The answer to this meta, as found by 44 solvers, was
MISTAKES.
Where to begin? Hmmm… There’s nothing special about the grid, no obvious themed entries, just the usual crossword stuff with some standard trivia facts. Well, the fact is, eight of those facts – so widely unquestioningly assumed to be true – are wrong.
I tried to come up with clues that would yield an answer in the grid that wouldn’t be questioned or raise any obvious alarms, but that, upon further web confirmation, would result in the correct answer. In grid order:
1A: The grid answer that fit was SECRETARIAT, but the real one voted “best horse” was MAN-O-WAR.
4D: It was not Rick who said that phrase in Casablanca (ahem, the greatest movie ever), but ILSA. And nowhere in the movie did anyone ever say “Play it again, Sam.”
12D: The prolific juicer with all the taters was not Barry BONDS, but Sammy SOSA.
27A: Thomas EDISON was a DC guy; it was Nikola TESLA who believed in the power of AC.
39A: Maine was a good guess, and in many regards (in reality and the web), it is the easternmost state. But because the Aleutian Islands spill over the 180° meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere, ALASKA is the easternmost state. It’s also the northernmost and westernmost.
49A: It’s the KELVIN scale whose “zero point” is at 0°. The “zero point” on the CELSIUS scale is -273°.
52D: Lake ERIE is the southernmost of the Great Lakes.
…and finally, 70A. William Shakespeare did have a lot of quotable lines… but this isn’t one of them. Sir Walter Scott penned this in his 1808 poem, Marmion. This misattributed quote is what gave me the idea for the meta.
The initials of all the correct answers in grid order spells MISTAKES, which certainly are pervasive on the Web. (Kids, please don’t use the Web to research your essays!). Oh, and the "bonus mistake" was one I made: TNT is not the same as dynamite, so Alfred Nobel did not invent TNT; he invented dynamite, earning me a "D" grade in bulletproofing. Okay, and OTRE and TRE got flagged for not being the Spanish translations I claimed them to be, but according to Spanish translation web pages, they were correct -- if not the most common. And of course, the web is always correct.
So, most of you guys enjoyed it, but some didn’t (not counting the “mistakes” I made). All I can say to that is to echo the words of the great philosopher, Ricky Nelson, who said “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.” (And then he flew into a mountain, but I digress). I can understand (kind of) that people don’t like having to use Google, but since that was the gist of the meta, it had to be done. Sorry, not sorry. That should cover it.
The random winner this week was
Wendy Walker, who will receive her choice of a) a Blarney Rebel Band CD, b) a Utica Club keepsake or c) a $15 donation I will make to a charity of her choice (Wendy, PM me with your address so I can get it to you).
Anyway, thanks for solving, and I hope to be back on a Monday in the not-too-distant future!