LA Times Crossword 13 Jul 23, Thursday

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Constructed by: Brian Callahan
Edited by: Patti Varol

Today’s Reveal Answer: Whoville

Themed answers each end with the family name of someone WHO lent their name to a city, a city name that includes the suffix “-VILLE”. Clever …

• 61A Town targeted by the Grinch, and an apt description of the ends of the answers to the starred clues? : WHOVILLE

• 16A *Nobel-winning mathematician portrayed in “A Beautiful Mind” : JOHN NASH (giving “Nashville”)
• 23A *”Captain America: The First Avenger” star : CHRIS EVANS (giving “Evansville”)
• 37A *Gospel legend with the hit “Move On Up a Little Higher” : MAHALIA JACKSON (giving “Jacksonville”)
• 50A *Tennis great for whom the ESPY Courage Award is named : ARTHUR ASHE (giving “Asheville”)

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

Bill’s time: 5m 59s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

13 Four-award acronym : EGOT

The acronym “EGOT” stands for “Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony”, and is a reference to performers who have won all four awards.

16 *Nobel-winning mathematician portrayed in “A Beautiful Mind” : JOHN NASH (giving “Nashville”)

The wonderful 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind” was adapted from a very successful book of the same name written by Sylvia Nasar. Both book and film tell the life story of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe on the big screen). Nash was a mathematician and Nobel Laureate who struggled with paranoid schizophrenia. Sadly, Nash and his wife died in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike in 2015. They were on their way home from the airport, returning from Norway where Nash had been awarded the Nobel Prize.

The Tennessee city of Nashville was founded in 1779 near a stockade in the Cumberland River valley called Fort Nashborough. Both the settlement and the fort were named for General Francis Nash, a war hero who died in combat during the American Revolution.

18 Website bigwig, for short : ADMIN

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.

19 “Raise your glass!” : A TOAST!

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 …

23 *”Captain America: The First Avenger” star : CHRIS EVANS (giving “Evansville”)

Chris Evans’ Hollywood career really took off when he was cast as the Human Torch in the “Fantastic Four” movies starting in 2005. He portrayed another superhero in 2011, playing the title role in “Captain America: The First Avenger”.

“Captain America: The First Avenger” is a superhero film released in 2011 based on the Marvel Comics character. Chris Evans appears in the title role. This one is set in WWII, so I might take a look one day …

Evansville, Indiana is the largest city in the southern part of the state. It sits on a bend of the Ohio River, and is sometimes known as “River City”. The city was named for Robert Morgan Evans, who was the tenth Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives. He was also very influential in the development of the city.

27 Some Pac-12 athletes : UTES

The Utah Utes are the athletic teams of the University of Utah.

34 Casual eatery : BISTRO

“Bistro” was originally a Parisian slang term describing a little wine shop or restaurant.

37 *Gospel legend with the hit “Move On Up a Little Higher” : MAHALIA JACKSON (giving “Jacksonville”)

Mahalia Jackson was an African-American gospel singer who was known as the first Queen of Gospel Music. She recorded many records, including 12 that went gold, i.e. sold more than a million copies each.

41 Sheepish ones? : OVINES

The Latin word for “sheep” is “ovis”, giving us the adjective “ovine” meaning “like a sheep”.

42 McFlurry cookie : OREO

A McFlurry is an ice cream dessert served in McDonald’s restaurants. A McFlurry is made from soft-serve ice cream, to which are added crushed candy bars or cookies. Cleverly, a McFlurry is mixed on a machine with the mixing blade then doubling as a spoon with which one eats it.

44 Sheepish one? : EWE

An adult male sheep is a ram, although a castrated ram is known as a wether. An adult female is a ewe, and a young sheep is a lamb.

50 *Tennis great for whom the ESPY Courage Award is named : ARTHUR ASHE (giving “Asheville”)

The Arthur Ashe Courage Award has been presented annually since 1993 as part of the ESPY Awards. Named for tennis great Arthur Ashe, the Courage Award is presented to individuals whose contributions “transcend sports”. The list of recipients includes Howard Cosell (1995), Muhammad Ali (1997), Billie Jean King (1999), Nelson Mandela (2009), Caitlyn Jenner (2015) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver (2017).

Samuel Ashe was the Governor of North Carolina from 1795 to 1798. North Carolina’s Ashe County and the cities of Asheboro and Asheville are named in his honor.

55 Meditative discipline : ZEN

Zen is a Buddhist school that developed its own tradition in China back in the 7th century AD. “Zen” is a Japanese spelling of the Chinese word “chan”, which in turn derives from the Sanskrit word “dhyana” meaning “meditation”.

61 Town targeted by the Grinch, and an apt description of the ends of the answers to the starred clues? : WHOVILLE

The Grinch is the title character in Dr. Seuss’s 1957 children’s book “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” He is a grouchy creature who lives as a hermit in a cave outside the town of Whoville. The Grinch’s only companion is his dog Max. Based on Seuss’s hero, we now use the term “grinch” for someone who is opposed to Christmas festivities or who is coarse and greedy in general.

63 Kayak kin : CANOE

The boat known as a canoe takes its name from the Carib word “kenu” meaning “dugout”. It was Christopher Columbus who brought “kenu” into Spanish as “canoa”, which evolved into our English “canoe”.

There is a type of boat used by Inuit people called a “kayak”. The term “kayak” means “man’s boat”, whereas “umiak” means “woman’s boat”.

64 Arctic diving bird : AUK

Auks are penguin-like sea birds that live in colder northern waters including the Arctic. Like penguins, auks are great swimmers, but unlike penguins, auks can fly.

Down

1 “This seems familiar” feeling : DEJA VU

“Déjà vu” is French for “already seen”.

4 Volcano between Messina and Catania : ETNA

Messina is a port, and the third largest city, on the Italian island of Sicily. The city’s natural harbor has a curved shape like that of a scythe. When founded by Greek colonists in the 8th century BC, the settlement’s first name was “Zancle”, from the Greek word for “scythe”. The port gives its name the Strait of Messina, the narrow passage between the island of Sicily and the Italian mainland.

The Metropolitan City of Catania (“Province of Catania” prior to 2015) is not only home to the city of Catania, but is also home to Mount Etna, Europe’s largest volcano. It is the second largest city on the island of Sicily (after Palermo), and has a long and rich cultural history. Today, Catania is known as a center for technology industries, earning it the nickname “European Silicon Valley”.

9 Insignia or LG product, for short : LED TV

Insignia is a house brand of electronic and electrical devices sold by Best Buy.

LG is a very large South Korean manufacturer of electronics, chemicals and telecom products. The company used to be known as Lucky-Goldstar, whence the initialism “LG”.

10 Colonial soldiers? : ARMY ANTS

Army ants are a collection of over two hundred different species of ants. Each species is known for aggressively raiding a certain area en masse, foraging for food. Army ants also stay on the move, never building permanent nests.

11 Brief “That’s wildly personal” : TMI

Too much information (TMI)

12 Personal ID : SSN

Social Security number (SSN)

17 Defense advisory gp. : NSC

The National Security Council (NSC) was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1947. It is chaired by the sitting president and meets in the White House Situation Room.

21 Meteorologist’s pressure line : ISOBAR

An isobar is a line on a weather map connecting points of equal barometric pressure.

24 McEntire in the Country Music Hall of Fame : REBA

Reba McEntire is a country music singer and television actress. McEntire starred in her own sitcom “Reba” that aired on the WB and the CW cable channels from 2001 to 2007. She is sometimes referred to as “The Queen of Country”.

The Country Music Hall of Fame was chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964, and opened as a museum in Nashville in 1967. Home to one of the most extensive music collections in the world, the museum relocated to a 140,000 square-foot facility in 2001. This new building was expanded to double its size in 2014.

25 Archie’s boss, in detective fiction : NERO

Archie Goodwin is a character in the “Nero Wolfe” series of detective novels by Rex Stout. Goodwin’s job is secretary and chauffeur to Wolfe, but he also serves as the narrator of the stories.

32 Flamenco shout : OLE!

Flamenco is a style of Spanish music and dance. The origin of the word “flamenco” isn’t clearly understood, but the explanation that seems most credible to me is that it comes from Flanders in Northern Europe. Given that “flamenco” is the Spanish word for “Flemish” and Flanders is home to the Flemish people it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

33 Scrooges : MISERS

Ebeneezer Scrooge is the main character in the novella “A Christmas Carol” By Charles Dickens. Through the course of the story, Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, who show him the consequences of his miserly behavior. His name “Scrooge” has become a part of the English language as a term to describe someone who is stingy and mean with money.

35 Raw-bar need : ICE

Almost all of the shellfish consumed at a raw bar is not only uncooked, it is also still alive.

36 “__, Vikings”: Minnesota fight song : SKOL

The Minnesota Vikings joined the NFL as an expansion team in 1960. Founded in Minnesota, the team’s name reflects the location’s reputation as a center of Scandinavian-American culture.

37 NYC home of van Gogh’s “Starry Night” : MOMA

“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, and was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1941 …

40 Trader __ : JOE’S

Trader Joe’s is a grocery store chain based in Monrovia, California that was founded in 1979 by Joe Coulombe. Trader Joe’s is very popular where I live, even though it stocks less than 10% of the items found in a typical grocery store. 80% of the items on the shelves are sold under a Trader Joe’s brand name, and are obviously chosen well. One of the more successful items is Charles Shaw wine, known as “Two Buck Chuck” here in California as it sold for many years at a price of $1.99.

45 Guitar pedal : WAH-WAH

A wah-wah (also “wa-wa”) pedal connected to an electric guitar alters the tone of the signal created so that it mimics the human voice.

47 Rhododendron variety : AZALEA

Azaleas are very toxic to most animals. If you go to Korea, you might come across “Tug Yonju”, which is azalea wine made from the plant’s blossoms. Azaleas are usually grown as shrubs, but are also seen as small trees, and often indoors.

Rhododendron is a genus of woody plants that usually have showy flowers. The rhododendron is the national flower of Nepal, where the bloom is also considered edible.

48 Basement : CELLAR

A cellar is a room, or a set of rooms, below the ground floor of a building. The term “cellar” comes from the Latin “cellarium”, which means the same thing. “Cellarium”, in a literal sense, describes a collection of “cells”, a group of storage rooms.

51 Capital on the Red River Delta : HANOI

Hanoi (“Hà Nội” in Vietnamese) was the capital of North Vietnam, and Saigon the capital of South Vietnam. After the Vietnam War, Hanoi was made capital of the reunified state. Saigon, the larger metropolis, was renamed to Ho Chi Minh City. Hanoi is located in the delta of the Red River, and is just over 50 miles from the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea.

53 What absent-minded students play? : HOOKY

Apparently the term “hooky” comes from “hoekje”, the Dutch name for the game hide-and-seek. To play hooky is to shirk one’s responsibility, as in a schoolkid taking a day off without permission.

54 Ltr. holder : ENV

An envelope (env.) might hold a letter (ltr.).

59 Obama-era legislation, initially : ACA

The correct name for what has been dubbed “Obamacare” is the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (ACA).

60 Spam container : CAN

Spam is a precooked meat product that is sold in cans. It was introduced by Hormel Foods in 1937. The main meat ingredients are pork shoulder meat and ham. The name “Spam” was chosen as the result of a competition at Hormel, with the winner earning himself a hundred dollars. According to the company, the derivation of the name “Spam” is a secret known by only a few former executives, but the speculation is that it stands for “spiced ham” or “shoulders of pork and ham”. Spam is particularly popular in Hawaii, so popular that it is sometimes referred to as “the Hawaiian steak”.

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