"Close Calls"

[Al Sisti]

Need one more? This might also answer some of the notions solvers had that there might be additional layers to this meta. They were right.
Hmmm... okay, we now know that we're trying to delete ("strike") 1, then 2, then three letters from the three "strike-themed" entries. But which letters? Here's a clue: If you delete the right letter(s), not only will those deleted letters form the meta answer, but the remaining letters in each theme entry will also be a valid answer to another clue in the puzzle. And not only that, the initials of those three alternate entries, taken in grid order, will also spell out the answer to this question: "How many of those strike calls were too close to take?" (ref: Nudge 2)

[Al Sisti]

Wednesday night leaderboard update... noting a serious drop-off here.

62 Bird Lives 
63 CPJohnson 
64 minimuggle 
65 emmie 
66 cbarbee002

[Darth]

Off the... whatever it is.

Nice one! Thanks, Al!

[Al Sisti]

Thursday evening leaderboard update:

67 woozy 
68 rayyandroid 
69 Jaclyn 
70 Jeremy Smith 
71 SeamusOL 
72 Mikey G 
73 kamashdad 
74 PuzNewbie 
75 Matt M 
76 Darth 
77 mbd 
78 Steve M 
79 Sharkicicles 
80 JR 
81 Jerry Miccolis 
82 Darth

Will I hit triple digits for the first time? Two days left!!

[Al Sisti]

Friday night update:

83 Eric Porter 
84 Jimbo 
85 Adam 
86 Cate C 

[ajk]

Finally got back to this. Needed the nudges. Impressive work indeed!

[Al Sisti]

Happy Fathers’ Day, Muggles! It’s also Reveal Day for my puzzle, “Close Calls.”

Okay, it was pretty evident from the get-go that this was a baseball-themed meta… evident by the comments, which ranged from “Yeah! A baseball-themed meta!” to “Argh! I know nothing about baseball.” The title wasn’t much help – “Close Calls” would probably have led me to look for entries that were off by one letter from what I expected… and that was intentional. Having three of the clues end with “[Strike X]” was what led solvers to correctly assume we were looking at baseball. But what did “Strike X” mean? What to do with that “hint”?

Catching on that “strike” – besides being used as a noun in the usual context – could also be used as a verb, savvy solvers now read those hints as “delete 1 letter” from the first themer, etc. Okay, that could be a promising metanism… but which letters, and why? Deleting 1 letter from a 9-letter word and keeping the same order of the remaining 8 letters gives us 9 different candidates, and if we have to anagram those 8 letters, there are… a lot more. Fortunately, there was no anagramming required, and even more fortunately, there was a way to corroborate that you’d deleted the right letter(s), elsewhere in the grid.

When our closer threw his first pitch, the ump called it “Strike 1.” Striking/Deleting the “Y” from “FREEWILLY” yielded the title “FREEWILL,” which is also an alternate answer to the clue at 25A, Song from Canada’s Rush. Do the other themers follow suit? Um, yes.

FREEWILLY – Y = FREE WILL (alternate answer to 25A Song from Canada’s Rush)
THERING – ER = THING (alternate answer to 35D Addams Family character)
OUTLANDER – OUT = LANDER (alternate answer to 43D Lunar ___)

…and concatenating the deleted letters, we get “Yer Out!”, a call our closer was more than happy to hear. But was the batter happy with the calls; i.e., were they all strikes? Technically, yes (see the “strike zone box” below), but two of them could have been called a ball by the ump… so, strike or ball, were too close for the batter to take. And coincidentally enough, when we take the initials of the “alternate answer” clues, in grid order, they spell out “TWO,” which I used as my corroborative nudge, “"How many of those strike calls were too close to take?"

.
While I didn’t get to triple-digit solvers, we got pretty close. Out of the 91 correct solvers, the randomly-picked winner of either a Utica Club keepsake, or a Blarney Rebel Band CD, or $15 donation to any charity is Dow Jones. Congrats; shoot me a message and let me know what prize you want (including the Contest Crosswords Combating Cancer (CCCC))

I’ll be back soon with another meta, trying to hit that triple-digit milestone. In the meantime, remember your father today… besides your mother, he’s one of the most important parents you had!

[bhamren]

On a whim, after grid was done, I saw YER in Tom Sawyer ant OUT in Outlander and submitted YER OUT and to my surprise it was right

[dsbened]

The clue for 59D is way too funny!