0614-22 NY Times Crossword 14 Jun 22, Tuesday

Constructed by: Robert Won
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Reveal Answer: Rock and Roll

Themed answers each comprise two words, the first of which can precede “ROCK” and the second of which can precede “ROLL”:

  • 56A Genre with a Hall of Fame in Cleveland … or what can follow the respective halves of 17-, 33- and 40-Across : ROCK AND ROLL
  • 17A Easy order for a barista : BLACK COFFEE (Black Rock & coffee roll)
  • 33A Coil in a mattress : BEDSPRING (bedrock & spring roll)
  • 40A Ocean invertebrate with a round, translucent body : MOON JELLY (moon rock & jelly roll)

Read on, or jump to …
… a complete list of answers

Bill’s time: 7m 45s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Hot dish that sounds cold : CHILI

The full name of the dish that is often called simply “chili” is “chili con carne”, Spanish for “peppers with meat”. The dish was created by immigrants from the Spanish Canary Islands in the city of San Antonio, Texas (a city which the islanders founded). The San Antonio Chili Stand was a popular attraction at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and that stand introduced the dish to the rest of America and to the world.

11 ___ Dhabi : ABU

Abu Dhabi is one of the seven Emirates that make up the federation known as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The two largest members of the UAE (geographically) are Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the only two of the seven members that have veto power over UAE policy. Before 1971, the UAE was a British Protectorate, a collection of sheikdoms. The sheikdoms entered into a maritime truce with Britain in 1835, after which they became known as the Trucial States, derived from the word “truce”.

14 Composer Copland : AARON

Aaron Copland was the most American of all classical composers, I think. Perhaps his most famous work is the “Fanfare for the Common Man”. The piece was written in 1942 and was intended to be uplifting in the gloomy years leading up to WWII. “Fanfare” is recognized not just for performances of the original, but also for the progressive rock version that was recorded by Emerson, Lake & Palmer in 1977.

16 Hummus, for one : DIP

The lovely dip/spread called hummus usually contains mashed chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic. The name “hummus” is an Arabic word for “chickpeas”.

17 Easy order for a barista : BLACK COFFEE (Black Rock & coffee roll)

A barista is a person who serves coffee in a coffee shop. “Barista” is Italian for “bartender”.

20 They play among the reeds : OBOISTS

A double-reed instrument is one in which two pieces of cane vibrate against each other to produce sound. In a single-reed instrument, just one piece of cane vibrates the mouthpiece. The best-known examples of double-reed instruments are the oboe and the bassoon.

21 Gin flavoring : SLOE

The sloe is the fruit of the blackthorn bush, and the main flavoring ingredient in sloe gin. A sloe looks like a small plum, but is usually much more tart in taste.

22 Exclamation of epiphany : AHA!

An epiphany is an appearance or manifestation, especially of a supreme being. By extension, “epiphany” can also apply to a sudden insight or intuitive perception. The term derives from the Greek “epiphainein” meaning “to manifest, display”.

25 Not quite ROFL : LOL

Rolling on floor laughing (ROFL)

30 “If ___ Street Could Talk” (2018 film) : BEALE

Beale Street in downtown Memphis, Tennessee is a major tourist attraction. In 1977, by act of Congress, the street was officially declared the “Home of the Blues” due to its long association with the musical genre. Apparently “Beale” is the name of some forgotten military hero.

37 Oscar-winning film set partly in Iran : ARGO

“Argo” is a 2012 movie that is based on the true story of the rescue of six diplomats hiding out during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The film was directed by and stars Ben Affleck and is produced by Grant Heslov and George Clooney, the same pair who produced the excellent “Good Night, and Good Luck”. I highly recommend “Argo”, although I found the scenes of religious fervor to be very frightening …

38 Jell-O shapers : MOLDS

If you like Jell-O, then you might want to stop by LeRoy, New York where you can visit the only Jell-O museum in the world. While at the museum, you can walk along the Jell-O Brick Road …

40 Ocean invertebrate with a round, translucent body : MOON JELLY (moon rock & jelly roll)

The moon jelly (also “common jelly”) is a type of jellyfish found in almost all of the world’s oceans. It is prey to many different predators, including sunfish and sea turtles, as well as some seabirds.

42 Trumpet’s sound : BLARE

We get our word “trumpet”, describing the brass instrument, from the Old French word “trompe”. A “trompe” was a long, tube-like instrument, and a “trompette” was a smaller version.

45 Sherwood ___ : FOREST

Even though Robin Hood is a character from legend, Sherwood Forest does really exist. It is located in Nottinghamshire in England, and has been around since the last ice age.

49 “The Waste Land” author’s monogram : TSE

T. S. Eliot (TSE) wrote his poem called “The Waste Land” in 1922. “The Waste Land” opens with the famous line, “April is the cruellest month …”

51 Artist Henri Toulouse-___ : LAUTREC

The celebrated French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from an aristocratic family. This breeding may have made life comfortable for him, but it was the source of his famous disabilities. He had congenital conditions that resulted from the inbreeding that was a tradition in his family (Henri’s parents were first cousins).

55 A live one might be hot : MIC

One of my favorite hot-mic moments took place in 2005, when Paris and London were vying to host the 2012 Olympics. French President Jacques Chirac compared Paris and London in that context while chatting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Chirac said, over a hot mic:

The only thing that they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease … You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine.

56 Genre with a Hall of Fame in Cleveland … or what can follow the respective halves of 17-, 33- and 40-Across : ROCK AND ROLL

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can be visited on the shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was created in 1983 and started inducting artists in 1986. The Foundation didn’t get a home until the museum was dedicated in Cleveland in 1995. I had the great privilege of visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame some years ago and really enjoyed myself. The magnificent building was designed by famed architect I. M. Pei.

60 Card player’s call : UNO!

UNO! is a card game that was developed in the early seventies and that has been sold by Mattel since 1992. UNO falls into the shedding family of card games, meaning that the goal is to get rid of all your cards while preventing opponents from doing the same.

62 Pisa dough? : EUROS

The word “lira” is used in a number of countries for currency. “Lira” comes from the Latin for “pound” and is derived from the British pound sterling, the value of a Troy pound of silver. For example, the lira (plural “lire”) was the official currency of Italy before the country changed over to the euro in 2002.

63 Kylo ___ of “Star Wars” : REN

Kylo Ren is the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa in the “Star Wars” universe. The character’s birth name was Ben Solo. He was trained as a Jedi knight by his uncle, Luke Skywalker. However, Ben came to embrace the Dark Side, and changed his name to Kylo Ren. Ren is played by actor Adam Driver.

Down

2 “2001: A Space Odyssey” antagonist : HAL

In Arthur C. Clarke’s “Space Odyssey” (famously adapted for the big screen as “2001: A Space Odyssey”) the computer system that went rogue was called HAL 9000, or simply “HAL”. HAL stands for “Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer”. Even though Clarke denied it, there’s a good argument that can be made that the acronym HAL is a veiled reference to IBM, the big player in the world of computing at the time of the novel’s publication (1968). The acronym HAL is just a one-letter shift from the initials “IBM”.

4 ___ citato (in the passage quoted) : LOCO

“Loc. cit”. is short for “loco citato” meaning “in the place cited”. Loc. cit. is used in a footnote instead of op. cit. as it refers not only to a prior work, but also to the same page in that work.

5 Rorschach pattern : INKBLOT

The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which a subject is asked to interpret a series of inkblots. The test was created by Swiss Freudian psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach in the 1920s.

11 “Easy on Me” singer, 2021 : ADELE

“Easy on Me” is a 2021 song co-written and recorded by Adele. In the song, Adele is directly addressing her 9-year-old son, asking him to be “easy on” her following her divorce from his father.

12 Plains figure replaced by Monticello on U.S. nickels : BISON

The Buffalo nickel is also called the Indian head nickel, and was minted from 1913 to 1938. The coin is so called because the obverse bears the profile of a Native American male, and the reverse an image of an American bison.

Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson’s plantation home, first appeared on US currency in 1928, when it featured on the reverse of a two-dollar bill. The image was replaced on the bill in 1966. Monticello also appears on the reverse of the 5-cent coin, starting in 1938 and continuing to this day.

18 Cucumber-like, maybe : COOL

Apparently, scientists have shown that the inside of a cucumber (“cuke” for short) growing in a field can be up to twenty degrees cooler than the surrounding air. That’s something that was believed by farmers as early as the 1730s, at which time the phrase “cool as a cucumber” was coined.

24 Compadre : AMIGO

“Compadre” is Spanish for “friend, buddy”.

27 Mont Blanc, for one : ALP

Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps. The name “Mont Blanc” translates from French into “white mountain”. The mountain lies on the border between France and Italy, and it has been generally accepted for decades that the summit lies within French territory. However, there have been official claims that the summit does in fact fall within the borders of Italy.

29 Outskirts of the outskirts : BOONIES

“Boondocks” (often shortened to “boonies”) is a term used in North America for a remote, usually rural area. Often the term is used derogatively, implying that a remote location is unsophisticated. “Boondocks” was first used by American soldiers stationed in the Philippines in the early 1900s. The word evolved from the Tagalog “bundok” meaning “mountain”.

30 Book-loving Disney princess in a yellow gown : BELLE

Disney’s 2017 romantic fantasy film “Beauty and the Beast” is based on the animated movie the same studio released in 1991. In turn, 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast” was an adaptation of the 18th-century version of the fairy tale “La Belle et la Bête” written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens play the title roles in the 2017 film, with both performances garnering critical acclaim.

36 Flappers in a gaggle : GEESE

A collection of geese is referred to as a “gaggle” when on the ground. When geese are in V-formation in flight, they are referred to collectively as a “skein”.

38 Late singer with a food name : MEAT LOAF

“Meat Loaf” was the stage name of rock musician Marvin Lee Aday from Dallas, Texas. Meat Loaf’s second album is “Bat Out of Hell”, one of the best selling albums of all time. “Bat Out of Hell” still sells hundreds of thousands copies every year, and has sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

41 PSAT takers, often : JRS

Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT)

42 Operator of a stud farm : BREEDER

The word “stud”, meaning “male horse kept for breeding”, is derived from the Old English word “stod”, which described a whole herd of horses. The term “stud” can be used figuratively for a “ladies’ man”.

44 Community card between “flop” and “river” in hold’em : TURN

In the card game called Texas hold ‘em, two hole cards are dealt to each player, and five community cards are dealt face up on the table. The community cards are dealt in the three stages. The first three cards are dealt in one stage (the flop), then the fourth card is shown (the turn), and finally the fifth card (the river).

45 It’s connected to the tibia : FEMUR

The thigh bone, the femur, is the longest and strongest bone in the human body.

52 Rights advocacy org. : ACLU

53 Some four-stringed instruments, for short : UKES

The ukulele (uke) originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.

54 Mötley ___ : CRUE

Mötley Crüe is an American rock band from Los Angeles. They’ve been around since 1981, co-founded by the famous drummer Tommy Lee. Tommy Lee is also known for his two celebrated marriages, the first with Heather Locklear and the second with Pamela Anderson. The name “Mötley Crüe” was chosen as someone once described the band members as a “motley looking crew”. The spelling was made to look a little more exotic, with the umlauts added over the “o” and “u” one day, as the band were drinking bottles of “Löwenbräu” beer!

56 Letter after pi : RHO

Rho is the Greek letter that looks just like our Roman letter “p”, although it is equivalent to the Roman letter R. It is the 17th letter in the Greek alphabet.

58 John of Salisbury : LOO

The use of “john” as a slang term for a toilet is peculiar to North America. “John” probably comes from the older slang term of “jack” or “jakes” that had been around since the 16th century. In Ireland, in less polite moments, we still refer to a toilet as “the jacks”.

Salisbury is a city in South West England that sits on the edge of the famous Salisbury Plain (which is home to Stonehenge). The city was in the news relatively recently as it was the site of the poisoning of Russian military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The British authorities hold that two Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, poisoned the Skripals with the nerve agent Novichok because the father had acted as a double agent for the UK. Petrov and Boshirov claim that they traveled from Russia as tourists and wanted to see the “famous” spire of Salisbury Cathedral. Hmm …

59 “Acid” : LSD

Someone taking the drug LSD is often said to be “dropping acid”. The use of the verb “to drop” was popular slang long before LSD came on the scene, and back then applied to the taking of any illegal drug.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 Hot dish that sounds cold : CHILI
6 Increase, as a pot : ADD TO
11 ___ Dhabi : ABU
14 Composer Copland : AARON
15 Feature of five U.S. presidents from Lincoln to Harrison : BEARD
16 Hummus, for one : DIP
17 Easy order for a barista : BLACK COFFEE (Black Rock & coffee roll)
20 They play among the reeds : OBOISTS
21 Gin flavoring : SLOE
22 Exclamation of epiphany : AHA!
25 Not quite ROFL : LOL
26 Inventor’s protection : PATENT
28 $, %, & or @ : SYMBOL
30 “If ___ Street Could Talk” (2018 film) : BEALE
32 “It is a tale told by an ___, full of sound and fury”: Shak. : IDIOT
33 Coil in a mattress : BEDSPRING (bedrock & spring roll)
37 Oscar-winning film set partly in Iran : ARGO
38 Jell-O shapers : MOLDS
39 Slushy summer treat : ICEE
40 Ocean invertebrate with a round, translucent body : MOON JELLY (moon rock & jelly roll)
42 Trumpet’s sound : BLARE
43 Furious : IRATE
44 Prevailing tendencies : TRENDS
45 Sherwood ___ : FOREST
48 Go a-courting? : SUE
49 “The Waste Land” author’s monogram : TSE
50 Big nights before big days : EVES
51 Artist Henri Toulouse-___ : LAUTREC
55 A live one might be hot : MIC
56 Genre with a Hall of Fame in Cleveland … or what can follow the respective halves of 17-, 33- and 40-Across : ROCK AND ROLL
60 Card player’s call : UNO!
61 More robust : HALER
62 Pisa dough? : EUROS
63 Kylo ___ of “Star Wars” : REN
64 Serviceable : OF USE
65 Put down new turf on : RESOD

Down

1 Taxi : CAB
2 “2001: A Space Odyssey” antagonist : HAL
3 Nest egg letters : IRA
4 ___ citato (in the passage quoted) : LOCO
5 Rorschach pattern : INKBLOT
6 Bubbling away : ABOIL
7 Dict. offerings : DEFS
8 Loopy : DAFT
9 Overstep one’s bounds : TRESPASS
10 Verse that exalts its subject : ODE
11 “Easy on Me” singer, 2021 : ADELE
12 Plains figure replaced by Monticello on U.S. nickels : BISON
13 Surprise win : UPSET
18 Cucumber-like, maybe : COOL
21 Lifelessly dull : STERILE
22 “Take me ___” : AS I AM
23 Water power, informally : HYDRO
24 Compadre : AMIGO
27 Mont Blanc, for one : ALP
29 Outskirts of the outskirts : BOONIES
30 Book-loving Disney princess in a yellow gown : BELLE
31 Whirlpool : EDDY
33 Bit of lightning : BOLT
34 Defeatist’s assertion : I CAN’T
35 Bookish sorts : NERDS
36 Flappers in a gaggle : GEESE
38 Late singer with a food name : MEAT LOAF
41 PSAT takers, often : JRS
42 Operator of a stud farm : BREEDER
44 Community card between “flop” and “river” in hold’em : TURN
45 It’s connected to the tibia : FEMUR
46 Sheepish : OVINE
47 Intel mission : RECON
48 Gawk : STARE
52 Rights advocacy org. : ACLU
53 Some four-stringed instruments, for short : UKES
54 Mötley ___ : CRUE
56 Letter after pi : RHO
57 Common conjunctions : ORS
58 John of Salisbury : LOO
59 “Acid” : LSD

6 thoughts on “0614-22 NY Times Crossword 14 Jun 22, Tuesday”

  1. 6:34. I got the theme after I finished the puzzle – i.e. once I took a look at it.

    I always order BLACK COFFEE, and the baristas do sort of give you a funny look when you do. I get a “That’s it??” kind of reaction.

    “Compadre” simply means a friend or companion in Spanish. “Padrino” is the Spanish word for “Godfather”.

    Best –

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