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CROSSWORD CONSTRUCTOR: Michael S. Maurer & Pawel Fludzinski
THEME: Drink, Drink, Drink
Each of today’s themed answers is a toast:
32A. Line from “The Student Prince” appropriate for this puzzle : DRINK, DRINK, DRINK
5A. Spanish toast : SALUD!
20A. Formal toast : TO YOUR HEALTH!
49A. Informal toast : DOWN THE HATCH!
62A. German toast : PROST!
10D. Hebrew toast : L’CHAIM!
44D. Japanese toast : KANPAI!
BILL BUTLER’S COMPLETION TIME: 7m 04s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0
Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
5. Spanish toast : SALUD!
“Salud” is Spanish for “health”, and is used as a toast. Salud!
10. Back muscle, for short : LAT
The muscles known as the “lats” are the latissimi dorsi, the broadest muscles in the back. “Latissimus” is the Latin for “broadest” and “dorsum” is Latin for “back”.
14. It’s just an excuse : ALIBI
“Alibi” is the Latin word for “elsewhere” as in, “I claim that I was ‘elsewhere’ when the crime was committed … I have an ‘alibi’”.
15. “Oh, quit your joshin’!” : C’MON!
When the verb “to josh” was first used in the 1840s, as an American slang term, it was written with a capital J. It is likely then that the term somehow comes from the proper name “Joshua”, but no one seems to remember why.
19. Second-place finisher, famously : HARE
“The Tortoise and the Hare” is perhaps the most famous fable attributed to Aesop. The cocky hare takes a nap during a race against the tortoise, and the tortoise sneaks past the finish line for the win while his speedier friend is sleeping.
20. Formal toast : TO YOUR HEALTH!
The tradition of “toasting” someone probably dates back to the reign of Charles II, when the practice was to drink a glass of wine to the health of a beautiful or favored woman. In those days, spiced toast was added to beverages to add flavor, so the use of the word “toast” was an indicator that the lady’s beauty would enhance the wine. Very charming, I must say …
22. Twenty-one places : CASINOS
The term “casino” originated in the 1700s, then describing a public room for music or dancing. “Casino” is a diminutive of “casa” meaning “house”.
The card game known as “twenty-one” was first referred to in a book by Cervantes, the author famous for writing “Don Quixote”. He called the game “ventiuna” (Spanish for “twenty-one”). Cervantes wrote his story just after the year 1600, so the game has been around at least since then. Twenty-one came to the US but it wasn’t all that popular so bonus payments were introduced to create more interest. One of the more attractive bonuses was a ten-to-one payout to a player who was dealt an ace of spades and a black jack. This bonus led to the game adopting the moniker “Blackjack”.
26. “___ Restaurant” (hit 1968 album) : ALICE’S
Arlo Guthrie is the son of Woody Guthrie. Both father and son are renowned for their singing of protest songs about social injustice. Arlo is most famous for his epic “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”, a song that lasts a full 18m 34s. In the song Guthrie tells how, after being drafted, he was rejected for service in the Vietnam War based on his criminal record. He had only one incident on his public record, a Thanksgiving Day arrest for littering and being a public nuisance when he was 18-years-old.
27. Custardy dessert : TIRAMISU
Tiramisu is an Italian cake. The name “tiramisu” translates from Italian as “pull me up”, and is often translated into our English phrase “pick-me-up”.
30. San ___, Italy : REMO
The Italian city of San Remo sits on the Mediterranean, right on the border with France. In Italian the city is named Sanremo, just one word, although the spelling of “San Remo” dates back to ancient times.
40. Early 2000s Apple product : EMAC
Apple makes versions of its iMac line of computers that are aimed at schools. These are usually low-end machines that sell at a reduced price. Apple used to name such an offering an “eMac”, short for “education Mac”.
45. Bare-naked Lady : GODIVA
In the legend of Lady Godiva, a noblewoman rode naked through the streets of Coventry in England, basically as a dare from her husband in return for relieving the taxes of his tenants. Lady Godiva issued instructions that all the town’s inhabitants should stay indoors while she made her journey. However, a tailor in the town named Tom disobeyed the instructions by boring holes in the shutters on his windows, and “peeped”. As a result, Peeping Tom was struck blind, and the term “peeping Tom” has been in our language ever since.
58. “Gone With the Wind” setting : TARA
In the legend of Lady Godiva, a noblewoman rode naked through the streets of Coventry in England, basically as a dare from her husband in return for relieving the taxes of his tenants. Lady Godiva issued instructions that all the town’s inhabitants should stay indoors while she made her journey. However, a tailor in the town named Tom disobeyed the instructions by boring holes in the shutters on his windows, and “peeped”. As a result, Peeping Tom was struck blind, and the term “peeping Tom” has been in our language ever since.
60. Antidoping target, informally : ROID
Steroids are found commonly in nature, with familiar examples being cholesterol and testosterone. The controversial class of drugs called anabolic steroids (known informally as “roids” or simply “steroids”) are artificially produced chemicals designed to mimic the effect of the male sex hormone, testosterone. They are termed “anabolic” as they build up cellular tissue (particularly muscle) in a process called anabolism. Taking anabolic steroids can be termed “juicing”, and the aggressive behavior that can be a side-effect is known as “roid rage”.
61. Uganda’s Amin : IDI
Uganda is a landlocked county in East Africa lying just to the west of Kenya. Uganda was ruled by the British as a protectorate from 1894 and gained independence in 1962. Uganda is very much associated with the tyrannical rule of Idi Amin in the 1970s.
Down
3. Partner of trade : CAP
“Cap and trade” is an emissions trading scheme designed to reduce overall emission of greenhouse gases. The idea is that a government can limit a country’s overall industrial emissions by allowing companies to pollute to a maximum level by issuing each a permit. A company needing to emit more gases can trade permits with a company needing a lower limit, so that the country’s overall emissions target can still be achieved.
4. 😉 or 🙁 : EMOTICON
An emoticon is a glyph created using text characters to represent facial features, and usually oriented sideways. The emoticon is designed to indicate emotion or attitude. The classic example is the smiley face ?
5. Some plasma TVs : SANYOS
Sanyo is a Japanese electronics manufacturer based near Osaka and founded in 1947. The company name means “three oceans” reflecting the company’s original aim to sell its products all around the world (across three oceans: the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian).
8. It has hundreds of thousands of drivers : UBER
Uber is a ridesharing service that was founded in 2009 and is based in San Francisco. The service is somewhat controversial and has been described as an illegal taxicab operation. Central to Uber’s service is the company’s mobile app, which can use the client’s GPS location to help find the nearest available ride. Uber’s main competitor is Lyft. Personally, I love the service and have only had good experiences …
10. Hebrew toast : L’CHAIM!
“L’Chaim!” is a Hebrew toast meaning “to life”, with “chai” being the Hebrew word for “life”.
11. Italy’s ___ Coast : AMALFI
Amalfi is a coastal town on the Gulf of Salerno located about 30 miles southeast of Naples. The town gives its name to the popular tourist destination known as the Amalfi Coast.
12. Attorneys’ favorite desserts? : TORTES
A torte is a type of cake made primarily with eggs, sugar and ground nuts (but no flour).
The word “tort” is a French word meaning “mischief, injury or wrong”. Tort law is generally about negligence, when the action of one party causes injury to another but that action falls outside of the scope of criminal law.
16. Kind of jacket : NEHRU
A Nehru jacket is very like a regular suit jacket, except that the collar buttons at the neck. It was originally created in the 1940s in India, and then marketed as the Nehru jacket in the west in the sixties. The name Nehru was lifted from Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964.
18. Actress Skye : IONE
Ione Skye is an American actress born in Hertfordshire in England. She is best known for portraying the character Diane Court in the 1989 high school romance movie “Say Anything …”, starring opposite John Cusack. Skye is the daughter of the Scottish folk singer Donovan.
21. Savanna animal : ELAND
An eland is a large African antelope, in fact the largest on the continent. Both male and female elands have horns, and those horns have a steady spiral ridge along their length.
23. Blue Jay but not Cardinal, for short : ALER
The Toronto Blue Jays baseball franchise was founded in 1977. The Blue Jays are the only team based outside the US to have won a World Series, doing so in 1992 and 1993. And since the Montreal Expos relocated to Washington, the Blue Jays are the only Major League Baseball team now headquartered outside of the US.
The St. Louis Cardinals were originally called the “Brown Stockings”, changing their name to the “Perfectos” in 1899. That obviously didn’t go down well with the locals, as the owners changed it one year later to the Cardinals.
24. ___ Valley, Calif. : SIMI
Nowadays, Simi Valley, California is perhaps best known as home to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. The library is a great place to visit, and there you can tour one of the retired Air Force One planes.
29. Korean War soldier : ROK
A South Korean soldier is known as an ROK, named from the initials for the Republic of (South) Korea.
31. “Rule, Britannia” composer : ARNE
Thomas Arne was an English composer from London. Arne wrote some iconic compositions including “Rule, Britannia!” He also wrote a version of “God Save the King” that became the British national anthem.
34. Part of the cabinet that oversees hwys. : DOT
Department of Transportation (DOT)
35. Hold aside for a year, as a college athlete : REDSHIRT
To redshirt a college athlete is to hold him or her aside for a year in order to extend the players period of eligibility. The term dates back to the mid-fifties, when red shirts were worn by the scrimmage squad during practice.
37. Where the pews are : NAVE
In large Christian churches, the nave is the main approach to the altar, and is where most of the congregation are seated.
A pew is a bench in a church, one usually with a high back. The original pews were raised and sometimes enclosed seats in the church used by women and important men or families. “Pew” comes from the Old French “puie” meaning “balcony, elevation”.
38. 1980s Chrysler offering : K-CAR
Chrysler introduced K-cars in the early 1980s at a time when demand for large cars with V8 engines was plummeting. Post-oil crisis consumers were seeking low-cost, fuel-efficient vehicles, which brought Chrysler to the brink of bankruptcy. It was the economical 4-cylinder, front-wheel drive platform that singlehandedly delivered the company into the profitability within a couple of years. K-cars were designed to carry 6 passengers, on two bench seats. Remember taking a corner a little too fast on those seats, in the days when no one wore seat belts?
42. God, in the Torah : ADONAI
“Adonai” is a Hebrew name for God.
44. Japanese toast : KANPAI!
“Kanpai!” translates from Japanese as “Cheers!”
46. Start of a fairy tale : ONCE
51. Penultimate word of a fairy tale : EVER
The stock phrase “Once upon a time” has been used in various forms as the start of a narrative at least since 1380. The stock phrase at the end of stories such as folktales is often “and they all lived happily ever after”. The earlier version of this ending was “happily until their deaths”.
48. Roger who set a home run record in 1961 : MARIS
Roger Maris (whose real name was Roger Maras) was the son of Croatian immigrants. It was Maris’s single-season record of 61 home runs that Mark McGwire broke in 1998 (hitting 70 that season). Maris’s own record of 61 runs (from 1961) beat the previous record of 60 set in 1927 by Babe Ruth.
57. Gridiron highlights, for short : TDS
We never used the word “gridiron” when I was growing up in Ireland (meaning a grill used for cooking food over an open fire). So, maybe I am excused for finding out relatively recently that a football field gridiron is so called because the layout of yard lines over the field looks like a gridiron used in cooking!
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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Speedway event : RACE
5. Spanish toast : SALUD!
10. Back muscle, for short : LAT
13. One who’s tight-lipped : CLAM
14. It’s just an excuse : ALIBI
15. “Oh, quit your joshin’!” : C’MON!
17. Supreme Court justices, e.g. : APPOINTEES
19. Second-place finisher, famously : HARE
20. Formal toast : TO YOUR HEALTH!
22. Twenty-one places : CASINOS
25. One with a long sentence : LIFER
26. “___ Restaurant” (hit 1968 album) : ALICE’S
27. Custardy dessert : TIRAMISU
30. San ___, Italy : REMO
31. Flare-up of crime? : ARSON
32. Line from “The Student Prince” appropriate for this puzzle : DRINK, DRINK, DRINK
39. Trio x 3 : NONET
40. Early 2000s Apple product : EMAC
41. Attempted to sell : MARKETED
45. Bare-naked Lady : GODIVA
47. 10 out of 10 : IDEAL
48. Kid’s nighttime fear : MONSTER
49. Informal toast : DOWN THE HATCH!
53. Pic : SNAP
54. Chubby : OVERWEIGHT
58. “Gone With the Wind” setting : TARA
59. Something to watch on la télé : SERIE
60. Antidoping target, informally : ROID
61. Uganda’s Amin : IDI
62. German toast : PROST!
63. A-1 : TOPS
Down
1. “Made for moments” sloganeer : RCA
2. Yodeler’s peak : ALP
3. Partner of trade : CAP
4. 😉 or 🙁 : EMOTICON
5. Some plasma TVs : SANYOS
6. Descriptive of los Andes : ALTOS
7. Stead : LIEU
8. It has hundreds of thousands of drivers : UBER
9. Satellite ___ : DISH
10. Hebrew toast : L’CHAIM!
11. Italy’s ___ Coast : AMALFI
12. Attorneys’ favorite desserts? : TORTES
16. Kind of jacket : NEHRU
18. Actress Skye : IONE
21. Savanna animal : ELAND
22. Verify the age of, in a way : CARD
23. Blue Jay but not Cardinal, for short : ALER
24. ___ Valley, Calif. : SIMI
27. Handled, as a case : TRIED
28. Ain’t the way it should be? : ISN’T
29. Korean War soldier : ROK
31. “Rule, Britannia” composer : ARNE
33. Prepared to propose : KNELT
34. Part of the cabinet that oversees hwys. : DOT
35. Hold aside for a year, as a college athlete : REDSHIRT
36. “You’re lookin’ at your guy” : I’M IT
37. Where the pews are : NAVE
38. 1980s Chrysler offering : K-CAR
41. Center : MIDST
42. God, in the Torah : ADONAI
43. Common poster headline : REWARD
44. Japanese toast : KANPAI!
45. Went out in the rain, say : GOT WET
46. Start of a fairy tale : ONCE
48. Roger who set a home run record in 1961 : MARIS
50. Institution often named for a saint: Abbr. : HOSP
51. Penultimate word of a fairy tale : EVER
52. War ace, e.g. : HERO
55. Fake blood, e.g. : GOO
56. Cool : HIP
57. Gridiron highlights, for short : TDS
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7:08, no errors. It's gonna be hot down here, so I'm playing hooky in the high country again today …
19 minutes for me – same as my LAT time today. SW corner was the trickiest with ADONAI and KANPAI so close together. Clever theme. I had heard L'CHAIM uttered, but I had never seen it written. KANPAI is new to my vocabulary.
The NYT reminded me of one of my favorite toasts. "Everyone should believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink…"
Best –
13:04, no errors, but had the same problems as you, Jeff, in that SW. Never heard ADONAI, and I at first spelled KANPAI wrong, tho I know the word. Or I thought I did!
Yes, but McGwire's feat was helped by ROIDS!!! LOL!!!
12:39, no errors. Surprised at my time today, everything was pretty much in my strike zone. I'm old enough to have: attended a Yankee baseball game (at Yankee Stadium) in 1961 when MARIS and Mantle were battling for the home run record; actually owned and wore a NEHRU jacket; purchased the ALICE'S Restaurant album.
No errors. As a non-drinker, I have never been able to understand the connection between making a toast and downing alcohol. To me the two have nothing to do with each other.
Have to be the odd man out, at least so far. Couldn't finish off the SW corner.
14:31, and a whopping SIX errors in the lower left. This one kicked my behind. Just couldn't "see" MIDST for 41D, because I thought 41A was BARTERED. And with a Japanese term and a Torah reference (????)
in the same quadrant I was hung out to dry. I'll be drowning my sorrows over this one.
Since it seems that so many had a problem with the SW corner, I might offer a comment or two. ADONAI is famous as the "substitute word" for YAHWEH in the Hebrew scriptures. At some point in time some Hebrew scholars took it upon themselves to decide that YAHWEH was too sacred to be pronounced and inserted ADONAI (meaning, Lord) in its place. God himself had never said that He did not want his name pronounced but the scholars thought that they knew better than God.
I barely knew KANPAI. I, at first, tried to fit in BANZAI. BANZAI is indeed an exclamation used in Japanese but it is not used in making a toast. MARKETED was the last word to fall into place for me.
At the risk of starting a holy war may I ask Dale to consider reading the rabbinical commentary to why God's name is not used. Christian or Muslim commentary is second hand. There are other reasons.
19 minutes, no errors.
@ Bart Berlin, yes, thanks. I will certainly be willing to look into why the rabbis did what they did.