The Onion February 16 2011

I'm two updates behind! I need to quickly bust these out before I get to a point where I am too far in the hole to dig myself out.

By: Deb Amlen
Difficulty: 3/5
Enjoyability: 5/5
Theme: Road to Hell

Theme

Recommended listening: I'm eschewing the too obvious Highway To Hell from AC/DC in favor of Drivin' n Cryin's Straight To Hell. The live version. From the live album that you really ought to listen to if you haven't before.

Okay. Word ladder, from ROAD to HELL. You'll see one letter change in each subsequent clue answer until we get to the end. Check it out.

• 1A Like the intentions the starred clues are paved with (GOOD)
• 23A *One way (and the beginning of a word ladder) (ROAD)
• 32A *Go through volumes (READ)
• 45A *Noodle or noggin (HEAD)
• 56A *Grasped (HELD)
• 71A *Fire down below? (and the end of the word ladder) (HELL)

I just love the symmetry of it. Very first across clue is GOOD, and the very last one is HELL. Beautiful.

What I missed

There are two clues that I confidently, unhesitatingly filled in only to discover later that I answered them completely wrong.

• 18A Bartletts' kin (BOSCS) Not JOSIAH, as my impulsively written
  
  
  This is a Bosc. Click through for a wikipedia article about a pear.
  
  
  This is a Bartlett. Click through to YouTube for the "Ignorant Tight Ass Club" scene.
• 37D ___ Wars (BOER) I put STAR. "Blank" Wars, four letters? Come on.
  
  I had not heard, before working this puzzle, of the Boer Wars, or of the Boers of South Africa. I fell down a mighty wiki hole reading up on them. This is a whole geographic, ethnic, and political event that I might never have known about were it not for this clue. (Did you know that Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch?)
  
  This is the kind of clue that makes me think working crosswords is a valuable mental and intellectual exercise.