0427-17 New York Times Crossword Answers 27 Apr 17, Thursday

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CROSSWORD CONSTRUCTOR: Todd Gross
THEME: Rate Square
Today’s grid features the letters RATE written in 8 different ways in a 4×4 square at the center in circled letters. Those eight different arrangements are included in eight answers in the puzzle. There are also a couple of other paired answers that reference the arrangement in the middle of the grid:

31A. Do over and over : ITERATE
37A. Mark below a line : CARET
42A. Hotel posting : RATES
46A. Like some allowances : DIETARY
16D. Animals whose tongues flick about 150 times a minute : ANTEATERS
24D. Look piercingly at : STARE INTO
25D. Afghanistan’s third-largest city : HERAT
32D. Open again, as a keg : RETAP

1A. With 68-Across, the shaded part of this crossword : CENTRAL
68A. See 1-Across : SQUARES

8A. With 67-Across, what the shaded part of this crossword represents : SUDOKU
67A. See 8-Across : PUZZLE

BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 13m 41s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

8. With 67-Across, what the shaded part of this crossword represents : SUDOKU
(67A. See 8-Across : PUZZLE)
Number puzzles similar to our modern-day Sudoku first appeared in French newspapers in the late 1800s. The format that we use today was created by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old freelance puzzle constructor from Connersville, Indiana and first published in 1979. The format was introduced in Japan in 1984 and given the title of “Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru”, which translates to “the digits are limited to one occurrence”. The rather elaborate Japanese title was eventually shortened to Sudoku. No doubt many of you are fans of Sudoku puzzles. I know I am …

17. Eli and Aaron, in the Bible : PRIESTS
In the Bible, Eli is a High Priest of Shiloh, and the teacher of Samuel. As such, his story is told in the Book of Samuel. Eli had two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, both of whom are described as wicked. As a result of their wayward lifestyle, it is prophesied that all of Eli’s male descendents will die before reaching old age.

In the Bible and the Qur’an, Aaron was the older brother of Moses and was a prophet. Aaron became the first High Priest of the Israelites.

20. ___ Enterprises (bygone TV production company) : MTM
MTM Enterprises was a television production company founded in 1969 by Mary Tyler Moore, originally to produce the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. The company subsequently produced the likes of “The Bob Newhart Show”, “Rhoda”, “WKRP in Cincinnati”, “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere”. That’s a lot of great television …

21. Home of The Times-Picayune, familiarly : NOLA
The city of New Orleans, Louisiana has the nickname “The Big Easy”. This name might come from the early 1900s when musicians found it relatively “easy” to find work there. The city is also known by the acronym NOLA, standing for New Orleans (NO), LA.

26. Where lakes are loughs : EIRE
“Loch” is the Scottish Gaelic word for “lake”. The Irish Gaelic word is “lough”.

33. Core parts : ABS
The abdominal muscles (abs) are more correctly referred to as the rectus abdominis muscles. They are all called a “six-pack” in a person who has developed the muscles and who has low body fat. In my case, more like a keg …

37. Mark below a line : CARET
The character known as a caret was originally a proofreading mark, used to indicate where a punctuation mark was to be inserted. “Caret” is Latin for “it lacks”.

49. Certain bond, for short : MUNI
A municipal bond (muni) is one that is issued by a city or local government, or some similar agency. Munis have an advantage over other investments in that any interest earned on the bond is usually exempt from state and federal income taxes.

55. Hawaiian fish with a palindromic name : ONO
The wahoo is a cousin of the mackerel, and is known as the ono in Hawaii.

Down
1. Legendary N.Y.C. club, with “the” : COPA
The Copacabana of song is the Copacabana nightclub in New York City (which is also the subject of the Frank Sinatra song “Meet Me at the Copa”). The Copa opened in 1940 and is still going today although it is struggling. The club had to move due to impending construction and is now “sharing” a location with the Columbus 72 nightclub.

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star
Tony always tended bar
Across the crowded floor, they worked from 8 til 4
They were young and they had each other
Who could ask for more?

3. Long-running TV drama started in 2003 : NCIS
NCIS is the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates crimes in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The service gives its name to the CBS TV show “NCIS”, a spin-off drama from “JAG” in which the main “NCIS” characters were first introduced. The big star in “NCIS” is the actor Mark Harmon. “NCIS” is now a franchise, with spinoff shows “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “NCIS: New Orleans”.

4. Annual September TV event : THE EMMYS
The Emmy Awards are the television equivalent of the Oscars from the world of film, the Grammy Awards in music and the Tony Awards for the stage. Emmy Awards are presented throughout the year, depending on the sector of television being honored. The most famous of these ceremonies are the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Daytime Emmy Awards. The distinctive name of “Emmy” is a softened version of the word “immy”, the nickname given to the video camera tubes found in old television cameras.

5. Believer in an Ethiopian Zion : RASTA
I must admit that I don’t really know much about Rastafarianism. I do know that a “Rasta”, like Bob Marley, is a follower of the movement. Some say that Rastafarianism is a religion, some not. I also know that it involves the worship of Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia.

6. “The enemy of ___ is the absence of limitations”: Orson Welles : ART
Orson Welles is perhaps best-remembered in the world of film for his role in 1941’s “Citizen Kane”. In the world of radio, Welles is known for 1938’s famous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds”, a broadcast that convinced many listeners that the Earth was indeed being invaded by aliens.

7. Church inits. : LDS
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often abbreviated to “LDS”, is known colloquially as the Mormon Church.

9. Tribe after which the 45th state is named : UTE
The Ute is a group of Native American tribes that now resides in Utah and Colorado. The Ute were not a unified people as such, but rather a loose association of nomadic groups. The word “Ute” means “Land of the Sun”, and “Ute” also gave us the state name “Utah”.

10. Steak ___ : DIANE
Steak Diane is pan-fried filet mignon served in a flambéed sauce made from the juices in the pan along with butter, shallots, cream and brandy. The dish is named after Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt.

12. Longtime New Yorker writer Pauline : KAEL
Pauline Kael was a film critic who wrote for “The New Yorker” magazine from 1968 to 1991.

13. Part of the body whose name is both English and Latin : ULNA
The radius and ulna are bones in the forearm. If you hold the palm of your hand up in front of you, the radius is the bone on the “thumb-side” of the arm, and the ulna is the bone on the “pinkie-side”.

15. ___ Lock (neighbor of Page Up) : NUM
That would be on a computer keyboard.

16. Animals whose tongues flick about 150 times a minute : ANTEATERS
Anteaters tear open ant and termite nests using their sharp claws and then eat up the eggs, larvae and mature ants using their tongues. They have very sticky saliva which coats the tongue hence making the feeding very efficient. The tongue also moves very quickly, flicking in and out of the mouth at about 150 times per minute.

23. Wrestler Flair : RIC
The wrestler Ric Flair’s real name is Richard Fliehr. Perhaps following the lead of his compatriot Jesse Ventura, Flair explored the possibility of running for governor of the state of North Carolina. Dearie, dearie me …

25. Afghanistan’s third-largest city : HERAT
Herat is the third largest city in Afghanistan, and is located in the northeast of the country.

27. Cinnabar, e.g. : RED
Cinnabar is the ore from which mercury is extracted. It is a bright red or scarlet mineral in its natural form.

39. First commercial film with stereophonic sound, 1940 : FANTASIA
“Fantasia” was Disney’s third feature length movie, released in 1940. The film had a disappointing critical reception and pushed the Disney company into financial difficulties. RKO took over the film’s distribution in 1946. The folks at RKO cut a full hour off the running time and relaunched the movie into a successful run. If you haven’t seen “Fantasia”, I urge you to do so. It’s a real delight …

Monophonic sound (“mono”) is sound reproduced using just one audio channel, which is usually played out of just one speaker. Stereophonic sound is reproduced using two audio channels, with the sound from each channel played out of two different speakers. The pair of stereo speakers are usually positioned apart from each other so that sound appears to come from between the two. Quadraphonic sound (4.0 surround sound) uses four audio channels with the sound played back through four speakers often positioned at the corners of the room in which one is listening.

41. Lead-in to -tainment : EDU
The word “edutainment” describes educational entertainment, a work that is designed to both educate and to entertain. The Walt Disney Company was the first to embrace the term, using it to describe the “True-Life Adventures” series of films produced from 1948 to 1960.

43. OS part: Abbr. : SYS
Operating system (OS)

47. Daniel ___, first Japanese-American to serve in Congress : INOUYE
Senator Daniel Inouye was a US Senator for the state of Hawaii and was the President pro tem of the Senate (the US Vice President is the President of the Senate). Given this role, he was the highest-ranking Japanese-American in the country’s history as he was third in the line of succession to the office of US President. Senator Inouye passed away in 2012. Honolulu’s airport was renamed to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in 2017 in his honor.

49. “I Love Lucy” neighbor : MERTZ
In the hit television show “I Love Lucy”, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz play Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. The Ricardos’ best friends are also their landlords, Fred and Ethel Mertz. The Mertz’s are played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance.

51. Utter mess : SNAFU
SNAFU is an acronym standing for Situation Normal: All Fouled Up (well, that’s the “polite” version!). As one might perhaps imagine, the term developed in the US Army, during WWII.

53. Home of Pearl City : OAHU
Pearl City is located in Honolulu, along the north shore of Pearl Harbor.

54. Cameron of “Charlie’s Angels” : DIAZ
The Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz started out her professional life as a model. Diaz’s first acting role was in the 1994 film “The Mask”, starring alongside Jim Carrey.

“Charlie’s Angels” is a fun action movie from 2000 that is a spinoff from the iconic TV show of the same name from the seventies. The “Angels” in the movie version are Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, with Bill Murray as John Bosley. John Forsythe provides the voice of the unseen “Charlie”, just as he did in the original television show.

56. Big Ten inits. : OSU
Ohio State University (OSU) was founded back in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The athletic teams of OSU are called the Buckeyes, named after the state tree of Ohio. In turn the buckeye tree gets its name from the appearance of its fruit, a dark nut with a light patch thought to resemble a “buck’s eye”.

The Big Ten is the nation’s oldest Division I college athletic conference and today is comprised of not ten, but twelve colleges mainly located in the Midwest. The conference was founded in 1896 and earned the name “Big Nine” in 1899 when Iowa and Indiana joined to bring the number of teams in the conference to nine. The conference name was changed to the Big Ten after Michigan rejoined in 1917. Right after WWII, the University of Chicago dropped out so the conference became known as the Big Nine again until 1949. The official designation of “Big Ten” was adopted in 1987 when the conference (once again with with a complement of ten teams) registered as a not-for-profit corporation. It was decided to keep the official name of Big Ten when Penn State joined in 1990 bringing the number of schools to the level of eleven, and even when the University of Nebraska-Lincoln joined in 2011 as the twelfth team.

59. Scots Gaelic : ERSE
There are actually three Erse languages: Irish, Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) and Scots Gaelic. In their own tongues, these would be Gaeilge (in Ireland), Gaelg (on the Isle of Man) and Gaidhlig (in Scotland).

60. You might give them props : SETS
That would in the world of acting.

62. Picture frame? : CEL
In the world of animation, a cel is a transparent sheet on which objects and characters are drawn. In the first half of the 20th century the sheet was actually made of celluloid, giving the “cel” its name.

63. CPR offerer : EMS
An emergency medical technician (EMT) might administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. With 68-Across, the shaded part of this crossword : CENTRAL
8. With 67-Across, what the shaded part of this crossword represents : SUDOKU
14. Orange place : ORCHARD
15. Seafaring : NAUTICAL
17. Eli and Aaron, in the Bible : PRIESTS
18. Having a perfect record : UNBEATEN
19. A business might have one that’s fixed : ASSET
20. ___ Enterprises (bygone TV production company) : MTM
21. Home of The Times-Picayune, familiarly : NOLA
22. Reed section? : MARSH
26. Where lakes are loughs : EIRE
28. You might go for one at the beach : SWIM
31. Do over and over : ITERATE
33. Core parts : ABS
36. “Well, isn’t that something!” : OH MY!
37. Mark below a line : CARET
38. Note just above C : D-FLAT
40. Terminate : CEASE
42. Hotel posting : RATES
44. “Right back ___!” : AT YA
45. Manual opener : KEY
46. Like some allowances : DIETARY
48. Peeping, say : NOSY
49. Certain bond, for short : MUNI
50. “Hey, buddy!” : PSSST!
52. “Inner-city” for “black,” to some people : CODE
55. Hawaiian fish with a palindromic name : ONO
57. Scruffs : NAPES
61. Tops off? : HAIRCUTS
63. Gap in a tape, maybe : ERASURE
65. Cross words : I HATE YOU!
66. Like a selfish attitude : ME-FIRST
67. See 8-Across : PUZZLE
68. See 1-Across : SQUARES

Down
1. Legendary N.Y.C. club, with “the” : COPA
2. Drops the ball : ERRS
3. Long-running TV drama started in 2003 : NCIS
4. Annual September TV event : THE EMMYS
5. Believer in an Ethiopian Zion : RASTA
6. “The enemy of ___ is the absence of limitations”: Orson Welles : ART
7. Church inits. : LDS
8. Turn in : SUBMIT
9. Tribe after which the 45th state is named : UTE
10. Steak ___ : DIANE
11. Numerical prefix : OCTO-
12. Longtime New Yorker writer Pauline : KAEL
13. Part of the body whose name is both English and Latin : ULNA
15. ___ Lock (neighbor of Page Up) : NUM
16. Animals whose tongues flick about 150 times a minute : ANTEATERS
23. Wrestler Flair : RIC
24. Look piercingly at : STARE INTO
25. Afghanistan’s third-largest city : HERAT
27. Cinnabar, e.g. : RED
28. Punch : SOCK
29. “So much fu-u-u-u-un!” : WHEE!
30. “Possibly” : I MAY
32. Open again, as a keg : RETAP
33. Quartet part : ALTO
34. American Pharoah and others : BAYS
35. Canine command : STAY
39. First commercial film with stereophonic sound, 1940 : FANTASIA
41. Lead-in to -tainment : EDU
43. OS part: Abbr. : SYS
47. Daniel ___, first Japanese-American to serve in Congress : INOUYE
49. “I Love Lucy” neighbor : MERTZ
51. Utter mess : SNAFU
52. Computer ___ : CHIP
53. Home of Pearl City : OAHU
54. Cameron of “Charlie’s Angels” : DIAZ
56. Big Ten inits. : OSU
58. Sound of contentment : PURR
59. Scots Gaelic : ERSE
60. You might give them props : SETS
62. Picture frame? : CEL
63. CPR offerer : EMS
64. Necessary: Abbr. : REQ

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14 thoughts on “0427-17 New York Times Crossword Answers 27 Apr 17, Thursday”

  1. Not a difficult puzzle but very cleverly done in the CENTRAL SQUARES. A shade over 24 minutes to finish this one.

    I don't fully understand the quote by Orson Welles. Is he saying that ART needs limitations and that not having limitations is ART's enemy? I'm either not understanding what he's saying or I don't understand what he's saying…if you know what I'm saying. Why does art need limitations?

    Best –

  2. @Bill
    Part of the theme is that the arrangement of letters in those center squares reflect the rules in Sudoku almost exactly for a 4×4 square. In case you haven't done Sudoku, it requires placing the numbers 1-9 in a sequence of 3×3 grids placed in a 3×3 fashion in such a way that:

    1. 1-9 appears in sequence only once vertically and horizontally.
    2. 1-9 appears in each individual 3×3 square only once.

    Since the second rule would be much harder (though awesome if someone made a real Sudoku grid like that, broken up of course), we see the first rule in work. While 9 separate letters appearing in a single square wouldn't be that noticable (perfectly mimicking the Sudoku rules) from a setting perspective, reducing it to 4 is.

    Hence, note that with R-A-T-E, the setter has fulfilled rule #1 perfectly within the circled boxes.

  3. Bill, thanks again for providing this blog. As I've said before, I used to read that Rex guy. I find you much more enjoyable and fun. One inconsistency today at 47 across. Not sure if you meant Joe Biden was President of the Senate when Daniel Inouye died. Mike Pence is current Veep. Thanks again. Doug

  4. Thanks, Douglas, for spotting that error. My comment was written soon after Senator Inouye passed away, and I forgot to update it. All fixed now. I really apprecaite you taking the time to point out the misstep. Thanks!

  5. 20:12, no errors. Okay … for once, I'm going to take a slightly negative tack: While I enjoyed this puzzle and I think it's extremely clever, I also think that the central 4×4 square is at most what is called a "Latin square", not a sudoku. Glenn's rule #2 is a necessary condition for the latter.

    @Jeff … Re the Welles quote: My take is that art intrinsically involves working within a restrictive set of limitations. A great painting cannot possibly capture all the nuances of the three-dimensional scene it represents, but it can convey the essence of that scene and the better it does so, the more artful it is. (At least, if I had been asked a question about this on a high school or college exam, that's the kind of BS I'd have come up with in response … 🙂

  6. @Glenn has pointed out to me that each of the four 2×2 subsquares making up the 4×4 square in the middle is filled with exactly one each of the letters A, E, R, and T, just like each of its rows and columns are, making it truly analogous to a sudoku, so I withdraw my previous objection completely. A tour de force!

  7. Slow start, confusing finish to this one, not recognizing the Sudoku analogy, but filling all the squares correctly.

  8. 17:21 and no errors. Not totally hard, but not easy either. A clever theme, without relying to dirty tricks. Good for a Thursday.

    Not really sure I liked the inferences of 52A. A lot of ways to clue that without "going there."

  9. No errors. Relatively easy for a Thursday. My last entry was SUDOKU. I was thinking that Sudoku dealt with numbers and not letters. Then I re-read the clue and saw that it only said "resembles".

    Bill, you might want to add to your notes about Senator Inouye that the Honolulu International Airport has been renamed the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. This just took place in the last two or three days. No one questions that he deserves the honor. Critics, however, are saying that people will struggle with the spelling and pronunciation of the name.

  10. 22:35, no errors. Nice puzzle layout. Had no trouble recalling Senator Inouye, but have always had difficulty remembering the spelling. The pronunciation, for anyone not familiar with him, is simple: 'In no way'.

  11. I am surprised that no one mentioned that Senator Inouye was a true American hero; having been awarded the Medal of Honor for action in WWII

  12. 14A is not accurate, here in Florida our oranges are in groves, while apples and pears grow in orchards.

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