1116-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Nov 16, Wednesday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Jim Peredo
THEME: Batman!
Today’s puzzle is all about the 1960s TV show “Batman”. On the obvious side, there are four kapow-ish hidden words in four answers, and these have been highlighted in the grid. Less obvious are 16 occurrences of the syllable “NA”, prior to an ending in the bottom right: BATMAN! It helps if you recall the theme music of the TV show, which includes a pulsing “NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BATMAN!”

21A. City called the “Silicon Valley of India” : BANGALORE
34A. Little Italian girls : BAMBINAS
45A. Post-lunch pick-me-up : POWER NAP
55A. Hendrix famously used one in his Woodstock rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” : WHAMMY BAR

7A. “Apocalypse Now” setting, familiarly : NAM
10A. ___ fides (credentials) : BONA
17A. Easily bruised fruit : BANANA
25A. College in New Rochelle, N.Y. : IONA
29A. Ask “Can I?” repeatedly, say : NAG
34A. Little Italian girls : BAMBINAS
37A. Actress Davis of “Beetlejuice” : GEENA
39A. Hang-ups : SNAGS
43A. Ball’s partner : ARNAZ
45A. Post-lunch pick-me-up : POWER NAP
52A. Hawaiian coffee region : KONA
59A. Record of the year : ANNAL
63A. Granny : NANA
67A. When doubled, a 2010s dance : NAE
71A. 1960s TV icon whose name follows a pair of letters found, appropriately, 16 times in this puzzle’s Across answers : BATMAN

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 9m 43s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
7. “Apocalypse Now” setting, familiarly : NAM
The epic war drama “Apocalypse Now” was released in 1979 and starred Martin Sheen as Captain Willard and Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz. The premise of the film is that both Willard and Kurtz are special ops officers, with Willard sent into the jungle to assassinate Kurtz who has “gone rogue”. The film is notorious for the trouble that director Francis Ford Coppola had completing the shoot. Brando turned up on set grossly overweight (as a special ops guy!), and poor Martin Sheen had a heart attack during filming.

10. ___ fides (credentials) : BONA
“Bona fide(s)” translates from the Latin as “in good faith”, and is used to indicate honest intentions. It can also mean that something is authentic, like a piece of art that is represented in good faith as being genuine.

16. Olympian war god : 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, Deimos and Eros. The Roman equivalent to Ares was Mars.

17. Easily bruised fruit : BANANA
There is no botanical distinction between bananas and plantains. The terms simply describe fruit intended for eating raw (bananas) and fruit intended for cooking (plantains).

19. Jacob’s first wife : LEAH
According to the Bible, Leah was one of the two wives of Jacob, the other being Leah’s sister Rachel. Jacob’s intention had been to marry Rachel, but the Leah and Rachel’s father “switched” his daughters and provided Leah as the veiled bride. Jacob married Rachel a week later, and lived with the two wives concurrently.

20. Bob Cratchit’s job in “A Christmas Carol” : CLERK
Bob Cratchit is the underpaid clerk who works for Ebeneezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens story “A Christmas Carol”. Tiny Tim is the nickname of Timothy Cratchit, the little disabled boy in the Charles Dickens novella “A Christmas Carol”.

21. City called the “Silicon Valley of India” : BANGALORE
Bangalore is the third most-populous city in India and is located in the south of the country. Today Bangalore is known as the Silicon Valley of India because it is a center of excellence for all things related to the semiconductor and information technology industries. I had the privilege of spending a very enjoyable few days working in Bangalore when I was in that line of work.

25. College in New Rochelle, N.Y. : IONA
Iona College is a Roman Catholic school run by Christian Brothers in New Rochelle, New York. The school’s sports teams are called the Iona Gaels, and the team mascot goes by the name Killian.

26. Org. with a “100 Years … 100 Movies” list : AFI
The American Film Institute (AFI) was founded in 1967 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). One of the AFI’s more visible programs is the “100 Year Series”, including lists of Best Movies in several categories and a list of the Best Movie Quotes in 100 years of movie-making.

30. Musher puller : SLED DOG
“Mushing” is the use of one or more dogs to pull a sled. “Mush” is thought to come from the French “marche” meaning “go, run”.

37. Actress Davis of “Beetlejuice” : GEENA
As well as being a successful Hollywood actress, Geena Davis is an accomplished archer and came close to qualifying for the US archery team for the 2000 Summer Olympics. Davis is also a member of American Mensa. She is quite the lady …

“Beetlejuice” is a 1988 comedy-horror film directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton in the title role. Beetlejuice is an underworld character who tries to scare away the new inhabitants of a house that is haunted by the ghosts of a deceased couple (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis).

42. Chows down : EATS
“Chow” is an American slang term for food that originated in California in the mid-1800s. “Chow” comes from the Chinese pidgin English “chow-chow” meaning “food”.

43. Ball’s partner : ARNAZ
Desi Arnaz was famous for his turbulent marriage to Lucille Ball. Arnaz was a native of Cuba, and was from a privileged family. His father was Mayor of Santiago and served in the Cuban House of Representatives. However, the family had to flee to Miami after the 1933 revolt led by Batista.

47. British soldier in the Revolution : RED COAT
Nowadays in the British Army the red tunic is reserved only for ceremonial purposes, as the vivid color has proved to be a detriment since the invention of the rifle.

51. Mini-albums, informally : EPS
An extended-play record, CD or download (EP) contains more music than a single, but less than an LP.

52. Hawaiian coffee region : KONA
Kona coffee is cultivated on the Big Island of Hawaii, on the slopes of Mauna Loa and Hualalai, two of the five active volcanoes on the island. Coffee plants were brought to Kona in 1828 and late in the 19th century, coffee became a viable and worthwhile crop. Today Kona is a one of the most expensive and popular coffees in the world.

55. Hendrix famously used one in his Woodstock rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” : WHAMMY BAR
You know that lever that electric guitar players “wiggle” to produce a vibrating sound? Well, it’s called a “whammy bar”. Movement of the bar changes the tension of the strings, resulting in a change of pitch that the player can use to create a number of different effects.

59. Record of the year : ANNAL
“Annal” is a rarely used word, the singular of the more common “annals”. An annal would be the recorded events of one year, with annals being the chronological record of events in successive years. The term “annal” comes from the Latin “annus” meaning “year”.

64. Like most knock-knock jokes : OLD

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Irish
Irish who?
Irish you in the name of the law!

65. Cool, in the 1960s : GROOVY
The term “groovy” meaning “neat, cool” comes from the jazz slang phrase “in the groove”.

67. When doubled, a 2010s dance : NAE
The Nae Nae is a hip hop dance that is named for the 2013 song “Drop that NaeNae” recorded by We Are Toon. The main move in the dance involves swaying with one hand in the air and one hand down, with both feet firmly planted on the dancefloor. Go on, do it. You know you want to …

68. Duke Ellington’s “Take the ___” : A TRAIN
The A Train in the New York City Subway system runs from 207th Street, through Manhattan and over to Far Rockaway in Queens. The service lends its name to a jazz standard “Take the ‘A’ Train”, the signature tune of Duke Ellington and a song much sung by Ella Fitzgerald. One version of the lyrics are:

You must take the A Train
To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem
If you miss the A Train
You’ll find you’ve missed the quickest way to Harlem
Hurry, get on, now, it’s coming
Listen to those rails a-thrumming (All Aboard!)
Get on the A Train
Soon you will be on Sugar Hill in Harlem.

71. 1960s TV icon whose name follows a pair of letters found, appropriately, 16 times in this puzzle’s Across answers : BATMAN
The television show “Batman” aired from 1966-1968. Burt Ward played Robin opposite Adam West’s Batman. Supposedly, Burt Ward was offered the part taken by Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate”, but Ward couldn’t get out of his contract for the “Batman” television series. Holy xxxx, Batman!

Down
1. News network with a stock ticker : CNBC
CNBC is a business news channel owned by NBC. Launched in 1989, up until 1991 CNBC was known as the Consumer News and Business Channel.

4. Bart or Ringo : STARR
Bart Starr is a retired football player and coach who spent his whole career with the Green Bay Packers. Starr was quarterback for the Packers from 1956 to 1971. Starr was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) in the first two Super Bowls.

Ringo Starr’s real name is Richard Starkey. Before he joined the Beatles (replacing drummer Pete Best), Starkey played with the Raving Texans. It was with the Raving Texans that he adopted the name “Ringo Starr”, because he wore a lot of rings and he thought it sounded “cowboyish”. Back then his drum solos were billed as “Starr Time”.

5. Modest two-piece bathing suit : TANKINI
A “tankini” is a two-piece bathing suit comprising a tank top and a bikini bottom.

7. Silent screen actress Naldi : NITA
Nita Naldi was a silent film actress from New York City who usually played a “femme fatale” type of role.

8. Dreamboat : ADONIS
In Greek mythology, Adonis is a beautiful young god loved by Aphrodite. Adonis dies in a hunting accident (gored by a boar), but not before he gives Aphrodite a child. Adonis was originally a Phoenician god “absorbed” into Greek lore (Phoenicia is modern day Lebanon). The child born of Adonis to Aphrodite was called Beroe, after which is named Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon. We also use the term “adonis” to mean “beautiful male”.

9. Genghis Khan, e.g. : MONGOL
Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire, destined to be the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. He first built his empire by uniting nomadic tribes of northeast Asia, but once Genghis Khan had consolidated his position, he initiated Mongol invasions throughout Eurasia. At it’s height, the Mongol Empire stretched from the River Danube to the Sea of Japan.

11. Cookie that started as a Hydrox knockoff : OREO
The Oreo cookie was 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 …

13. Tennis player who posthumously received a Presidential Medal of Freedom : ASHE
Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth, Ashe found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African American player to be so honored. Ashe continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979 Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery, with follow-up surgery four years later during which he contracted HIV from blood transfusions. Ashe passed away in 1993 due to complications from AIDS. Shortly afterwards, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

22. Rare blood type, for short : A-NEG
How common a particular blood type in a population varies quite a bit depending ethnicity. In general, the rarest blood type is AB-negative. The most common blood type is O-positive.

26. Build-___ Workshop (toy retailer) : A-BEAR
Build-A-Bear Workshop is a retailer of stuffed animals, mainly teddy bears, that was founded in Saint Louis in 1997. The “gimmick” is, that customers get to customize their stuffed animal during the purchasing process in the store.

27. QB Brett : FAVRE
Brett Favre is best known as the former starting-quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. Favre retired in 2010 after playing with the Minnesota Vikings for a short time. Among the many NFL records held by Favre, he has made the most consecutive starts.

31. Early American diplomat Silas : DEANE
Silas Deane was a member of the Continental Congress. When Deane was dispatched to Paris by the Congress, he became America’s first foreign diplomat. His amazing story is told in Joel Richard Paul’s book called “Unlikely Allies”.

35. 2015 Whitey Bulger biopic : BLACK MASS
“Black Mass” is a 2015 movie starring Johnny Depp as the infamous Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. The film is based on a 2001 non-fiction book called “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob”. I didn’t like it …

46. Microsoft’s defunct digital encyclopedia : ENCARTA
Microsoft badly wanted to get into the online encyclopedia business in the eighties, and approached the biggest and the best, “Encyclopaedia Britannica”. “Britannica” declined, fearing that an online version would damage their print sales. “Britannica” had to sell eventually, but not to Microsoft, as the inevitable decline in print sales happened anyway. So Microsoft made a deal with “Funk & Wagnalls” and started publishing “Encarta” in disk form in the early nineties. Usage of Encarta grew until along came Wikipedia. Encarta was discontinued at the end of 2009.

48. Question repeatedly posed by Ferris Bueller’s teacher : ANYONE?
It was Ben Stein who played the most famous of the teachers in the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

“Bueller? …Bueller? …Bueller?”
“Anyone? Anyone?”

49. Indian drums similar to bongos : TABLAS
A tabla is a percussion instrument used in the Indian subcontinent. The tabla consists of a pair of hand drums and is similar to bongos.

55. Org. for the New York Liberty : WNBA
The New York Liberty was founded in 1997 and was one the original eight teams to play in the Women’s NBA. The franchise is based in Newark, New Jersey.

57. Diarist Frank : ANNE
Anne Frank has to be one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust. This is largely because the story of this young girl lives on in her widely published diary, and in adaptations of the diary for stage and screen. Anne Frank was a German until she lost her nationality in 1941 when the Nazis came to power. By this time she was living with her family in Amsterdam, as the Franks chose to flee Germany in 1933. When the Germans occupied the Netherlands, the family went into hiding in the attic of Otto Frank’s office building (Otto was Anne’s father). There the family hid for two whole years until they were betrayed. The family was split up, and Anne and her sister died from typhus in a concentration camp in 1945.

60. Chomsky who wrote “Syntactic Structures” : NOAM
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at MIT. Chomsky is known as one of the fathers of modern linguistics.

61. Big name in sports 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.

62. Country singer Loretta : LYNN
The singer Loretta Lynn is sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Country Music. Lynn was born in 1932 in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner and his wife, and so famously is also referred to as “the Coal Miner’s Daughter”. Her much younger sister (by 19 years) is the singer Crystal Gayle.

65. Gift of ___ : GAB
Blarney is a town in County Cork in the south of Ireland. Blarney is home to Blarney Castle, and inside the castle is the legendary Blarney Stone. “Kissing the Blarney Stone” is a ritual engaged in by oh so many tourists (indeed, I’ve done it myself!), but it’s not a simple process. The stone is embedded in the wall of the castle, and in order to kiss it you have to sit on the edge of the parapet and lean way backwards so that your head is some two feet below your body. There is a staff member there to help you and make sure you don’t fall. The Blarney Stone has been labelled as the world’s most unhygienic tourist attraction! But once you’ve kissed it, supposedly you are endowed with the “gift of the gab”, the ability to talk eloquently and perhaps deceptively without offending. The term “blarney” has come to mean flattering and deceptive talk.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Like a virgin : CHASTE
7. “Apocalypse Now” setting, familiarly : NAM
10. ___ fides (credentials) : BONA
14. Bees collect it : NECTAR
15. Altar vow : I DO
16. Olympian war god : ARES
17. Easily bruised fruit : BANANA
18. “This weighs a ___!” : TON
19. Jacob’s first wife : LEAH
20. Bob Cratchit’s job in “A Christmas Carol” : CLERK
21. City called the “Silicon Valley of India” : BANGALORE
23. Like yellow 17-Acrosses : RIPE
25. College in New Rochelle, N.Y. : IONA
26. Org. with a “100 Years … 100 Movies” list : AFI
29. Ask “Can I?” repeatedly, say : NAG
30. Musher puller : SLED DOG
34. Little Italian girls : BAMBINAS
37. Actress Davis of “Beetlejuice” : GEENA
38. Bad to the bone : EVIL
39. Hang-ups : SNAGS
42. Chows down : EATS
43. Ball’s partner : ARNAZ
45. Post-lunch pick-me-up : POWER NAP
47. British soldier in the Revolution : RED COAT
50. Computer cooler : FAN
51. Mini-albums, informally : EPS
52. Hawaiian coffee region : KONA
53. Basics : ABCS
55. Hendrix famously used one in his Woodstock rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” : WHAMMY BAR
59. Record of the year : ANNAL
63. Granny : NANA
64. Like most knock-knock jokes : OLD
65. Cool, in the 1960s : GROOVY
66. Hamburger holders : BUNS
67. When doubled, a 2010s dance : NAE
68. Duke Ellington’s “Take the ___” : A TRAIN
69. Pub orders : ALES
70. Tee preceder : ESS
71. 1960s TV icon whose name follows a pair of letters found, appropriately, 16 times in this puzzle’s Across answers : BATMAN

Down
1. News network with a stock ticker : CNBC
2. Get better : HEAL
3. Teen’s affliction : ACNE
4. Bart or Ringo : STARR
5. Modest two-piece bathing suit : TANKINI
6. Time in history : ERA
7. Silent screen actress Naldi : NITA
8. Dreamboat : ADONIS
9. Genghis Khan, e.g. : MONGOL
10. Singer of love songs : BALLADEER
11. Cookie that started as a Hydrox knockoff : OREO
12. Close : NEAR
13. Tennis player who posthumously received a Presidential Medal of Freedom : ASHE
21. Kicked off : BEGAN
22. Rare blood type, for short : A-NEG
24. Gives a bad review : PANS
26. Build-___ Workshop (toy retailer) : A-BEAR
27. QB Brett : FAVRE
28. “Why should ___?” (“No, it doesn’t bother me”) : I MIND
31. Early American diplomat Silas : DEANE
32. Available from a keg : ON TAP
33. Crowd reactions to a daredevil : GASPS
35. 2015 Whitey Bulger biopic : BLACK MASS
36. Maple syrup, essentially : SAP
40. Achieve great success : GO FAR
41. Mop, as a deck : SWAB
44. Quickly pan (in) : ZOOM
46. Microsoft’s defunct digital encyclopedia : ENCARTA
48. Question repeatedly posed by Ferris Bueller’s teacher : ANYONE?
49. Indian drums similar to bongos : TABLAS
54. Embarrassing laugh accompanier : SNORT
55. Org. for the New York Liberty : WNBA
56. Lug : HAUL
57. Diarist Frank : ANNE
58. Citrus drinks : ADES
60. Chomsky who wrote “Syntactic Structures” : NOAM
61. Big name in sports shoes : AVIA
62. Country singer Loretta : LYNN
65. Gift of ___ : GAB

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5 thoughts on “1116-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 16 Nov 16, Wednesday”

  1. 9:15, no errors, iPad. I completely missed the entire theme! Things I'd never heard of: BUILD-A-BEAR, WHAMMY BAR, NAE NAE, and TANKINI. Luckily, all could be inferred from crossing entries.

    I've now watched a video and listened to a song including a reference to "nae nae" and I think that I prefer Mozart … or Willy Nelson … or Gordon Lightfoot … or Kiri Te Kanawa … or Huddie Ledbetter … or pretty much anything else … 🙂 … but I do have a tin ear, after all … so it's probably just me … 🙂

  2. Just over 15 minutes for this one. I got the theme and the highlighted Batman noises, but the NA NA NA….had to be illustrated here, but I certainly remember the song.

    Same whiskey tango foxtrots as Dave. And I'll let others to the NAE NAE as well.

    Bill – if you don't like the Irish portrayed in a bad light, I'd skip HBO's Boardwalk Empire as well. That said, I really liked that series..

    Best –

  3. No errors. I never caught on to the NANANANA's until coming here. If the clue to NA had been written a little more specifically (e.g., saying "a pair of vocalized letters") then I'm sure more of us would have gotten it. I got off track and was searching for BA's as the first two letters of BATMAN's name. There were 15 of those but that endeavor turned out to be a waste of time. I did like the inclusion of the four TV screen sound effects. Very GROOVY.

  4. Could have done without this one. Very easy, then a muddle in the bottom middle. The NANANANA…thing meant nothing to me. Looking for something better tomorrow.

  5. I really wish some of these highly esoteric terms like TANKINI, that I often feel are convenient inventions on the part of the setter, would not make their way into puzzles. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot, indeed!!!!

    I suppose only musicians would appreciate "whammy bar".

    Be that as it may, I filled in at 8:36, with no errors, beating Bill's time for the second day on the bounce, so I guess I shouldn't complain….

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