A weekly meta crossword created by members of the forum. Difficulty levels will vary. Hints are usually available starting Wednesday, and solutions are posted on Sunday.
In anticipation of the football game next Sunday, the prompt for today’s MMM is:
The answer is an entertainer at a past Super Bowl Halftime show.
Some Googling may be necessary, depending on your knowledge in various categories. As for difficulty, FanDuel lays this one at 2½.
Thanks to @Abide for test solving and wise counsel and to @Joe Ross for making the theme-designating asterisks easier to distinguish from quotation marks. He has also upgraded the font you see in the .pdf below from Roboto to Nunito Sans for what our typographical team assures us is a more professional look.
Thanks to Jay @Bird Lives for stepping in last-minute with this puzzle, then his patience, counsel, & willingness to edit while we all worked out the font issue.
Really don’t know what to do with this one. I see some things that sort of have commonality, but some are just ???. Intrigued. And waiting for a nudge.
UPDATE - got a little nudge from @boharr … still took quite a while, with some lists in front of me and lots of searching searching searching. And a few extra guesses on Crosshare.
OTC and now I need a nap!
Last edited by HeadinHome on Mon Feb 05, 2024 4:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
HeadinHome wrote: Mon Feb 05, 2024 2:53 pm
Really don’t know what to do with this one. I see some things that sort of have commonality, but some are just ???. Intrigued. And waiting for a nudge.
Same here... a rabbit hole or two, but myriad dead ends. Time for the set-it-aside-and-come-back tactic
Check out "The MOAT Mini Pack of Marching Bands" here. US$5 gets you 7 Marching Bands which, hard enough on their own, now contain metas too. And once again there's a mega-meta!
I can’t do anything about technical difficulties at Crosshare. But I can offer help with other difficulties. Apparently the Fan Duel handicappers were way off in their assessment of difficulty. They’re raising the point spread.
Traditionally, Wednesday is Nudgeday (yes, we have traditions here at the MMM), so I may be jumping offsides, but since some people seem to have gotten off to a false start or no start at all, here are a couple of early nudges.
Parsing the title, one might say that solving the meta is a singular achievement.
Along similar lines, eleven Easter eggs are nestled in the clues. A couple of the clues hold more than one. These goodies are not necessary for the solution, but they might help. And it might be enjoyable just to find them and put them in your basket.
Pretty sure I have it but Crosshare will not allow me to submit. I solved on paper and now cannot get to the page where I select reveal puzzle and then go to the submission page.
EDIT: Once I revealed the nudges in Crosshare I was able to see the grid and reveal to get to the submission form.
Great puzzle Jay!
My avatar proves that it is sometimes better to be lucky than good!
HeadinHome wrote: Mon Feb 05, 2024 4:25 pm
CrossHare has been doing some interesting things… yesterday it dumped a few of my answers out and I had to fill the in again. ?
That happened to me once over this weekend. All in all though I've gotten a lot out of crosshare so I shouldn't complain too much.
OTC. Superb 
!
