0304-13 New York Times Crossword Answers 4 Mar 13, Monday

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Solution to today’s crossword in the New York Times
Solution to today’s SYNDICATED New York Times crossword in all other publications

CROSSWORD SETTER: Ian Livengood
THEME: Sounds Greek … each of today’s themed answers ends with a syllable that sounds like the Greek letter RHO:

16A. Legal thriller author who wrote “Presumed Innocent” : SCOTT TUROW
22A. Illustrious warrior returning from battle : CONQUERING HERO
36A. King Tut, e.g. : EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
47A. Four-time Daytona 500 winner : CALE YARBOROUGH
58A. Journalists’ office : NEWS BUREAU
35D. Greek letter that sounds like the end of 16-, 22-, 36-, 47- or 58-Across : RHO

COMPLETION TIME: 6m 57s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0

Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across

1. ___-Saxon : ANGLO
Germanic tribes invaded Great Britain from the early 5th century and created the nation that we now call England. The Anglo-Saxons, as these tribes came to be called, held sway in the country until 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxons were descendants of three Germanic tribes:

– The Angles, from Angeln in Northern Germany (and the tribe that gave the name “England”).
– The Saxons, from Lower Saxony and Holland.
– The Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula in Denmark.

9. Daffodil-to-be : BULB
Daffodils are more properly called narcissus plants, a whole genus in the Amaryllis family. Ancient Greeks believe that after the god Narcissus died (while obsessed with his reflection in a pool), his remains were turned in the Narcissus flower, hence the name. Back in the British Isles, the daffodil is most famous as the national flower of Wales. It is also remembered for its appearance in Wordsworth’s poem:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;

13. Big name in plastic wrap : SARAN
What’s known as plastic wrap in America, we call cling-film in Ireland. Plastic wrap was one of those unintended inventions, a byproduct of a development program to create a hard plastic cover for cars.

15. Norway’s capital : OSLO
Oslo, the capital of Norway, is an ancient city that was founded around 1048. The medieval city was destroyed by fire in 1624 and was rebuilt by the Danish-Norwegian king Christian IV and renamed to Christiana. In 1877 there was an official change of the spelling of the city’s name to “Kristiana”, and then more recently in 1925 the name was restored to the original Oslo. Things have almost gone full circle and now the center of Oslo, the area that would have been contained by the original medieval walls, has apparently been renamed to Christiana.

16. Legal thriller author who wrote “Presumed Innocent” : SCOTT TUROW
“Presumed Innocent” is a great debut novel by Scott Turow, first published in 1987. The screen adaption in 1990 stars Harrison Ford and does justice (pun intended!) to the book. Turow came out with a sequel to “Presumed Innocent” in 2010 called “Innocent”. It’s going on my Christmas list …

18. One-named supermodel from Somalia : IMAN
Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid is a Somalia-born supermodel who goes simply by the name “Iman” these days. Iman is smart cookie. Imam has a degree in Political Science and is fluent in five languages: Somali, Arabic, Italian, French and English. Since 1992 Iman has been married to British rock star David Bowie.

20. End of the Greek alphabet : OMEGA
Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and is the one that looks like a horseshoe. The word “omega” literally means “great O” (O-mega). Compare this with the Greek letter Omicron meaning “little O” (O-micron).

21. Thyroid, for instance : GLAND
The thyroid gland is found in the neck, just below the Adam’s apple. The gland produces several thyroid hormones, some of which control the rate at which the body uses energy i.e. the body’s rate of metabolism.

27. Visitors to baby Jesus : MAGI
“Magi” is the plural of the Latin word “magus”, a term applied to someone who was able to read the stars. Hence, magi is commonly used with reference to the “wise men from the East” who followed the star and visited Jesus soon after he was born.

36. King Tut, e.g. : EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
King Tut is a name commonly used for the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen. Tutankhamen may not have been the most significant of the pharaohs historically, but he is the most famous today largely because of the discovery of his nearly intact tomb in 1922. Prior to this find, any Egyptian tombs uncovered by archaeologists had been ravaged by grave robbers. Tutankhamen’s magnificent burial mask is one of the most recognizable of all Egyptian artifacts.

42. Nevada city on the Humboldt River : ELKO
The city of Elko came into being in 1868 as a settlement built around the eastern end of a railway line that was constructed from California and that was destined for Utah. When that section of the line was completed. the construction crews moved on towards the Nevada/Utah border, and the settlement was left behind to eventually form the city of Elko

43. “Little” Dickens girl : NELL
“The Old Curiosity Shop” by Charles Dickens tells the story of little 14-year-old Nell Trent and her grandfather who live in the Old Curiosity Shop in London. If you visit London, there actually is an “Old Curiosity Shop”, in Westminster. It is an establishment selling odds and ends, old curiosities, and is believed to have been the inspiration for the shop in the Dickens story. The building has been around since the 1500s, but the name “The Old Curiosity Shop” was added after the book was published.

45. Bovine mouthful : CUD
Ruminants are animals that “chew the cud”. Ruminants eat vegetable matter but cannot extract any nutritional value from cellulose without the help of microbes in the gut. Ruminants collect roughage in the first part of the alimentary canal, allowing microbes to work on it. The partially digested material (the cud) is regurgitated into the mouth so that the ruminant can chew the food more completely exposing more surface area for microbes to do their work.

47. Four-time Daytona 500 winner : CALE YARBOROUGH
Cale Yarborough is a former NASCAR driver and owner. Yarborough was the first NASCAR driver to appear on the cover of “Sports Illustrated”.

56. “No seating” letters on Broadway : SRO
Standing Room Only (SRO).

57. ___ the Red (Viking explorer) : ERIC
According to Icelandic tradition, Erik the Red was the man responsible for founding the first Nordic settlement in Greenland. Erik had a famous son, the explorer Leif Ericson.

62. Armstrong of jazz : LOUIS
Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans in 1900. Armstrong had a poor upbringing, and only stayed in school till he was 11 years old. The exact origin of Louis’s nickname “Satchmo” seems to be a little unclear. One story is that he used to dance for pennies in New Orleans as a youngster and would hide those pennies in his mouth away from the other kids. For this he earned the nickname “satchel mouth”, which was shortened to “Satchmo”.

Down
1. Part of N.A.A.C.P.: Abbr. : ASSOC
The full name of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is remarkable in that it actually still uses the old but offensive term “colored people”. The NAACP was founded in 1909, by a group that included suffragette and journalist Mary White Ovington, wealthy socialist William English Walling, and civil rights activist Henry Moscowitz. Another member of the founding group was W. E. B. Du Bois, the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard University.

4. 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”.

6. Small Welsh dog : CORGI
The Welsh corgi is a herding dog, and one of the oldest breeds in Britain. Corgis aren’t speedy enough to do their job by running around livestock like collies, and instead nip at the heels.

7. M.I.T. business school name : SLOAN
MIT’s School of Management is named for MIT graduate Alfred P. Sloan, former chairman of General Motors.

8. AAA offering : TOW
The American Automobile Association (AAA) is a not-for-profit organization focused on lobbying, provision of automobile servicing, and selling of automobile insurance. The AAA was founded in 1902 in Chicago and published the first of its celebrated hotel guides back in 1917.

10. Law officer wearing a star : US MARSHAL
The office of US Marshal is the oldest federal law enforcement office in the country, and was created in 1789. The federal agency called the United States Marshal Service (USMS) was formed in 1969. Included in the list of duties of the USMS is the apprehension of federal fugitives, transportation of federal prisoners and the protection of endangered federal witnesses.

11. Grassy expanse in the Southwest : LLANO
“Llano” is the Spanish word for “plain”.

12. Name said before and after James : BOND
James Bond was of course the creation of the writer Ian Fleming. Fleming “stole” the James Bond name from an American ornithologist. The number 007 was also “stolen”, from the real life English spy John Dee who was active in the late 16th century. Dee would sign his reports to Queen Elizabeth I with a stylized 007 to indicate that the reports were for “her eyes only”.

17. Some Feds : T-MEN
A T-man is a law-enforcement agent of the US Treasury.

21. West African nation : GHANA
The name “Ghana” means “warrior king” in the local language. The British established a colony they called Gold Coast in 1874, later to become Ghana, as part of the scramble by Europeans to settle as much of Africa as they could. One of Ghana’s most famous sons is Kofi Annan, the diplomat who served as General Secretary of the UN for ten years until the beginning of 2007.

24. Artist Vincent van ___ : GOGH
Vincent Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who seems to have had a very tortured existence. Van Gogh only painted for the last ten years of his life, and enjoyed very little celebrity while alive. Today many of his works are easily recognized, and fetch staggering sums in auction houses. Van Gogh suffered from severe depression for many of his final years. When he was only 37, he walked into a field with a revolver and shot himself in the chest. He managed to drag himself back to the inn where he was staying but died there two days later.

27. “Whatever” : MEH
“Meh!” is one of those terms unfamiliar to me outside of crosswords. It is a modern colloquialism meaning “I’m not great, but not bad”.

29. Sporting venue : GYMNASIUM
Our word “gymnasium” comes from the Greek “gymnasion” meaning “public place where exercise is taken”. The Greek term comes from “gymnos” meaning “naked”, as that physical training was usually done unclothed.

31. “The Lord of the Rings” tree creature : ENT
Ents are those tree-like creatures that live in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth in his series of books “The Lord of the Rings”. “Ent” is an Old English word for “giant”.

32. Wall St. debut : IPO
An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is the very first offer of stock for sale by a company on the open market. In other words, an IPO marks the first time that a company is traded on a public exchange. Companies have an IPO to raise capital to expand (usually).

35. Greek letter that sounds like the end of 16-, 22-, 36-, 47- or 58-Across : RHO
Rho is the Greek letter that looks just like our Roman letter “p”.

37. Accounts of Scheherazade : TALES
Scheherazade was a Persian queen of legend, and the storyteller in the wonderful “One Thousand and One Nights”.

46. Andress of “Dr. No” : URSULA
The actor Ursula Andress was quite the sex symbol in the sixties, famously playing Honey Ryder in the first James Bond movie “Dr. No”. Andress was born in Switzerland and is fluent in English, French, Italian, German and her native Swiss-German.

47. Yule song : CAROL
The word “carol” came into English via the Old French word “carole”, which was a “dance in a ring”. When “carol” made it into English, about 1300 AD, the term was used to describe a dance as well as a joyful song. Around 1500 AD, carols that were sung came to be associated with Christmas.

“Yule” celebrations coincide with Christmas, and the words “Christmas” and “Yule” have become synonymous in much of the world. However, Yule was originally a pagan festival celebrated by Germanic peoples. The name “Yule” comes from the Old Norse word “jol” that was used to describe the festival.

52. Quest in a Monty Python movie : GRAIL
The word “grail” comes into English via French and Latin from Greek, and means a “shallow cup”. The Holy Grail is a sacred object in some Christian traditions, usually said to be the cup, plate or chalice used by Jesus at the Last Supper. The grail also features in Arthurian legend, a Monty Python movie, and in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”.

53. Monopoly purchase before a hotel : HOUSE
The commercial game of Monopoly is supposedly a remake of “The Landlord’s Game” created in 1903 by a Quaker woman called Lizzie Phillips. Phillips used her game as a tool to explain the single tax theory of American economist Henry George. The Landlord’s Game was first produced commercially in 1924. The incredibly successful derivative game called Monopoly was introduced in 1933 by Charles Darrow, who became a very rich man when Parker Brothers bought the rights to the game just two years later in 1935.

54. Old VHS rival : BETA
The video standard known as VHS is more fully referred to as the Video Home System. VHS was one of many standards touted by various manufacturers in the seventies. The biggest rival to VHS was of course Betamax, but we all knew which of the two standards won the final round in that fight.

58. Homer’s neighbor on “The Simpsons” : NED
Ned Flanders lives next door to Homer on TV’s “The Simpsons”. Ned is voiced by actor Harry Shearer and has been around since the very first episode aired in 1989.

59. CD-___ : ROM
CD-ROM stands for “compact disc read only memory”. The name indicates that you can read information from the disc (like a standard music CD for example), but you cannot write to it. You can also buy a CD-RW, which stands for “compact disc – rewritable”, with which you can read data and also write over it multiple times using a suitable CD drive.

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For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. ___-Saxon : ANGLO
6. Chicago winter clock setting: Abbr. : CST
9. Daffodil-to-be : BULB
13. Big name in plastic wrap : SARAN
14. Performance for one : SOLO
15. Norway’s capital : OSLO
16. Legal thriller author who wrote “Presumed Innocent” : SCOTT TUROW
18. One-named supermodel from Somalia : IMAN
19. “___ see now!” (“Aha!”) : OH, I
20. End of the Greek alphabet : OMEGA
21. Thyroid, for instance : GLAND
22. Illustrious warrior returning from battle : CONQUERING HERO
25. Diner coffee container : URN
26. Rowing implements : OARS
27. Visitors to baby Jesus : MAGI
30. Fake : FEIGN
33. Laugh syllable : HAR
36. King Tut, e.g. : EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
40. Skirt line : HEM
41. Increase : ADD TO
42. Nevada city on the Humboldt River : ELKO
43. “Little” Dickens girl : NELL
45. Bovine mouthful : CUD
47. Four-time Daytona 500 winner : CALE YARBOROUGH
54. Cover all the ___ : BASES
55. Wanders : ROAMS
56. “No seating” letters on Broadway : SRO
57. ___ the Red (Viking explorer) : ERIC
58. Journalists’ office : NEWS BUREAU
60. Talk up : TOUT
61. Finales : ENDS
62. Armstrong of jazz : LOUIS
63. Something for the needy : ALMS
64. When the sun is out : DAY
65. Enough : AMPLE

Down
1. Part of N.A.A.C.P.: Abbr. : ASSOC
2. Cantina chip : NACHO
3. Body part often pulled in sports : GROIN
4. Back muscle, for short : LAT
5. Traveling, as a band : ON TOUR
6. Small Welsh dog : CORGI
7. M.I.T. business school name : SLOAN
8. AAA offering : TOW
9. Water heater : BOILER
10. Law officer wearing a star : US MARSHAL
11. Grassy expanse in the Southwest : LLANO
12. Name said before and after James : BOND
14. One in court : SUER
17. Some Feds : T-MEN
21. West African nation : GHANA
23. One-liner : QUIP
24. Artist Vincent van ___ : GOGH
27. “Whatever” : MEH
28. Ripen : AGE
29. Sporting venue : GYMNASIUM
30. Fleeting craze : FAD
31. “The Lord of the Rings” tree creature : ENT
32. Wall St. debut : IPO
34. Just fine : A-OK
35. Greek letter that sounds like the end of 16-, 22-, 36-, 47- or 58-Across : RHO
37. Accounts of Scheherazade : TALES
38. Sit ___ by : IDLY
39. Make over : REDO
44. Picks via ballot : ELECTS
45. Hair parter : COMB
46. Andress of “Dr. No” : URSULA
47. Yule song : CAROL
48. Sporting venue : ARENA
49. Rambunctious : ROWDY
50. Low-voiced chorus member : BASS
51. Deplete : USE UP
52. Quest in a Monty Python movie : GRAIL
53. Monopoly purchase before a hotel : HOUSE
54. Old VHS rival : BETA
58. Homer’s neighbor on “The Simpsons” : NED
59. CD-___ : ROM

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