"What Lies Beneath" by ajk

[ChrisKochmanski]

SSSolved!

I needed the nudges.

Nice!

[DrTom]

Solved with the aid of the nudges. I was doing the right type of thing, but just the wrong way and the nudges told me why I was failing.

Thanks Alan.

[rjy]

Sssolved with nudge 1… fun! Thanks, Alan!

[CPJohnson]

SSSolved, with nudges, and with help from a friend! Sometimes I just can't exit a rabbit hole.......

[ajk]

Monday leaderboard update. Thanks for solving, and as usual please let me know if I missed anyone.

[TS] Abide
[TS] Wendy Walker
1. Hector
2. Meg
3. boharr
4. Gutman
5. Capn Rick
6. Cindy Weatherman
7. HeadinHome
8. KayW
9. ReB
10. MatthewL
11. ky-mike
12. whimsy
13. MarkWoychick
14. Bird Lives
15. BarbaraK
16. Philip Chow
17. Laura M
18. frostyjhammer
19. DIS
20. michaelm
21. kurtalert
22. Schmeel
23. Pair O Ducks
24. Darth
25. damefox
26. JM
27. Bob cruise director
28. woozy
29. Dow Jones
30. DrTom
31. emmie
32. Cindy Heisler
33. Cinny
34. merlinnimue
35. CPJohnson
36. hcbirker
37. Katiedid
38. benchen71
39. Berto
40. I K Snamhcok
41. ChrisKochmanski
42. rjy
43. hoover
44. Tom Wilson

[Qmark]

Was out of town on the weekend and wasn't able to print the puzzle (my preferred method of solving) until today. Needed the asterisks (but not the nudges)...SSSolved! Thanks!

[ajk]

Mid-week update. A few more solvers to add:
45. Qmark
46. Sharkicicles
47. PuzNewbie
48. Rufus T Firefly
49. BrennerTJ
50. Jaclyn
51. ChrisCross
52. Mikey G

Thanks for solving.

[ajk]

One more additional solver, bringing us to 53 total (not too bad considering the initial snafu):
53. Darrell

[ajk]

The meta answer is TROLL.

Let's start with that rather long-winded preamble. Do you really need to know that I started teaching this week? Well, it turns out some hints were hidden in those meanderings:

Hope everyone is enjoying the last days of summer as we prepare to cross over to fall. Quite literally the last day for me, as the semester spans mid-August to mid-December, and I start teaching tomorrow. Anyway, I hope you manage to connect with the overarching concept of this one.

So hopefully that put you in the right frame of mind to notice that five symmetrically placed grid entries (whose clues eventually acquired asterisks) could also be clued as a type of bridge:
17A TRUSS
19A PONTOON
27A ISTHMUS
41A DENTURE
43A TOWER

Ok, so given the title we're looking for something that lies beneath a bridge, which might be enough to trigger the answer, especially with the mythological hint in the prompt. But we can do better than guess--what happens if we go looking beneath those words? Where would we look?

Well, it can't be the first or last letter, because there's nothing under the P in PONTOON or the I in ISTHMUS or the S in TRUSS [confession: that was an accident, but it sounds good in retrospect ]. You might also have noticed that all the theme entries have an odd number of letters. Might there be a reason for that? Indeed, if we look under the exact middle of each bridge we find the letters T R O L L, which is the answer.

Thanks again to @Abide, who had the great idea to install the TROLL, and hide it under the middle of each entry. Originally the themers were all well known bridges, but it turns out that there is some sort of global conspiracy to only use an even number of letters for famous bridge names (LONDON, RIALTO, CORANADO, MACKINAC, GOLDENGATE, PONTEVECCHIO, etc.). So things were reworked to types of bridges in order to be able to stash the TROLL in the middle. Thanks once again for solving!