1128-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 28 Nov 16, Monday

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CROSSWORD SETTER: Kristian House
THEME: Duck, Duck, Goose
Today’s themed answers contain hidden words made from the circled letters in the grid. Reading from the top, those hidden words are a DUCK, DUCK and a GOOSE. That sequence reminds of the children’s game DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE:

58A. Children’s game … or the circled words in 20-, 28- and 48-Across : DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE

20A. “Bowiemania” and “Come Together: America Salutes the Beatles” : TRIBUTE ALBUMS (hiding “teal”)
28A. 1948-94, in South Africa : APARTHEID ERA (hiding “eider”)
48A. Bitter rivals : SWORN ENEMIES (hiding “nene”)

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

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. Taxis : CABS
A hansom cab is a very specific design of horse and buggy that was patented by Joseph Hansom in 1834 in England. The “cab” in the name is short for “cabriolet”, an earlier design of carriage on which the hansom was based. It’s from “hansom cab” that we get our modern term “cab”.

9. Wiccan or Druid : PAGAN
A pagan is someone who holds religious beliefs that are different from the main religions of the world. In classical Latin, “paganus” was a villager, a rustic.

Wicca is a relatively new phenomenon, a Neopagan religion that developed in the twentieth century. A follower of Wicca is called a Wiccan or a Witch.

Druids were priests of Celtic Europe during the Iron Age.

15. Demolish : RAZE
To “raze” (“rase”, in UK English) is to level to the ground. I’ve always thought it odd that “raise”, a homophone of “raze”, means to build up.

18. Razor brand : ATRA
Fortunately for crossword constructors, the Atra razor was introduced by Gillette in 1977. The Atra was sold as the Contour in some markets and its derivative products are still around today.

19. Zapped with a stun gun : TASED
Victor Appleton wrote a novel for young adults called “Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle”. The company that developed the TASER electroshock weapon partly named its product as a homage to the novel. The acronym “TASER” stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle”.

20. “Bowiemania” and “Come Together: America Salutes the Beatles” : TRIBUTE ALBUMS (hiding “teal”)
The beautiful color of teal takes it name from the duck called a “teal”, which has dark greenish-blue (teal) markings on its head and wings.

24. Bill with Hamilton’s visage : TEN
The US ten-dollar bill features the image of Alexander Hamilton, the first US Secretary of the Treasury, on the obverse. As such, ten-dollar bills are sometimes called “Hamiltons”. By the way, the $10 bill is the only US currency in circulation in which the portrait faces to the left. The reverse of the ten-dollar bill features the US Treasury Building.

25. McKellen who played Gandalf : IAN
Sir Ian McKellen is a marvelous English actor, someone who is comfortable playing anything from Macbeth on stage to Magneto in an “X-Men” movie. On the big screen, McKellen is very famous for playing Gandalf in “The Lord of Rings”. In the UK, Sir Ian is noted for being at the forefront of the campaign for equal rights for gay people, a role he has enthusiastically embraced since the eighties.

28. 1948-94, in South Africa : APARTHEID ERA (hiding “eider”)
Apartheid was the system of racial segregation used in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. “Apartheid” is an Afrikaans word meaning “apart-hood, the state of being apart”. Eiders are large sea ducks. Their down feathers are used to fill pillows and quilts, giving the name to the quilt called an “eiderdown”.

32. I.S.P. with a butterfly logo : MSN
The Microsoft Network (MSN) used to be an Internet service provider (ISP). These days, MSN is mainly a web portal.

42. Common play on fourth down : PUNT
That would be football.

48. Bitter rivals : SWORN ENEMIES (hiding “nene”)
The bird called a nene is a native of Hawaii, and is also known as the Hawaiian goose. The name “nene” is imitative of its call. When Captain Cook landed on the islands in 1778, there were 25,000 nene living there. By 1950, the number was reduced by hunting to just 30 birds. Conservation efforts in recent years have been somewhat successful.

52. That, in Tabasco : ESO
Tabasco is one of Mexico’s 31 “estados” (states), and is located in the very southeast of the country.

53. Chicken ___ king : A LA
A dish prepared “a la king” (usually chicken or turkey), is food prepared in a cream sauce, with mushrooms, pimentos, green peppers and sherry.

58. Children’s game … or the circled words in 20-, 28- and 48-Across : DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE
“Duck, Duck, Goose” is a kid’s game, and not one that I’d heard of to be honest …

62. Actress Kirsten of “Spider-Man” : DUNST
Kirsten Dunst is a Hollywood actress from Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Dunst is perhaps best known for playing the love interest and female lead in the “Spider-Man” series of movies opposite Tobey Maguire. Personally, my favorite Dunst films are “Wimbledon” and “Marie Antoinette”. Dunst is a dual citizen of the US and Germany, as her father is from Hamburg.

64. Part of an archipelago : ISLE
“Archipelago” is a name often used for a group or chain of islands. “Archipelago” is our spelling of the Italian “arcipelago”, a word that has Greek roots. “Arcipelago” was the proper name for the Aegean Sea in Greek, a word that was eventually used for the Aegean Islands.

66. Chum, in Chihuahua : AMIGO
Chihuahua is a state in northern Mexico that shares a border with Texas and New Mexico. Chihuahua is the largest state in the country, so has the nickname “El Estado Grande”. The state takes its name from the Chihuahuan Desert which lies largely within its borders. The Chihuahua breed of dog takes its name from the state.

69. Senegal’s capital : DAKAR
The Republic of Senegal is a country on the far western coast of Africa. For many years Senegal was a French colony, gaining independence in 1960. The capital of Senegal is Dakar, a city located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean.

70. Ice cream brand known as Dreyer’s west of the Rockies : EDY’S
Dreyers’ ice cream sells its products under the name Dreyers in the Western United States, and Edy’s in the Eastern states. The company’s founders were William Dreyer and Joseph Edy.

Down
3. Tony ___, 1990s-2000s British P.M. : BLAIR
Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for ten years, from 1997 to 2007. Blair led his Labour Party from the left towards the center, helped along by the phrase “New Labour”. Under his leadership, Labour won a landslide victory in 1997, and was comfortably elected into power again in 2001 and 2005. Blair stepped down in 2007 and Gordon Blair took over as prime minister. Labour was soundly defeated at the polls in the next general election, in 2010.

4. Balkan country once part of Yugoslavia : SERBIA
Serbia is a landlocked country in southeast Europe. After WWII, Serbia became one of several states making up the nation called Yugoslavia. Serbia became independent again in 2006 as Yugoslavia broke up after the declaration of independence by Montenegro.

The Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe is usually referred to as “the Balkans”. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains located in present-day Bulgaria and Serbia. “Balkan” is Bulgarian for “mountain”.

5. Group that included Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez : BRAT PACK
The Brat Pack moniker is reminiscent of the Rat Pack of the fifties and sixties (Franks Sinatra & co.). To qualify as a “founding” member of the Brat Pack, the actor had to appear in either “The Breakfast Club” or “St. Elmo’s Fire”, or both. So we have Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy.

6. After curfew : LATE
Our word “curfew” comes from an Old French word meaning “cover fire”. In medieval days a bell would be ring in the evenings as a signal to bank the hearths in preparation for sleeping. The intent was to prevent uncontrolled fires starting from fireplaces that were not tended during the night.

7. Klein of Vox.com : EZRA
Ezra Klein is a journalist and blogger who writes for “The Washington Post”, “Bloomberg” and “MSNBC”. Klein’s contribution at “The Washington Post” is the most-read blog that the paper publishes.

Vox is a news and opinion website that was founded by former “Washington Post” journalist Ezra Klein in 2014.

8. What the Forbes 400 measures : WEALTH
The Forbes 400 is a list published annually by “Forbes Magazine”, a list of the 400 Americans with the largest net worth. Top of the list for the 17 years up to 2010 was Bill Gates. In the year 2000, the 400 wealthiest people controlled 12.2% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. That’s 12.2% … I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have thought of that …

9. Flower that’s also a girl’s name : PETUNIA
The flowering plants known as petunias are in a genus that related to the tobacco plant. The name “petunia” comes from the obsolete French word “petun” meaning “tobacco plant”.

10. Economist Smith : ADAM
Adam Smith was a pioneer in the field of “political economy”, an original term used for the study of production and trade and their relationship with law, government and the distribution of wealth. Adam Smith’s great work is called “The Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776. The book was a big hit within his own lifetime and went a long way to earning him the reputation as the father of modern economics and capitalism. Smith coined the phrase “the invisible hand of the market”, describing his assertion that a marketplace tends to self-regulate.

11. Dressed to the nines : GUSSIED UP
“To gussy up” is to dress showily, and is derived from the slang term “gussy” that was used for an overly-dressed person.

The term “to the nines” means “to perfection”. The first person to use the term in literature was Robbie Burns. Apparently the idea behind the use of “nines” is figurative (pun!), with the number nine considered “ideal” as it is arrived at by multiplying three by three.

13. Homer Simpson’s neighbor : NED
Ned Flanders lives next door to Homer on TV’s “The Simpsons”. Ned is voiced by actor Harry Shearer and has been around since the very first episode aired in 1989.

21. Diamond officials, informally : UMPS
That would be baseball.

32. Inventor of a “code” : MORSE
Samuel Morse came up with the forerunner to modern Morse code for use on the electric telegraph, of which he was the co-inventor. Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. The most common letters are assigned the simplest code elements e.g. E is represented by one dot, and T is represented by one dash. When words are spelled aloud in Morse code, a dot is pronounced as “dit”, and a dash is pronounced as “dah”.

38. “Ben-___” : HUR
Lew Wallace was a general for the Union Army during the Civil War, and was also an author. He wrote a very successful and celebrated book called “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ”, first published in 1880, which was made into a movie starring Charlton Heston.

40. T. S. Eliot’s Rum ___ Tugger : TUM
Rum Tum Tugger is one of the characters in T. S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. Rum Tum Tugger also appears in the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats”, the musical based on Eliot’s book. In the musical, Rum Tum Tugger’s persona was written as a homage to Mick Jagger of Rolling Stones. So, the character tends to strut around the stage a lot.

49. Majestic Yellowstone creature : ELK
Yellowstone was the first National Park to be established in the world, when it was designated as such by President Grant in 1872. What a great tradition it started! The American National Parks truly are a treasure.

50. Literature Nobelist Gordimer : NADINE
Nadine Gordimer is an author and political activist from South Africa. Gordimer’s writing was recognized in 1991 when she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of the main focuses of her works is the apartheid that was once part of South African culture and law.

57. “Our Gang” dog : PETEY
Hal Roach made a whole series of comedy shorts with “The Little Rascals”, also known as “Our Gang”. The gang included a Pit Bull Terrier that we should remember, as he had that distinctive ring around his eye. When the dog first appeared on screen, he was called “Pansy”, but the name was soon changed to “Pete the Pup”, or sometimes simply “Petey”.

59. Links org. : USGA
The United States Golf Association (USGA) was formed in 1894. The need for a governing body for the sport became evident that year when both the Newport Country Club and the St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Yonkers, declared that the winner of a tournament at each of their courses was the “national amateur champion”. The first president of the USGA was Theodore Havemeyer, and to this day the one and only US Amateur Trophy bears his name.

The oldest type of golf course is a links course. The name “links” comes from the Old English word “hlinc” meaning “rising ground”. “Hlinc” was used to describe areas with coastal sand dunes or open parkland. As a result, we use the term “links course” to mean a golf course that is located at or on the coast, often amid sand dunes. The British Open is always played on a links course.

61. Adobe material : CLAY
The building material known as adobe has been around a long time, and has been used in dry climates all over the world. The original form of the word “adobe” dates back to Middle Egyptian times, about 2000 BC. The original spelling is “dj-b-t”, and translates as mud (sun-dried) brick.

63. “___ Thurman” (Fall Out Boy song) : UMA
Fall Out Boy is a rock band from Chicago that formed in 2001. And then, I lost interest …

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Taxis : CABS
5. Huffed and puffed : BLEW
9. Wiccan or Druid : PAGAN
14. Fit for the job : ABLE
15. Demolish : RAZE
16. Draw out : EDUCE
17. What lions and big engines do : ROAR
18. Razor brand : ATRA
19. Zapped with a stun gun : TASED
20. “Bowiemania” and “Come Together: America Salutes the Beatles” : TRIBUTE ALBUMS (hiding “teal”)
23. Be extremely frugal : SCRIMP
24. Bill with Hamilton’s visage : TEN
25. McKellen who played Gandalf : IAN
28. 1948-94, in South Africa : APARTHEID ERA (hiding “eider”)
32. I.S.P. with a butterfly logo : MSN
35. What a knife wound might leave : SCAR
36. Senate staffers : AIDES
37. “I know! I know!” : OH! OH!
39. Makes a blanket, e.g. : KNITS
42. Common play on fourth down : PUNT
43. Go ___ (no longer follow orders) : ROGUE
45. It may have 40, 60 or 75 watts : BULB
47. Shell out : PAY
48. Bitter rivals : SWORN ENEMIES (hiding “nene”)
52. That, in Tabasco : ESO
53. Chicken ___ king : A LA
54. Appear, as problems : CROP UP
58. Children’s game … or the circled words in 20-, 28- and 48-Across : DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE
62. Actress Kirsten of “Spider-Man” : DUNST
64. Part of an archipelago : ISLE
65. Letter-shaped metal fastener : T-NUT
66. Chum, in Chihuahua : AMIGO
67. In close proximity : NEAR
68. “___ goes nothin’!” : HERE
69. Senegal’s capital : DAKAR
70. Ice cream brand known as Dreyer’s west of the Rockies : EDY’S
71. Catch sight of : ESPY

Down
1. Things pushed around a supermarket : CARTS
2. Multiple-choice options : A,B OR C
3. Tony ___, 1990s-2000s British P.M. : BLAIR
4. Balkan country once part of Yugoslavia : SERBIA
5. Group that included Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez : BRAT PACK
6. After curfew : LATE
7. Klein of Vox.com : EZRA
8. What the Forbes 400 measures : WEALTH
9. Flower that’s also a girl’s name : PETUNIA
10. Economist Smith : ADAM
11. Dressed to the nines : GUSSIED UP
12. Hole in one : ACE
13. Homer Simpson’s neighbor : NED
21. Diamond officials, informally : UMPS
22. Buzzer : BEE
26. Venue for a rock concert : ARENA
27. Vile : NASTY
29. Sprinted : RAN
30. Shoshone or Sioux : TRIBE
31. Quick swim : DIP
32. Inventor of a “code” : MORSE
33. Broadway offerings : SHOWS
34. Baddie : NO-GOODNIK
38. “Ben-___” : HUR
40. T. S. Eliot’s Rum ___ Tugger : TUM
41. Rain jackets : SLICKERS
44. Legislator : ENACTOR
46. Floating block of ice : BERG
49. Majestic Yellowstone creature : ELK
50. Literature Nobelist Gordimer : NADINE
51. Allay, as fears : SOOTHE
55. Southern corn breads : PONES
56. Take forcibly : USURP
57. “Our Gang” dog : PETEY
59. Links org. : USGA
60. Like most consignment shop items : USED
61. Adobe material : CLAY
62. “Dear old” person : DAD
63. “___ Thurman” (Fall Out Boy song) : UMA

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5 thoughts on “1128-16 New York Times Crossword Answers 28 Nov 16, Monday”

  1. 7:30, no errors, iPad. As so often happens with easy puzzles, I forgot to look for a theme … short attention span, I guess … 🙂

    I heard of "Duck, Duck, Goose" many years ago, but never played the game and never met anyone who had. Must be a regional thing, a disappearing thing, or both.

  2. I didn't get the theme until I had finished the puzzle despite not knowing of DUCK DUCK GOOSE. Didn't remember eider as a duck, but I remember eiderdown.

    Same time as LAT today. One writeover with LPGA before USGA.

    I've read The Wealth of Nations. It's a truly brilliant work IMHO…

    Best-

  3. Duck, duck goose is a children's game in which the players sit in a ring. "It" walks around the ring, tapping each player and saying duck duck duck duck until eventually saying goose,
    "goose" and "It" run around the ring, with goose trying to tag it before it can reach
    goose's open spot. When it reaches goose's spot and sits down before being tagged, goose becomes it and repeats the process. No real winners and losers, but a good means of occupying kids and burning off a little energy.

  4. Re: DUCK DUCK GOOSE I have a vague memory about possibly playing a similar game as a child. As I remember it, we were standing, not sitting. And I seem to remember that the "it" person simply tapped someone on the shoulder without the use of any words. When you are a kid, almost anything can become a fun game.

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