IMPORTANT NOTE: Change of plans here — instead of today being January’s Week 5, today will be February’s Week 1…and then we will have a rare February Week 5 on Friday, February 28th to make up for the missing one. Solve today’s meta to find out why.

LAST WEEK’S META:

Seven famous (-ish?) names were last week’s theme entries, but solvers only got the last name:

18-A: [He wrote “Super Sad True Love Story”] = SHTEYNGART
39-A: [He wrote the book “Hamilton” on which the musical was based] = CHERNOW
53-A: [He did tricks on a motorcycle] = KNIEVEL
55-A: [He is known for decades of NFL commentary] = MICHAELS
60-A: [He was mayor of New York City from 1974 to 1977] = BEAME
61-A: [He was chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014] = BERNANKE
75-A: [He has been a castmember of shows such as “Felicity,” “Alias,” and “Heroes”] = GRUNBERG

Those range from “household name” to “maybe vaguely familiar,” so what’s the strand that ties them all together? Well, we could start by looking at their first names, which are somewhat oddly missing:

GARY SHTEYNGART
RON CHERNOW
EVEL KNIEVEL (actually “Robert Craig Knievel,” but would you rather watch a guy named “Rob Knievel” jump a canyon on a motorcycle or a guy named “Evel Knievel”?)
ABE BEAME
AL MICHAELS
BEN BERNANKE. “Ben” is actually his whole first name, which sort of ruins the amazing Benjamin Banneker/Ben(jamin) Bernanke anagram.
GREG GRUNBERG

What next? Notice that each of these people’s last name contains all the letters in their first name. This leave some letters left over, like so:

GARY SHTEYNGART = SHTENT
RON CHERNOW
EVEL KNIEVEL
ABE BEAME
AL MICHAELS
BEN BERNANKE
GREG GRUNBERG

Now what? This: Each of these leftover sets anagram into a word that can satisfy another entry’s clue:

SHTENT = TENTHS = 23-A [Fractional amounts] = EIGHTHS
CHEW = CHEW (no anagram needed on this one) = [Use your teeth to grind food] = MASTICATE

[more to come! see solution grid above]

Today’s puzzle is Week 1 of 5 in February.No Instructions given here since there are no-instructions solving options available. Good luck!

–Matt