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Title: “I As in Interrobang”
Prompt: This week’s contest answer is an eight-letter, two-word phrase that would’ve made a good title for this puzzle.
Answer: MARK TIME
Correct entries: 267 overall, of which 179 were solo solves

I think I’ve referred to puzzles like this in the past as “The Butler Did It” metas. Punctuation is omnipresent and ever-useful, but, like butlers back in the day, often overlooked — in other words, a perfect sneaky basis for a meta.

Here you might have noticed some strangely worded entries, but putting your finger on the precise cause of the weirdness was tricky. Ultimately successful solvers noticed that only eight entries in the grid had any punctuation at all:

17-A: [This author’s novel Pet Sematary [sic] became director Mary Lambert’s second feature film in 1989] = STEPHEN KING
23-A: [Like POW—or WOW … or YEOW!] = LOUD
38-A: [Wham!’s biggest video of 1985] = FREEDOM
40-A: [City like Cairo, N’Djamena or Abuja; Porto-Novo is one as well] = CAPITAL
66-A: [M. Night Shyamalan’s signature move—prepare to be stunned] = TWIST ENDING
12-D: [The 8:27 PM from Clermont-Ferrand to Paris’s Austerlitz Station and the 6:00 AM from Clermont-Ferrand to Lyon’s Part Dieu] = TRAINS. Curiouser and curiouser!
27-A: [Moe’s Tavern is one (on TV at least)] = BAR
49-A: [Action represented by the emoticon :’(] = CRYING

Only eight clues with any punctuation, and we’re looking for an eight-letter answer, so this is probably the right path. But now what?

Key insight: the words don’t matter at all. Only the punctuation! In a reversal of their normal roles, the humble punctuation becomes king, and the almighty words are forced into a subservient role. Like so:

17-A: Apostrophe, Bracket, Bracket, Apostrophe = ABBA (taking the first letters)
23-A: Dash, Ellipsis, Exclamation Point = DEEP
38-A: Exclamation Point, Apostrophe = EPA
40-A: Comma, Apostrophe, Semicolon, Hyphen = DASH
66-A: Period, Apostrophe, Dash = PAD
12-D: Colon, Hyphen, Apostrophe, Colon, Hyphen, Apostrophe = CHA-CHA
27-A: Apostrophe, Parenthesis, Parenthesis = APP
49-A: Colon, Apostrophe, Parenthesis = CAP

Those all spell something useful! Final step: find the clue in the grid that each of those seven entries could satisfy:

ABBA = 20-A [1970s and 1980s band with iconic stage costumes]
DEEP = 16-A [Last word in the title of a hit that topped the charts for Adele] = RAIN. From this classic Adele song.
EPA = 13-D [Independent government arm founded during the Nixon Administration] = AMTRAK
CASH = 1-A [Singing legend Johnny] = MATHIS
PAD = 73-A [Common school supply] = ERASER
CHACHA = 52-A [Dance of Cuban origin] = MAMBO
APP = 50-A [Clickable phone feature] = ICON
CAP = 48-D [Item on the head of a graduating student] = TASSEL

Circle the first letter of those eight entries, take them in grid order, and you’ve got contest answer MARK TIME.

THIS WEEK’S INSTRUCTIONS:

This week’s contest answer is a noted prankster.

Solve well, and be not led astray by words intended to deceive.