0913-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 13 Sep 16, Tuesday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Stanley Newman
THEME: QQ
Today’s themed answers each contain two letters Q:

17A. Person between 50 and 59 : QUINQUAGENARIAN
40A. O’Neal’s memoir of his N.B.A. rookie year : SHAQ ATTAQ
65A. N.H.L. team that became the Colorado Avalanche : QUEBEC NORDIQUES

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 7m 31s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. End of “Macbeth” or “Othello” : ACT V
Shakespeare adopted the five-act structure for all of his plays, using the same format that was used by Seneca for his Roman tragedies. Given five acts, the plays tend to unfold as follows:

  • Act I is used as an introduction
  • Act II is used to complicate things
  • Act III contains the climax of the tale
  • Act IV is used to add some suspense
  • Act V is the conclusion

5. Airer of F.C.C. hearings : C-SPAN
C-SPAN is a privately-funded, nonprofit cable channel that broadcasts continuous coverage of government proceedings.

10. Something caught in a filter : SPAM
Apparently the term “spam”, used for unwanted email, is taken from a “Monty Python” sketch. In the sketch (which I’ve seen) the dialog is taken over by the word Spam, a play on the glut of canned meat in the markets of Britain after WWII. So “spam” is used for the glut of emails that takes over online communication. I can just imagine nerdy Internet types (like me) adopting something from a “Monty Python” sketch to describe an online phenomenon …

14. “Downton Abbey” countess : CORA
In the incredibly successful period drama “Downton Abbey”, the patriarch of the family living at Downton is Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham or Lord Grantham. The character is played by Hugh Bonneville. Lord Grantham married American Cora Levinson (played by Elizabeth McGovern. Lord and Lady Grantham had three daughters, and no son. The lack of a male heir implied that the Grantham estate would pass to a male cousin, and out of the immediate family. The Grantham daughters are Lady Mary (played by Michelle Dockery), Lady Edith (played by Laura Carmichael) and Lady Sybil (played by Jessica Brown Findlay). Lady Sybil had the audacity to marry the family chauffeur, an Irish nationalist. The shame of it all …

15. “Macbeth” or “Otello” : OPERA
Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian composer mainly of operas who was active during the Romantic era. Equally as famous as Verdi’s operas, are arias from those operas such as “La donna è mobile” from “Rigoletto”, “The Drinking Song” from “La Traviata” and “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” from “Nabucco”. Verdi was a big fan of William Shakespeare and wrote three operas based on the Bard’s plays: “Macbeth”, “Otello” and “Falstaff”.

16. Davenport’s home : IOWA
Davenport, Iowa sits on the Mississippi River. The city was founded in 1836 by landowner and businessman Antoine LeClaire, with the assistance of a group of investors. The investors resisted the use of LeClaire’s name for the new settlement as LeClaire was of mixed race, had a French name and was a Catholic. Instead, it was named for George Davenport, one of the other investors.

17. Person between 50 and 59 : QUINQUAGENARIAN
A quinquagenarian is a person in his or her fifties. The term comes from the Latin “quinquagenarius” meaning “containing fifty”.

20. Supermarket checkout lines? : UPC
Universal Price Code or Universal Product Code (UPC)

21. RCA introduction of 1977 : VCR
Video Cassette Recorder (VCR)

25. The Goddess of Pop : CHER
Cher’s real name is Cherilyn Sarkisian, born in 1946. Formerly one half of husband-wife duo Sonny & Cher, she is often referred to as the Goddess of Pop. In her acting career, Cher was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar of 1984 for her performance in “Silkwood”. She went further in 1988 and won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Loretta Castorini in “Moonstruck”.

31. Rights, informally : DIBS
The phrase “to have dibs on” expresses a claim on something. Apparently, the term “dibs” is a contraction of “dibstone”, which was a knucklebone or jack used in a children’s game.

40. O’Neal’s memoir of his N.B.A. rookie year : SHAQ ATTAQ!
Retired basketball player Shaquille O’Neal now appears regularly as an analyst on the NBA TV show “Inside the NBA”. Shaq has quite a career in the entertainment world. His first rap album, called “Shaq Diesel”, went platinum. He also starred in two of his own reality show: “Shaq’s Big Challenge” and “Shaq Vs.”

42. ___ Brewster, Cary Grant’s role in “Arsenic and Old Lace” : MORTIMER
“Arsenic and Old Lace” is a Frank Capra film released in 1944. The movie is based on a 1939 stage play by Joseph Kesselring. The film stars Cary Grant as a completely madcap and frantic Mortimer Brewster. Grant was only the fourth choice for the role, after Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Ronald Reagan. That’s quite an eclectic mix of actors …

52. Workplace fairness agcy. : EEOC
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) is a term that has been around since 1964 when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was set up by the Civil Rights Act. Title VII of the Act prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin or religion.

58. ___ Lanka : SRI
The island nation of Sri Lanka lies off the southeast coast of India. The name “Sri Lanka” translates from Sanskrit into English as “venerable island”. Before 1970, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name given to the country during British rule.

59. The Braves of the N.L. East : ATL
The Atlanta Braves are the only team to have won baseball’s World Series in three different home cities. They won as the Boston Braves in 1914, the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and the Atlanta Braves in 1995.

63. Mythical bird : ROC
The mythical roc is a huge bird of prey, reputedly able to carry off and eat elephants. The roc was said to come from the Indian subcontinent. The supposed existence of the roc was promulgated by Marco Polo in the accounts that he published of his travels through Asia.

64. Black ___ (secret missions) : OPS
“Black ops” is the name given to covert operations, activities that are usually outside of standard military protocol and may even be against the law. Funding for black ops is usually provided by a secret “black budget”.

65. N.H.L. team that became the Colorado Avalanche : QUEBEC NORDIQUES
The Colorado Avalanche is a professional ice hockey team based in Denver, Colorado. The Avalanche were founded in Quebec in 1972 as the Quebec Nordiques, and moved to Denver in 1995.

70. Vietnam’s capital : 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.

72. 1950s British P.M. Anthony ___ : EDEN
Sir Anthony Eden served as Britain’s Foreign Secretary during WWII, and then as Prime Minister from 1955-57. I think it’s fair to say that Eden doesn’t have a great reputation as a statesman. He was proud of his stance in favor of peace over war, so his critics characterized him as an appeaser. His major stumble on the world stage occurred with the Suez Crisis in 1956. Egypt’s President Nasser unilaterally nationalized the Suez Canal causing war to be declared on Egypt by Britain, France and Israel. Within a few months political pressure from the US and the USSR caused the allies to withdraw, bolstering Egypt’s national reputation. Eden never recovered from the loss of face at home, and it is felt that the stress even affected his health. Eden resigned in January 1957.

73. Central Florida metropolis, informally : O-TOWN
Orlando in Central Florida is the largest inland city in the state. Orlando was the most visited cities in the US in 2009, mainly as it is home to many theme parks including Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida and SeaWorld. Orlando has a few nicknames, including O-Town and Theme Park Capital of the World.

Down
1. Emulates the O. J. Simpson jury : ACQUITS
There is a famous quip that was used by defense attorney Johnnie Cochran in the O.J. Simpson murder trial: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”. This was a reference to Simpson trying on a replica of the leather glove found at the scene of the crime.

2. “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses,” e.g. : COUPLET
The following lines first appeared in the “New York World” in 1925, attributed to Dorothy Parker:

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

5. Davenport, e.g. : COUCH
The name Davenport, when used to mean a sofa, is one of those generic terms that evolved for an item from the name of a prominent manufacturer. The long-gone Davenport Company sold a lot of furniture in the midwest and upstate New York, so the term is especially common in that part of the country.

8. Mars, to the Greeks : ARES
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 (Fear), Deimos (Terror) and Eros (Desire). The Roman equivalent to Ares was Mars.

9. iPod Mini successor : NANO
The iPod Nano is the successor to the iPod Mini and was introduced to the market at the end of 2005. There have been seven versions of the Nano to date and the current Nano as well as playing tunes is an FM player, records voice memos, has a pedometer and can connect with external devices (like a heart monitor, maybe) using Bluetooth technology.

11. Sidney of “Lilies of the Field” : POITIER
The Hollywood actor Sidney Poitier was born in Miami, but grew up in the Bahamas. Poitiers breakthrough role in movies came with 1955’s “Blackboard Jungle”, in which he played an incorrigible high school student. I find it interesting that one of Poitier’s most respected performances found him playing a teacher of a rough set of students in 1967’s “To Sir, with Love”. Off the screen, Poitier entered the diplomatic service for the Bahamas, serving as the nation’s non-resident ambassador to Japan from 1997 until 2007.

Sidney Poitier won his only Best Actor Oscar playing the male lead in 1963’s “Lilies of the Field”.

13. Miss ___, etiquette columnist : MANNERS
“Miss Manners” is the pen name of Judith Martin, a journalist and authority in the field of etiquette.

18. Channel for TV shoppers : QVC
The QVC shopping channel was founded in 1986 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The company now has operations not only in the US but also in the UK, Germany, Japan and Italy. That means QVC is reaching 200 million households. The QVC acronym stands for Quality, Value and Convenience.

26. Lucy or Ricky on “I Love Lucy” : RICARDO
In the hit television show “I Love Lucy”, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz played Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. The Ricardos’ best friends were also their landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz. The Mertz’s were played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance.

30. Vampire in “The Vampire Chronicles” : LESTAT
Lestat de Lioncourt is the central character in Anne Rice’s series of erotic and Gothic novels “The Vampire Chronicles”.

36. ___ Beta Kappa : PHI
Phi Beta Kappa was the first collegiate Greek fraternity in the US, founded in 1776 at the College of William and Mary. The organization served as a model for future collegiate fraternities and sororities, although in the 19th century Phi Beta Kappa distanced itself from the fraternal focus and transformed into the honor society that it is today, recognizing academic excellence. The initials Phi Beta Kappa stand for “philosophia biou kybernētēs”, which translates into “philosophy is the guide of life”. The symbol of the Phi Beta Kappa Society is a golden key.

39. Beanie, e.g. : CAP
A beanie is a knitted, close-fitting hat with no brim. The name probably comes from the slang term “bean” meaning “head”.

41. Logician’s “There you have it” : QED
QED is used at the end of a mathematical proof or a philosophical argument. The QED initialism stands for the Latin “quod erat demonstrandum” meaning “that which was to be demonstrated”.

42. Cousin of a baboon : MACAQUE
The most widely distributed genus of primates on the planet is Homo, a genus containing only one species, namely man (Home sapiens). The second most populous genus of primates is Macaca, the Old World monkeys known familiarly as macaques. Macaques can be found all across Asia, from Japan to Afghanistan, as well as in North Africa. Some of the most famous macaques live in a colony on the Rock of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean.

43. Deep and sonorous, as a voice : OROTUND
“Orotund” can mean full in sound, and sonorous. However, the term can also mean pompous and bombastic.

51. Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary : YARROW
Peter Yarrow was the “Peter” in the folk music group Peter, Paul and Mary. Two of Yarrow’s most famous compositions are “Puff, the Magic Dragon” (co-written with Leonard Lipton) and “The Wedding Song (There is Love)”.

54. Corrida cheer : OLE!
Spanish bullfighting is known locally as “corrida de toros”, literally “race of bulls”.

56. “The Thinker” sculptor : RODIN
Rodin’s famous sculpture known as “The Thinker” has been reproduced many times. Rodin’s original version of “The Thinker” is actually a detail in a much larger work known as “The Gates of Hell”. The original plaster version of “The Gates of Hell” can be seen at the magnificent Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

66. “___ courage!” (French cry) : BON
The French expression “Bon courage!” is usually translated into English as “Good luck!”.

67. Donator of Lennon’s home to the National Trust : ONO
John Lennon grew up in a modest home in Liverpool in the northwest of England. Named “Mendips”, the house belonged to Lennon’s maternal aunt and her husband. Lennon was raised by his aunt from the age of five, after his mother was persuaded that the arrangement would be of benefit to young John. Mendips was purchased by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono in 2002, who then handed it over the National Trust, a British conservation organization.

68. Quid pro ___ : QUO
“Quid pro quo” is Latin for “something for something”, a swap.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. End of “Macbeth” or “Othello” : ACT V
5. Airer of F.C.C. hearings : C-SPAN
10. Something caught in a filter : SPAM
14. “Downton Abbey” countess : CORA
15. “Macbeth” or “Otello” : OPERA
16. Davenport’s home : IOWA
17. Person between 50 and 59 : QUINQUAGENARIAN
20. Supermarket checkout lines? : UPC
21. RCA introduction of 1977 : VCR
22. Surfacing for a golf course : SOD
23. Pie pan material : TIN
24. Sort : ILK
25. The Goddess of Pop : CHER
27. Vindictiveness : SPITE
29. Rebuke, with “off” : TELL
31. Rights, informally : DIBS
34. Oblique look : LEER
35. Brews, as tea : STEEPS
38. Orators’ aids : CUE CARDS
40. O’Neal’s memoir of his N.B.A. rookie year : SHAQ ATTAQ!
42. ___ Brewster, Cary Grant’s role in “Arsenic and Old Lace” : MORTIMER
45. Gushes, as from a water fountain : SPURTS
49. Domain : AREA
50. Water swirl : EDDY
52. Workplace fairness agcy. : EEOC
53. Acknowledge as true : COP TO
55. Things sometimes seen in banks : OARS
58. ___ Lanka : SRI
59. The Braves of the N.L. East : ATL
60. Chicken drumstick : LEG
63. Mythical bird : ROC
64. Black ___ (secret missions) : OPS
65. N.H.L. team that became the Colorado Avalanche : QUEBEC NORDIQUES
69. Frequent follower of “said” in the Bible : UNTO
70. Vietnam’s capital : HANOI
71. Mistyping remedy : UNDO
72. 1950s British P.M. Anthony ___ : EDEN
73. Central Florida metropolis, informally : O-TOWN
74. Perfume : ODOR

Down
1. Emulates the O. J. Simpson jury : ACQUITS
2. “Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses,” e.g. : COUPLET
3. Sparse flow : TRICKLE
4. Moving day vehicle : VAN
5. Davenport, e.g. : COUCH
6. Let off from punishment : SPARED
7. Violin’s string tightener : PEG
8. Mars, to the Greeks : ARES
9. iPod Mini successor : NANO
10. Title bestowed on 72-Across : SIR
11. Sidney of “Lilies of the Field” : POITIER
12. Was in store for : AWAITED
13. Miss ___, etiquette columnist : MANNERS
18. Channel for TV shoppers : QVC
19. 15+ minutes of a typical TV hour : ADS
26. Lucy or Ricky on “I Love Lucy” : RICARDO
28. Award on a wall : PLAQUE
30. Vampire in “The Vampire Chronicles” : LESTAT
32. Waffle introducer? : BUT …
33. Gels : SETS
36. ___ Beta Kappa : PHI
37. Unchanged : SAME
39. Beanie, e.g. : CAP
41. Logician’s “There you have it” : QED
42. Cousin of a baboon : MACAQUE
43. Deep and sonorous, as a voice : OROTUND
44. Filled (with) : REPLETE
46. Reverberate : RESOUND
47. Sink, as one’s chances : TORPEDO
48. ___ kick (swimming technique) : SCISSOR
51. Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary : YARROW
54. Corrida cheer : OLE!
56. “The Thinker” sculptor : RODIN
57. Many an ology: Abbr. : SCI
61. Reverberate : ECHO
62. Metaphor for insignificance : GNAT
66. “___ courage!” (French cry) : BON
67. Donator of Lennon’s home to the National Trust : ONO
68. Quid pro ___ : QUO

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7 thoughts on “0913-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 13 Sep 16, Tuesday”

  1. 11:02, no errors, iPad. Quinquagenarian. Now there's a word for the ages (pun intended). I wish I had learned it when I could have used it self-descriptively. Septuagenarian just doesn't have the same quirky ring to it.

  2. 10:24, no errors. Had a little difficulty with 40A SHAQ ATTAQ; until I recalled seeing a sign while watching a game on television. Did not know that he wrote a memoir with that as the title, but not surprised.

  3. This one a bit on the nasty side. Was squashed by a SHAQAsTAQ: he unloaded a BUs on me instead of a BUT. Other wise, I enjoyed the play.

  4. No errors. Q is not my favorite letter to work with.
    @Bill…I notice that you did not change the theme description from yesterday. Did you intentionally wish to repeat "They're there"? One reason that I particularly ask about this is that as I came near the end of the puzzle I began to wonder what you were going to call it today.

  5. 8:49, not quick, but no quibbles. Quite easy, actually. Quaint little theme. You can quote me on that.

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