for baby Jesus : EL NINO
When the surface temperature of much of the Pacific Ocean rises more that half a degree centigrade, then there is said to be an El Niño episode. That small temperature change in the Pacific has been associated with climatic changes that can stretch right across the globe. El Niño is Spanish for “the boy” and is a reference to the Christ child. The phenomenon was given this particular Spanish name because the warming is usually noticed near South America and around Christmas-time.

53. Furniture 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.

54. It’s below “C V B N M” : SPACEBAR
That would be on a computer keyboard, for example …

62. Hand communication, for short : ASL
It’s really quite unfortunate that American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL) are very different, and someone who has learned to sign in one cannot understand someone signing in the other.

63. Prefix with cortex : NEO-
The neocortex is part of the brain, the part of the cerebral cortex that is especially large in higher animals.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Edit, as tape : SPLICE
7. Pro-___ : AMS
10. Bill issuer, for short : ATM
13. 3 Musketeers filling : NOUGAT
14. Some trophies : CUPS
16. Mauna ___ : LOA
17. “Gosh darn it!” : AW NUTS!
18. Ford aircraft of the 1920s-’30s : TRIMOTOR
20. Hand over : CEDE
21. Flame-colored gemstones : FIRE OPALS
22. Hindu god pictured playing a flute : KRISHNA
25. It might save your skin : ALOE
26. Like Liederkranz cheese : SMELLY
28. Parcel of land : TRACT
32. Outburst accompanying a facepalm : D’OH!
35. With 44-Across, off-the-record discussions … or 12 answers in this puzzle? : SIDE
36. “Want me to?” : SHALL I?
37. ___ Air : IPAD
39. Alternative to Mega Millions : LOTTO
41. Spa session : SOAK
42. Minor, as a sin : VENIAL
44. See 35-Across : BARS
46. “Didn’t need to know that” : TMI
47. Georgia of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” : ENGEL
48. Sink to the bottom : SETTLE
50. Onetime Mustang option : T-TOP
52. Like elephant seals : EARLESS
56. Hospital conveyance : STRETCHER
60. Auto parts giant : NAPA
61. Superior, as investments go : AAA-RATED
62. Brutish sort : ANIMAL
64. Big mfr. of 10-Acrosses : NCR
65. North Atlantic hazard : BERG
66. Six Nations tribe : SENECA
67. Jane in court cases : DOE
68. Kickoff aid : TEE
69. “He hath ___ the fateful lightning …” (“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyric) : LOOSED

Down
1. Concession stand : SNACK BAR
2. High-carb bite : POWER BAR
3. Day before mardi : LUNDI
4. “Well … probably” : I GUESS
5. One notably entertained by a laser pointer : CAT
6. French connections : ETS
7. Play starter : ACT I
8. Andy who won Olympic gold in tennis in 2012 : MURRAY
9. Pitcher’s delivery : SPIEL
10. Province bordering Sask. : ALTA
11. It might include “copy” and “paste” : TOOLBAR
12. Chocolate treat since 1932 : MARS BAR
15. Hairless : SMOOTH
19. Works with librettos : OPERAS
21. Golf Channel analyst Nick : FALDO
23. Royal Navy letters : HMS
24. Sam of “Jurassic Park” : NEILL
27. Not disturb : LET BE
29. Jillions : A LOT
30. Place for steamers : CLAM
31. Place to order a mai tai, maybe : TIKI
32. Low-class watering hole : DIVE
33. Feature of many a wedding reception : OPEN
34. Loiter, with “out” : HANG
36. In a way, informally : SORTA
38. Certain New Year’s resolution follower : DIETER
40. ___ Tots : TATER
43. PC task-switching shortcut : ALT-TAB
45. Camera with a mirror-and-prism system, for short : SLR
48. Round figure : SPHERE
49. Weather phenomenon named for baby Jesus : EL NINO
51. Eightsome : OCTET
53. Furniture designer Charles : EAMES
54. It’s below “C V B N M” : SPACEBAR
55. Sneeze guard locale : SALAD BAR
56. Beach formation : SAND BAR
57. Buffet with shells : TACO BAR
58. Steak request : RARE
59. Barely beat : EDGE
62. Hand communication, for short : ASL
63. Prefix with cortex : NEO-

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6 thoughts on “0121-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 21 Jan 16, Thursday”

  1. i enjoy the explanations you give to the puzzles and today though not your crossword in paper for this date you mention alberta where i live now but where i was born and raised ,saskatchewan. in Canada we are often discouraged as to the lack of knowledge generally our southern neighbors have of canada.we dont fear for our lives from moose and we arent for the most part a frozen wasteland.lol thank you for putting us in your x word. ps. you mention alberta is a big province.. actually saskatchwan larger in size with quebec ontairio and british columbia the largest of ten provinces. we have 3 territories.. again you are enjoyed!

  2. i enjoy the explanations you give to the puzzles and today though not your crossword in paper for this date you mention alberta where i live now but where i was born and raised ,saskatchewan. in Canada we are often discouraged as to the lack of knowledge generally our southern neighbors have of canada.we dont fear for our lives from moose and we arent for the most part a frozen wasteland.lol thank you for putting us in your x word. ps. you mention alberta is a big province.. actually saskatchwan larger in size with quebec ontairio and british columbia the largest of ten provinces. we have 3 territories.. again you are enjoyed!

  3. 11:15, two errors. I had DIME / MENIAL in place of DIVE / VENIAL. (As I wrote in the M, I had a fleeting sense of wrongness, but neglected to go back and check myself.) Pretty easy for a Thursday puzzle. (If it had been harder, I would surely have checked myself more closely, so it's obviously not my fault that I made a stupid error … no, really … it isn't … 🙂

  4. No errors and I feel good about it! Up until lately I have almost never completed a Thursday successfully. Maybe I am getting better. I hope so. But my main objective is to learn something at the same time and today's puzzle offers lots of opportunities for that.

  5. 11:44, no errors. Thought I was just in synch with the setter today, but I see a lot of ~11 minute times.

    Thanks for the Liederkranz/Limburger explanation. My grandparents loved the stuff, I would not go anywhere near it. For some inkling of the scent, don't wash your feet or take your shoes off for about a month.

  6. 22:19, no errors. Never felt comfortable with this, because it's full of disingenuous editing, designed to confuse and mislead. Standard Shortz fare. Can't wait for him to retire.

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