"Solo Performers" by benchen71

[edestlin]

Like DrTom, I guessed the answer from what I had found but I'm not completely sure how to get to that answer. I think I see it, but I look forward to seeing the explanation. It's just not my week!

[Cinny]

Slogged across the moat, but I am still missing one part of the answer. I only know 2 of these artists. Glad my submission was right, because I can't Google anymore tonight. Tough one, Ben.

[DebbieC]

I already had the info/performers that the nudges lead to - just don't know what to do with them!

First letters?

Thanks for the response. Still not seeing it. Maybe I don't havre enought single-name performers. Found six . . . .

[benchen71]

Nearly at the end of the second day, and the early nudges appear to have helped some:

rjy
BrennerTJ
kurtalert
lbray53
markhr
edestlin
Cindy Heisler
SeamusOL
Darrell
woozy

That brings us to 22.

[sharkicicles]

Well I was literally listening to one of the artists at the time of solving and managed to miss them in the grid…

This was a fun one. Thanks Ben!

[jhseeman]

Finally had some time to catch up on this weeks puzzles.
Crossed the Moat but had to jump the last bit, will wait for the summation to find out my missing parts of the bridge across the moat.
Didn't use nudges.

Thanks Ben.

[benchen71]

A quick solver update for you:

JHSeeman
Sharkicicles
Laura M
Johnny Luau
ReB
Carolyn

We're up to 28, which is low for what I thought would be a "week 2". Ah well, I guess I can't win 'em all!

[benchen71]

There have been no more solvers, so here's the answer to "Solo Performers":

I'm afraid the central clue confused potential solvers who found NAME quickly but then struggled to identify the hidden artists. One issue was that RZA and OMI were not hiding in the longest entries. So if I was to edit this one, I would put a black square in CUTFLOWERS and AYEAYESIR. Obviously this would change the grid entries in these regions, but it might have made it fractionally easier.

This whole puzzle came about because I wanted to use ENYA as part of a meta mechanism, since she appears so frequently in crosswords!

[KayW]

DNF for me this week. I found everybody but RZA and OMI - and I couldn't find those even by googling "list of mononymous celebrities". I did see SIA hiding in 45D perSIA. I tried FAKE NAME which looked promising if you use the given names of DIDO (Florian), PINK (Alecia), and SIA (Sia) Kate.

On the bright side: a while back I ordered a bag of the down-under candy Fantales after reading about them in the 9/27 MOAT "Laughter is the Best Drug". They are a very tasty candy! although a little too pricey to order from overseas on a regular basis. But now I have a small stash of celebrity trivia with which to brush up my NAME DROP-ping skills:

(and of course, I ordered it just for the trivia. The yummy candy had nothing to do with it )

[Dave C]

Focusing on the longest entries, I had FLO instead of RZA and YE instead of OMI, so it was also DNF for me.

[Dplass]

Never heard of Rza or Omi...so this was an Impossible To Finish for me.

[Laura M]

I was specifically looking/Googling for mononymous singers with 4-letter names, since everything I'd found pointed to that being the idea. I did eventually backsolve the 3-letter ones, but count me among those who have never heard of them (sorry!). My musical knowledge is very skewed toward latter-20th-century pop :-)

[MMe]

I don't think we have hit the moment yet where every string of three letters is a solo artist -- unlike airport codes: RZA and OMI are airports in Argentina and Iran.