0106-18 NY Times Crossword Answers 6 Jan 2018, Saturday

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Constructed by: Peter Wentz
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Theme: None

Bill’s time: 20m 13s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

5. What you can do to “Moon River” : WALTZ

What we tend to think of as a waltz today is danced at about 90 beats per minute. The original waltz was much faster, and is danced at about 180 beats per minute. To differentiate, we now call the faster dance a “Viennese Waltz”, and sometimes refer to the other as the “English Waltz” or “slow waltz”.

The lovely song “Moon River” was written by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini. It was sung by Audrey Hepburn in the wonderful 1961 movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. The song went on to become the theme song for Andy Williams, who performed it at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1962.

10. Follower of John : ACTS

The Acts of the Apostles is the fifth book of the Christian New Testament. It is believed that the author of the Gospel of Luke was the same person who wrote “Acts”.

16. One of the initial anchors of CNN’s “American Morning” : ZAHN

Paula Zahn has worked as a journalist and news anchor with ABC, NBC, Fox News and CNN. She is currently the host of a true crime show on the Discovery Channel called “On the Case with Paula Zahn”. Outside of her work on television, Zahn is an accomplished cellist and has even played at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra.

“American Morning” is CNN’s flagship morning show. It tries to differentiate itself from the competition by avoiding much of the banal “chat” between the news presenters, focusing more on the stories themselves.

18. Event in every Summer Olympics since 1900 : EPEE

There are three fencing events in the modern Olympics, with each distinguished by the weapon used:

• Foil
• Épée
• Sabre

22. Chaser of un trago de tequila : AGUA

In Spanish, one might drink some “agua” (water) as a chaser after taking “un trago de tequila” (a shot of tequila).

30. Garden sight : GNOME

In English folklore, the fairy’s anti-hero is the diminutive gnome, an evil ugly character. Over the centuries, the gnome has become more lovable so we now have garden gnomes, and even the Travelocity Gnome.

39. Something good for Charlie Brown? : GRIEF

Charlie Brown is the main character in the long-running comic strip called “Peanuts”, created by Charles Schulz. Charlie’s catchphrase is “good grief”. He has several persistent frustrations in his life, including an inability to fly a kite. The focus of his kite-flying frustration is the dreaded Kite-Eating Tree.

44. Writing form even more constrained than a tweet : HAIKU

A haiku is a very elegant form of Japanese verse. When writing a haiku in English we tend to impose the rule that the verse must contain 17 syllables. This restriction comes from the rule in Japanese that the verse must contain 17 sound units called “moras”, but moras and syllables aren’t the same thing. What the difference is though, is not so clear to me. Here’s an example of a Haiku:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

46. Results of some scans : PDFS

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format introduced by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF documents can be shared between users and read using many different applications, making them more universally accessible than documents saved by one particular program.

48. City at the foot of the Sierra Nevada : RENO

Reno, Nevada was named in honor of Major General Jesse Lee Reno, a Union officer killed in the Civil War. The city has a famous “Reno Arch”, a structure that stands over the main street. The arch was erected in 1926 to promote an exposition planned for the following year. After the expo, the city council decided to keep the arch and held a competition to decide what wording should be displayed, and the winner was “The Biggest Little City in the World”.

The American Sierra Nevada range lies in California and Nevada. The Spanish Sierra Nevada range is in Andalusia, with the name meaning “snowy range” in Spanish.

54. Sticking point? : VOODOO DOLL

Voodoo is a religion that originated the French slave colony of Saint-Domingue on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

58. Noted Brit in the news : HUME

The TV journalist Brit Hume’s full name is Alexander Britton Hume. He makes a lot of appearances on the Fox News Channel.

Down

6. Home of the world’s busiest airport: Abbr. : ATL

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is the world’s busiest airport, as measured by passenger traffic. Atlanta has had that distinction since 1998, and was the world’s busiest in terms of take-offs and landings from 2005 until 2013. Over 50% of Atlanta’s traffic comes from Delta Air Lines.

7. Actress Lucy : LIU

Lucy Liu is an actress from Queens, New York. Liu’s big break came when she was chosen to play the Ling Woo character in “Ally McBeal”. I liked her in the 2000 film “Charlie’s Angels” but as I am no fan of Quentin Tarantino, I did not enjoy the movie “Kill Bill”. I am having fun watching one of Liu’s more recent projects, in which she plays Jane Watson, one of the two lead characters in the TV crime drama “Elementary”.

8. “Did not need to know that” : TMI

Too much information! (TMI)

9. Terminals at London Heathrow? : ZEDS

The letter named “zed” has been around since about 1400, and derives from the Greek letter zeta. The spelling and pronunciation of “zee”, used in America today, first popped up in the 1670s.

London’s Heathrow handles handles more international passengers than any other airport in the world, and is the third busiest airport around the globe in terms of passenger traffic (after Atlanta and Beijing).

10. High-end Hyundai : AZERA

The Hyundai Azera was the name used worldwide for the model known as the Hyundai Grandeur in its homeland of South Korea. The Azera was produced from 1986 to 1992.

11. Main feature of the Gmail logo : CAPITAL M

Gmail is a free webmail service provided by Google, and my favorite of the free email services. Gmail made a big splash when it was introduced in 2007 because it offered a whopping 1GB of storage whereas other services offered a measly 2-4MB on average.

12. National force, informally : THE FEDS

A “fed” is an officer of a US federal agency, although the term usually applies to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

15. Blue-striped ball : TEN

That would be pool.

21. English channel : THE BEEB

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is also known as “the Beeb”, a name given to the network by the great Peter Sellers on the classic British radio comedy called “The Goon Show”. The BBC was founded in 1922, and was the world’s first national broadcasting organization.

31. Who said “Revolutions are the locomotives of history” : MARX

Karl Marx was a German philosopher and revolutionary who helped develop the principles of modern communism and socialism. Marx argued that feudal society created internal strife due to class inequalities which led to its destruction and replacement by capitalism. He further argued that the inequalities created in a capitalist society create tensions that will also lead to its self-destruction. His thesis was that the inevitable replacement of capitalism was a classless (and stateless) society, which he called pure communism.

35. 1960s movie with the tagline “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere” : EASY RIDER

“Easy Rider” is a 1969 movie about two bikers traversing the American Southwest and the South. The bikers are famously played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Fonda produced the film and Hopper directed.

36. Devices that hurt sales at Kodak : DIGICAMS

George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company, named after the Kodak camera that he had invented four years earlier. He came up with the name of Kodak after careful consideration. Firstly he was a big fan of the letter “K”, calling it “strong, incisive”. He also wanted a word that was short, easy to pronounce and difficult to mispronounce, and a word that was clearly unique with no prior associations. “Kodak” fit the bill.

38. Precious : CHICHI

Someone who is “chichi” is showily trendy and pretentious. “Chichi” is a French noun meaning “airs, fuss”.

41. Dell competitor : LENOVO

Lenovo is a Chinese manufacturer of computers. The company is very successful, and sold more personal computers in 2013 than any other vendor worldwide. IBM sold off its personal computer division to Lenovo in 2005.

45. Sagal of “Futurama” : KATEY

Katey Sagal played Peggy Bundy on “Married … with Children”. Later she took over as star of the show “8 Simple Rules” in the middle of its run, when John Ritter passed away unexpectedly in 2003. More recently, Sagal appeared on the FX drama “Sons of Anarchy”. In 2004, she married Kurt Sutter who created the “Sons of Anarchy” series.

52. Response to a joke, maybe : LOL

Laugh out loud (LOL)

57. Deal breakers, for short? : DEA

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was set up in 1973, while President Nixon was in office.