0530-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 30 Mar 16, Monday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: David Woolf
THEME: Tossed Salad
Each of today’s themed answers contains a string of letters that are circled in my grid. These letters are S-A-L-A-D, but the order has been TOSSED around, rearranged:

62A. Common first course … or what’s literally contained in 17-, 23-, 32-, 44- and 49-Across? : TOSSED SALAD

17A. Tropical drinks often served with umbrellas : PINA COLADAS
23A. Spicy ballroom activity? : SALSA DANCING
32A. Finishing eighth out of eight, say : DEAD LAST
44A. Application to highways before a winter storm : ROAD SALT
49A. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author : DOUGLAS ADAMS

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME:5m 59s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Funny Groucho or Harpo : MARX
Groucho Marx’s real name was Julius Henry Marx. By the time Groucho started his successful, post-Hollywood career hosting the quiz show “You Bet Your Life”, he was sporting a real mustache. For all his movies, his mustache had been painted on with greasepaint.

Harpo Marx was the second oldest of the Marx brothers. Harpo’s real name was Adolph, and he earned his nickname because he played the harp. Famously he didn’t speak on screen, a routine he developed after reading a review that he performed really well when he just didn’t speak!

5. Lover of Tristan, in legend : ISOLDE
According to Arthurian legend, Iseult (also “Isolde”) was the adulterous lover of Sir Tristan, one of the Knights of the Round Table. Iseult was an Irish Princess who fell in love with Tristan who had been sent to win Iseult’s hand in marriage for King Mark of Cornwall. The tale was used as the basis for Richard Wagner’s celebrated opera “Tristan und Isolde”.

11. Place with R.V. hookups : KOA
Kampgrounds of America (KOA) was founded in 1962 by Montana businessman Dave Drum, who opened up his first property along the Yellowstone River. His strategy was to offer a rich package of services including hot showers, restrooms and a store, which he hoped would attract people used to camping in the rough. The original campground was an immediate hit and Drum took on two partners and sold franchises all over the country. There are about 500 KOA sites today.

15. GoDaddy purchase : DOMAIN
GoDaddy is a domain registrar and web hosting company. A domain registrar is an entity that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. In fact, I use to GoDaddy to maintain my registration of the LAXCrossword.com and NYTCrossword.com domain names. The other side of GoDaddy’s business is web hosting. This means that GoDaddy provides space on servers where websites (like this one) are maintained, and also provides Internet connectivity so that the website is accessible via the World Wide Web.

17. Tropical drinks often served with umbrellas : PINA COLADAS
“Piña colada” is a Spanish term which translates into “strained pineapple”. The Piña colada cocktail was introduced in the Caribe Hilton San Juan in 1954, and since 1978 it has been the official beverage of Puerto Rico. Yum …

19. ___ Period (time in Japanese history) : EDO
Edo is the former name of the Japanese city of Tokyo. Edo was the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate, a feudal regime that ruled from 1603 until 1868. The shogun lived in the magnificent Edo castle. Some parts of the original castle remain and today’s Tokyo Imperial Palace, the residence of the Emperor of Japan, was built on its grounds.

20. Lustful deity of myth : SATYR
The satyrs of Greek mythology came with a very high sex drive. They are the “rude” male subjects drawn on the side of old Greek vases. The nubile maidens known as nymphs were often an object of attention for the satyrs.

23. Spicy ballroom activity? : SALSA DANCING
The genre of music called salsa is a modern interpretation of various Cuban traditional music styles.

27. Communication for the deaf, in brief : 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.

31. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Mel : OTT
At 5′ 9″, Mel Ott weighed just 170 lb (I don’t think he took steroids!) and yet he was the first National League player to hit over 500 home runs. Sadly, Ott died in a car accident in New Orleans in 1958 when he was only 49 years old.

47. Actress Thurman : UMA
Robert Thurman was the first westerner to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Robert raised his children in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and called his daughter “Uma” as it is a phonetic spelling of the Buddhist name “Dbuma”. Uma’s big break in movies came with her starring role in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 hit “Pulp Fiction”. My favorite Uma Thurman film is the wonderful 1996 romantic comedy “The Truth About Cats and Dogs”.

48. Zodiac lion : LEO
Leo is the fifth astrological sign of the Zodiac. People born from July 23 to August 22 are Leos.

49. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author : DOUGLAS ADAMS
The English writer and dramatist Douglas Adams is best known for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide …” started out life as a comedy series on BBC radio in 1978, but it certainly had legs. It was adapted into stage shows, five books, a television series, computer game and a 2005 film.

55. Boleyn, Brontë or Bancroft : ANNE
Anne Boleyn was the second wife of Henry VIII of England. Anne was found guilty of high treason after about a thousand days of marriage to Henry, accused of adultery and incest (probably trumped-up charges). She was executed, but perhaps her legacy lived on in her only child, as her daughter reigned for 45 very prosperous years as Queen Elizabeth I.

Anne was the youngest of the three sisters in the literary Brontë family. Her older sisters wrote novels that are more recognized, but Anne’s two novels do have a following. “Agnes Grey” is based on her own experiences working as a governess. Her other novel, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” is written as a long letter from a young man describing the events leading up to his first meeting with his wife-to-be. Anne Brontë’s writing career was cut short in 1849, when she died of pulmonary tuberculosis, at only 29 years of age.

The lovely actress Anne Bancroft was born Anna Italiano in the the Bronx, New York. Bancroft was probably best known for her performances in the 1962 movie “The Miracle Worker” (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar) and in the 1967 movie “The Graduate”. She was married for 40 years to Mel Brooks, right up till her passing in 2005.

56. Prof helpers : TAS
Teaching assistant (TA)

61. 2012 #1 album for Taylor Swift : RED
Singer Taylor Swift had one of her first gigs at the US Open tennis tournament when she was in her early teens. There she sang the national anthem and received a lot of favorable attention for the performance.

65. Maker of the Optima and Sorento : KIA
The Kia Optima was sold for a while in Canada and Europe as the Kia Magentis.

The Kia Sorento is an SUV.

70. The Ugly Duckling, actually : SWAN
Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Ugly Duckling” has to be one of the most endearing ever written. Unlike so many “fairy tales”, “The Ugly Duckling” isn’t based on any folklore and simply a product of Andersen’s imagination. It is speculated that Andersen was the illegitimate son of the Crown Prince of Denmark, and that he wrote the story of the ugly duckling that turned into a beautiful swan as a metaphor for the secret royal lineage that was within Andersen himself.

Down
1. Rand McNally items : MAPS
Rand McNally is a company long associated with the city of Chicago. Its roots go back to 1856 when William Rand opened a printing shop in the city. Two years later he hired an Irish immigrant named Andrew McNally and the pair turned to printing tickets and timetables for the railroad industry. They diversified into “railroad guides” in 1870, a precursor of what was to be their big success, the road atlas. When automobile travel started to become significant, Rand and McNally turned their attention to roads and they published their first road map, of New York City in 1904. Rand and McNally really popularized the use of highway numbers, and indeed erected many roadside highway signs themselves, long before the state and federal authorities adopted the idea.

2. Big name in running shoes : AVIA
The Avia brand name for athletic shoes was chosen as “avia” is the Latin word for “to fly”, and suggests the concept of aviation. Avia was founded in Oregon in 1979.

3. $2,000 for Boardwalk, with a hotel : RENT
Boardwalk is a property sitting right beside the GO corner in the game of Monopoly.

The street names in the US version of Monopoly are locations in or around Atlantic City, New Jersey.

4. Penetrating looks? : X-RAYS
X-rays were first studied comprehensively by the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen (also “Roentgen”), and it was he who gave the name “X-rays” to this particular type of radiation. Paradoxically, in Röntgen’s native language of German, X-rays are routinely referred to as “Röntgen rays”. In 1901 Röntgen won the first Nobel Prize in Physics that was ever awarded, recognition for his work on X-rays.

6. Note between fa and la : SOL
The solfa syllables are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la & ti.

7. Warren Buffet, the Oracle of ___ : OMAHA
Warren Buffett is one of my heroes, a man with the nicknames “Wizard of Omaha” and “Oracle of Omaha”. Despite being one of the wealthiest men in the world, Buffet lives a relatively frugal and modest life. Buffett also has a very Jeffersonian attitude towards the role his wealth plays within his family. He has set up his estate so that his children get enough money to be independent, but the vast majority of his assets are going to charity, both before and after he dies.

9. Singer Ross with the Supremes : DIANA
The Supremes were the most successful vocal group in US history, based on number one hits. The group started out in 1959 as a four-member lineup called the Primettes. The name was changed to the Supremes in 1961. One member dropped out in 1962, leaving the Supremes as a trio. Lead singer Diana Ross began to garner much of the attention, which eventually led to a further name change, to Diana Ross & the Supremes.

10. Coast Guard rank: Abbr. : ENS
Ensign (ens.)

26. Thanksgiving’s mo. : NOV
Thanksgiving Day was observed on different dates in different states for many years, until Abraham Lincoln fixed the date for the whole country in 1863. Lincoln’s presidential proclamation set that date as the last Thursday in November. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the fourth Thursday in November, arguing that the earlier date would give the economy a much-needed boost.

34. Paver’s supply : TAR
The terms “Tarmac” and “macadam” are short for “tarmacadam”. In the 1800s, Scotsman John Loudon McAdam developed a style of road known as “macadam”. Macadam had a top-layer of crushed stone and gravel laid over larger stones. The macadam also had a convex cross-section so that water tended to drain to the sides. In 1901, a significant improvement was made by English engineer Edgar Purnell Hooley who introduced tar into the macadam, improving the resistance to water damage and practically eliminating dust. The “tar-penetration macadam” is the basis of what we now call Tarmac.

35. Target of a decade-long manhunt, informally : OSAMA
Osama bin Laden founded his militant Islamist group called al-Qaeda in the late eighties. “Al-Qaeda” translates as “the base”, and can refer to a military base. It was originally the name of a training camp set up for mujahedin fighters opposing the Russians who occupied Afghanistan at the time.

37. Germany’s ___ von Bismarck : OTTO
Germany first became a country of her own in 1871 when the Princes of the various independent German states met at Versailles outside Paris to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as the Emperor of the German Empire. The man behind this historic development was Wilhelm’s Ministerpräsident, Otto von Bismarck. Von Bismarck was a powerful figure in Prussia and indeed on the world stage, earning him the nickname of the “Iron Chancellor”.

50. Longtime NBC newsman Roger : O’NEIL
Roger O’Neil is a news reporter who has worked for NBC for over 30 years.

52. An Obama girl : SASHA
Sasha is the younger of the two Obama children, born in 2001. She is the youngest child to reside in the White House since John F. Kennedy, Jr. moved in with his parents as a small infant. Sasha’s Secret Service codename is “Rosebud”, and her older sister Malia has the codename “Radiance”.

59. What a volcano erupts : LAVA
Our word “volcano” comes from “Vulcano”, the name of a volcanic island off the coast of Italy. The island’s name comes from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. The Romans believed that the island of Vulcano was the chimney of the forge belonging to the god Vulcan. The Romans also believed that the eruptions on Mount Etna in Sicily were caused by Vulcan getting angry and working his forge so hard that sparks and smoke flew out of the top of the volcano.

60. Biblical garden : EDEN
According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in a garden “in” Eden, with Eden being geographically located by reference to four rivers including the Tigris and the Euphrates. Some scholars hypothesize that Eden was located in Mesopotamia, which encompasses much of modern-day Iraq.

62. Dickens’s Tiny ___ : TIM
Tiny Tim is the nickname of Timothy Cratchit, the little disabled boy in the Charles Dickens novella “A Christmas Carol”. “A Christmas Carol” is such a popular book that it has not been out of print since its first publication in December 1843.

64. Showtime’s serial killer protagonist, familiarly : DEX
“Dexter” is a crime show that airs on Showtime. The title character works for the Miami Police Department as an expert in blood spatter patterns by day, but is a serial killer by night. The original series was based on the “Dexter” novels written by Jeff Lindsay. I haven’t seen this show myself, but my eldest son really enjoys it …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Funny Groucho or Harpo : MARX
5. Lover of Tristan, in legend : ISOLDE
11. Place with R.V. hookups : KOA
14. Swear : AVER
15. GoDaddy purchase : DOMAIN
16. 90° bend : ELL
17. Tropical drinks often served with umbrellas : PINA COLADAS
19. ___ Period (time in Japanese history) : EDO
20. Lustful deity of myth : SATYR
21. Rooster’s mate : HEN
22. Store sign during business hours : OPEN
23. Spicy ballroom activity? : SALSA DANCING
27. Communication for the deaf, in brief : ASL
30. Try to win, as a lover : WOO
31. Baseball Hall-of-Famer Mel : OTT
32. Finishing eighth out of eight, say : DEAD LAST
35. Strain the body too much : OVERDO
38. Stupefy : DAZE
39. Baby horses : FOALS
41. Nipple : TEAT
42. Rococo and Postmodernism : STYLES
44. Application to highways before a winter storm : ROAD SALT
46. Take to court : SUE
47. Actress Thurman : UMA
48. Zodiac lion : LEO
49. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author : DOUGLAS ADAMS
55. Boleyn, Brontë or Bancroft : ANNE
56. Prof helpers : TAS
57. Earl or baron : NOBLE
61. 2012 #1 album for Taylor Swift : RED
62. Common first course … or what’s literally contained in 17-, 23-, 32-, 44- and 49-Across? : TOSSED SALAD
65. Maker of the Optima and Sorento : KIA
66. “Hey!,” from someone who’s hiding : IN HERE!
67. Wander : ROVE
68. Foxy : SLY
69. Butcher’s implement : MEAT AX
70. The Ugly Duckling, actually : SWAN

Down
1. Rand McNally items : MAPS
2. Big name in running shoes : AVIA
3. $2,000 for Boardwalk, with a hotel : RENT
4. Penetrating looks? : X-RAYS
5. Declaration made with a raised right hand : I DO
6. Note between fa and la : SOL
7. Warren Buffet, the Oracle of ___ : OMAHA
8. Stowed on board : LADED
9. Singer Ross with the Supremes : DIANA
10. Coast Guard rank: Abbr. : ENS
11. Stay authentic, colloquially : KEEP IT REAL
12. Of yore : OLDEN
13. See 18-Down : ALONG
18. With 13-Down, move at a snail’s place : CRAWL
22. Groups of eight : OCTETS
24. Hangs around and does nothing : LOAFS
25. Just all right : SO-SO
26. Thanksgiving’s mo. : NOV
27. Does sums : ADDS
28. Bench or chair : SEAT
29. Relaxing time after church, say : LAZY SUNDAY
33. Downpour : DELUGE
34. Paver’s supply : TAR
35. Target of a decade-long manhunt, informally : OSAMA
36. Over hill and ___ : DALE
37. Germany’s ___ von Bismarck : OTTO
40. Eardrum-busting : LOUD
43. Squirmy fish : EEL
45. Curses : DAMNS
49. Opposite of whites, laundrywise : DARKS
50. Longtime NBC newsman Roger : O’NEIL
51. Do penance (for) : ATONE
52. An Obama girl : SASHA
53. Thing in the plus column : ASSET
54. Goes way, way up : SOARS
58. Erupt : BLOW
59. What a volcano erupts : LAVA
60. Biblical garden : EDEN
62. Dickens’s Tiny ___ : TIM
63. Long, long time : ERA
64. Showtime’s serial killer protagonist, familiarly : DEX

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2 thoughts on “0530-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 30 Mar 16, Monday”

  1. No errors. Several words of interest as expanded on in Bill's comments. I seem to recall this same theme "Tossed Salad" once before. But I guess there's nothing wrong with recycling a theme.

  2. 8:37. no errors. Fun theme, typical Monday sprint, except I did get bogged down a bit in the southwest corner. Trying to remember DOUGLAS ADAMS, not knowing Taylor Swift's album, and thinking that 29D had something to do with 'supper' rather than Sunday.

Comments are closed.