It’s still August and it’s still hot pretty much everywhere in North America. I am probably not alone in looking forward to the fall. But it will only come with time, so let’s pass some of that time solving this week’s crossword.
- Name: Mine All Mine
- Grid size: 15×15
- Number of entries: 74
- Difficulty: Medium (my solve time: 8:07)
Well we really went down a rabbit hole with this week’s puzzle – the themers are all phrases not usually used about mining that include a word that relates to mining, and clued in a punny way to make the phrase relate to mining:
- 19A: [Image in a miner’s dream?]: TUNNEL VISION – I guess if you spend 8 hours a day or more in a tunnel you may dream about it when you sleep.
- 30A: [Mining an ore site with a partner?]: IN THE SAME VEIN – Two miners working in the same area are probably working the same vein of ore.
- 38A: [Is familiar with a rock boring tool?]: KNOWS THE DRILL – After a pick, most people associate drills with mining.
- 53A: [What the dynamite crew is doing at the mine?]: HAVING A BLAST – I’d imagine working with dynamite, while dangerous, might be fun as well, and you would definitely have a blast.
This one was more difficult than I’ve found recent puzzles. It took me a while to break in – I didn’t get anything in the NW corner until I’d filled in other areas. The section around 25D was particularly hard for me; I blanked on the Beatles song, had to guess at the school, and where on earth did the clue for 26D come from? But all gettable with crosses, and my time was only about 30 seconds slower than my average, even with seeking out and correcting a typo.
Canadian content:
- 25D: [Trade sch. in Edmonton}: NAIT – I believe we’ve seen the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in here before.
- 37A: [The “A” of 25-Down]: ALTA – Knowing that there was a A in 25D was actually quite helpful, and I had a hunch it stood for Alberta (rather then Academy or something else).
Other stuff:
- 11D: [Joky suffix with “pay”]: OLA – Coincidentally, I just listened to a podcast about the “new payola” in podcasting, where guests on podcasts are paying to be interviewed on them and there’s a lot of discussion about the ethics of this arrangement.
- 21A: [Suffix chlor- and fluor-]: INE – On review, I’m surprised that INE came to me quicker than IDE – wonder how many solvers that got.
- 26D: [11th most popular girl’s name in 1898]: EDNA – I have many questions… I first read this as 1998 and thought that might be the year after “Frozen” came out and so initially thought it was “Elsa.” But. then I reread the year and did a double take – 1898?! 11th most popular? Why not “Poet ____ St. Vincent Millay”? The miracle of crossword puzzles – now I know something I would likely never have come across otherwise.
- 27A: [Tiny river isle]: AIT – Kind of surprised we don’t see this in more crosswords – two vowels and an often used consonant should frequently come in handy for constructors.
- 30D: [Words after call or knock]: IT OFF – I would have got it quicker if the clue was “Words after shake.”
- 33D: [____ of tears]: VALE – Pretty proud of myself that I immediately put in vale rather than veil or vail.
- 50D: [Ear-tugging Burnett]: CAROL – My Mom loved “The Carol Burnett Show” so I saw it a lot growing up. The “Gone with the Wind” parody is possibly one of the funniest skits ever shown on television. So Carol is the source for this week’s quote.
Quote of the week:
“No one ever said life was fair. Just eventful.”
– Carol Burnett