"Hop on Pop and . . . ."

[cbarbee002]

Morning . . . uh, Afternoon Muggles! As a neophyte to the process of creating / posting a puzzle, it took me a bit to figure out how to do so (with a lot of BMac's hand-holding), so apologies for the delay. As this puzzle is one of my first efforts, please bear with its shortcomings . . . .

Also, it's somewhat daunting to follow Bird Lives and Al Sisti, but I'm thinking this puzzle at least will give you respite from the more difficult ones, as I project it to be ~1.5-ish in difficulty.

This week's puzzle is called "Hop on Pop and . . . .", which references of course a favorite book among those born in 2017 and later. Please PM me with your solutions by 4 p.m. on Sunday and as usual I'll post a leaderboard during the week a few times. I also will provide a nudge on Wednesday (which may not be needed).

Hop on Pop and.puz

Hop on Pop and.pdf

The solution to this meta is something you will need to do in order to solve. Enjoy!

[Joe Ross]

20210125 MMM cbarbee002 — Hop on Pop and... — Excel form


20210125 MMM cbarbee002 Hop on Pop and... — PDF from PUZ (Larger grid.)

[Abide]

Started on this one 30 minutes ago. Needed some Googling for bottom center. Interestingly, when I went to Youtube to verify 44-A pronunciation, a 43-D ad popped up (which I had just Googled).

Some clever cluing here, but seems tougher than a Week 1.5. Maybe chewing on a cigar will help..

[Tom Wilson]

Agreed. I think the constructor sells himself short on the difficulty factor!

[RPardoe]

Answer submitted - awaiting confirmation.
Edit - and confirmed.

[Wendy Walker]

Just like Peter, I had to Google to get some of the answers bottom-center but in the process found a great-looking recipe for 51D. I 18A'd at your clue for 36A. Time to work on the meta before yoga class.

[Dannyvee]

Confirmed correct!

[oldjudge]

Answer submitted

[Meg]

I’ve submitted. Waiting for confirmation.
And we have confirmation.🛋

[Hector]

Same. Fun mechanism; thanks, Chris!

[boharr]

Off the couch!

Confirmed and thanks again for the clever puzzle.

[Cindy]

Solved

[LesY]

Solved it. Impressive first effort, Chris!

[cbarbee002]

You may have noticed that my clueing on 56A acknowledges a missing letter "at the end" - - meant to say in the middle. Apologies - - no impact on the meta.

[cbarbee002]

Leaderboard as of this morning:

RPardoe
Dannyvee
Meg
Hector
oldjudge
Cindy
boharr
LesY

[Dplass]

Confirmed dechesterified, after a tiny nudge. Thanks for the free puzzle!

[bhamren]

Can someone throw me a nudge on 53D. I must have most of the bottom right corner wrong since I only have the last letter of 53D and the others look questionable since filling anything in these 3 spaces will not make words.

Thanks.

Edit - thanks for the nudges. I saw that I had 54D wrong also.

[Dow Jones]

Confirmed. Off the couch. There's alot of talent within this group !

[dudeski]

Nice puzzle. Nudge-aided.

[Bird Lives]

Off the couch. The idea of the mechanism occurred to me but just for a moment. It's one I've seen in cryptics every so often,but then I thought: nah, Chris doesn't seem like a cryptics kind of guy. But last night's Zoom confirmed the idea I had discarded. Thanks, Chris.