Not a whole lot of obvious themed entries in this one, so where to begin? The only thing I gave you before the nudges was in the usual “hint” spot; the SE corner entry, which said “One side in a checkers game... the other is a hint to this meta.” The SE grid entry was REDS, which meant the other side was “Blacks.” Couple with the title, I had hoped solvers would deduce that they were going to “leap” over “black” [squares]. Pretty straightforward, right? Uh, apparently not. Without the nudges, I think there were two solvers.
Eventually, the nudges had you looking at five specific rows, and eventually, people saw that they could form the words:
ER_RAND
MA_TE
RUS_HIN
CA_P
GOL_D
…and solvers either saw (or found, by using OneLook) that all five could be proceeded with the word FOOLS (or FOOL’S), and by doing a quick search of Aretha Franklin songs, 32 solvers came up with the meta’s answer: “Chain of Fools” (each “Fools ___” phrase was formed by linking two partial words together, forming a “chain of fools”).
Thinking that might be too easy (ha!), I also worked super hard to create a second “hidden aha” that roughly used the same “chaining” mechanism, where I similarly linked the last word of the clue for the first part of the Fool word with the first word of the clue from which the second part was taken. Together, they formed a clue for the FOOL word. Confused? Here it is in a nutshell:
Last word of 17A with first word of 18A -- Quick Trip -- clued the word ERRAND
Last word of 26A with first word of 28A -- Close Colleague -- clued the word MATE
Last word of 39A with first word of 41A -- Burst Through -- clued the phrase RUSH IN
Last word of 47A with first word of 49A – Baseball Topper -- clued the word CAP
Last word of 64A with first word of 66A – Ring Element -- clued the word GOLD
Anyway, the reactions to this meta ranged from “my favorite” to “not my favorite” and everywhere in between. That’s fair, and it’s always a chance you take when you test the waters with a different mechanism.
The randomly selected winner of whatever she wants -- either a Blarney Rebel Band CD, or a Utica Club keepsake, or $15 donated to a charity of her choice -- is
Cinny Congratulations!!