0704-22 NY Times Crossword 4 Jul 22, Monday

Constructed by: Bruce Haight
Edited by: Will Shortz

Today’s Reveal Answer: Statue of Liberty

Happy 4th of July, everyone! Themed answers each end with a word that collectively suggest the STATUE OF LIBERTY:

  • 57A New York City landmark suggested by the ends of 17-, 22-, 34- and 50-Across : STATUE OF LIBERTY
  • 17A Handing responsibility to someone else : PASSING THE TORCH
  • 22A Major accomplishment in baseball or horse racing : TRIPLE CROWN
  • 34A One way to deal with a pain in the neck : ASPIRIN TABLET
  • 50A Two interacting communities in the home of a college : TOWN AND GOWN

Bill’s time: 6m 23s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 French fashion monogram : YSL

Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) was an Algerian-born French fashion designer. Saint Laurent started off working as an assistant to Christian Dior at the age of 17. Dior died just four years later, and as a very young man Saint-Laurent was named head of the House of Dior. However, in 1950 Saint Laurent was conscripted into the French Army and ended up in a military hospital after suffering a mental breakdown from the hazing inflicted on him by his fellow soldiers. His treatment included electroshock therapy and administration of sedatives and psychoactive drugs. He was released from hospital, managed to pull his life back together and started his own fashion house. A remarkable story …

9 Did the backstroke, say : SWAM

In swimming, the backstroke is also known as the “back crawl”. An advantage of swimming the backstroke is that it is relatively easy to breathe. A disadvantage is that the swimmer cannot see where he or she is going.

14 Boxing weight with a limit of 118 pounds : BANTAM

“Bantam” means “small, miniature”. The term derives from small breed of poultry known as bantam breeds.

20 Folk singer Guthrie : ARLO

Guthrie

21 Soothing skin balm : ALOE GEL

Aloe vera has a number of alternate names that are descriptive of its efficacy as a medicine. ancient Egyptians knew it as the plant of immortality, and Native Americans called it the wand of heaven.

22 Major accomplishment in baseball or horse racing : TRIPLE CROWN

In Major League baseball, a player can earn the Triple Crown when he is the leader in three specific statistics. The pitching Triple Crown includes wins, strikeouts and earned run average (ERA). The batting Triple Crown includes home runs, runs batted in (RBI) and batting average.

The US Triple Crown horse races are, in order through the year:

  1. The Kentucky Derby
  2. The Preakness Stakes
  3. The Belmont Stakes

26 Sound of a diaphragm spasm : HIC!

Hiccups is a series of forced intakes of breath, the result of spasms in the muscles of the chest and throat. The most common cause of hiccups is some sort of irritation to the stomach or esophagus, usually taking place while eating. Apparently, we don’t really understand the reason why we hiccup, but a favored suggestion is that it may be something that we inherited from our ancestors of long ago who didn’t stand up quite as straight as we do. Gravity helps us swallow our food, but animals who walk on all fours don’t have that advantage as the food moves horizontally down the throat and into the stomach. Such beasts are in greater need of an involuntary hiccup should some food get stuck. Just a theory …

28 Adamant affirmation : YES I DO!

The words “adamant” and “adamantine” can mean “hard like rock, stony”, in the literal sense. In the more figurative sense, someone who is adamant or adamantine is stubborn or inflexible, like a mule, mulish.

29 Moe, Larry or Curly : STOOGE

If you’ve seen a few of the films starring “The Three Stooges” you might have noticed that the line-up changed over the years. The original trio was made up of Moe and Shemp Howard (two brothers) and Larry Fine (a good friend of the Howards). This line up was usually known as “Moe, Larry and Shemp”. Then Curly Howard replaced his brother when Shemp quit the act, creating the most famous trio, “Moe, Larry And Curly”. Shemp returned when Curly had a debilitating stroke in 1946. Shemp stayed with the troupe until he himself died in 1955. Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser, and then “Curly-Joe” DeRita. When Larry Fine suffered a stroke in 1970, it effectively marked the end of the act.

31 More’s opposite : LESS

I say avoid any express checkout lane in a market that is labeled “10 items or less”. It should be “10 items or fewer”. I know, I know … I should calm down … and get a life …

33 “I think …,” to texters : IMHO …

In my humble opinion (IMHO)

34 One way to deal with a pain in the neck : ASPIRIN TABLET

“Aspirin” used to be a brand name for the drug acetylsalicylic acid. Aspirin was introduced by the German drug company Bayer AG in the late 1800s. As part of the war reparations paid by Germany after WWI, Bayer AG lost the use of the trademark “Aspirin” (as well as the trademark Heroin!) and it became a generic term.

40 Air-conditioner measures, for short : BTUS

In the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), the power of a heating or cooling unit can be measured using the British Thermal Unit (BTU). This dated unit is the amount of energy required to heat a pound of water so that the water’s temperature increases by one degree Fahrenheit.

41 Actor Jared : LETO

Jared Leto is an actor and musician. In the world of music, he is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for the rock band 30 Seconds to Mars. In the film world, one of his most critically acclaimed roles was that of a heroin addict in “Requiem for a Dream”. Leto also appeared in “American Psycho”, “Panic Room” and “Lord of War”. He won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in 2013’s “Dallas Buyers Club”, in which he portrayed a transgender woman.

42 Conan of late-night TV : O’BRIEN

The so-called “War for Late Night” of 2010 involved Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. O’Brien had stayed loyal to NBC on the understanding that he would take over “The Tonight Show” after Jay Leno retired. When Leno’s contract expired in 2009, NBC moved Leno aside, with his agreement, and O’Brien took over. But Leno then hosted a new spot in prime time called “The Jay Leno Show”, and apparently the two shows split the traditional late night audience, much to the annoyance of advertisers. NBC reacted by moving Leno back to the late night slot, and mayhem ensued!

45 Kansas City baseball team : ROYALS

The Kansas City Royals Major League Baseball team was founded in 1969. The team takes its name from the American Royal, a livestock show and rodeo held annually in Kansas City since 1899.

49 “This little piggy” : TOE

When talking to a little child, one might refer to his or her toes as “little piggies”.

This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.

57 New York City landmark suggested by the ends of 17-, 22-, 34- and 50-Across : STATUE OF LIBERTY

The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France to the United States. It was designed by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and constructed in France by civil engineer Gustave Eiffel (of Eiffel Tower fame). The statue was disassembled, shipped to the US, and reassembled on its pedestal on Bedloe’s Island (now “Liberty Island”). A ceremony of dedication was held in 1886. If you take a boat ride down the Seine in Paris you will probably see a one-third replica of Lady Liberty standing on a small island in the river, looking quite magnificent. That copy was given to the people of Paris by the city’s American community in 1889.’

Emma Lazarus was a poet from New York City who is best known as the author of an 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus”. “The New Colossus” sits on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, a fitting location given that the title refers to Lady Liberty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

61 Hawaii’s ___ Coast : KONA

The Kona district on the Big Island of Hawaii is on the western side of the island. The largest town in Kona is Kailua-Kona. Kailua-Kona is often incorrectly referred to as “Kona”. The term “kona” translates as “leeward side of the island” in Hawaiian.

64 Online source of film facts : IMDB

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website was launched in 1990, and is now owned by Amazon.com. It’s a great site for answering questions one has about movies and actors.

Down

2 Van Gogh’s “The ___ Night” : STARRY

“The Starry Night” (“La Nuit Étoilée” in French) is a Van Gogh masterpiece depicting what the artist could see from the window of his room in a sanitarium near the village of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It is a lovely piece …

4 Law enforcement org. : FBI

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was set up in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), with the name changing in 1935. The Bureau was set up at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was largely moved to do so after the 1901 assassination of President McKinley, as there was a perception that anarchists were threatening law and order. The FBI’s motto uses the organization’s initialism, and is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity”.

6 London’s land: Abbr. : ENG

The terms “United Kingdom”, “Great Britain” and “England” can sometimes be confused. The official use of “United Kingdom” originated in 1707 with the Acts of Union that declared the countries of England and Scotland as “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”. The name changed again with the Acts of Union 1800 that created the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” (much to the chagrin of most of the Irish population). This was partially reversed in 1927 when the current name was introduced, the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, in recognition of an independent Irish Free State in the south of the island of Ireland.

London is the largest metropolitan area in the whole of the European Union (and one of my favorite cities in the world). It has been a major settlement for over 2,000 years and was founded as a town by the Romans who named it Londinium. The name “Londinium” may have existed prior to the arrival of the Romans, and no one seems too sure of its origins. Famously, the City of London is a one-square-mile area at the center of the metropolis, the area that marked old medieval London. “The City”, as it is commonly called, has its own Mayor of the City of London (the Mayor of London is someone else), and its own City of London Police Force (the London Metropolitan Police are the police usually seen on the streets, a different force).

7 Rose petal fragrance : ATTAR

Attar of rose is also known as rose oil, and is an essential oil extracted from the petals of various types of rose.

8 Mexican artist Frida : KAHLO

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter famous for her self-portraits. She was married to the equally famous artist Diego Rivera. Kahlo was portrayed by actress Salma Hayek in a film about her colorful life called “Frida” released in 2002.

9 Urban air pollution : SMOG

“Smog” is a portmanteau formed by melding “smoke” and “fog”. The term was first used to describe the air around London in the early 1900s. Several cities around the world have a reputation of being particularly smoggy. For example, the most smog-plagued city in Latin America is Mexico City, which is located in a highland “bowl” that traps industrial and vehicle pollution.

11 Intense illumination, as in old movie projectors : ARC LIGHT

The first electric light was an “arc lamp”, a lamp in which light is produced by an arc of ionized gas between two electrodes. The arc lamp was largely replaced by incandescent lighting, in which light was produced by a glowing filament that was heated by passing an electric current through it.

24 River of central Germany : EDER

The Eder is a river in Germany, and a tributary of the Fulda River. The Eder has a dam near the small town of Waldeck which holds water in the large Edersee reservoir. This was one of the dams that was attacked by the RAF during WWII with the famous Barnes Wallis bouncing bombs. It was destroyed in the Dam Busters raid in 1943, but rebuilt the same year.

25 Mozart’s “___ Fan Tutte” : COSI

Mozart’s comic opera “Così fan tutte” is also known in English as “The School for Lovers”. The literal translation of the opera’s Italian title is “Thus do all (women)”, or “Women are like that”.

27 Business bigwig, for short : CEO

A bigwig is someone important. The use of the term “bigwig” harks back to the days when men of authority and rank wore … big wigs.

30 Product of Shell or ExxonMobil : OIL

Royal Dutch Shell is the fourth largest company in the world in terms of revenue (Walmart is the largest) and is headquartered in the Hague, in the Netherlands. The company was formed in 1907 with the merger of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Transport and Trading company of the UK. The two companies merged in order to compete globally with the biggest US oil company of the day, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Shell Oil Company is a US-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell that is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

The Exxon Corporation was a descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company. Exxon merged with Mobil (yet another descendant of Standard Oil) in 1999 to form ExxonMobil.

32 NBC comedy show, in brief : SNL

“Saturday Night Live” (SNL)

36 This Greek letter: ψ : PSI

Psi is the 23rd and penultimate letter of the Greek alphabet, and the one that looks a bit like a trident or a pitchfork.

37 Trillion: Prefix : TERA-

The prefix “tera-” signifies a trillion, and comes from the Greek word “teras” meaning “monster”.

39 Woody ___, bartender on “Cheers” : BOYD

Woody Boyd is the lovable and naive bartender on several seasons of the sitcom “Cheers”. Woody is portrayed by Woody Harrelson. The Woody character replaced the bartender named “Coach” when actor Nicholas Colasanto passed away.

40 Program that spits out spam : BOT

A bot is a computer program designed to imitate human behavior. It might crawl around the Web doing searches for example, or it might participate in discussions in chat rooms by giving pre-programmed responses. It might also act as a competitor in a computer game.

43 Caesar’s rebuke to Brutus : ET TU?

It was Shakespeare who popularized the words “Et tu, Brute?” (meaning “And you, Brutus?”). They appear in his play “Julius Caesar”, although the phrase had been around long before he penned his drama. It’s not known what Julius Caesar actually said in real life (if anything at all) as he was assassinated on the steps of the Senate in Rome.

44 Memos : NOTES

“Memorandum” means “thing to be remembered” in Latin, from the verb “memorare” meaning “to call to mind”.

46 James ___, author who won a posthumous Pulitzer : AGEE

James Agee was a noted American film critic and screenwriter. Agee wrote an autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family” that won him his Pulitzer in 1958, albeit posthumously. He was also one of the screenwriters for the 1951 classic movie “The African Queen”.

47 Country singer Morgan : LORRIE

Lorrie Morgan is a country music singer with quite the pedigree. Born Loretta Lynn Morgan in Nashville, she is the daughter of country music singer George Morgan.

48 Try to hit, as a gnat : SWAT AT

Gnats are attracted to the smell of rotting food, and vinegar. Simple homemade traps that use vinegar are often constructed to attract and kill gnats.

51 Virginia who wrote “Mrs. Dalloway” : WOOLF

Virginia Woolf was an English author who was active in the period between the two World Wars. Woolf’s most famous novels were “Mrs. Dalloway”, “To the Lighthouse” and “Orlando”. She also wrote a long essay entitled “A Room of One’s Own” in which she states “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

“Mrs. Dalloway” is a novel by Virginia Woolf that was first published in 1925. The story tells of a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a day in which she is preparing for a party that she is hosting. The novel has been compared to “Ulysses” by James Joyce, a story about a day in the life of Leopold Bloom.

53 “Bye Bye Bye” boy band : NSYNC

“Bye Bye Bye” is a 2000 hit song recorded by the boy band NSYNC. It was originally written for another boy band, the English group 5ive, but they passed on it.

55 Open ___ (prepare to pay later) : A TAB

When we run a “tab” at a bar, we are running a “tabulation”, a listing of what we owe. Such a use of “tab” is American slang that originated in the 1880s.

60 One of three things tried by Goldilocks : BED

The story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” was first recorded in 1837 in England, although the narrative was around before it was actually written down. The original fairy tale was rather gruesome, but successive versions became more family-oriented. The character that eventually became Goldilocks was originally an elderly woman, and the three “nameless” bears became Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear.

Complete List of Clues/Answers

Across

1 French fashion monogram : YSL
4 Completely lose it, with “out” : FREAK …
9 Did the backstroke, say : SWAM
13 Broke a fast : ATE
14 Boxing weight with a limit of 118 pounds : BANTAM
16 Trifling : MERE
17 Handing responsibility to someone else : PASSING THE TORCH
20 Folk singer Guthrie : ARLO
21 Soothing skin balm : ALOE GEL
22 Major accomplishment in baseball or horse racing : TRIPLE CROWN
26 Sound of a diaphragm spasm : HIC!
28 Adamant affirmation : YES I DO!
29 Moe, Larry or Curly : STOOGE
31 More’s opposite : LESS
33 “I think …,” to texters : IMHO …
34 One way to deal with a pain in the neck : ASPIRIN TABLET
40 Air-conditioner measures, for short : BTUS
41 Actor Jared : LETO
42 Conan of late-night TV : O’BRIEN
45 Kansas City baseball team : ROYALS
49 “This little piggy” : TOE
50 Two interacting communities in the home of a college : TOWN AND GOWN
54 “There’s another good reason!” : THAT TOO!
56 Historical periods : ERAS
57 New York City landmark suggested by the ends of 17-, 22-, 34- and 50-Across : STATUE OF LIBERTY
61 Hawaii’s ___ Coast : KONA
62 One of two on a shirt : SLEEVE
63 Suffix with Egypt or Paris : -IAN
64 Online source of film facts : IMDB
65 Threw a party for : FETED
66 And so on: Abbr. : ETC

Down

1 Threaten, as a little dog might : YAP AT
2 Van Gogh’s “The ___ Night” : STARRY
3 Comic actress Jones, formerly of 32-Down : LESLIE
4 Law enforcement org. : FBI
5 Campaigned for office : RAN
6 London’s land: Abbr. : ENG
7 Rose petal fragrance : ATTAR
8 Mexican artist Frida : KAHLO
9 Urban air pollution : SMOG
10 Comment while pulling into the driveway : WE’RE HOME
11 Intense illumination, as in old movie projectors : ARC LIGHT
12 “That doesn’t do much for me” : MEH
15 Apes cats? : MEOWS
18 Soaks (up) : SOPS
19 Protection for an outdoor reception : TENT
23 Woman’s name that looks like Roman numerals for 51 + 51 : LILI
24 River of central Germany : EDER
25 Mozart’s “___ Fan Tutte” : COSI
27 Business bigwig, for short : CEO
30 Product of Shell or ExxonMobil : OIL
32 NBC comedy show, in brief : SNL
34 When it comes down to it : AT BOTTOM
35 Steadiness, as in leadership : SURE HAND
36 This Greek letter: ψ : PSI
37 Trillion: Prefix : TERA-
38 Lots and lots : A TON
39 Woody ___, bartender on “Cheers” : BOYD
40 Program that spits out spam : BOT
43 Caesar’s rebuke to Brutus : ET TU?
44 Memos : NOTES
46 James ___, author who won a posthumous Pulitzer : AGEE
47 Country singer Morgan : LORRIE
48 Try to hit, as a gnat : SWAT AT
51 Virginia who wrote “Mrs. Dalloway” : WOOLF
52 Free, as a bank account : NO-FEE
53 “Bye Bye Bye” boy band : NSYNC
55 Open ___ (prepare to pay later) : A TAB
57 Hit the slopes : SKI
58 Permit : LET
59 “Now ___ seen everything!” : I’VE
60 One of three things tried by Goldilocks : BED