"Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well" by benchen71

[whimsy]

Well, well, well. Whaddya know? I crossed the moat.

Thanks for the puzzle, Ben!

[Jeremy Smith]

Crossed, stormed, etc. Thanks, Ben!

[benchen71]

Solver update:

Johnny Luau
DrTom
Victor Poon
Jeremy Smith
Jaclyn
Spid4567
omnilynx
GarReaper
K7
Tim
DebbieC

That brings us up to 51. Time for late nudges!

[benchen71]

Nudges, in order of increasing blatancy:

1. There are no meta hints in the grid, but I am pretty sure you won't need one! Given the puzzle title, 5 down entries should have stuck out like a sore thumb.

2. Since the long down entries start with WELL, think of these entries as wells.

3. You want what's right at the bottom of these wells.

[ajk]

Finally found time to look at this. Speedy nudge-free solve. Fun stuff, thanks.

[benchen71]

I wasn't going to mark my total grid completions on Crosshare until I went over 40,000. But I couldn't help myself:

[Qmark]

Got to the MOAT late, but crossed and castle stormed with no nudges needed...thanks Ben!

[benchen71]

A solver update:

edestlin
ajk
Kulea
Qmark
Gutman

That's a grand total of 56. I have a busy morning tomorrow, as school goes back after two weeks of holidays. So I'm going to post the answer early...

[benchen71]

Here's the solution to "Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well":

However, a little birdy (@DrTom) told me this is untrue, and Snopes agrees so that settles it. Apologies if this made solving the meta harder than it was supposed to be!

Be that as it may, here's the song that inspired this meta: