other Washington Post Sunday crossword, September 4 (contains answers)

Posted September 12, 2005 • Comments Off on Washington Post Sunday crossword, September 4 (contains answers)

Cw-050904

Title: Miner Details
Theme entries: familiar phrases containing words related to mining, defined with puns.

I feel I should mention that the scribble marks all over this one are courtesy of Josephine Rose Sedlak.

24A, The inseparable miners always worked ___: in the same VEIN
50A, The miner retired after his ___: third STRIKE
74A, The miner couldn’t work because somebody ___: took his PICK [this is the only one that isn’t any kind of a pun, which really thew me off]
103A, The hotshot miner fizzled; he was a ___: flash in the PAN
8D, THe ridiculed miner quit because he couldn’t ___: handle a DIG
15D, The disorderly miner was given ___: the bum’s RUSH
61D, The laid-off miner felt that he ___: got the SHAFT [heehee]
69D, The untruthful miner made a ___: bogus CLAIM

Things I learned, with web links so you can learn them too:

21A, Heckelphone kin: OBOE
27A, Zhou ___: ENLAI [I only mention this because I had not yet looked up the ‘new’ spelling from this exact same clue appearing in the last puzzle]
31A, “Nancy” rich kid: ROLLO
37A, WWII craft: LSTs
66A, Actor Novello: IVOR
67A, Toby filler: ALE
98A, Obliquely: AHTWART
10D, Emperor of 69 AD: OTHO [I’m curious as to whether this guy has anything to do with why the character was called Otho in Beetlejuice. I’ll also note that they used AD instead of the newly-more-acceptable CE.]
14D, Will of “The Waltons”: GEER
28D, Jabba’s slave dancer: OOLA [you gotta respect the amount of backstory they have for these minor characters]
37D, ___-majeste: LESE
51D, Greenland air base site: THULE
89D, Seceder of 1967: BIAFRA
90D, Stable hand: var.: OSTLER

Overall:
I messed up only four squares in this one (not counting the ones Josie scribbled on), all in one word (I put BEAU and it was HAUT) and got one letter (the intersection of LESE and LSTs) outright wrong. This was a cute theme, though (as I noted above) I’m not sure how “took his pick” is a pun. [hours later: ooohhhhh. took his pick.] There were 8 theme entries and a whopping 14 things I marked to look up. I’m getting stupider!